The Mental Health Benefits Of Forest Bathing

I live in a big city. Well, actually, the suburbs of a big city. But still, I’m surrounded by houses, traffic, sometimes construction, noise, lights — near a busy highway.

During the pandemic, at the start especially, I really felt the benefits of getting outside for walks with our dog. Even just around my local neighbourhood. It felt like getting outside with the dog was one thing that was still normal, that still hadn’t changed when the rest of the world had been turned upside down with restrictions, lockdowns, mandates, health orders. But I could get outside quickly and easily and get fresh air and exercise with our dog (who, if you’ve followed me the last few months, you’ll know we sadly lost in December 2021 to cancer — but good news, we will hopefully be getting a new rescue dog in a month or so!).

The world seemed almost normal when I was outside walking. I felt compelled to get outside and if I didn’t I’d go stir crazy! Not that I was even working from home, mind you, but still, just for the sense of normality, of the simplicity that you could safely go outside and move around familiar areas without restriction (at least where I live). It was a balm for my mental health

But what I noticed was when I left the not overly exciting sidewalks and streets and neighbourhood greenspaces (read playing fields), and went further afield to forested areas with trails and large towering trees, surrounded by nature and bushes and plants and flowers, I could feel the benefits on my mental health even more! Something I had never noticed before the pandemic and had taken for granted — the calming, rejuvenating, relaxing and refreshing feeling I got wandering through the forests of where I live in the Pacific Northwest.

About five or so years ago, when I first started my meditation practice, I learned about the practice of shinrin-yoku, which translates to forest bathing in Japanese. It’s basically the practice of slowly, mindfully, walking through forests and taking time to savour the experience as doing so brings a host of health benefits — not only physically but mentally.

According to a 2010 research paper on the benefits of Shinrin-yoku, where groups were measured walking in the city then forest environments (and then vice versa) and measured on a variety of physiological markers, results show that spending time in a forest lowers cortisol (the stress hormone), as well as your pulse, blood pressure, revs up the parasympathetic nervous system (aka your ‘rest and digest’ system) and turns down the sympathetic (aka your ‘fight or flight or freeze’ system) as compared to when the same measurements were taken walking around a city.

There’s also the terminology in the meditation community of ‘city energy’ and that if you do a meditation retreat in a secluded area in the country or away from the city, you’re asked to get rid of your ‘city energy’ that you accumulate just by the fact that you live in a busily populated area and that you may not realize you have — a sort of ‘go go go’, always busy frenetic energy which isn’t superhelpful when you’re supposed to be nice and zen in a meditation retreat!

So getting out in nature seems to help you rid yourself of the city energy and, as the famous quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson says:

Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.

How do you feel when you get out of the city or town that you might live in and into nature? Or, if you live in the country, do you feel differently when you go to a big city?