The Mental Health Benefits of Being Near Water

Thirty minutes at a waterfall fixed my whole week.

You know that heavy-head feeling you get by midweek?

Not stressed. Not falling apart. Just full?

Like a browser with forty tabs open, and no idea what to do first.

That was me on Tuesday morning.

We decided to take a trip up to North Wales, with Porthmadog as our base camp.

And we went to Aber Falls.

It’s in North Wales. Snowdonia. You park up, and there’s this easy path (Llwybr Rhaeadr Fawr), through a valley with big hills and high peaks rising either side of you.

The walk wasn’t dramatic, it was just quiet. A grumbling, overcast sky, that managed to retain the rain that was clearly desperate to escape.

And after a while, something in me shifted.

I didn’t notice it happening, that’s the thing. But sometime during that walk, my head just… stopped.

I suddenly realised I was in the moment, and just enjoying the surroundings.

 

Why it calms us

Turns out there’s actual science behind that. It’s called Attention Restoration Theory.

The idea is that nature requires a softer kind of attention from you, than work does. The focused, effortful thinking we do all day is genuinely tiring. Being in a natural environment lets your brain recover from it. Quietly. Without you doing a thing.

So, the valley was already doing the work before we’d even seen the water.

We were taking our time, and reached the falls after about forty minutes.

And I wasn’t prepared for how it made me feel.

There were only a handful of other people there. Nobody was talking much. Everyone was just there, watching.

Waterfalls do that to people. There’s a pull to them that produces a kind of collective hush.

 

The science of the “Blue Mind”

A marine biologist called Wallace Nichols spent years trying to understand why.

What he found was that being near water puts you into a gentle meditative state. Without any effort on your part. No breathing exercises, no technique, no trying.

He calls it the blue mind. A shift away from the over-stimulated, over-worked state we’re all running on, and towards something quieter.

And it’s a process proven by science.

Moving water produces negative ions. These are charged particles in the air, that can raise serotonin levels.

Waterfalls produce them in very high concentrations, so that lift you feel near a waterfall? It’s a chemical reaction in your body. Because of where you’re standing.

So, as well as being a nice walk. It’s also a biological reset 🙂

We sat next to the falls and ate lunch.

No sounds apart from the falling water. And that sound was more than enough. It fills the space where your thoughts usually sit.

Fifteen minutes is the threshold where researchers start to see measurable drops in cortisol (That’s the pond with a decent bit of wind on itstress hormone). Fifteen minutes is all you need to feel the mental health benefits of being near water .

We were sat by that waterfall for thirty.

By the time we got up to leave, I felt revitalised. Genuinely lighter. Like all my troubles had been washed off me.

Now, I know you probably can’t just decide to go to Snowdonia for a few days. Only early retirement gave me that option.

 

Stay local and still feel the mental health benefits of being near water

But here’s the thing. You don’t need to go to Snowdonia, or any other National Park for that matter (although when you do get the opportunity, it’s definitely worth it).

The mechanism doesn’t care about the scenery. It just needs water and movement and your attention for fifteen minutes.

It could be…

• A weir.
• A river at the edge of the park.
• A canal lock.
• A local stream, or brook.

Any of those will work. The research doesn’t specify a specific scene or postcode. It just says: moving water, fifteen minutes, leave distractions at home.

That’s it.

I drove back from Aber Falls feeling like a different person.

And being out in nature did that. No prescription drugs, no therapist, just natures own medicine cabinet.

I can’t wait to hear how you felt afterwards 🙂