Why spending time in the woods makes you feel calm
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What benefits does forest bathing provide for mental and physical health?
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You're listening to LifeKits. From NPR. Hey, everybody. It's Marielle. Isn't the forest a magical place? Like when you really venture into the woods and you see these century-old trees towering over you, sunlight twinkling through them, and spiders weaving their elaborate webs. The smell of pine needles is in the air. Birds are tweeting. You hear a mysterious sound that you're not going to pay too much attention to, but you really hope is not a bear. There is a moment of awe that happens when you step into a forest. And I think a lot of us can sense that forest bathing, or taking in the forest through your senses, makes us feel better and calmer. I was surprised to learn that there are decades of scientific evidence backing that up.
A lot of the evidence comes from Japan, where the term forest bathing originated in the 1980s. Over many years, researchers have shown in peer-reviewed studies that time in the forest is a kind of medicine. Forest bathing helps your immune system by increasing your levels of anti-cancer proteins and immune cells that kill tumors. It's been shown to lower blood pressure and stabilize blood sugar. It can help with depression. It can lower adrenaline and turn down the dial on your body's fight-or-flight response.
What we could see in the data was that as soon as somebody came into proximity of a tree and they were just present and mindful, paying attention and appreciating the tree, that basically their parasympathetic activity, which is the relaxation response in the body, was increased.
I know, all of that from spending time with trees. On this episode of Life Kit, we will talk about how to forest bathe using the research as our guide to what works. And we'll share some exercises to get you started. Feel free to head outside to listen to this one. If, like me, you're wondering why forests are so good for our health, there's an evolutionary hypothesis for this. Simply put, for much of human history, we lived in nature.
So the thinking is, because we evolved in nature, we have a biological need to connect with nature.
So we love nature because we learn to love the things that have helped us survive. That's Dr. Ching Lee, by the way. He's a professor at Nippon Medical School in Tokyo and the president of the Japanese Society of Forest Medicine. He's designed and carried out a lot of Japan's research on forest bathing. Another expert you'll hear from in this episode is Gary Evans. director of the Forest Bathing Institute in the UK, which was heavily inspired by Dr. Lee's work. Gary says at this point, we can survive without exposure to nature and forests specifically.
But there's a difference between surviving and thriving.
All right, let's get thriving. We're going to start with some forest bathing basics. Gary says a lot of the time when we head to the woods or a hiking trail, Nature is a backdrop. You know, it's secondary.
So we might be walking and talking with a friend, running, cycling, horse riding.
But he says if you want to get all the benefits of forest bathing, your primary focus should be connecting with nature. So takeaway one, really let yourself bathe in the forest. It's kind of like bathing in your tub. You're there to relax and dwell in the experience.
If you say, OK, I'm going to go to the park, I'm going to go to the forest, I'm going to appreciate nature. the natural beauty. So that's the first thing, set the intention.
Ideally, you can also set aside an entire morning or afternoon for this because... The important thing for people listening to remember is that relaxation is not like an on-off switch. As for how much time, Dr. Lee suggests two to six hours.
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