Mariel Cigarra

Another sense you can use in the forest is taste.

I mean, you have to be careful.

Don't just pick up a mushroom and start eating it.

But if you learn about plants and foraging, you can add that to your forest bathing practice.

You can also buy teas and tinctures from trained herbalists in your community and then bring them to the forest with you.

Lucretia Van Dyke is an herbalist, a ceremonialist, and author of the book African American Herbalism, a Practical Guide to Healing Plants and Folk Traditions.

Also, herbalists use the flowers to help people work through grief.

So sometimes she'll take a couple drops of a mimosa tincture in her mouth.

That brings us to takeaway five.

Go deeper.

Work with the forest to process what you're going through.

Gary says you can see nature as a mirror.

The Forest Bathing Institute, which he runs, leads group trips to forests in the UK and around the world.

And people have told him that forest bathing helped them work through grief.

In the forest, dead trees provide homes for woodpeckers and owls.

And when they fall down, they become hiding spots for frogs and other creatures.

And they provide a space for mushrooms and moss to grow.

In death, they support life.

Another metaphor, think about how trees communicate with each other through their network of roots underground.

It's a stark contrast with how isolated many of us feel these days.