Tuning Into Nature
“A space is understood and appreciated through its echo as much as through its visual shape, but the acoustic percept usually remains as an unconscious background experience.”
As I head out the door for my morning walk at home I am greeted with sounds like the gentle percussion of palm leaves rustling through the wind or the birds singing in their soprano melodies. The neighborhood is an eclectic mix of apartments, townhomes and houses crammed together near the beach in Long Beach, CA. Despite the concentration of people a version of nature’s acoustical masterpiece happens every morning. The vibe of nature feels good.
Over the last several months I have been playing with designing my experience for my morning ritual focused on sound.
The approach I take to design involves understanding the behavior that will take place and whether or not it is being supported by the environment. The environment will be looked at in two layers. The peripheral environment are the things that are often out of our control like the neighborhood, the office, traffic or mother nature. The immediate environment are areas that we can influence in a way to support our well being. For example our home, our living room, our workstation or our car.
Behavior
The mornings are a time for me to become grounded before I start my day. I have really taken the time to establish a ritual of a morning walk, coffee, gentle movement and meditation. As you can imagine a calming environment is ideal for this morning ritual.
Peripheral Environment
By the time I arrive back home from my walk “busy” has started it’s day and all of the noise pollution that comes with busy is being absorbed by me whether I am aware of it or not. There are the typical neighborhood squawks of neighbors reminiscing about the latest Next Door gossip. The neighbor’s gardener starts his gas powered engine to trim the trees. The dogs, the kids, the cars, the delivery trucks. There is so much to do and so much noise is required for the doing.
Immediate Environment
My house is small so all of this takes place in the living room unless I can take it outside during the warmer months. Unfortunately the noise from outside my home is very disruptive. Closing the windows would be ideal but the house is old and when they are closed they do little more than collect enough dust to show me there is thin glass between me and the outer world.
Design Problem
To sum it up my behavior of my morning ritual is not fully being supported by immediate environment because of the noise coming from the peripheral environment. I have a sound problem.
SOUND
We are aware for the most part that we have an option to change our acoustical environment. That awareness is often tied to rituals like the shower, driving in the car, working out, or cooking. We default to playing music, or listening to a podcast or maybe even the news. There are nature playlists and white noise sounds to help people fall asleep. I am not suggesting something entirely new but maybe we can use what exists in a new way. How about the times when we might need a little recharge in the middle of the day?
Why Nature?
The science behind our connection to nature’s restorative qualities has been hypothesized and study with the Attention Restoration Theory. Environmental Psychologists Kaplan and Kaplan went beyond intuition and have conducted a number of studies that suggest being in nature can increase emotional well being, enhance productivity while minimizing the impact of stress. There are some complexities to the theory but the long and short is being in nature is a restorative experience for our cognitive abilities. (This piece is intended to focus on design but if you would like to read more about the theory this blog post here is a very pleasant and interesting read.)
Solution
The idea is to play sounds of nature at a volume that is not too loud. This will take some tweaking as you do not want it to be too loud that it is disruptive but something that your mind can rest easy with. It’s possible to create an acoustical bubble in your immediate environment that allows for you to focus or recharge while mellowing out some of the chaotic background noise that is in your peripheral environment. Understanding the intention of how you want to spend your time in your space will go a long way. Our minds are super susceptible to distracting noises and even more so when we feel stressed out. We are unintentionally fixating on things that are beyond our control. Unless we live in nature we are likely to encounter some sort of disturbance from our environment that is beyond our control. Give playing nature sounds a shot the next time you need a little restorative time.