The Moken sea nomads are often depicted in National Geographic articles as living an ideal life. One cannot help but be immediately impressed by their beautiful location by their paradise-like environment as I was.
The Moken have traditionally lived nomadically in the South Pacific and Southeast Asia from the Philippines, to Indonesia, and up into the Indian Ocean. My own close encounter with them took place on a small quiet island in a part of the Indian Ocean known as the Andaman Sea, off the coast of Thailand and Burma. Getting there called for chartering a boat to the island. I chartered a boat off of the coast of Thailand along with a group of Thai locals who naturally got as seasick as people can get. It took us three hours on a motorboat to ply our way to the islands, and as we did, flying fish would soar out of the water, flying with their fins in order to escape from the intruding boat that I was on. Finally we arrived to the island with white, sandy beaches and crystal clear, turquoise waters. The islands are preserved as a National Park and their tropical forests and colorful coral reefs are well preserved, free and protected from development.
It was a warm balmy, breezy calm day on the coast islands when I arrived. It was just another day of serene peace. The sea was characteristically steady as it often is in the Andaman Ocean, and the water was clear enough for some snorkeling. I got ready to set off to snorkel and swim across the turquoise blue water between two islands as the sun drenched me with its warm rays. The water glittered, reflecting rays of sun into my eyes. I put my scuba mask on, walked out into the white sand, and then plunged into the water. As I swam, a full rainbow-like spectrum of varying fish swam along with me. The water was full of crackle-pop sound, the sound of fish eating small organisms on the coral reef, like the sound of Rice Krispies. Eventually, I made it across the channel, onto the beach of a pristine island, with a lush jungle, untouched by civilization. As I walked along on the bleached sand I ran into a frizzy haired, tanned boy walking away from me with his bare feet. This, I knew, was a Moken boy. Curious I followed him, picking up my pace, and turned the corner as the beach curved. As I rounded the corner, two beached and anchored hand-made wooden boats came into view. A whole family of tanned Moken was sitting together on the beach. It was a tranquil scene here on the beach in between the ocean and the palm forest behind them. This was a group of people in their natural habitat, the way we all lived on our planet in the year 8000 B.C.
The Belgian explorer of the Congo forest of Africa, Alyette De Munck, once living with the African pigmies as he documented their way of life. He gives another example of humans living in their natural habitat. Later he wrote an article for the National Geographic in the 1960s' in which he tells his stories about these nomadic hunting and gathering pygmies of Africa. In his account he was astonished by how connected the pygmies were to the jungle. They didn't wear much clothing to separate themselves from the elements. But there wasn't much need because of the sheltering canopy overhead that protects them from rain and the sun. Everything they had was made from what they found in the jungle, even their homes were made of the jungle.
It took billions of years for animals to evolve to fit into the earths various environments. As Dr Timothy Leary says we are "born as divine mutations" perfectly designed to live in a particular habitats. When our ancestors biologically adapted to the world of elements of earth with its plants, animals, and sun and other people they were naturally selected by this environment to live. They then had children who carried the adaptive genes. We inherited the genes of those that fit into the wilderness. We are the descendants of the people that were matched to survive in their environment, not the ones that were not matched. Those who may not have been matched to their environment died and did not have kids and therefore we do not have the genes of the unfit, we have the genes of the fit. We were all born divine and perfect mutants based on billions of years of natural selection.
For example, part of our environment is our atmosphere. We evolved in this atmosphere on planet earth and that is why we needed to adapt and wear space suits in order to breathe, protect our skin, and regulate our temperature on the moon. We will have to wear protective suits on Mars in the future. We did not evolve on Mars. We are not Martians, therefore Mars is not a harmonious environment for humans. We are Earthlings, yet even on earth we only have a thin layer of breathable air above sea level and then as we climb from there, the earth is less and less hospitable. On the tops of our highest mountains we die of lack of oxygen. Space is not that far away; if we could drive straight up for one hour we would be out of our atmosphere and into dark, empty space.
In empty space thousands of miles away from the earth we can see that the layer of breathable atmosphere is a limited thin coating. From the viewpoint of space our atmosphere is a chemical mixture that is the one and only single planetary atmosphere that will allow us to survive without protective space suits. Our lungs breathe an exact mixture of nitrogen and oxygen and other gases. If we were on a planet with pure oxygen we would find ourselves dead very quickly.
Our planet among its galaxy is like a small safe aquarium for goldfish inside a house. Beyond the aquarium the goldfish cannot breath and they parish. As we take goldfish from the sea, perhaps also humans are lifted into intergalactic space and contained in earthly gas mixtures in "terrariums" for the amusement of the intelligent aliens. There, in the mixture of gases, we survive. But if we were lifted out of the aquarium or terrarium we would die in their atmosphere.
We are also not biologically adapted to the deep ocean hydrosphere, that's why again, we have to create breathing equipment to help us survive beneath the surface of the ocean. Trying to find equilibrium our ancestors have had millions of years of selection that brought their minds and bodies closer and closer to homeostasis and comfort in a particular and specific planetary environment.
Therefore, we find explanation as to the reason why the color green sits in the middle of our visible spectrum and the reason it is gentle on our eyes compared to the ultraviolet or bright red. It is the color of plants and of the forest that our eyes had biologically adapted to.
We find the reason why our bodies are just the right weight to walk comfortably on the gravity filled earth. If our bodies were on an extremely small planet, as our first trips to our own moon have shown, we would bounce off the surface and fly with little control. If our bodies were on a very large planet we would lay smashed, glued and bolted down to the large planets surface, barely able to move and our poor heart would labor and work slowly until it freezes.
Because we evolved on earth we find the reason why our skin is perfectly adapted to the precise and exact amount of sunlight that enters our earth's atmosphere from a specific distance. If the earth were the distance of some of our neighboring planets we would either be burned and fried, such as on mercury or instantly or frozen cold in time on Pluto.
