Medicines of the Mar - Seeing Blue

"Suppose I were to begin by saying I had fallen in love with a color." Maggie Nelson, Bluets

Standing under bright sunlight on Mission Beach, San Diego at 10:12 AM I saw the ocean in layers of blue that expanded across my entire field of vision. I stared into the distance at turquoise, cerulean, indigo, and baby blue that almost matched my faded Levi’s. I felt calm, steady breaths, the sentiment that life was entirely worth living. This is not the only time I’ve experienced this: Throughout my life, have been staggered by the balancing effect that a few minutes spent looking out a window, into a blue sky, across a blue horizon, or even into the speckled navy of a night sky can have on my physiology and mental state. Blue is the color most widely associated with the sea, as well as the sky. It is the color of distance, of atmospheric vastness. It is the color of worlds beyond our reach, worlds we nonetheless find so pleasing to look at.

Color is one of the primary sensory factors involved in the process the human physiology uses to make meaning. It is one of the first ways humans categorize the world in infancy, and is a powerful tool of symbolism within cultures and history. Among all colors, blue holds a particularly complex place in human perception and culture. Looking into history, it is surprisingly unclear exactly when humans first started treating blue as a distinct color. Many early societies leave little trace of blue in their art, artifacts, or even language. Some historians note that explicit references to the color remain absent from many ancient texts, including the early versions of the Bible and even Homer’s Odyssey where the sea is famously described not as blue but as “wine-dark.”

When humans did begin to represent blue deliberately it required extraordinary effort. True blue pigments are rare in the earth (where most pigment is harvested), though blue can be found in the middle-eastern rock Lapis Lazuli, which is a key ingredient in the popular Renaissance pigment ultramarine (beyond the sea). Ultramarine was so coveted during the Renaissance that it was more valuable than gold, and was thus reserved for the most important or sacred figures in paintings, perhaps most notably the robes of the Virgin Mary. The same color painters once revered as precious and kept reserved for depictions of the sacred exists freely around us in the present day.

While cultures have long attached rich symbolic meaning to the color blue, modern research suggests that our attraction to it may also have physiological bases.

Philosopher Denis Dutton is credited for the term “aesthetic Darwinism” which proposes that human aesthetic preferences may have evolved alongside survival instincts. According to aesthetic Darwinism, humans evolved to feel drawn to landscape aesthetics that supported survival of a human population. Blue environments signal evolutionarily advantageous conditions. Clear blue skies indicate stable weather and long-range visibility, while bodies of water provide resources for survival. As a result, the human brain may interpret these environments as relatively safe, which could encourage relaxation and exploratory mindsets.

Research on environmental psychology supports this idea. Exposure to natural environments, particularly those including water (sometimes referred to as “blue spaces”) are associated with reduced stress and improved physical activity (Georgiou, M., et al). Psychologist Stephen Kaplan’s Attention Restoration Theory offers another explanation for this experience. The Attention Restoration Theory suggests that natural environments restore mental attention because they engage the mind and capture attention without exhausting an individual’s cognitive energy. Kaplan references a state of mind called “soft fascination,” which is associated with natural environments (hard-fascination would be watching an auto-race, while soft-fascination emerges from activities like walking in nature). Soft-fascination is conducive to the processes of cognitive restoration and stress reduction (Kaplan, 1995).

In addition, studies of light exposure show that blue wavelengths emitted by daylight influence circadian rhythms and cognitive alertness (Lockley et al., 2006; Cajochen et al., 2011). Taken together, these findings suggest that the calming effect many people experience when looking at oceans or skies may not be purely symbolic or cultural and may be connected to deeper biological processes of perception and evolution.

Before the mind begins to register a view from a cliff or an expansive horizon as beautiful, the body begins responding. My shoulders drop, my jaw unclenches, the tension between my eyebrows seems to dissipate while my eyes scan the distance. Looking back at history and evolution, it’s no wonder I find myself standing still in front of the ocean, or views of the sky: this environment may be embedded in my physiology to be perceived as safe and full of restorative potential.

If blue environments help regulate the nervous system, what does that mean for daily life?

It is incredibly easy to encounter the sky (even through cloud covers and atmospheric variances, the sun naturally emits blue light). Even an attentive glance upward may initiate regulatory responses to an individual’s physiology. Blue environments are one of the most accessible natural regulators available to us, and offer valuable variance from the hard-fascination inducing, close-range stimulus modern humans are so familiar with which are known to cause stress. One simple way to experience this effect is to intentionally spend a few moments looking at the broadest sky, or open horizon available. After a minute or two one may notice their bodily tensions softening and their mind relaxing. Perhaps this is the body remembering something ancient, of standing under an open sky and scanning the distance.