What Happens When We Forget We Are Nature.
We recently heard the term Nature-Deficit Disorder used in a conversation with Zach Bush on The Joe Rogan Experience. The phrase stayed with us because it names something at the heart of much of what we are exploring through Yarn & Yield: the consequences of becoming disconnected from the living world.
The term was coined by author Richard Louv in his 2005 book Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder. Louv was not proposing a medical diagnosis. Rather, he was looking for a way to describe the human costs of our growing alienation from nature. As he explains, the term refers to the consequences of spending less time in nature and more time indoors, surrounded by technology and disconnected from the natural world.
The idea is particularly relevant today. For many of us, daily life takes place largely indoors, under artificial light and increasingly through digital devices. We can work, shop, learn, socialise and entertain ourselves without needing to pay much attention to the natural systems that make our lives possible. We can go days without noticing the season, touching soil, observing the weather or spending meaningful time in a natural environment.
This does not necessarily mean that people have stopped caring about nature. Many people care deeply about climate change, biodiversity loss and environmental destruction. But there is a difference between caring about nature as an idea and having a living relationship with the natural world.
We can know that forests are important without knowing the trees in the forest near our home. We can understand that soil matters without ever growing food. We can worry about biodiversity loss without knowing which birds, insects or plants share our neighbourhood.
The result is a growing paradox. We are completely dependent on the natural world, while becoming increasingly disconnected from it.
The natural environment is part of our health
The relationship between nature and human wellbeing is not simply philosophical. The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) recognises the natural environment as an important determinant of health. Natural environments provide the ecological systems on which human life depends, while also contributing to physical and mental wellbeing through recreation, culture, spirituality and our relationships with place.
Research into green space and mental health has identified several possible pathways through which natural environments may influence wellbeing, including physical activity, stress reduction, restoration, social interaction and environmental factors such as air quality and noise. A systematic review of the research found evidence of associations between green-space exposure and mental health, while also highlighting the complexity of the relationship and the need for further research.
Nature is not a cure for every problem, and spending time outdoors is not a replacement for medical care or professional mental health support. But the places where we live and spend time do matter. Our environments influence our opportunities for movement, the amount of stress we experience, our ability to connect with other people and our sense of belonging.
In Australia, this understanding also needs to acknowledge the much deeper relationship between people, place and wellbeing held within Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures. The AIHW recognises the importance of connection to Country and caring for Country, and reports that research generally finds positive associations between these cultural connections and health and wellbeing.
For First Nations peoples, connection to Country is not a lifestyle choice or a wellness trend. It is part of an ancient and continuing relationship with place, culture, identity, responsibility and wellbeing. This is an important reminder that the idea of reconnecting with nature is not new. In many ways, the modern problem is that Western societies have spent centuries separating human life from the natural world and are now beginning to rediscover something that many Indigenous cultures have never forgotten: that human beings exist within living systems rather than outside them.
Connection is more than simply being outdoors
Being in nature can certainly be restorative. Research into nature exposure and wellbeing has found associations with improvements in mood, stress regulation and other aspects of mental health, although the evidence varies and researchers continue to explore the mechanisms involved.
But nature connection is more than simply being outdoors. It develops through familiarity, attention and relationship.
There is a difference between passing through a landscape and paying attention to it. There is a difference between looking at a tree and knowing that tree is part of the place where you live. There is a difference between occasionally visiting a park and becoming involved in caring for a local environment.
Over time, a place can become more than a location. It becomes somewhere we know. We begin to notice when the creek is flowing higher than usual, which birds return each season and how the light changes across the landscape. We become aware when something is different.
And once we know a place, it becomes much easier to care about what happens to it.
This relationship with place can also connect us to other people. Growing food together, restoring habitat, learning a practical skill, sharing a meal or caring for a local environment create opportunities for connection that do not depend on simply sitting down and trying to make conversation with strangers.
Research into nature-based community programmes is beginning to explore this relationship more directly. A qualitative study of a Landcare ACT nature-connection programme found that participants described benefits relating not only to their connection with nature, but also to social connectedness, personal goals, exploration of local places and participation in conservation activities.
This is where nature connection becomes particularly important to the work of Yarn & Yield. We do not see connection to nature and connection to community as separate goals. We see them as relationships that can strengthen one another.
The land is part of the work
At Yarn & Yield, the land is not simply the location where our activities happen. It is part of the work itself.
