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The Cabin: Woodlands, Forest Therapy, and Shinrin-Yoku

My father owns a small cabin in the woods near our house. It's small, wooden, nestled in a small valley with a rippling stream. The cabin is stilted, sitting just up a small embankment facing the stream, which my father has reinforced with a small drystone wall on either side. On the other side of the bank is a steep hill, crawling with verdant trees and ferns. Sitting on the balcony that my father build all by himself, I can be one with the natural world, allowing all my superficial stresses and anxieties to melt away as the sound of rippling water, whistling birds, cracking logs on the fire, and the light patter of rain on the tin roof fills my ears. My dad built this whole oasis by himself, using only materials from the valley and unused items from the outside world. Inside the cabin, a rusty old furnace sits in the corner, and a tin chimney passes through the corrugated roof above. A small coffee maker sits on the shelf, its bottom blackened by soot from the fire. It sits next to a glass milk bottle, filled with some perky purple flowers. In the observation of my surroundings, and the intense concentration the forest fills me with, I began to think: is there any research on this? Yeah, that's right, my first question wasn't about how these green valleys were formed or why mushrooms only grew near the stream, but if people smarter than me were able to explain how I felt. 

Turns out, of course, there are. I found a Psychology Today article authored by Marlynn Wei M.D., J.D. (what a showoff) about the health benefits of walking in the forest. In the article, Dr. Wei talks about the impact that walking in the woods has on our psyche. In particular, she talks about the Japanese tradition of Shinrin-Yoku, or "forest bathing," which has evolved into the much more modern practice of "forest therapy." In fact, several studies over the past decade have found that being in a woodland environment can lead to being more physically and mentally relaxed - and have even been shown to lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol and boost the human immune system. The paper "Effects of Walking in a Forest on Young Women," published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health in January of 2019 suggests that walking as little as 15 minutes a day in the forest can drastically improve a person's mood and relieve anxieties. The studies compared results between participants who walked in the city against those who walked in the forest. The participants who walked in the forest were said to feel much more relaxed and experience fewer negative emotions than their urban counterparts. 

In addition, walking in woodlands has also been shown to reduce all negative emotions, not just stress and anxiety. Using the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory, or STAI, researchers found that most participants experienced a mass decrease in a whole range of emotions, such as tension, anxiety, fatigue, depression, anger, and confusion. Researchers have also examined the effects of walking in the forest on physical relaxation, finding that forest therapy activates the 'relaxation response' of the parasympathetic nervous system. Some smaller studies have suggested that forest therapy may have antidepressant effects, comparable to actual antidepressants. Forest walking can be especially useful as it combines mindfulness with exercise, which is both proven to be antidepressants - especially in young children. 

Finally, the last word on Shinrin-Yoku, the ancient Japanese cultural practice that involves bathing in the woods. Some studies have suggested that Shinrin-Yoku naturally releases helpful antioxidants into the bloodstream, helping our physical health. These studies were conducted by measuring the levels of these chemicals before and after forest bathing and concluding that test results found dramatically higher levels of these helpful chemicals in the bloodstream post-bathing. 

If I can just lie in the woods, sipping a fresh coffee I've just boiled on the furnace, listening only to the sounds of nature, AND be less stressed, calmer, less angry, more healthy, less toxic, and more at ease with myself and my situation, sign me up. That sounds like a pretty good deal.

07/05/2022

by Frankie E.J. Robinson

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