How Being Mindful and Connecting in Nature Affect Wellbeing

Connecting in nature mindfully generally brings a higher degree of one’s wellbeing. A known process from ‘The Journey’ by Ian Banyard was followed in order to provide measurable results in the thesis in order to describe how wellbeing is enhanced. This thesis takes the structure from ‘The Journey’ and further expands the means of growing the understanding of one’s wellbeing. A series of four qualitative and quantitative surveys were employed throughout the program to gather necessary information. This provides confidence that ‘The Journey’ is useful in promoting wellbeing and self-discovery while also building a supportive community of like-minded people. The data provides further personal insight on how to improve future ‘Journey’ programs. Due to inconsistent participation in the surveys throughout my research, ensuring the results were unbiased, proved to be challenging. However, trends in the data were observed. The participants already began with a knowledge and appreciation for nature, wellbeing and mindfulness. Therefore, the full improvement potential of the course may not be as obvious as the participants started with a higher enlightened baseline than the general public