Enjoying natural environments safely: sports, adventure, risk and safeguarding health

Thegrim period that we are now living through, marked by the global pandemic, can become a positive impetus for a new culture of physical exercise, sports, and recreational and leisure activities for all ages, reclaimingthe great educational and cultural value ofcombining nature and sport. To be an ideal outdoor gymnasium natural environments, with theirwidely recognized health benefits, should be viewed as a means to educate the individual as a whole. At the same time,in the planning of physical activities and sports in such settings, we must be mindful of the need to prevent injuries andmanage risks and dangers. There is clearly a fundamental difference between outdoor activities practiced in a yard or public park and those pursued in natural settings. In the latter case, interactions in the ecosystem between biotic and abiotic factors prevail overanthropogenic factors, and we must strive to strike the right balance betweena spirit of free, adventurous discovery of the natural environment and respect for that environment,as well as the safeguarding of individual and collective health. To explore space and time through the body, action and movement, experiencing kinesthetic beauty while immersing ourselves sensorially in nature, to transform information into learning and education into personal growth, a sort of dialectic relationship between the individual and the environment and finally, to reclaim the land through action and movement, moral, spiritual and cultural values through the essential physicality of our body connected to nature while respecting ourselves and others. Based on these principles, the natural environment in every country and all across Europe can become a truly fantastic, varied open air gymnasium, where physical activity, sports and leisure activities can be pursued with no age limits in complete safety, reclaiming and giving meaning to our human condition