Lost and Found in the Woods - My First Forest Bathe.
By Alexia Wdowski
‘When we walk on the earth with reverence, beauty will decide to trust us.’ ― John O’Donohue.
The words ‘forest’ and ‘bathing’ together are evocative and strange and I imagine drowning in a sea of green leaves to a Kate Bush soundtrack. Turns out Forest Bathing is both more evidence-based and even more extraordinary than it sounds.
‘By being in a forest we can strengthen our connection with the natural world; calm our senses; relax; rejuvenate; boost our immune systems and connect to ourselves and to the wider world,’ said my Aberystwyth forest bathing guide Lucy McQuillan, who studied Forest Bathing with Nature and Therapy UK. She has previously worked for national parks and community projects on the West Coast of Scotland, the Lake District and Exmoor.
Forest Bathing, or Shinrin-Yoku, is a Japanese practice that originated in 1982 as part of a national health programme in response to unhealthy lifestyles in overcrowded cities (sound familiar?). Unlike taking a literal bath in hot water, Shinrin-Yoku means a metaphorical ‘bathing’ of all the senses. We bathe in nature to make contact with and return to something that we have lost.
We met in a busy layby just outside of Aberystwyth, and the first task was to get to the forest. I clutched my little foam mat as we made our way along the muddy footpath and into a cluster of trees not far from the river. The light was dappled and leaves moved with the breeze as Lucy selected a place to begin without too many dog-walkers. There was one other person in the group and neither of us were forest bathing experts so we stood in a circle while Lucy explained that her role as a guide was to slow us down, help us stay in the moment and involve our senses through the use of different forest bathing ‘invitations.’
Invitation 1: Textures - Explore and find different textures in our surroundings.
Five steps away from where we stood I found varieties of autumn leaf in stages of decay from damp to soft to dry. Moss covered the trunk of a tree like a rag-rug of greens. I focused on the lengths of the grasses leaning over it and noticed each dried piece. How thin they were, and pale, and precisely folded in the middle.
Lucy hit her Japanese singing bowl and a chime slid out to us through the trees. We were asked to bring back something and a dry crisp leaf curled itself around my finger, its spine showing, and I carried it back like a prize to show the others. We all brought back a piece of the forest, a pile of multi-coloured leaves, a ripe acorn, a hawthorn shell. We spoke about why we liked them, where we had found them and why they stood out to us within the teeming mass of other textures. Lucy said when we do these activities our thoughts will come and go, and that we can notice them and then let them float on by. Like vast systems of weather, like clouds across a wide blue sky.
Being in the beauty of nature is calming and has been shown to benefit us in ways both psychological and biological. This increased wellbeing has been studied by the Japanese who tested the effects on our health and immune system. Studies from 2010 found forest environments promoted lower concentrations of cortisol, pulse rate, blood pressure and sympathetic nerve activity than did city environments. They also found greater parasympathetic nerve activity. Other studies showed that time spent forest bathing appeared to specifically raise the levels of cancer-fighting white blood cells in the body.
Various plants release phytoncides – airborne chemicals, or nature’s essential oils, that include antibiotics and antifungals to protect trees and vegetation. The idea is that breathing in these plant phytoncides can stimulate our own immune system for the better on a microbiological level. As well as helping our immune system fight cancer, these effects could be of use in the treatment and prevention of respiratory diseases such as covid.
Invitation 2: Human Camera
This one was more complicated for Lucy to explain. We were invited to pair up and take it in turns to be the ‘human camera.’ The camera kept their eyes shut, and their partner led them on a walk until they noticed something especially beautiful. Then the camera could ‘take a picture.’ This involved opening our eyes and letting the light and the picture flood in. It could be something right up close, a gnarled tree trunk seen in microscopic level of detail, or a deep and dim mass of tree branches. I was shown a fly agaric mushroom, pushing up red and shocking from the ground. For the last picture my partner turned me to face the light directly and it swarmed into focus, mixing with a thousand silver leaves.
Walking blindly in the forest heightened other senses, the uneven ground, the strength and direction of the wind, even the controlled vulnerability of being lead by another through the woods. Afterwards we both said how fun it was. The mix of anticipation followed by instant sensation.
Invitation 3
For our last invitation we were asked to sit on our foam board and find an object to focus on for 15 minutes, slowly zooming out to include more detail. I found a stubborn-looking bramble branch and sat in front of it. I breathed in the warm, wet smell of mulch and decay and felt the sun’s heat on my back through my coat. I looked at the bramble and traced the lines of one leaf with my eyes, finding crease after crease, and thorn after thorn when a cappuccino-coloured spider appeared, bright and limber. I raised my eyebrows at it’s entrance. When I heard the chime to return I was studying the movements of a yellow bee and had to tear myself away. It took a few more chimes to call our other forest bather back and we searched for him through branches waving in the breeze. Eventually he appeared from behind a bush with a big slow smile on his face.
Here in the UK we face our own specific challenges – a cost of living crisis, fallout from Brexit and unhealthy habits made during the pandemic when access to nature was subject to fines and restrictions. While forest bathing is not a cure for the world’s economic ills, it can help to address health issues and on an individual level remind us of who we are, where we come from, what is important in life, and give us the rejuvenating power to continue.
After our final invitation from the forest, we both felt refreshed and creative. The small details found in nature had become strangely infinite and this made life feel full of possibility. We drank herbal tea from a flask in the small clearing and shared segments from an orange, before slowly finding our way back to town.
