Why do we feel good by the sea?
Miguel lives on the Asturian coast. When he travels to large inland cities, he tends to feel uneasy. Getting away from the sea makes me nervous. In fact, he remembers a visit to London in which, suddenly, he noticed his lack: I had been there for a week; One day I was quite overwhelmed and had to go to the bank of the Thames. Its not the same but something helped, I needed to see water. I know it is something psychological, but  . This view is supported by Wallace J. Nichols, BA in Marine Biology, Economics and Natural Resource Policy, and Ph.D. in Political and Social Sciences, Environmental Activist, and Author of the book Blue Mind: The Amazing Science That Shows How To Be Close, Inside, About or underwater it can make you happier, healthier, more connected and better at what you do.  As he describes himself, his approach accurately addresses all the physical, ecological, economic, cognitive, emotional, psychological and social benefits of healthy oceans and waterways. Among them, regain calm by removing stress and anxiety. For him, no doubt: Proximity to water floods the brain with feel-good hormones such as dopamine and oxytocin. Levels of cortisol, the stress hormone, drop. Scientists have discovered that the brain prefers the color blue over all others and that water increases our ability to concentrate. Sound helps too: Whether its hitting a boat, the waves crashing on the beach, or the gurgling of a stream. It is a noise with some regularity, and some irregularity. It does not demand your attention. It does not carry information. But it gets your attention. Psychologists call it mild fascination. That creates a bubble of loneliness and privacy around you. You can hear yourself thinking. Because of my work and my life I have been closely linked to the ocean and it is for me a therapy  Aketza Snchez  All the studies carried out show that we are happier with water  Wallace J. Nichols  He points out how relevant feeling weightlessness: If you are really in the water, you have another level of comfort or support. You are not dealing with gravity. Your brain is not coordinating 200 muscles to allow you to stand or sit. So when you see water, when you listen to it, it triggers the response in your brain that you are in the right place, he adds. And he recommends rafting, kayaking, surfing  Water therapy is increasingly used to treat a variety of ailments, including wounded veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and depression.  The surfer from Survivors    Aketza Snchez knows this well, despite the fact that it was precisely at sea where his life was almost cut short. He became known in the first edition of the Survivors program, held in 2000; it was that Basque surfer who finished third although he was chosen the favorite of the public. Today, at 47 years old, he can tell a story that has a lot to do with how the ocean can help us overcome the stones that come our way: We all know that when we find ourselves at sea we have a little more joy in it. Body; It is true that because of my work and my life I have been very attached to him and I have realized that for me it was like a kind of therapy . To escape the madness and stress caused by the fame obtained in that contest, he traveled the world in search of waves, but it was when he returned home that life took a turn: I was giving a paddle board lesson (paddle surfing) and, like so many other times, I jumped into the water with a somersault. But something went wrong, I stuck my head in the sand and an unmistakable noise warned me that I had hit rock bottom. Like an old door, a rusty spring, a chalk on the blackboard, I heard a iiickkkk. I remained sunk looking at the bottom, I went to turn around and next to me I saw an arm that seemed not to be mine. I tried to move my hands, fingers, legs, trunk, whatever, please, I wanted to turn around! But only my eyes paid attention to me, wide as saucers looking at the transparent blue of the water and the sand at the bottom  . The result, a spinal injury that took him several months in the hospital and years of recovery thinking that he would never walk again, have sex, control his sphincters  Thanks to the effort of my stubbornness, that of people that was next to me and, of course, I managed to walk to the sea, although not like before. At least to be able to move around and lead an almost normal life. They took me to the water and put me on the board with the oar and I saw that on top of the water I was moving much better than walking, that a kind of current rose and fell throughout my body to keep me standing up . Today he continues with the spinal cord damage and with drugs, needing to spend whole days in bed because of the pain. But I am very grateful to the sea for how it has treated me, first for sparing my life in the coup. Many tell me to see if I am not afraid of him, but I think it was very important for my recovery: it didnt take long for me to get soaked and with his silence and his slight movements I was able to manipulate my legs and my hands again at my decision. It has been and is a very long job but it is something that on land I would not have been able to achieve .  When I was a kid, I would surf from early in the morning until late at night when I could, and after school I would do the same. And I realized that there were people walking on the beach with an advanced age but an enviable physical and emotional state. Later I learned how much walking through the water and on the sand, living near the sea, with the saltpeter, the light, the vitamin D, the iodine, the negative ions  Everything makes the person physically and emotionally find themselves best. -He started an association, Goazenup, that combines the practice of paddle board with yoga and that tries to help people with different physical, mental or simply vital problems    My experience tells me that many of the cases that I have in my hands at the moment in the Goazenup association are people who come in with quite a few shortcomings. Logically, serious diseases are difficult to cure, but the improvement in the quality of life is impressive, the evolution they have and how they prosper. The joy, the happiness, the movements  everything improves in the sea and, in this case, doing paddle board.  It also works with institutions to help foster adolescents and young people, whom it takes to practice sports at the sea.  After many years with the association, I have found that many young people, in addition to reassuring, centering and socially improving their qualities physically, are also doing very well emotionally. From here, a project called Zabalbideak was born, in collaboration with the Diputacin de Bizkaia, with which I help as a mentor to young people between 16 and 21 years old at risk of social exclusion. And it is impressive to see how self-esteem, a word that many of them do not even know, begins to have a meaning. And they begin to see that they can be self-sufficient in this life that puts so many obstacles on them. Thus, these young people can know the sea and sports in contact with nature, and positively change to be more social people, with greater self-esteem, with a physical more accepted in this society  And they can begin to move away from that risk of social exclusion. Marine biologist Wallace J. Nichols makes this recommendation whenever possible: Stop on the way to work and dip your feet in. It will make your day better, I guarantee it.