Why You Feel Exhausted After Some Places—and Renewed After Others
Ever leave a conversation or scroll through social media and feel completely fried—but then find yourself grounded after just a few minutes under open sky?
There’s a reason for that—and it goes deeper than stress.
Modern life demands a lot from our minds. We’re constantly processing emails, notifications, news alerts, to-do lists, conversations, and expectations. We adapt, of course—but our nervous systems weren’t designed to operate in high-alert mode all day, every day – digital overwhelm is a real thing.
What most people don’t realize is that this kind of over stimulation isn’t just mentally tiring—it’s physically draining.
Your brain, while weighing only about 2% of your body mass, consumes around 20% of your body’s energy. It takes a lot of energy to run your brain. And when it perceives uncertainty, pressure, or even subtle social tension, it kicks into high gear. Your body begins to burn through glucose and oxygen at an accelerated rate—fueling constant thought, decision-making, and emotional vigilance.
That’s why you can feel exhausted after a Zoom meeting, a grocery store run, or an hour on social media. Your body is burning energy, even if you’re sitting still.
Anne Lamott’s method for reclaiming stillness amid the noise
Anne Lamott, in her beloved book Bird by Bird, describes the endless “radio station” that plays in her mind—constantly broadcasting fear, shame, self-doubt, and the need to prove herself. The exhaustion behind it is real. When the volume rises too high, Anne doesn’t push through it. She walks.
Not a fitness walk. Not to multitask. Just… walks. Out the door, through the trees, no headphones, no agenda. And slowly, the dial begins to turn down. The voices that once shouted become whispers. Her breath evens out. The trees remind her that life isn’t an emergency.
She writes:
“Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you.”
Nature, for her, isn’t a productivity hack—it’s a soul practice. A place where the judgment stops, the racing mind pauses, and she remembers she doesn’t have to earn her worth. The healing isn’t flashy. It’s subtle, and sacred. Just being, under sky.
Lesson: You don’t always need a solution. Sometimes, you just need space to stop solving.
Now layer in the invisible energy of a place: the emotional tone of a crowded space, the electromagnetic signals from screens, the energy of the people around you. Just like some rooms feel heavy the moment you enter them, others feel light and calm. We’ve all felt it. But we’re rarely taught to trust those signals—or recover from the energetic cost of digital overwhelm.
This is where nature becomes more than scenery—it becomes medicine.
Natural spaces aren’t just beautiful; they’re energetically coherent. They demand our attention the way city streets or digital feeds do. Instead, they offer what scientists call “soft fascination”—gentle stimuli like the rustle of leaves, the trickle of a stream, or the pattern of clouds passing overhead – nature therapy. These cues engage your attention just enough to quiet your internal chatter without overloading your mind.
Personally, I am always my calmest and most creative by a body of water. There’s a reason for this. The air near bodies of water often contain negative ions, which can increase oxygen flow to the brain, leading to improved mental energy and increased serotonin levels – the happy hormone. Last year, I even decided to go on a “tour of the beaches” for several months. It was rejuvenating, to say the least. (OK, I’m a full time traveler, most of us can’t go “to the beach” for several months. But even before I could do this, I always felt refreshed and more clear headed with a short walk by the beach.)
“Go to the water when your soul is tired. Let it remind you how to flow again.”
— Brianna Wiest
It’s not just poetic—it’s neurological.
Being in nature reduces cortisol (your stress hormone), lowers blood pressure, improves heart rate variability, and restores cognitive clarity. But even without the research, your body already knows this. That exhale when your feet hit the trail or your eyes rest on a mountain? That’s your nervous system letting go. A nervous system reset.
In fact, the earth’s natural electromagnetic field has been shown to help regulate human circadian rhythms and mood. When we spend time outside—especially barefoot, near water, or among trees—we come back into harmony with the very frequencies that support physical and emotional health.
So how do you reset in a world that never stops?
You step outside. You pause. You let the land hold you for a while.
And it doesn’t have to be dramatic.
A quiet bench under a tree. A few minutes watching the clouds. A barefoot walk through the grass at sunrise. These aren’t luxuries; they’re lifelines.
Parker J. Palmer – Held by the Forest When Nothing Else Worked
In Let Your Life Speak, Parker J. Palmer shares his journey through depression—not as a problem to be fixed, but as a teacher he learned to listen to. In one of the most honest sections of the book, he describes how no pep talk, therapy, or intellectual reasoning could touch the deep darkness he felt.
What helped?
Sitting alone in a forest clearing. A nervous system reset.
Not trying to meditate. Not “forest bathing” as a practice. Just being in the presence of trees that had no demands, no deadlines, no expectations. He says the stillness of the woods didn’t try to cheer him up. It simply sat with him, holding him without judgment.
“The silence surrounded me. The trees didn’t fix me—they just accepted me. They stayed. And over time, I began to stay too.”
Palmer credits that stillness—what he calls the “natural world’s unconditional welcome”—as one of the first things that helped him return to himself. It didn’t ask anything from him. And that, he says, is what began to heal him.
Lesson: Sometimes, the most profound healing comes not from advice—but from presence.
When you give yourself this kind of nervous system reset, you return to your life with more clarity, better boundaries, and a deeper sense of groundedness. You don’t have to escape your life—you just need a rhythm that includes re-connection.
Tara Brach – The Healing Power of Pausing in the Woods
Tara Brach, a clinical psychologist and teacher of mindfulness meditation, has written and spoken often about the dangers of chronic over-doing—how even meaningful work can turn into burnout when we never pause.
In one story, she describes a period when her schedule had become relentless: nonstop teaching, caregiving, managing responsibilities. Though she teaches mindfulness, she found herself slipping into the familiar pattern of doing, fixing, striving. Her body tightened. Her sleep was shallow. Her joy vanished into obligation.
And then one day, she went into the woods behind her house.
She didn’t go with a goal. She simply paused. She let the wind move through the trees while she stood still, barefoot on the mossy ground. And something in her began to unwind. She recalls how, as the stillness grew around her, her breath softened—and her internal pressure began to dissolve.
“In the moments of pausing in nature,” she writes,
“I could feel a deep belonging—like the earth itself was saying, ‘You don’t have to try so hard.’”
It was a moment of realignment. Of being reminded that our worth isn’t tied to our output, and that the earth holds a rhythm that restores what productivity depletes.
She teaches now that burnout often stems not just from doing too much, but from forgetting our connection to what’s bigger than us—to nature, presence, and the stillness underneath all motion.
Lesson: Healing from burnout doesn’t require a sabbatical. Sometimes, it starts with standing still in the woods long enough to remember who you are.
A final thought:
Burnout doesn’t always look like collapse.
Sometimes, it looks like constant low-level depletion. If you’ve been feeling scattered, foggy, or “off,” don’t just push through it. Step into nature—even for a few minutes. Let the trees, the wind, the rhythm of the natural world do what they do best:
Bring you back to yourself.
Journal Prompt:
Where in my daily life do I feel the most energetically drained—and what natural spaces or practices help me feel whole again?
(Follow-up: What would it look like to give myself a tiny reset right now—today—not later?)
Rediscover what matters through nature
Feeling Overwhelmed or craving stillness? At Finding Nature’s Beauty, we create space to breathe, reflect and reconnect –with yourself and the world around you. Reflections, our newsletter, is designed to help you find calmness and clarity from the stress of everyday living by providing weekly inspiration, stories, and actionable ideas to guide you.