7 Science Backed Benefits of Indoor Plants (Published on Healthline)

Excerpts: 

• “Being able to look at plants and flowers may speed your recovery from an illness, injury, or surgery.”

• “A 2002 review of the research revealed that people recuperating from several kinds of surgery needed less pain medication and had shorter hospital stays than people who weren’t looking at greenery during their recovery periods.”

• “Multiple studies have found that plants in the workspace increase both productivity and creativity. One frequently cited study from 1996 found that students in a campus computer lab worked 12 percent faster and were less stressed when plants were placed nearby.”

• “In a 2004 study, researchers challenged people to make creative word associations. They performed better when a plant was in the room with them.”

• Sorry, plastic plants won’t help you pass your exams. In a small study involving 23 participants, researchers put students in a classroom with either a fake plant, a real one, a photograph of a plant, or no plant at all …Brain scans of the participants showed that the students who studied with real, live plants in the classroom were more attentive and better able to concentrate than students in the other groups.

 

Amazing Talk by Dr. Mark Plotkin (Skip to 5:05 for the beginning of the talk)

• If you’re in a pinch for time, skip to 7:10 and watch for one minute.

• Speaker’s bio:

“Dr. Mark Plotkin is a renowned ethnobotanist who has studied traditional indigenous plant use with elder shamans (traditional healers) of Central and South America for much of the past 30 years. 

As an ethnobotanist—a scientist who studies how, and why, societies have come to use plants for different purposes—Dr. Plotkin carried out the majority of his research with the Trio Indians of southern Suriname, a small rainforest country in northeastern South America, but has also worked with shamans from Mexico to Brazil.

Dr. Plotkin has a long history of work with other organizations to promote conservation and awareness of our natural world, having served as Research Associate in Ethnobotanical Conservation at the Botanical Museum of Harvard University; Director of Plant Conservation at the World Wildlife Fund; Vice President of Conservation International; and Research Associate at the Department of Botany of the Smithsonian Institution. Dr. Plotkin is now President of the Amazon Conservation Team (ACT), a nonprofit organization he co-founded with his fellow conservationist and wife Liliana Madrigal 1996.”

 

Excerpts From My Journal 

I still often find that asking people works much better than asking google.

The simple antidote to a huge number of unwanted situations: wait.

What if there was no need to be angry with yourself for feeling how you feel?

We often assign value based on transformative potential. We value songs because the way in which they can transform our state of mind. We value money because we can use it to transform our lives. We value cows largely because of their ability to transform grass into steak. 

Be patient with reality

Be patient with yourself

Given enough time

The wind can turn a stone into sand 

 

Music Recommendation