What I’d like to do, is to take the idea of ‘nourishment’ out of the kitchens and dining rooms, beyond our bellies, and onto the land around us, into the realm of our senses.
Yesterday, the keynote speaker, Jasmin Peschke, talked about the importance of our connection to both ourselves, to each other and to the land. And what I would like us to do is to think about how the lived connection to the life of the land, being immersed in the landscape, held by the land, being participants in its nurture and growth, can, in turn, nurture and grow us and our students. And how this connection invites us all to experience and embody a deepening sense of belonging and of becoming.
So let us start with the science. Modern scientific research shows that interaction with the natural world can lead to a recalibration of the brain’s sensory processing, potentially enhancing cognitive function and emotional well-being. Recent studies using EEGs[1][2][3][4][5] and other measures to study brain activity during time spent in the natural world found rhythmic brain activity that indicated
- improved attention
- higher functional connectivity
- altered sensory processing
- on the ground, this corresponds to
- better focus
- more cognitive flexibility
- increased creativity.
Other research using functional neuroimaging found a decrease in amygdala activity following just one hour in a natural environment.[6] The amygdala is a brain structure crucial for processing emotions, particularly fear and perceived threat. It is responsible for our fight/flight/freeze response in the face of danger.
Following traumatic events in a biography – and many of our students have this in their profile –the amygdala can become hyperactive, and this will often lead to anxiety and depression. It is what we know as PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder). Further, when the amygdala is overactive, it can disrupt the pre-frontal cortex, which is responsible for higher level cognitive processes, like memory, planning, emotional regulation, and so on, again leading to difficulties with focus, impulse control, and emotional regulation. It is a similar story for ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder), which may be characterised by disruptions in the connectivity between the amygdala and the pre-frontal cortex.
Being with the land (in the land /on the land) offers opportunities to soothe this. Being with the land is medicine and nourishment for effective self-regulation, which allows participation in daily activities and community, important steps on the road to healing the wounds of exclusion and social isolation. While this has been validated by recent scientific research, the idea of a ‘nature cure’ is not new. The monastery cure of the Middle Ages included rest, healthy food, and work in the gardens.
The NHS here in the UK has been prescribing a ‘dose of nature’, for both physical and mental health since 2022. Research conducted in Japan in the 1980s and 90s tracked the benefits of spending time in woodlands and forests.[7] The practice is known as Shinrin-yoko, which translates to ‘forest bathing’. It was developed as a national health programme after studies found measurable changes in stress hormones. Further research has shown health benefits that include
- reduced stress
- improved mood
- boosted immune system
- lowered blood pressure
- improved sleep
- increased concentration and memory
Apparently thirty minutes a week is already helpful. And two hours leads to consistently better physical health, and self-reported experience of well-being. In a process similar to the one in which nutrition enters our bodies as food, via our mouths, full of potential to maintain us, to harm us or to heal us, so our other sense organs, that is our skin, our eyes, ears and noses are open and receptive. We meet the world with our sense organs, and via these we ingest and digest our environment. You could say that our sense organs are portals to our inner landscape, and that the quality of our sensory experience guides and influences our inner activities.
Many of our students will have sensory diets, prescribed by an Occupational therapist (O.T).[8] This prescription will be the appropriate amount of sensory input to regulate the emotions, attention, and behaviour, so that the student is more calm, alert and organised. In other words, ready to learn. Ideally the diet will also specify the quality of the sensory input. Our young people are bombarded with sensory input that is increasingly difficult to digest, and the senses are burnt out and fatigued.
O.T.s tell us that the most effective sensory diets integrate seamlessly into existing routines, rather than as stand-alone tasks. And the neuroscientists tell us that while simply being in nature is beneficial, actively engaging and having a meaningful connection will further enhance the benefits.
At Ruskin Mill schools and colleges, with the curriculum and environments, we have a myriad of opportunities to integrate this into the rhythm of the day. Healthy, biodynamic ecologies are sensory medicine cabinets, treasure chests. Horticulture here at Ruskin Mill, with its market garden, polytunnels and crop field, is a great example of a rich and complex multi-sensory feast for the senses.
