PAH 150A3 - The Great Outdoors: Improving Health, Wellness, and Creativity by Living Life Outside

From physicians to neuroscientists to poets and songwriters, people around the world have long written about how even brief immersion in nature can improve the human condition. This course will explore these writings and what they have to tell us about understanding human experience and our interface with the natural world. Using applied humanities approaches and a variety of texts, our goal will be to develop real-world applications of insight, perspective, critical understanding, discernment, and creativity about the place and importance of nature in human experience. Over the course of the semester we will: (1) read and critically analyze writing by and about people who have found creative and innovative approaches to express and/or measure how immersion in nature makes humans healthier; (2) engage in reflective projects that open pathways to developing one's own creativity and imagination for personal and community applications of nature immersion; and (3) design an applied project focused on assessing how ideas for nature immersion might be implemented in real-world settings. Students will use project management and planning methods to write a project description, carry out an initial pilot version of the project, report on steps they have accomplished, and write a critical analysis of their project.