Forest Bathing

remembering to check in with my heart, too

Have you heard of shinrin yoku? The Japanese concept of “forest bathing”? It’s the practice of simply being out in nature, hiking, waking, wandering, what have you, and soaking in not only the glory of creation, but getting a whole slew of pretty serious neurological benefits, too.

The concept is simple- we were created to be part of this world, not divorced from it by technology and concrete and LED lighting, and we respond enthusiastically when we reconnect with nature. On a spiritual level, we understand this instinctively, and for the more skeptical among us, there is a growing body of research confirming this intuitive knowledge.

Everything from mood alteration to neurological “detox” from fight-or-flight fatigue to increases in memory and focus have been measured by studies. A 2015 study found that a 90 minute wander in a natural setting reduced “rumination” (defined as “repetitive thought, focused on negative aspects of the self”) and decreased activity in areas of the brain linked to mental illness. A 2010 study showed significant boosts to the immune system, which lasted a full month, after a 3 day/2 night camping trip. Benefits to mind, body and spirit abound when we put ourselves outside.

Here in New England, we are spoiled with natural beauty. My daily walk takes me down a quiet country road, lined with ancient stone walls and hickory, maple, and white oak. In fall, the trees surrounding the neighbor’s hay field are on fire with color and movement. If I’m quiet enough, I can get startlingly close to herds of deer; if I pitch my voice just right, I can call to the wild turkeys who strut everyone’s yards and they’ll answer back. Every other year, the wild apple tree at the end of the lane fruits, and you can smell the sweetness of the windfall long before you crest the hill and see the tree.

As someone who connects very deeply with God in nature, you’d think a daily opportunity to forest bathe in such abundance would mean I was the picture of blissful zen. Which, of course anyone who knows me would tell you, is patently false. Generally speaking, I’m an anxious buzz of self doubt and worries and restlessness. I can walk through a world that looks like this:

and have a head full of what ifs and if only I hadn’ts and rumination. So what gives?

My sister in law came to visit last week. She also loves hiking, so I planned several day trips to trails we hadn’t visited yet. The first was the intriguingly named Wolf Den trail, the site where the last wolf in Connecticut was tracked down and killed, way back in 1749. The trail reports we read about the expedition were laughably understated, or else we were woefully out of shape, because at several points on the hike, all eight of us were totally silent, unable to do anything but put one foot in front of the other and not collapse.

It was glorious. I had so much fun scrambling up rocks and navigating the thick mat of treacherous leaves that I forgot all about my headspace. And there, watching my kids crawl into a damp cave while I read a placard detailing Israel Putnam’s multi-day quest to kill Connecticut’s last wolf, I had an epiphany.

The story had bothered me. Suddenly, I was back in my head again, anxiously thinking about someone tracking a dangerous carnivore through thick woods in the depths of a New England winter. Sadly thinking about that last wolf, and how the loss of such an apex predator left a void in our ecosystem. We left the empty wolf den, and I felt agitated and unsettled. Nothing had changed, but everything had changed.

But then, as we continued our hike in breathless silence, the Holy Spirit whispered to me among the rocks and the three inches of oak and beech leaves blanketing the trial. “Your head is upset. I can see that. But how is it with your heart?”

The question was so unexpected and foreign I almost stopped walking (almost. if you stop your momentum halfway up an incline, woe unto you trying to start up again). For so long, I’ve let my head consume my internal landscape. Anxieties, enthusiasm, confusion, stubborness, ambition, whatever the weather in my brain, I’ve grown accustomed to assuming it meant the climate was the same all over myself. To consider that my bossy brain might not speak for my heart took my totally aback. But I was fascinated by the question, so I took a moment to internally stop and check in with my heart. To my surprise, it was peaceful.*

My head was upset about the wolf, and a long dead man out in winter temps before the advent of thinsulate jackets, and an argument earlier in the day, and how many ticks we’d probably picked up so far, and my husband’s truck that’s been in the shop for two months, and just the debris of daily life, but my heart was deeply at peace. Like, unrecognizably peaceful and content.

I felt so grateful then, that this gift had been given to me, the understanding that there was a deep well of contentment within me, that didn’t necessarily reflect the tempests in my brain. I spent the rest of the hike sort of probing that peace, beholding it with wonderment. I was still upset about the wolf, and the argument, and the ticks, but those things existed side by side with the peace in my heart.

It never fails to amaze me, the lengths that our Creator goes in pursuing our hearts. He created this amazing world, and then created us to not only respond to its beauty on an intellectual level, but all the way down to our very cells. We’re made to be drawn to the Beauty that literally heals us.

Here’s hoping that you get the chance to get some forest bathing in this week!

* This was right around the 90 minute mark of the hike- count me as another data point on the “effects of forest bathing on rumination”