PEMEHECON DETAILS:
- Professional Development Activity: 18th of February to 1st of March 2026
- Project Name: Protect the Environment and your Mental Health with your Connection with Nature (PEMEHECON)
- Agreement No: 2025-1-AT01-KA153-YOU-000297129
- Duration: 1st of August 2025 till 31st of May 2026 (10 months)
- Activity Dates: 18th of February – 1st of March 2026, including travelling dates.
- Activity: Training in Vienna, Austria, for 21 youth workers (3 youth workers from each organisation, 7 organisations) in Environment and Forest Theatre with Non-Formal Educational Activities.
- Accommodation: APPARTEMENTS FERCHERGASSE, Vienna Centre, Austria, https://www.rank.at/en/
- Applicant Organisation: NGO Tredu Club (Austria), Contact Person: Stephanie Rank, Email: stephanie@rank.at
- Coordinator: Nikolas Nikolaou, email: nicckolas44@gmail.com, Boghos Avetikian, boghosavetikian@gmail.com, Evangelia Nikolaou, email : evangelia.nikolaou@outlook.com
- Trainers: Erma Georgiou, Boghos Avetikian, Stephanie Rank
What happens when we are connected with nature?
Research is discovering all the different ways that nature benefits our well-being, health, and relationships. Humans have long intuited that being in nature is good for the mind and body. From indigenous adolescents completing rites of passage in the wild to modern East Asian cultures taking "forest baths," many have looked to nature as a place for healing and personal growth.
No one knows for sure; but one hypothesis derived from evolutionary biologist E. O. Wilson's "biophilia" theory suggests that there are evolutionary reasons people seek out nature experiences. We may have preferences to be in beautiful, natural spaces because they are resource-rich environments—ones that provide optimal food, shelter, and comfort. These evolutionary needs may explain why children are drawn to natural environments and why we prefer nature to be part of our architecture.
Now, a large body of research is documenting the positive impacts of nature on human flourishing—our social, psychological, and emotional life. Over 100 studies have shown that being in nature, living near nature, or even viewing nature in paintings and videos can have positive impacts on our brains, bodies, feelings, thought processes, and social interactions. In particular, viewing nature seems to be inherently rewarding, producing a cascade of position emotions and calming our nervous systems. These, in turn, help us to cultivate greater openness, creativity, connection, generosity, and resilience. In other words, science suggests we may seek out nature not only for our physical survival, but because it's good for our social and personal. well-being.
Why nature?
How nature helps us feel good and do good
The naturalist John Muir once wrote about the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California: "We are now in the mountains and they are in us, kindling enthusiasm, making every nerve quiver, filling every pore and cell of us." Clearly, he found nature's awe-inspiring imagery a positive, emotive experience.
But what does the science say? Several studies have looked at how viewing awe-inspiring nature imagery in photos and videos impacts emotions and behaviour. For example, in one study, participants either viewed a few minutes of the inspiring documentary Planet Earth, a neutral video from a news program, or funny footage from Walk on the Wild Side. Watching a few minutes of Planet Earth led people to feel 46 per cent more awe and 31 per cent more gratitude than those in the other groups. This study and others like it tell us that even brief nature videos are a powerful way to feel awe, wonder, gratitude, and reverence—all positive emotions known to lead to increased well-being and physical health.
Positive emotions have beneficial effects upon social processes, too—like increasing trust, cooperation, and closeness with others. Since viewing nature appears to trigger positive emotions, it follows that nature likely has favourable effects on our social well-being.
This has been robustly confirmed in research on the benefits of living near green spaces. Most notably, the work of Frances Kuo and her colleagues finds that in poorer neighbourhoods of Chicago people who live near green spaces—lawns, parks, trees—show reductions in ADHD symptoms and greater calm, as well as a stronger sense of connection to neighbours, more civility, and less violence in their neighbourhoods. A later analysis confirmed that green spaces tend to have less crime.
Viewing nature in images and videos seems to shift our sense of self, diminishing the boundaries between self and others, which has implications for social interactions. In one study, participants who spent a minute looking up into a beautiful stand of eucalyptus trees reported feeling less entitled and self-important. Even simply viewing Planet Earth for five minutes led participants to report a greater sense that their concerns were insignificant and that they were part of something larger compared with groups who had watched neutral or funny clips.
https://www.greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/what_happens_when_we_reconnect_with_nature
Contact
Thank you for visiting the PEMEHECON website, a KA153YOU program dedicated to connecting with the environment and promoting mental health through our connection with nature. Our mission is to raise awareness about the importance of preserving our natural resources and the positive impact it has on our mental well-being.