How does gardening reduce stress?
Stress can be a horrible thing if you haven’t found a way to handle it. Stress can be caused by work, relationships, health issues, financial situations, exams and many more things life throws at you. In 2019, a report was released by Southern Cross, stating that stress in New Zealand has risen by a net of 23.5% across businesses in the past two years. Not all stress is work related, so whatever causes your stress, your solution may be gardening. Not many people know that gardening can reduce stress and increase good health through sunlight, exercise, creativity and being alone.
Since long term stress can cause many health issues like high blood pressure, obesity, diabetes, depression and anxiety, controlling your stress levels is very important. Gardening can reduce your stress in many ways.
Sunlight
Gardening outside gives you your daily vitamin D. It is said that you need to spend 10-30 minutes in the sun to get your daily dose of vitamin D. This is to increases muscle, nerve and immune system health and prevent a range of diseases and sicknesses. Gardening encourages you to get out in the sun, increasing your Vitamin D intake, making your body healthier and happier. Vitamin D is known for reducing stress levels by helping manage the stress hormone called Cortisol.
Exercise
Gardening helps you get outside and lets you get some exercise into your daily routine, while you plant and maintain a beautiful garden. It is recommended that everyone gets around 2 and a half hours of exercise a day to keep fit and healthy. Gardening can help you achieve this by getting you moving around to water the plants, carrying dirt back and forth, getting up and down from the ground and so forth. Exercise is important in your daily life because it builds your muscle strength, gets your endurance and heart rate up. It also allows more oxygen to your brain and issues and raises endorphins levels resulting in more energy, the release of stress and a happier feeling. Therefore, your stress reduces through the exercise you do while gardening.
Creativity
Creativity and expressing yourself lets your body relax and your mind run free resulting in less stress and worry. Gardening is a great way to express yourself by choosing which plants you want to grow and where you want to place them.
Being alone
When you are in your garden alone on a beautiful sunny day, it can really help you focus on yourself and your thoughts with no distractions. Being alone in nature really helps to block out all the distractions and noise of the outside world, including works stress, family stress and all other types of stress and worries. It gives your mind a rest from overthinking and lets you have a moment of peace and quiet.
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