The Beauty of Nature & Music is Healing

Throughout the Ages

It has been known since antiquity that the beauty of nature and music has restorative, healing power. Until the early 20th Century, hospitals and sanitariums were located in beautiful, natural settings. Wilbert Gesler's book, Healing Places, asserts that place matters to health...a healing 'sense of place' was integral to the healing process in Bath, England and Lourdes, France.

Poets and philosophers have celebrated the power and significance of beauty throughout the ages. English poet, John Keats' most famous line is from Ode on a Grecian Urn, "Beauty is truth, truth is beauty...." Mystical Irish philosopher-poet, John O'Donohue, explores beauty's profound impact on our whole being in his masterful work, Beauty, The Invisible Embrace, calling our intimacy with beauty a "homecoming of the human spirit." www.jodonohue.com/books America's premier environmentalist author, Rachel Carson, believed that people who appreciated the beauty of nature would find "reserves of strength" that would last throughout their lives. www.rachelcarson.org

Enhancing the Therapeutic Environment: A Room With A View

Roger S. Ulrich, architecture professor at Texas A & M University, is the leading researcher in the use of nature in healthcare. He explains the decline of its use in the early decades of the 1900's. "Gardens became less prevalent in hospitals...as major advances in medical science caused hospital administrators and architects to concentrate on creating healthcare buildings that would reduce infection risk and serve as functionally efficient settings for new medical technology."

In 1984, Ulrich conducted the classic study which demonstrated that patients with a hospital window view of greenery healed faster than patients without such a view.

In Ulrich's 2002 overview, Health Benefits of Gardens in Hospitals, he found growing scientific evidence that viewing gardens can measurably reduce patient stress and improve health outcomes. Even with nonpatient studies, "simply looking at environments dominated by greenery, flowers or water -- as compared to built scenes lacking nature (rooms, buildings, towns) -- is significantly more effective in promoting recovery or restoration from stress." The effect was positive whether using actual gardens, artwork, photos, or nature videotapes. Even more amazing, "there is considerable evidence that the restorative effect of nature scenes are manifested within only three to five minutes as a combination of psychological / emotional and physiological changes...for instance, in blood pressure, heart activity, muscle tension, and brain electrical activity." There has been a "major resurgence in interest internationally in providing gardens in hospitals and other healthcare facilities."

Complemetary Therapies

In his groundbreaking book and PBS series, "Healing and the Mind", Bill Moyers explores the mind-body-spirit connection and the power of positive emotional experiences. He asserts, what many of us have felt for a long time, that medical science is beginning to catch up with what we already intuitively know.

In Healing Places, Gesler explains that "the word 'heal' derives from an Old English word 'haelon' which means wholeness. The parallel ideas of wholeness, connectedness and integration run throughout the literature on healing. Healing is facilitated by integrating the physical, mental, spiritual, emotional and social components of a patient's being. Each of these affect the other."

In the late 1990's, healing gardens and healing arts programs began to be placed in the "cascade of healing" in medical centers which used an integrative / holistic approach to patient care. Complementary therapies were used in conjunction with conventional medical treatment, helping to support patient's emotional well-being and quality of life. Likewise, it also improved for families and staff as well.

The Sunlit Paths DVD simulates a personal journey through beautiful spring gardens, helping patients experience a safe, peaceful place. It is a therapeutic resource which provides a positive focus and emotional comfort. The music and nature track is especially soothing and uplifting. Sunlit Paths is most effective when viewed often.

Being There

One of the most interesting findings of Ulrich's research overview is that the images of nature have a positive effect on the viewer, whatever its form -- photos, murals, video or actual greenery or flowers.

Original Inspiration: Luminous Blossoms Produce Elation

Founding Director, Christine Leahy's favorite past time years ago was photographing flowers. She began to notice that after shooting close-ups of luminous (backlit by the sun) blossoms she would feel elated. This feeling would last for several hours! In a poetic way, she concluded that viewling luminous images of natural beauty must increase the viewers internal luminance -- the inner "light" that seems to radiate throughout the body, mind and spirit -- producing a profound feeling of emotional well-being.

Years later, she received her masters in film production from San Francisco State University and determined that someday she would recreate this elation experience for others, especially those in hospitals or confined to bed or institutions. She also learned that flowers have the purest prana (Sanskrit: life force / energy) on earth. When she moved to Wilmington, she was inspired by its extraordinary spring beauty. In 1997, Christine had the fortune of meeting Lorraine Perry, an expressive therapist, who had just founded the Healing Arts Network and Michele Erich, music therapist at New Hanover Regional Medical Center. She told them about the idea of capturing the beauty of spring and offering it to people who were confined. Lorraine loved the idea and said she had been looking for a visual imaging aid for cancer patients who had trouble imagining a safe, peaceful place. With a small grant from the hospital, Garden of Light was created as a prototype relaxation video for cancer patients. From the success of that video, Christine formed a 501(c)3 non-profit. The idea of a series of simulated, outdoor video journeys, called Sunlit Paths, was born.