The accurate and exact amount of sunlight that enters our pupils in our eyes creates a brain chemical reaction that stimulates the release of stimulants in our brains to wake us up, like caffeine would do, except naturally. Hence we see why people get depressed in winter when our pupils receive less sunlight. The wilderness on planet Earth is perfectly audible and rarely too loud for us. Our ears are perfectly designed and attuned to the sounds of nature such as the sounds of the sea or of a light wind sifting through leaves of a tree. And also we can speculate why the reason why birds sound beautiful and the reason why the singing of a human voice is thought to be pleasant. These noises are enjoyable because we evolved to enjoy these noises. Anyone born with ears to sensitive for the conditions of the wilderness would live a life of pain and psychological trauma, thus decreasing chances for survival and therefore reproduction. We may not like the sounds on an alien planet because we didn't evolve on that planet.
We evolved around these things. We were interconnected with the wilderness. This is why traffic jams do not sound so nice and why the voice of a future extra terrestrial may not sound so great. We did not evolve around the sounds of traffic jams. This is essentially why we call the sound of honking horns, loud car motors, and thumping construction sites or blaring radio frequency "noise pollution." It isn't inherently bad. It is only given the earthling opinionated value judgment as bad because we haven't had millenniums of time to biologically adapt to urban society. "Pollution" isn't something we inherited from nature. It is something that has been invented relatively recently in the context of biological evolution and our minds and bodies have not necessarily gotten used to it. Our minds and bodies did not evolve around these things so they must psychologically adapt now. But there are some things that are impossible to biologically adapt to in one lifetime. The adaptation that we can attempt though is one of returning to Nature and bringing more of it into our industrial tech space.
The fact that we are still in essence the same creature that evolved around nature in foraging tribal cultures is very important to understand ourselves and understand what is healthy for us and what is not healthy. This perspective is significant in understanding how we behaved and acted and the way we fit psychologically into our ecosystem.
There is now plenty of scientific evidence proving that natural environments heal the mind. I think many people who are sensitive will say that they may not need an experiment and they already feel the physical differences in natural and artificial environments, but some of us may not recognize the differences. An example of a good experiment was done at The University of California at where a psychologist observed two different physiological reactions in subjects exposed to natural environments and subjects exposed to artificial environments. According to the Wall Street Journal, who reported the findings, the experiment had 112 young adults assigned a variety of stressful tasks...Afterward, the people who sat in the room with window views of trees and then walked through a nature preserve experienced observable declined blood pressure. The other group of subjects that also had the stressful tasks sat in a windowless room and then walked into an area of medium urban density had remaining high blood pressure. This is an example of the psychological benefit of being in the wilderness. The story of the nomadic lifestyle of the Moken sea nomads or the African pygmies is not too different than the way people in modern society camp out, in which people pack their tents and gear and then drive off to the wilderness of a National Forest. Usually a camper will drive to the forest, get out of the car, and then hike for a while until they find a good place to camp. This behavior is apparently healing, and why not? It seems to be basically reconnecting to our biological inheritance.
The reason why this therapy is healthy is obvious. It is exercise, it is fun, and it is reconnecting to our natural needs just as "talk therapy" or "sex therapy" teaches to do. The wilderness is a perfect place for relaxed psychoanalysis in which the therapist has a free and comfortable place to help the patient.....So now there are numerous programs of rehabilitation and mental health. There are nature clinics in which therapists teach people, to do things like general hiking and backpacking, set up a tent, start a fire, hike, or mountain bike and at the same time attempt to heal the patients mind.
One can receive a degree in this form of therapy at various colleges and universities. At other colleges and universities one can receive a degree in Adventure therapy, or Wilderness therapy. Steve Harper teaches one particular example of Wilderness Therapy. In an article he wrote entitled, "The Way of the Wilderness", he describes an important experience when he found healing on a camping/hiking trip. He says, "Our hike had started the night before, when my friend had said 'The moon is out, lets walk.' We met at three o clock that morning and began hiking up through the redwood-covered canyon of Big Sur. My young heart was hurting from the breakup of a long-term relationship. We struck a leisurely pace, following whatever seemed to rise in the moment. Sometimes I found myself in tears, other times stopping to drink water from the creek or investigate a new plant...as the day wore on I found myself softening to and accepting whatever emerged inside...I was sustained by all that surrounded me...the experience stands out as a clear turning point in my healing process." As a psychologist, Harper explains that he now takes his clients on excursions in nature. He says time spent outside in nature can be a couple of hours or months. Participants can be few or many. He says that he usually takes groups of "10 to 16 in size." He also mentions the following groups who do professional "wilderness groups and eco-psychology". Probably the most well know version is "Outward Bound" The organization has grown so large that it includes 40 schools worldwide.

Wilderness Ecotherapy

Horticulture Therapy

Virginia Tech and other large universities are offering degrees in Horticulture Therapy - a system of healing in which the maintaining of plants and gardens is used as a psychological treatment. The benefits of this include the fact that a healthy relationship with other living organisms is being created, the fact that the client is making contact with the natural world as the client tends his house plants or garden, and also the garden will be a more permanent future therapy in which the client can always have these plants in his permanent living space, thereby bringing wilderness home, even in a potentially urban setting. Ecotourism is another way to heal minds, as well as the environment. Whenever tourists elect to spend time in Nature reserves, especially in developing countries, tourists are supporting an ecotourism industry. When this happens, it creates local support for preserving undeveloped land for the sake of the economy. For example, Costa Rica has preserved 30% of its land to support its ecotourism industry. So essentially, ecotourism is a way to heal the mind and the land.