Halfpoint
Wendy Kurchak was feeling “completely and totally lost”. The retired guidance counsellor from Calgary had paused a second career as a communications co-ordinator with the Alberta Hospice Palliative Care Association to undergo treatment for breast cancer in 2016. She completed treatment the following year, but by 2020 she still felt emotionally adrift.
”[I experienced] the whole loss of identity that many women feel after going through breast cancer treatment,” she says.
Then, she saw a Facebook post about forest bathing, a mindfulness exercise that involves immersing yourself in nature. Kurchak hadn’t heard of forest bathing before, but she was intrigued and decided to register for a guided experience. She promptly fell in love.
”It forced me to slow down, helped ground me and allowed me to discover how I’m part of nature and part of how the whole world works together,” she says.
“Instead of worrying about treatment, or what it’s done to me or all those worries, forest bathing gives me those moments where all I’m doing is being distracted by beauty, nature and what’s going on at that very moment between me and the natural world.”
Many cultures have long believed that spending time outside, no matter the weather, can be good for your mental and physical health. In Japan, the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries has been encouraging people to practice “shinrin-yoku” (literally “forest bath”) since the 1980s.
That doesn’t just mean taking a walk in the woods. In fact, it’s not really about the walk at all.
“Forest bathing is about intentionality,” explains Erica Timko Olson, a clinical assistant professor with the University of Minnesota School of Nursing who’s currently studying how to make forest bathing more accessible. “It’s about spending time outdoors tuned into your senses – what you’re hearing, seeing, smelling.”
This type of mindfulness, ideally undertaken without a cellphone, helps us feel more present, grounded and connected to ourselves and the world around us.
And that has real health benefits. A 2009 study found that participants had better immune function after a three-day, two-night trip to a forest than they did on normal working days – and that the immune boost lasted for more than 30 days after their trip. A small 2011 study found spending a couple of hours forest bathing led to a reduction in blood pressure.
A 2019 paper found that forest bathing can reduce levels of the stress hormone cortisol. Another 2019 study found that spending 120 minutes per week in nature was positively associated with better health and well-being, and that was true whether participants spent that time all at once, or broke it up across multiple days.
These benefits aren’t necessarily tied to weather; in fact, Timko Olsen says the benefits of forest bathing might be even more noticeable during the cooler months.
“It takes more preparation,” she admits. “But there are so many views and the vistas that we can only see in the winter because they are normally covered up with leaves.”
“You can see for miles, [which can prompt a sense of awe] and we see in research that awe is really beneficial for giving people hope, purpose and the understanding that the world is much bigger than you,” she continues. “This makes your own problems seem easier to handle, because you realize how small you are, and how big and substantial the world is around you.”
Olsen believes it’s essential that all people have access to this kind of experience, including children, the elderly and people who have disabilities.
“The people who suffered the most in pandemics are the people who have the least access to green spaces,” she points out.
Emma Rooney, a Toronto-based certified forest therapy guide, agrees. That’s why she offers both in-person and online guided forest bathing experiences and reminds people that they don’t even really need a guide to benefit from spending time in nature.
“There hasn’t always been enough discussion about the inequities around green space; not everyone’s fortunate to live in High Park. And forest bathing doesn’t address that entirely,” she says. “But it does start from a place that nature is everywhere. If the sun rises where you are, if there’s a cloud or there’s a tree, we can take advantage of this – even if it’s surrounded by cement.”
For her part, Kurchak often tunes in to Rooney’s sessions from Calgary, where she might be sitting under a white spruce tree in her backyard that she’s nicknamed Ben, or if it’s really too cold, in her sunny dining room, looking through a big window toward the trees in her front yard. Wherever she’s joining from, though, she never misses a meeting.
“I often get overwhelmed by sadness about the things that are going on in the world. But forest bathing takes me from that point of despair to a point where I see that nature can revive itself, can take care of itself,” she says. “I can feel that connection with the natural world and know that there’s hope.”