Losing Eden: Why Our Minds Need the Wild

Jung believed that we had forgotten that we are primates, and that we need to make allowances for primitive layers in our psyche.

extolling the virtues of growing plants, and described it as ‘the marriage of the human psyche with the Great Mother’.14

contact with natural environments during pregnancy or the neonatal period results in a lower prevalence of allergic disorder, which is connected with regulation of the immune system.

Gardening is the most therapeutic and defiant thing you can do, especially in the city

Three-quarters of children (aged five to twelve) in the UK now spend less time outdoors than prison inmates, who require, according to UN guidelines, at least one hour of exercise in the open air every day.

people who lived near parks and woodlands had lower levels of income-related health inequalities.

Green urbanism and biophilic city design calls for walkable neighbourhoods and bicycle-friendly towns, alongside sustainable public transport.

‘The very thing that is causing our crisis – over-consumption – has become our palliative, to soothe away our anxieties about the damage we are doing to the world,’ she wrote. ‘Some people liken this to the vicious cycle of addiction.’

Collective amnesia is also at work. It is easy to be distracted from nature by our busy lives, by social media, work and technology. It is easy to forget that we are part of nature, and we only breathe, eat and drink because of it.

If an environment is equigenic, it may reduce the gap between the rich and the poor by weakening the link between socio-economic inequality and health inequality. Because of their many health benefits, natural environments are potentially equigenic.