Abstract
Research data has been collected concerning the physiological and psychological effects of environmental factors. However, there has been little research on the effects of soil on people. A soil observation was therefore carried out in the form of mudball-making, where indices of how soil affected people could be examined. The experiment was performed on seven visitors (average age 60.2±3.6) to the Kiryu Nature Sanctuary Forest, whose blood pressure, heart rate, heart rate variability, salivary amylase activity, POMS (Brief ), and VAS were measured before and after the activity. The results showed that the VAS values of “not healing,” “not relaxing,” “not interesting,” “not enjoyable” and “nerve-wracking” showed a significant lowering, suggesting that VAS provided useful indices for judging effectiveness in soil observations. Further study is required in regard to the other indices.
