TRAVEL FOR MENTAL HEALTH: LIFE & LEISURE MAGAZINE
More than ever, we need to stop and smell the roses - preferably while firing up our neurotransmitters with a change of scenery, writes Nina Karnikowski.
Remember that uplifted, inspired feeling you’d get after a holiday? How it seemed as though anything was possible and that a new you had been born?
Given the times, you may have to think back a bit, but it turns out there’s some fascinating neuroscience behind how and why holidays are good for our health and wellbeing, giving us ample reason to add “take a trip” to the top of the to-do list.
Essentially, the disruption of routine, change of scenery and novelty travel provides gives our brains a wake-up call, taking them off autopilot.
Our brains are constantly reading our environment, guessing what’s going to happen next and deciding what to do with resources, says Dr Peter Baldwin, a clinical psychologist at the Black Dog Institute.
When we go into a new context where things are different - such as when we take a holiday - it changes thought patterns and the predictions our brains tend to make during the normal weekly routine.
“Because there’s lots of novel sights and sounds on holiday, our brains tend to get more creative about the things they think about and the way they think about them,” Baldwin says.
“We often experience that as a sense of ‘things that didn’t feel possible suddenly do feel possible’ - or as being more open to things we might not normally have tried or considered.”
The good news is this cognitive flexibility persists for a brief time after travellers return home, leading to more creativity and innovative idea generation at work and home. “When we come back from holidays, increased cognitive flexibility helps us see things differently, or get a different perspective or take on things,” says Baldwin.
This can have a positive knock-on effect for our physical health, too. “Our conceptual frameworks about ourselves, others and the world get updated and that changes the way we engage in all sorts of behaviours, including diet and exercise. Suddenly, maybe we are that person who goes on a yoga retreat, or who tries CrossFit and isn’t a miserable failure at it.”
Mental health benefits also flow from the anticipation of travel: when we’re really looking forward to something, our brain triggers a release of dopamine, a neurotransmitter that helps control the brain’s reward and pleasure centres.
Professor Lionel Page, a behavioural economist at the University of Technology Sydney, says: “In psychology we call it ‘anticipation utility’, so as you think about borders opening and imagine going back or Bali or Japan, you already start enjoying part of that holiday because your brain is factoring in the expectation of satisfaction, which is releasing dopamine and giving a signal of reward in your brain.”
A landmark 2014 Cornell University study found that the anticipation of an experience such as travel can increase happiness substantially, and much more than the anticipation of buying material goods.
Travel helps on an interpersonal growth level as well. Baldwin says: “When we experience other cultures, and watch other human beings with essentially the same mental hardware as us approaching life so differently, it can be paradigm shifting for our brains. And when we come home, the people we talk to benefit from that paradigm-shifting way of thinking as well.”
By taking a trip, you are also more likely to end up with interesting stories to tell friends and colleagues, which will lead to better conversations and an improved sense of wellbeing for everyone involved.
Page points to the work of Nobel Prize-winning behavioural psychologist Daniel Kahneman, which illustrates how experiences such as holidays have longer lasting effects on happiness than material possessions.
“We get habituated to things,” says Page. “You get a bigger mortgage to get a better house to make yourself happier, but you get used to the house so it doesn’t have much of an impact on your happiness long-term. In comparison, if you take a trip to South America, you’re still consuming that experience afterwards, and that has a bigger long-term effect on your happiness.”
And while travel provides an obvious break from the stresses of home, leaving the drudgery of daily life to focus on pleasure and giving us time for reflection, when we return home our travel memories can become a potent stress moderator.
Says Baldwin: “Your brain is a massive simulation machine, it’s not a film recorder, and you can turn on whatever simulation you want just by closing your eyes. So when you’re in the middle of a tough day back at work, you can close your eyes for five minutes and mentally take yourself on a mini-holiday.”