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From Skeptic to Believer: Celebrating One Million Nature Prescriptions with Author Misty Pratt
This month marks a monumental achievement for PaRx: one million prescriptions for nature have been issued!
In just four years, nearly 15,000 healthcare providers have facilitated one million connections with nature. That's one million encounters motivating patients to experience the profound health benefits of being outdoors.
Time in nature is linked to positive impacts like reducing blood pressure, lowering cortisol levels, and alleviating anxiety and depression. For many people in Canada, these prescriptions have sparked transformative change.
One such transformative change belongs to Ontario author Misty Pratt, who shares her story today.
The Butterfly Effect
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When Misty Pratt first stood barefoot in the butterfly garden beside the hospital where she worked, she felt a little silly.
It was her first time filling her PaRx nature prescription, and as she watched people eating their lunches nearby, she wondered if she was doing it right.
But she stayed, focusing on the wind, the grass tickling her feet, the flutter of butterflies, the hum of distant voices. Eventually a sense of calm washed over her. She returned to the garden, day after day, realizing that these mindful moments outdoors were shifting something important within her.
A New Leaf
For most of her life, Misty had a complicated relationship with nature. As a child, she was terrified of spiders in the forest, leeches in the lake, and everything that crawled. She preferred to stay indoors, escaping into the pages of a book rather than venturing into the unknown wild.
At the same time, she was deeply anxious about the threats that nature faced. In grade school, she fundraised for the rainforest. As a young adult, she pursued two degrees in environmental science, which she says often left her feeling helpless: “I got so overwhelmed by the bad news. Talking every day about the destruction of the world and the fact that we're all doomed. It was too heavy.”
Her struggles with mental health began as a teenager, and for many years she searched for something to ease the weight. Her new book, All in Her Head, recounts this journey. As Misty strove to find a balance, a health practitioner prescribed her time in nature through PaRx.
“Her instructions were very specific,” Misty says. “I had to go outside in the grass. I had to take my shoes and my socks off. And I had to mindfully be like, ‘Okay, what do I feel?’ It was a very grounding moment.”
Through her nature prescription, Misty both improved her mental health and strengthened her connection to the earth. As she walks through her favourite neighbourhood ravine with her children today, she finds comfort in the changing seasons and return of the birds—a reminder of the rhythms of nature. Spending time outdoors is no longer a task but an integral part of her life, as automatic as breathing.
“Finding all of this in nature has helped me realize that no single person can fix every problem. At times I still feel anxious about the future, but I no longer want to cut myself off. The more that people appreciate the world we live in, the more we will care enough to protect it. Nature fills our cups and offers more solutions than we can begin to imagine.”
With one million prescriptions and counting, our journey toward making nature the fourth pillar of health has only just begun.
