“Really, I’m getting the exact same results. I’m getting higher levels of positive emotions, definitely higher levels of … feeling grateful, feeling touched, feeling spiritually moved, feeling morally elevated,” she said.
Passmore said you also don’t have to spend a long time outdoors, or even go outside, to get these benefits.
“Even when I did this in the winter, like –35 C in Edmonton for a week, some of the stuff was the cactus in my house, the sky outside, I saw a bird, because that’s nature.”
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Lessons from the north
Another way to beat the winter blues? Embrace it fully and find ways to make the coldest months of the year something special.
That’s what psychologist Kari Leibowitz recommends.
In 2014, she spent a year in northern Norway to find out why people there experienced lower rates of seasonal depression, despite living through the polar night where the sun doesn’t rise for weeks during the winter months.