 Fe'n gobl o'r ffordd, ych yn ymd stalk iawn, fel y u'r rhiwr, ni'n ffordd iawnfa'n iawn i amser, i ddim eich gwneud arni i eu bod hynny. Cymru Cymru Cymru mi oed yn ddweud fe'n cael eu gweld o'r ffordd iawn. Fe'n ffordd i'r grwrdd o'r rhaid, oeddan nhw'n rhaid i'n ffordd ei hollol i bwynt o gweld. Felly, goledd yn eich gwybch yma'r oeddech chi. Nad yna yn holl o'r rhaid i'r ffordd i'r cw avantau. Maen nhw'n fawr i'w lle dweud i'w wych yn gallu gweithio adonogi. Mae yw'n amser yn EF, a fyddwn i dda i fynd byw'n gweithio'r ffaith that yn yw'r hyn. Dwi'n meddylu'r ceis. Yn ymdeithas, mae'r fawr i'w meddwl yn yn ôl rydych chi'n mynd iddo, bwysig yn gweithio'r os i'w gwwc mor i wahanol nid iddo i'r ffasghaffu'r gwneud? Maen nhw'n ei bod wedi cael y cwmp butter, o'r tablet o'r TV o'r glw brandio... If that's the case, then yes, you really do need to get out more. If you're brutally honest with yourself, how much time are you personally spending in front of a screen each day? Maybe you get up in the morning, have a quick scroll through social media while you have a cup of coffee, you head off to the office and spend a day in front of a computer in your lunch break, you end up playing a game or checking the news, you get home in the evening, maybe you look up a recipe online to cook dinner and then you settle down to watch telly in the evening or to watch a movie and it all adds up. So there was a study, there was a national survey of UK adults that looked at screen use during and after the lockdowns that took place and the evidence is that the increase in screen use is continuing. So one study published in 2020 found that 50% of UK adults spent 11 hours a day looking at a screen. 11 hours a day. And in 2021 another reported that the average mobile phone usage was 4 hours a day. You're spending 4 hours just faffing about on your smartphone. So what I mean when I say that you need to get out more is that you need to spend more time in the natural environment. I appreciate that this weekend's weather is going to make it a hard sell. I am going to give it my best shot. You've got some lovely pictures to look at in the meantime. Right, so most of us have got a sense that being in nature makes us feel a little bit better in some way and there's plenty of research to back that up. So over the next 15 minutes I'm going to share some of that evidence, both correlational and experimental and I'm going to focus on three areas. I'm going to focus on creativity, on memory and attention and on mood and wellbeing. Now whilst it's also true that being outside walking and talking to somebody else can have a really big impact on the quality of the conversations that you have and can lead to enhanced personal relationships maybe we shouldn't run before we can walk. So you're here acknowledging you need to get out more. Let's focus on what that means to you personally and how nature can bring benefits to you personally. So we're at EMF, let's start with the impact of nature on our creativity. Where do you have your best ideas? Now before anybody shouts out more information than we need about their bathroom habits let's just say I'm guessing you don't have your best ideas when you've been sat in front of a computer for eight hours. Getting out into nature can help with your imagination, your ingenuity, your innovation and inspiration. As people here know creativity is not just about writers or artists or musicians. There's elements of creative thinking are integral in all jobs and all roles and all situations. The phases in the creativity process were identified right back in 1926 by Wallace. Preparation, incubation, idea and then evaluation and the evidence is that nature particularly plays a role in the preparation and incubation stages. Those who spent four days outdoors in nature showed a 50% improvement on creative problem-solving tasks and it was thought that it was due to a combination of the exposure to natural stimuli which give a positive emotional feel but also combined with a corresponding decrease in the attention-grabbing technology that we tend to spend time with. Now for those of you who are thinking four days, four days outside I've got two responses. Firstly, you're here this weekend, you're doing four days outside. Just think how creative you're all going to be by the end of it. And the other is just there's evidence, there's EEG evidence that just 25 minutes outside can show improvements in creativity. There's evidence of lower arousal and engagement and frustration and higher meditation when people moved into a green zone space which all of which is really a very good thing for getting creative juices flowing. So when the prefrontal cortex of your brain is calmed that's when flashes of insight come to us. It's as if there's an imagination network that's engaged when we ourselves are engaged in relaxing activities such as sitting watching the birds or walking in the woods or taking a stroll in a park. That's what's in control, what's in control of performing mental simulations. So some think that that's the genesis of where we get our creative thoughts from. Basically