What If Wellbeing Didn’t Need Four Walls?

Something happening off the Pembrokeshire coast today caught my attention.

On Skomer Island, a group of people are waking up this morning for the second of this year’s Skomer Yoga retreats. Organised by the Wildlife Trust of South and West Wales⁠, the current session runs from Thursday 27 to Saturday 29 August, bringing together yoga, wildlife and time on one of the most extraordinary islands in Wales.

I rather like the idea.

Not particularly because I think everybody should suddenly buy a yoga mat and learn how to put their ankles somewhere nature never intended them to go. What interests me is the thinking behind it.

We have become remarkably good at putting wellbeing indoors.

We exercise inside buildings. We meditate through apps. We watch sunsets through phone screens. We sit under artificial lights talking about our need to reconnect with nature.

Then somewhere like Skomer quietly reminds us that perhaps nature itself can be part of the experience.

And Skomer isn’t just a pretty backdrop.

It is one of Britain’s most important wildlife sites. The island supports nearly 350,000 breeding pairs of Manx shearwaters, making it home to the largest breeding colony in the world. This year it also recorded an extraordinary 52,019 puffins, breaking the previous Skomer record of 43,626 set only last year.

The puffins have now left for the year — they are generally gone from Skomer by the end of July — but the Manx shearwaters remain into September.

There is something quite wonderful about contemplating those numbers while standing on a relatively small Welsh island.

But there is another number I think is worth remembering: 120 minutes.

Research led by the University of Exeter involving almost 20,000 people found that those spending at least 120 minutes a week in nature were significantly more likely to report good health and higher wellbeing than people who had no contact with nature during an average week.

Interestingly, it didn’t seem to matter whether those two hours happened in one long visit or were accumulated through several shorter ones.

That matters because reconnecting with nature doesn’t require a retreat on Skomer.

It might be twenty minutes in the garden.

A walk beside a river.

Sitting beneath a tree.

Feeling grass beneath your feet.

Swimming outdoors.

Watching clouds move rather than checking what everybody else is doing on Facebook.

Researchers at the University of Derby have also spent years studying nature connectedness — not simply how much time we spend outside, but how emotionally connected we feel to the natural world.

Their review of 50 studies involving 16,396 people found that people with a stronger connection to nature tended to report greater wellbeing, particularly in areas associated with personal growth and functioning well.

One of their long-running projects is particularly interesting.

Evaluations of the Wildlife Trusts’ 30 Days Wild programme found sustained improvements in happiness, health, connection with nature and behaviours that help nature. Among participants who began with relatively low levels of nature connectedness, researchers reported sustained increases of 56% in nature connectedness, 19% in health and 13% in happiness.

That begins to sound rather familiar.

Because naturism, at its best, has always understood something about connection.

We sometimes talk about naturism primarily through the absence of clothing, but that has never adequately described how we live.

Take away the swimming costume and suddenly you notice the water differently.

Take away the shoes and you notice the ground.

Take away the layers on a warm afternoon and you notice the breeze, temperature and sunlight across your whole body.

Take away the phone occasionally and you might even notice the person sitting beside you.

None of those things is particularly dramatic.

Perhaps that is precisely their value.

There is an increasing industry built around selling us wellbeing. There are products, subscriptions, retreats, devices and programmes promising to reconnect us with ourselves.

Yet some of the things human beings seem to benefit from most remain wonderfully uncomplicated.

Movement.

Nature.

Friendship.

Sunlight.

Fresh air.

Rest.

Belonging.

And sometimes simply allowing ourselves to exist without performing for anybody.

That last one matters enormously to me.

Naturism creates opportunities to stop presenting a carefully edited version of ourselves to the world. Bodies become ordinary. Differences become ordinary. Nobody needs to be the youngest, fittest, thinnest or most confident person there.

You simply arrive as yourself.

That is why something like yoga on Skomer interests me even though yoga isn’t inherently naturist at all.

The interesting part is the philosophy behind taking something we normally place inside a studio and putting it back into the landscape.

Perhaps we should do more of that.

Not necessarily yoga.

Just life.

Eat outside occasionally. Walk barefoot where it is safe. Sit beneath a tree. Swim. Watch wildlife.

Look upwards. Feel the weather rather than merely checking it on an app.

And when circumstances and appropriate surroundings allow, experience some of those things naturally.

Naturism doesn’t need to become another complicated wellness programme.

Quite the opposite.

Sometimes its greatest gift is reminding us how little we actually need.

A safe place.

Good company.

A bit of Welsh countryside.

And permission to simply be.

If you gave yourself two hours in nature this week with absolutely nothing you had to achieve, where in Wales would you spend them?

Further reading

Wildlife Trust of South and West Wales — Skomer Island⁠

Wildlife Trust — Skomer Yoga 2026 and current events⁠

Wildlife Trust — Skomer's record-breaking 2026 puffin count⁠

University of Exeter — Two hours a week in nature and wellbeing⁠

University of Derby — Nature Connectedness Research Group⁠