According to scientists, a walk in the countryside can improve your mood, reduce stress and make time pass by

If you feel like there are never enough hours in a day, take a walk in nature.

In recent years, scientists have shown that spending time in green spaces has an uplifting effect and reduces depression and anxiety.

But now an interesting study suggests it helps us by slowing down our perception of time.

While city life can leave us feeling like we’re running out of time, research by psychologist Ricardo Correia at the University of Turku in Finland shows that immersion in nature actually seems to slow things down.

Professor Correia compared how people experience time in urban and natural environments and found that time seems to last longer in the countryside.

Unlike urban areas, where we are ‘time poor’, nature seems to slow down time (file image)

For example, people experience a walk in the countryside as longer than a walk of the same length in the city. And people who spend time in green areas estimate that they spent more time there than in a built-up environment.

In a research paper titled “Time Grows on Trees,” Mariya Davydenko of Carleton University in Canada and her colleagues found that a walk in a park “feels slower in nature than in man-made environments” and also improves mood and reduces stress.

In The Journal of Environmental Psychology, they wrote: ‘When you’re trying to make the most of your time, spending time on an enjoyable activity in nature can not only improve your psychological health in a number of ways, but it can also create the illusion that you’ve spent more time enjoying the activity than you actually have.’

The researchers noted that although participants estimated a longer time duration, this did not slow them down.

People in the study found that a walk in the countryside took longer than a walk of the same length in a city (archive photo)

Research from Carleton University in Canada shows that people who spend time in green spaces estimate that they spend more time there than in a built environment (file image)

Participants who reported feeling happier after the nature walk reported that “time flew,” even though they had estimated it to have taken longer.

Ruth Ogden, professor of temporal psychology at Liverpool John Moores University, wrote with researcher Jessica Thompson on the website Conversation: ‘It is not just our sense of time in the present moment that appears to be influenced by nature, but also our sense of the past and the future.

‘Previous research shows that spending time in nature helps shift our focus from the immediate moment to our future needs. So instead of focusing on the stress of demands on our time, nature helps us see the bigger picture.

“This can help us prioritize our actions so that we achieve our long-term goals rather than living in a permanent state of ‘just keeping our heads above water.’”