Both physical activity and exposure to nature are known separately to have positive effects on physical
and mental health. We have investigated whether there is a synergistic benefit in adopting physical
activities whilst being directly exposed to nature (‘green exercise’). Five groups of 20 subjects were
exposed to a sequence of 30 scenes projected on a wall whilst exercising on a treadmill. Four categories
of scenes were tested: rural pleasant, rural unpleasant, urban pleasant and urban unpleasant. The
control was running without exposure to images. Blood pressure and two psychological measures (selfesteem
and mood) were measured before and after the intervention. There was a clear effect of both
exercise and different scenes on blood pressure, self-esteem and mood. Exercise alone significantly