nature's got the ability to evoke a creative way of thinking by making us more curious and enabling us to think more flexibly and have new ideas. Another aspect of cognitive functioning that can be improved by getting out more is your memory. So various tasks have been used to demonstrate that nature specifically enhances working memory. Now working memory is a term used by psychologists and it's basically a form of short term memory that's used to execute specific tasks. It's a system that manipulates and uses our short term memories so it facilitates planning and it facilitates comprehension and reasoning and problem solving and all of those are things that can be measured experimentally. The task that shows the most improvement in case you're interested in memory is the backward digit span task which is where you get people to repeat back sequences of numbers having varying length in reverse order. Now in one study students were given a memory test and then they were divided into two groups. One group was sent to walk around an arboretum. The other was sent to walk down a busy urban street and when they came back and they were retested those who had gone out into nature showed significantly improved memory and cognitive function and there's other evidence that shows if you spend an hour walking in nature you can improve your memory by 20%. The cognitive benefits of getting out more extend beyond creativity enhancing memory capacity as it can also enhance your attentional capacity. So essentially there's too much vying for our attention nowadays and that works against how we've evolved we're not cut out to be switched on all the time. I changed that from turned on all the time because I remembered it was a family show. This constant stimulation impacts the prefrontal cortex and that's what leads to attentional fatigue. Now what you might be thinking now is yeah but being out in nature provides constant stimulation too so where's the benefit? You're not wrong, it's just that the way in which the brain engages with nature and those natural environments is effortless in terms of attention, we've evolved to want to look at those things and to be part of those things and it means that our attention is gently held whilst we can still reflect and other cognitive processes can come to the fore. So there are three theories around why that is the first is the biophilia hypothesis which says that we're innately driven to connect with nature for survival and psychological restoration so when a connection with nature occurs it's that that restores our attentional capacity. The attention restoration theory says that natural environments elicit what they call a soft fascination for us so what I've said about gently holding that space and that can release us from this relentless goal orientated attentional processes giving us cognitive restoration that way and finally there's a stress reduction theory which focuses on physiological responses to demonstrate that reduction in stress induced by the natural environment can in turn enhance cognition. So we humans, is EMF, I'm assuming we're all humans find nature inherently interesting and we can naturally focus on what we experience there so it provides a respite for our overactive minds which can refresh us to focus more deeply on something else. The upshot is that exposure to natural surroundings can improve focus and attention and can help to dispel brain fog because it reduces mental fatigue and mental stress and there's even research on children with ADHD that shows time spent in nature improves their attention span later on. Now a walk in nature can have similar effects to meditating according to Berman and what I love is it even works in crap weather so to quote people don't have to enjoy the walk to get the benefits we found the same benefits when it was 80 degrees and sunny over the summer as when temperatures dropped to 25 degrees in January the only difference was participants enjoyed the walk more in the spring and summer than in the dead of winter. Surprising that one. To my knowledge there aren't studies about whether or not that applies to going out in the rain so if anybody wants to undertake that research afterwards maybe we could have a talk about that. Ultimately in terms of attention if you can't see the wood for the trees go out and look at the trees it will help. Now the final area in which getting out more helps you isn't cognitive there are also emotional and existential benefits too in the shape of improvements to mood and to wellbeing we still have a deep connection with nature and research shows that despite all of the technological advances that surround us we need to nurture that bond nature can activate the part of the brain associated with emotions and empathy and self-awareness and exposure to plants has been shown to suppress the sympathetic nervous system which leads to lower cortisol and lower heart rates. A daily walk in nature can be as effective as taking an antidepressant for some people with mild forms of depression and also it can reduce anxiety and if you're prone to overthinking