Touching the earth, having hands in the soil, handling plants, the produce, the tools.
The smell of cut grass, of blossoms, fires, and manure.
The sound of birdsong, the buzz of bees, the bleats of sheep, the rain, the leaves in the wind.
The dance of light and dark. The colours. Fresh green shoots, ripening fruits. Bugs and butterflies. The blue sky, The flush of autumn. The weather.
And then: The warmth of the sun on the skin, the freshness of the air. The balance of the wheelbarrow. The flow of water. Essentially, the life of the cosmos.
What a banquet!
Margaret Colquhoun, Goethean scientist and founder of the Life science trust, which is now part of Ruskin Mill – that’s Fairhill Rise – suggested that regular work with the land enhanced our capacities to sense, so we might sense the elements, that we may flow with the seasons, and that our inner landscapes would grow and develop with the outer ones.[9]
The annual cycle of sowing seeds, tending to the crops, harvesting, processing and seed-saving ties the student (and ourselves) to the procession of the seasons, to the wheel of the year, nourishing the quality of rhythm and the sense of balance. As we cultivate the land, we are also cultivating a sense of wonder, and a sense of response-ability.
This seed-to-table ethos not only ensures sovereignty but makes tangible that the food on our plate is not dead matter, but part of a living process. The affordances of this seed-to-table curriculum, with its virtuous circle that begins and ends in the soil, is mirrored in the field I work in, where I work on the land with my students to cultivate colour, growing pigment plants, and then creating dye baths that transform our wool into a jewel box of colours.[10] It is a colour palette, rather than a taste palette, that we cater for. Bioregional, local colour, reflecting the landscape, ecology, and vitality it grew from.
The cauldron of transformation simmers away, not to coax the nutrients, the vitamins and minerals hidden within the vegetables and fruits, but to reveal the colours hidden within, and then to bathe our inner landscapes in new light. The colours yielded aren’t simply blocks of discrete colours. There is a whole spectrum, a symphony of colour, with infinite gradations of hues and tones. Some of the colours arising in the landscape we find arising in our dye pots in a similar fashion. Golden yellow from our golden rod flowers. However others vary, and we find complementary colour relationships akin to the afterimages arising in the eye. So, for example, a dye bath made from the deep purple berries of purging buckthorn is deep purple in colour. However, the wool that emerges from it will be green. There’s a balance there. Purple iris flowers create a purple ink. But when this goes into the receptacle of a limpet shell, calcium carbonate, it too becomes green.
Wool emerging from a woad vat is yellow, but as it is brought into the air, it breathes oxygen and becomes blue. The orange roots of madder offer us pinks, purples, browns, and reds, as well as orange, depending on factors such as temperature, cooking time, the water source – is it from a spring or from the sky – and so on. Much that can be said of ultra-processed fast food resonates with fast colour. It is the same stream of pollution and toxicity and ill-health, of chronic illness, hormone disruption, breathing problems and skin rashes. The cheap colours derived from the fossil fuel industry have complicated and multi-layered chemical profiles, chemicals that migrate from the dyes to the skin, and into the body. On the other hand, many of the plant dyes also have medicinal properties which means we can literally wear our medicine. Samuri warriors know this and would wear a layer of indigo-dyed cloth under their armour, knowing its antiseptic properties, somewhat useful when going into battle!
About 7 years ago, Glasshouse college hosted an extraordinary and wonder-ful exhibition cum installation, called ‘experience colour.’ For those of you that missed it, there is a book that compliments that exhibition. [11] In there, there is an essay by Liri Fillipini, art therapist at Glasshouse at the time, in which she says ‘We can ‘drink’ colour into ourselves, so that we are nourished and satisfied.’ I particularly like this description of colour as fluid, marking it as a life process, one that can be consumed by our senses.
We can take our experience with this sensory journey into colour back out to the land with us, where we have the living pictures of the seasons to feed our sensorial imagination, and the flowing processes of the becoming of colour, which allows us to imagine the hidden inner qualities of the plants. The hidden treasures lying within, not yet manifest in the world. Perhaps this can offer a doorway to find the hidden treasures within the other and within the self.
