Were they on to something?Ĭlearly, it worked for some people, and they continue to suggest that. Nineteenth-century doctors used to prescribe a long ocean voyage or beach stay as a cure for many ills. If the water is blue and it’s not polluted, you are getting a signal that is probably present in most if not all mammals.

They said, “This is good, this is right, this is safe and the place to survive and thrive.” For us today, it could be going to a swimming pool or a second-floor balcony on the ocean. Early humans seeking a place to call home and seeing a place overlooking the ocean or river realized that it makes them happy. Oftentimes it leads to feelings of connectedness and that can lead to innovative thoughts. That brain network is available for a completely different kind of quality of thought which is much more introspective and self-referential. We relax, and the quality of our thought changes.

Physiologically, our brains and bodies change. When we step away from our high-stressed lives and step into nature, we get a shift.

What’s the connection between human happiness and the ocean? There’s now a huge network of people over the past five years who seem interested in being connected and pushing the research forward and figuring out how to apply it in practical ways. I dove in and started putting on conferences and inviting the best neuroscientists and pairing them up with aquatic professionals and listening and collecting the conversations. For several years, I tried to give this away as an idea. At the same time, none of the books about water ever talked about the human brain. Yet it is the reason I became a marine biologist. As marine biologists, we don’t get a chance to talk about that feeling seriously and publicly. It’s something I’ve been experiencing and observing my whole life. It refers to a mildly meditative, relaxed state that we find ourselves in when we are in, on or under water. He recently spoke by telephone with The Post. His new book, “ Blue Mind,” combines personal stories and research studies to describe the healing power of water.

Since 2011, he has organized a yearly “Blue Mind” conference bringing together researchers studying the human brain and the marine world. Nichols, who lives near Santa Cruz, Calif., has come to believe that the best way to protect the oceans and its denizens is to make people value the good feelings that arise from being around water. But in the past five years, he has turned a new page, delving into neuroscience, human behavior and what he calls the “blue mind.” Nichols spent nearly two decades as a marine biologist studying Pacific Ocean sea turtles and working with fishermen in Baja California, Mexico, to protect the turtles from poachers.

Blue mind science