We are exploring what becomes possible when a community has a living place in which to learn, contribute, experiment and build relationships over time. Our workshops happen on the land. Our contributor days happen on the land. Our food systems work begins with the land. Our community gatherings happen on the land. Our enterprise development is grounded in relationship with the place in which it takes place.
This matters because ideas change when they encounter reality.
It is easy to talk about regeneration in a meeting room or boardroom table. It is different to stand beside a creek and ask what the creek needs. It is easy to talk about community resilience. It is different to work alongside people you did not know before, solving a practical problem together. It is easy to talk about belonging. It is different to return to the same place repeatedly, become familiar with it and gradually develop relationships with the people who are also part of it.
The land gives us somewhere to practise what we believe.
One of the ideas we are exploring through Yarn & Yield is that belonging is not something we simply receive. It is something we help create. We begin to belong somewhere through attention and participation. We show up, learn, contribute, take responsibility and return.
This is why we use the word contributor. We do not want people to be passive consumers of community or nature. We want to create opportunities for people to become part of something living. That contribution might involve growing food, restoring habitat, sharing knowledge, developing an enterprise, helping create a community event or simply showing up and participating.
There is no single way to contribute. But participation matters, because we do not believe the answer to disconnection is simply to consume more experiences. We believe it is to become part of something.
Remembering that we are nature
Much of the way modern society relates to nature is based on utility. What can we take from it? What can we produce? What can we extract? Even the language of nature’s “benefits” can sometimes reinforce this relationship. We go into nature because it gives us something: better mood, reduced stress, improved health or a break from everyday life.
These benefits are real and important. But there is another question we need to ask: what does our relationship with nature ask of us?
If the natural world is not simply a collection of resources, but a living system of which we are part, then our relationship cannot be based only on what we receive. It must also include responsibility, reciprocity and care.
This is the shift from nature as a place we visit to nature as a relationship we participate in. It is also the shift that sits at the heart of regenerative thinking. Regeneration asks us to move beyond simply reducing harm and towards contributing to the health and vitality of the systems of which we are part.
At Yarn & Yield, we are interested in what happens when nature is placed at the foundation of community life. Not because nature can solve every problem, and not because being outdoors is a replacement for professional healthcare. But because where we can create access to land and meaningful opportunities for participation, we believe something important can happen.
People can slow down, move, learn, contribute, meet other people and become familiar with a place. They can develop a relationship with the living world around them and begin to see themselves differently: not as separate observers of nature, and not simply as consumers of its benefits, but as participants in a living system.
Perhaps the answer to nature-deficit disorder is not simply to spend more time in nature. Perhaps it is to remember that we were never separate from it.
We breathe air produced through living systems. We drink water that moves through the earth. We eat food grown from soil. Our bodies are made from the same elements as the trees, the rivers, the animals and the land around us.
We are nature.
The question is therefore not only how nature can help us. It is also how can we become people who participate in the health of the living world that makes our own lives possible?
This is the question we are exploring at Yarn & Yield.
We are creating opportunities for people to come together on the land, to learn, contribute, care and build relationships. Because nature is not somewhere we go to become whole again. It is the living system of which we have always been a part.
Perhaps reconnecting with nature is less about finding our way back to something we have lost and more about remembering what we have forgotten: that we belong here, that we are connected and that our collective healing begins when we begin to live as though that is true.
Explore further
The Symbiocene
Explore our wider thinking about moving from separation and extraction towards connection, reciprocity and regeneration.
Richard Louv — What is Nature-Deficit Disorder?
Louv explains the origins of the term and why he created it to describe the human costs of alienation from nature. Short interview with Richard Louv.
Addressing “Nature-Deficit Disorder”: A Mixed Methods Pilot Study of Young Adults Attending a Wilderness Camp
A pilot study of young adults attending a four-week wilderness camp to investigate whether nature-based camp experiences would increase connection to nature and promote multiple dimensions of well-being.
Nature Deficit and Mental Health Among Adolescents: A Perspective on Conservation of Resources Theory
Nature deficit may change social (social capital) and personal resources (resilience), resulting in lasting damage to adolescents’ mental health. Therefore, based on the conservation of resources theory, this paper intends to explore the correlation between nature deficit and adolescents’ mental health, and the mediating role of social capital and resilience.