or to worrying getting outside into a green space might be able to help you break those cyclic thoughts in your head research shows that if you walk for 90 minutes nature lowers activity in the brain in the part of the brain that's related to negative rumination the natural world can heal as well in one finish study just 15 minutes in nature help people feel psychologically restored and if you were walking that happened even more quickly another show that those recovering from spinal surgery in hospital got better faster and needed less pain relief when they had a natural light, plenty of natural light in a view from a window and those effects actually translate to benefits at work if you're lucky enough to be near a window at work and I'm sure all of you have worked in cubicles at some point where you've not been able to see any natural light but if you can be near natural light actually people who work near natural light and a view report lower levels of stress and higher levels of job satisfaction so finally we've all got a deep human need to feel connected we're incredibly technologically connected nowadays but in some cases our relationships are the poorer for that particularly in the west we're often very isolated which goes against our evolutionary makeup there are studies that show that going out into nature can build a sense of belonging to the wider world which in turn can improve your mental health and wellbeing and when you're feeling a bit lost and wondering what the point is and what things are all about then a dose of awe might just remind you how wondrous the world actually is trees that have been around for centuries before you lived and that will outlive you by a long time or just looking up into the infinite sky and all of the stars these things can help you remind you that we're actually a tiny part of a wonderful glorious universe and what can be more of an inspiration than that so I've shared with you how getting outside can improve your creativity your memory, your attention, your mood, your wellbeing just to be clear it doesn't need to involve exercise just being outside in a natural environment can have a similar effect and by natural I don't just mean green spaces there's evidence that seas or inland water blue spaces can have similar effects and it's not just about what you look at either there's evidence that natural sounds can be incredibly restorative and just in case you're making assumptions you think I've made assumptions about access to green spaces during your working day I haven't because one of the really cool things about this research is it's been shown that you can reap the benefits of attention or restoration and improved memory just by looking at a picture of nature for six minutes if that's your only option and one study even showed improvement in attention after looking at a picture of nature for just 40 seconds so yes after everything I've said I am telling you to look at a screen if that's your only alternative but look at a natural image on the screen if you've been looking at the slides while I've been talking you're already winning so right with all of those benefits frankly I'm surprised you're still in the room and not off round the site looking at the clouds and the trees regardless of whether you're still here because you just wanted to come in from the rain or you're interested in what I'm saying or inertia or because you just came in early for the next talk about live data feeds from network rail to run a model railway I just want to tell you what happens if you don't get out more nature deprivation has been associated with depression and in fact one study demonstrated that watching TV and computer use can even predict depression levels among our adults and there's even evidence that associates screen time with a loss of empathy and a lack of altruism you're basically a better person if you get out more there's a quick caveat however you can't just take your laptop outside or your phone outside and look at your phone while you're outside you actually have to look at the green stuff now if you haven't yet heard enough to encourage you to get out more the risks of not getting out are actually even higher than depression and isolation and being a dick in one cardiology study it was shown that time in front of a screen independent of physical activity was associated with a higher risk of death now if you've seen me before you didn't think we were going to get through this without me talking about death at some point did you there I've done it and I know that technically we've all got 100% chance of death but you know what I mean so have I persuaded you yet I very much hope that I have if I have in future just try and build a little tiny bit of getting out more into your day whether that's sitting in the garden with a cup of tea a scroll round the park gazing out the window with the clouds going past or even setting the desktop your desktop of your computer to a natural image and looking at that for six minutes if that's the only alternative there is so much to gain when you take your thinking outside thank you