By Alexia Wdowski
‘When we walk on the earth with reverence, beauty will decide to trust us.’ ― John O’Donohue.
The words ‘forest’ and ‘bathing’ together are evocative and strange and I imagine drowning in a sea of green leaves to a Kate Bush soundtrack. Turns out Forest Bathing is both more evidence-based and even more extraordinary than it sounds.
‘By being in a forest we can strengthen our connection with the natural world; calm our senses; relax; rejuvenate; boost our immune systems and connect to ourselves and to the wider world,’ said my Aberystwyth forest bathing guide Lucy McQuillan, who studied Forest Bathing with Nature and Therapy UK. She has previously worked for national parks and community projects on the West Coast of Scotland, the Lake District and Exmoor.
Forest Bathing, or Shinrin-Yoku, is a Japanese practice that originated in 1982 as part of a national health programme in response to unhealthy lifestyles in overcrowded cities (sound familiar?). Unlike taking a literal bath in hot water, Shinrin-Yoku means a metaphorical ‘bathing’ of all the senses. We bathe in nature to make contact with and return to something that we have lost.
We met in a busy layby just outside of Aberystwyth, and the first task was to get to the forest. I clutched my little foam mat as we made our way along the muddy footpath and into a cluster of trees not far from the river. The light was dappled and leaves moved with the breeze as Lucy selected a place to begin without too many dog-walkers. There was one other person in the group and neither of us were forest bathing experts so we stood in a circle while Lucy explained that her role as a guide was to slow us down, help us stay in the moment and involve our senses through the use of different forest bathing ‘invitations.’
Invitation 1: Textures - Explore and find different textures in our surroundings.
Five steps away from where we stood I found varieties of autumn leaf in stages of decay from damp to soft to dry. Moss covered the trunk of a tree like a rag-rug of greens. I focused on the lengths of the grasses leaning over it and noticed each dried piece. How thin they were, and pale, and precisely folded in the middle.
Lucy hit her Japanese singing bowl and a chime slid out to us through the trees. We were asked to bring back something and a dry crisp leaf curled itself around my finger, its spine showing, and I carried it back like a prize to show the others. We all brought back a piece of the forest, a pile of multi-coloured leaves, a ripe acorn, a hawthorn shell. We spoke about why we liked them, where we had found them and why they stood out to us within the teeming mass of other textures. Lucy said when we do these activities our thoughts will come and go, and that we can notice them and then let them float on by. Like vast systems of weather, like clouds across a wide blue sky.
Being in the beauty of nature is calming and has been shown to benefit us in ways both psychological and biological. This increased wellbeing has been studied by the Japanese who tested the effects on our health and immune system. Studies from 2010 found forest environments promoted lower concentrations of cortisol, pulse rate, blood pressure and sympathetic nerve activity than did city environments. They also found greater parasympathetic nerve activity. Other studies showed that time spent forest bathing appeared to specifically raise the levels of cancer-fighting white blood cells in the body.
Various plants release phytoncides – airborne chemicals, or nature’s essential oils, that include antibiotics and antifungals to protect trees and vegetation. The idea is that breathing in these plant phytoncides can stimulate our own immune system for the better on a microbiological level. As well as helping our immune system fight cancer, these effects could be of use in the treatment and prevention of respiratory diseases such as covid.
Invitation 2: Human Camera
This one was more complicated for Lucy to explain. We were invited to pair up and take it in turns to be the ‘human camera.’ The camera kept their eyes shut, and their partner led them on a walk until they noticed something especially beautiful. Then the camera could ‘take a picture.’ This involved opening our eyes and letting the light and the picture flood in. It could be something right up close, a gnarled tree trunk seen in microscopic level of detail, or a deep and dim mass of tree branches. I was shown a fly agaric mushroom, pushing up red and shocking from the ground. For the last picture my partner turned me to face the light directly and it swarmed into focus, mixing with a thousand silver leaves.
Walking blindly in the forest heightened other senses, the uneven ground, the strength and direction of the wind, even the controlled vulnerability of being lead by another through the woods. Afterwards we both said how fun it was. The mix of anticipation followed by instant sensation.
Invitation 3
For our last invitation we were asked to sit on our foam board and find an object to focus on for 15 minutes, slowly zooming out to include more detail. I found a stubborn-looking bramble branch and sat in front of it. I breathed in the warm, wet smell of mulch and decay and felt the sun’s heat on my back through my coat. I looked at the bramble and traced the lines of one leaf with my eyes, finding crease after crease, and thorn after thorn when a cappuccino-coloured spider appeared, bright and limber. I raised my eyebrows at it’s entrance. When I heard the chime to return I was studying the movements of a yellow bee and had to tear myself away. It took a few more chimes to call our other forest bather back and we searched for him through branches waving in the breeze. Eventually he appeared from behind a bush with a big slow smile on his face.
Here in the UK we face our own specific challenges – a cost of living crisis, fallout from Brexit and unhealthy habits made during the pandemic when access to nature was subject to fines and restrictions. While forest bathing is not a cure for the world’s economic ills, it can help to address health issues and on an individual level remind us of who we are, where we come from, what is important in life, and give us the rejuvenating power to continue.
After our final invitation from the forest, we both felt refreshed and creative. The small details found in nature had become strangely infinite and this made life feel full of possibility. We drank herbal tea from a flask in the small clearing and shared segments from an orange, before slowly finding our way back to town.