Highland Climate Festival
Saturday 25th June to Sunday 3rd July 2022
We are delighted to announce that we are taking part in the inaugural Highland Climate Festival. The Highland Climate Festival will involve a range of events across Highland to promote and celebrate climate action. We will be delivering a range of online Nature-Connection activities across the 9 days of the festival and all of these activities will be delivered FREE of charge.
The Individual Benefits of Increased Connection with Nature
The concept of 'connection with nature' encompasses how we relate to nature, react to it and experience it. ‘Nature Connection’ is far more than just passively being in nature or exposed to it. Nature Connection describe our relationship to nature including the emotions and the emotional responses that nature creates in us. Being in nature can generate a wide range of emotions within us including calm, joy, awe and wonder, as well as aiding creativity and improving concentration. Increased nature connectedness is also associated with a lower incidence of ‘affective’ mental health problems in particular lowering depression and anxiety levels and relieving stress.
The Environmental Benefits of Increased Connection with Nature
Whilst the individual benefits to nature to health and wellbeing of increased connection are important on a personal level, increased connection with nature can also be beneficial to the wider natural environment, as it can lead to more pro-environmental attitudes and subsequent positive behaviours. At a time when the world is confronted with growing environmental threats, better understanding the critical connection between people and nature is key to informing effective decision making, stimulating positive action, and optimising the benefits people and communities receive from nature.
Connecting with nature therefore helps to bring us improved mental, physical and emotional health, and provides the foundation for resilient, healthy ecosystems, communities, and economies to thrive and remain for generations to come.
Events
Online Guided Nature-Connection Events
On Saturday 25th June and Sunday 3rd July we will be delivering a one hour online nature-connection activity. Hugh will guide you through 4 or 5 nature-connection activities that you can take part in anywhere in nature where there is a bit of peace and quiet and you can get WiFi or mobile internet. The first of these will be held via Facebook Live so register to take part on our An Darach Forest Therapy Facebook Page.
Nature-Connection Invitations
We have posted a series of ‘Nature-Connection’ invitations on our website and one of these each day on our Facebook page from Saturday 25th June to Sunday 3rd July.
Virtual Scottish Tree Hugging Championships
We are already hosting the Scottish Tree Hugging Championships on Friday 22nd July which will be held on the Ardtornish Estate.
We are also going to run a Virtual Scottish Tree Hugging Championship during the Highland Climate Festival.
There will be two categories in this online competition:
Dedication: Most dedicated hug demonstrating presence, intention, love, respect etc.
Freestyle: Most creative hug.
Whilst this is intended to be a fun event, we hope that it will help:
To raise awareness of nature in the local and global community
To promote understanding about the benefits of trees for human health
To increase appreciation of nature, near and far
Post your pictures on our An Darach Forest Therapy Facebook Page between 9am Saturday 25th June and 6pm Friday 1st July. We will then share the photo to our Facebook Newsfeed to make sure that it appears visible to everyone! Invite your friends to like or love this post. The competitor who gets the most ‘likes’ and ‘loves’ in each category will be the winner and will receive a set of all our Forest Bathing and Nature Connection Booklets and a Sit Spot Seat Pad.
You do not need to live in Scotland to take part, but there will be a ‘Scotland Competition’ and the ‘Rest of the World Competition’.
The winners will be announced on Sunday 3rd July. You can register on Facebook if you want! If you include the co-ordinates of your tree (the compass app on your phone should tell you this) we will include it on our map of Online Tree Huggers below.
