In the late 1990s, the University of Illinois conducted studies at Robert Taylor Homes to examine the impact of physical environments on well-being. The researchers looked at the effect that trees had on people’s lives – and found that just a few trees and some grass near an apartment could significantly improve the residents’ mental health and cognitive functioning. Losing Eden provides the evidence of how nature makes us calmer, healthier, happier, even kinder. Jones moves between close biological evidence – how our parasympathetic nervous system is triggered when we're in nature, how bacteria found in soil increases stress resilience – to large-scale environmental studies. The book is shot through with personal experience [...] but is] not really a memoir; it's about all of us." When the first daffodils were blooming two months ago, the apocalyptic prologue to Lucy Jones’s Losing Eden would have felt urgent enough. It describes a young girl, Xena, wearing goggles and a respirator, walking to her grandmother’s house. Here, they sit together and experience nature – birds singing, trees growing – through a virtual-reality scene. “Why did nature end, Granny?” Xena asks. “We didn’t love it enough,” Granny answers. “And we forgot it could give us peace.”

By the time I'd read the first chapter, I'd resolved to take my son into the woods every afternoon over winter. By the time I'd read the sixth, I was wanting to break prisoners out of cells and onto the mossy moors. Losing Eden rigorously and convincingly tells of the value of the natural universe to our human hearts' Amy Liptrot, author of The Outrun Although nature’s effect on the psyche is not often spoken about in contemporary psychological discourse, Carl Jung, the founder of analytical psychology, was an early advocate of nature’s mental health benefits.

Kõige enam jäi kõlama paralleel, et praegu on inimkond loodusega suhtes justkui teismeeas mässumeelne tütarlaps, kes emale vastu hakkab, ja ei adu, mida tema heaks tehtud on. Varem või hiljem kasvab tütar sellest east välja ja taipab, et tal on ema taas vaja. Throughout, Jones has called upon a lot of nature writers and ecologists, drawing upon their prose and ideas. One of the real strengths in Losing Eden is the way in which she writes about the incredibly diverse reaction to nature through the ages. When Petrarch, for instance, climbed Mont Ventoux in 1336, Jones remarks: ‘… he chastised himself for “admiring earthly things” and fled angrily from the peaks in shame.’ From the eighteenth-century in Britain, when travel for the middle classes became more widespread, blinds were pulled down on trains to ‘avoid offence’ from the ‘mountains and hills that had previously been seen as pimples, warts or blisters on the surface of God’s earth.’ In this ground-breaking, deeply personal investigation, acclaimed journalist and author Lucy Jones brings to light the emerging concept of 'matrescence'. Drawing on new research across various fields - neuroscience and evolutionary biology; psychoanalysis and existential therapy; sociology, economics and ecology - Jones shows how the changes in the maternal mind, brain and body are far more profound, wild and enduring than we have been led to believe. She reveals the dangerous consequences of our neglect of the maternal experience and interrogates the patriarchal and capitalist systems that have created the untenable situation mothers face today. Losing Eden: Why Our Minds Need the Wild by Lucy Jones attempts to show us the science behind intuitive knowledge that being in nature is good for us. This is an insightful environmental read on the existential impacts of our separation from nature. Lucy Jones waxes poetic with her prose about the wild while she presents rigorous research on the myriad benefits of exposure and immersion in nature on our mental health and childhood development.

This vault protects hundreds of thousands of plant seed species – an agricultural safety net in case of global disaster caused by climate change. It’s one of hundreds around the world, but it houses the greatest diversity. For Jones, it was a chilling reminder of what our future will look like if we don’t alter our course in the wake of ecological collapse. When author Lucy Jones was recovering from alcoholism, four elements helped her start anew: psychotherapy, medication, community, and nature. The latter came as a surprise – she found it almost by accident when she moved into a new apartment and became emotionally attached to a pear tree outside her bedroom window. In Losing Eden, Jones is both thoughtful and probing. She speaks to a great deal of different people working across the field, as well as attending specific congresses, and travelling to places of interest, such as the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. Located within the Arctic Circle, the Global Seed Vault is a ‘man-made deep-freeze containing around 900,000 seed samples to protect agricultural biodiversity in the case of climate breakdown, nuclear war and natural disasters.’In this lively narrative Dant discusses the key events and topics in the environmental history of the American West, from the Beringia migration, Columbian Exchange, and federal territorial acquisition to post–World War II expansion, resource exploitation, and current climate change issues. Losing Eden is structured around three important themes: balancing economic success and ecological destruction, creating and protecting public lands, and achieving sustainability. While we all have a lot to lose as we grow more disconnected from nature, our children are perhaps the most vulnerable. Consider this: in the United Kingdom, three out of four children aged five through 12 now spend less time outdoors than prison inmates, who are required by the United Nations to get at least one hour of exercise outside every day. It might have been a reaction to the negative ions that are abundant around the ocean and other natural areas where air molecules are broken apart by crashing waves, moving air, or sunlight. Negative ions can help the brain release serotonin and activate the parasympathetic nervous system, calming the body and the mind.

|Beautifully written, movingly told and meticulously researched, Losing Eden is an elegy to the healing power of nature, something we need more than ever in our anxiety-ridden world of ecological loss. Woven together with her own personal story of recovery, Lucy Jones lays out the overwhelming scientific evidence for nature as nurturer for body and soul with the clarity and candour that will move hearts and minds – a convincing plea for a wilder, richer world."

Praise

The 2nd edition of an expansive history of the American West in terms of its environmental heritage. By the time I'd read the first chapter, I'd resolved to take my son into the woods every afternoon over winter. By the time I'd read the sixth, I was wanting to break prisoners out of cells and onto the mossy moors. Losing Eden rigorously and convincingly tells of the value of the natural universe to our human hearts" If the reader hasn't read any psychology book before this may all be very fascinating, but otherwise it gets a bit repetitive. Fight or flight syndrome, rising cortisol levels with continuous stress, more schizophrenia in dense urban areas, the evolutionary reason why the urban setting is just not right for us - it is all quite well known.