How becoming aware of birds in nature can affect your mood and mind: Faraaz Abdool reflects on what birds can teach us about living in the now. Even accidental or occasional birders can enjoy the benefits of birds.
While scrolling through my social media feed a couple days ago I came across a word I hadn’t previously seen: “ornitherapy.” Aside from the word rolling supremely easy off the tongue, it jumped out at me for a couple other reasons. Firstly, “orni“ indicates something bird-related, and secondly “therapy” suggests a practice which would result in the overall betterment of one’s state. I couldn’t believe it, here was a word describing a familiar – and formerly indescribable – feeling. A single word to summarise the warm euphoria experienced when sharing a moment with any number of feathered beings.
I did a quick search and found a book entitled Ornitherapy: For Your Mind, Body, and Soul by Holly Merker, Richard Crossley, and Sophie Crossley. Published in March 2021, the book expands on the basic definition of ornitherapy as “the mindful observation of birds benefiting our minds, bodies, and souls.”
Certainly, the discerning reader must be wondering if this is all legitimate, how on earth can watching birds be a form of therapy – and why hasn’t anyone over the entirety of human existence ever noticed this? Well, some people have discovered the therapeutic benefits of enjoying wild birds; they are called birders. Before we get lost in nomenclature and categories of hobbyists, a birder can loosely be defined as anyone who enjoys the presence of wild birds in their natural habitat.
This extends welcoming arms to anyone who has ever seen a bird and paused for a moment to marvel at it. A birder may be someone who travels halfway around the planet to see particular birds. A birder is also someone who enjoys the sound of birdsong in the morning, wafting in through the kitchen window. You may not yet be aware of it, but you might just be a birder yourself, already raking in the benefits of ornitherapy.
It is important to not get lost in the pursuit, however. As humans living in the 21st century, we are thoroughly conditioned to always pursue. Stillness is frowned upon; contentment is often labelled as complacency. There is an unspoken (albeit subliminally implanted) ethos among us to continually do more, see more, accomplish more, and make more. Even birders can fall victim to this disease, many of us carry a list of species we have already seen. The consequence of this is a list of species we aspire to see, and this is a concept by which many of us can become consumed – thus becoming wholly lost.
This desire for “more” effectively puts our focus in the future. This is the flip side of living in the past and is equally detrimental to our well-being. It is objectively impossible to live in the present by reading the news – as the news is all that has already happened. Similarly, it is equally impossible to live in the present by studying for an exam – as tha