Anna Willoughby, B.Sc Hons (Exon) Psychology, M.St (Oxon) Social anthropology, M.A (Manchester) Visual anthropology, Dip. Education (Distinction).
Wool and Colour tutor, and Master practitioner of Practical Skills Therapeutic education at Ruskin Mill College, Ruskin Mill Trust, UK.
Having spent many years involved in environmental activism, advocacy, and social research, as well as delving deep into the wonders, confluence and mysteries of the more-than-human world, Anna was drawn to dig into the biodynamic ecology at Ruskin Mill. This led her to metamorphose into a craft and land tutor at the college, where the plant-dye workshop is rooted firmly in a field-to -fibre ethos. She is a Master Practitioner of the college PSTE* method, offering practical skills, transformative processes, and therapeutic affordance, through the lens of wool-craft, to staff across the provisions; she works on the ground with students to curate gardens and field-crops of bio-regional tinctorial plants, co-creating a palette of colour that is steered by the seasons, and anchored firmly in the land.
*PSTE, Practical skills therarapeutic education.
Anna.Willoughby@rmc.rmt.org
Ruskin Mill College, rmt.org/ruskinmill, The Fisheries, Horsley, Gloucestershire GL6 0PL
Ruskin Mill Trust:
Ruskin Mill Trust is an educational charity that operates in England, Scotland and Wales, offering exciting outdoor learning environments, utilising practical land and craft activities to support the development of work and life skills in young people with autism and other learning difficulties.
Ruskin Mill Trust’s method of Practical Skills Therapeutic Education combines the insights from Rudolf Steiner’s educational inspiration and understanding of human phasic development, and is inspired by the work of John Ruskin and William Morris. Working with hand, head, heart and place, through practical activities, performing arts, therapies, culture and social enterprise, Ruskin Mill Trust helps individuals to re-imagine their potential. https://rmt.org/
[1] Imperatori, Claudio & Massullo, Chiara & De Rossi, Elena & Carbone, Giuseppe & Theodorou, Annalisa & Scopelliti, Massimiliano & Romano, Luciano & Del Gatto, Claudia & Allegrini, Giorgia & Panno, Angelo. (2023). Exposure to nature is associated with decreased functional connectivity within the distress network: A resting state EEG study. Frontiers in Psychology. 14. 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1171215.
[2] Yao W., Zhang X., Gong Q. (2021). The effect of exposure to the natural environment on stress reduction: a meta-analysis. Urban For. Urban Green. 57
[3] Bowler D. E., Buyung-Ali L. M., Knight T. M., Pullin A. S. (2010). A systematic review of evidence for the added benefits to health of exposure to natural environments. BMC Public Health
[4] McDonnell AS, Strayer DL 2024) The influence of a walk in nature on human resting brain activity: a randomized controlled trial. Sci Rep. 2024
[5] McDonnell AS, Strayer DL. (2024) Immersion in nature enhances neural indices of executive attention. Sci Rep. 2024
[6] Sudimac, S., Sale, V. & Kuhn, S. (2022) How nature nurtures: Amygdala activity decreases as the result of a one-hour walk in nature.
[7] Vermeesch AL, Ellsworth-Kopkowski A, Prather JG, Passel C, Rogers HH, Hansen MM (2024) Shinrin-Yoku (Forest Bathing): A Scoping Review of the Global Research on the Effects of Spending Time in Nature. Glob Adv Integr Med Health. 2024
[8]Magdalena Wójcik (2023) The Role of a Sensory Diet in Improving the Quality of Psychosocial Functioning of Students in Inclusive Education. Maria Curie-Skłodowska University
[9] Margaret Colquhoun, Healing Outer and Inner Landscapes. P193 in Richard Thornton smith (2009) Cosmos earth and nutrition. Sophia books
[10] Wicker, A. (2023). To dye for: How toxic fashion is making us sick--and how we can fight back. G.P. Putnam's Sons.
[11] Liri Filippini, The Therapeutic nature of colour. P255 in Troy Vine (ed.) (2018) Experience colour. An exhibition by Nora Löbe & Matthias Rang
