Forest Therapy

by Sarah Ivens

  Copyright

  Copyright © 2018 by Sarah Ivens

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  Da Capo Press

  Hachette Book Group

  1290 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10104

  www.dacapopress.com

  @DaCapoPress

  Originally published in 2018 by Piatkus in the United Kingdom

  First U.S. Edition: September 2018

  Published by Da Capo Press, an imprint of Perseus Books, LLC, a subsidiary of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.

  ISBNs: 978-0-7382-8513-9 (paperback); 978-0-7382-8514-6 (ebook)

  E3-20190614-JV-PC-AMZ

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Introduction

  1 Sold on Science and Statistics

  2 A Walk in the Woods

  3 Spring Cleaning

  4 Summer Lovin’

  5 Fall in Love

  6 Winter Wonderland

  7 Parenting in Plein Air

  8 Being at One with Nature

  9 Couples’ Countryside Cure

  10 Natural Beauty

  11 Food Glorious Food

  12 The Call of the Wild

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Further Reading

  For William and Matilda, the most magical gifts Mother Nature could have bestowed on me, and in loving memory of my grandma, Mollie Guillaume, who taught me about gratitude, strength and kindness, and whom I miss every single day.

  Introduction

  There is pleasure in the pathless woods, there is rapture in the lonely shore, there is society where none intrudes, by the deep sea, and music in its roar; I love not Man the less, but Nature more.

  Lord Byron

  Who hasn’t felt happier after a walk in the woods, a picnic in a park or a swim in the sea? No one. There is something soul-soothingly simple and refreshing about being in nature, about making good use of the great outdoors, in being mindful of Mother Nature’s gifts and grabbing the spring and summer—and those blue-sky, brisk days of autumn and winter—with both hands. But, sadly, these are skills we are losing. We are becoming creatures wrapped in walls and trapped by to-do lists, hibernating while the world sprouts, grows and changes. Oh, just think about what we are missing! We are missing out on the refreshing scent of pine and freshly mown grass. We are missing getting caught in a shower of pink blossoms in spring and being dazzled by the dusky beauty of roses in late summer. Being in nature allows us the childlike fun you feel marching through squelchy mud in autumn or sliding over a glittering world on a frosty winter’s morning. Being in nature is about being attuned to changing seasons and benefitting from the natural world around you. It’s the feel of a velvety petal, the sound of a squeaky-smooth grass blade, the sight of dancing dandelion seeds. It’s about being present and alive, and never missing out.

  But at the moment, we are missing out. We’re staying in and losing out, and that is making us sad, anxious—and worse. I know, because it happened to me.

  As a child, being outdoors was second nature. I was born in Waltham Forest, the London Borough famous, and protected, for the woodlands in which Henry VIII and Elizabeth I used to escape the trials and tantrums of the royal court. I spent most of my time stuck in mud and mushing fallen petals into perfume, or pretending to get married to the neighbor’s son under the cherry blossom tree in our back garden. Children are natural, instinctively mindful of their world, and as I went through the turbulence of my parents’ divorce, I remember finding solace in the world I had created in the ponds and thickets surrounding my home. I watched tadpoles sprout legs and baby birds gratefully receive their lunch from their busy mothers’ beaks, and—despite the adult noise—I was happy.

  At 11, my mum and her new husband moved my baby brother and me out to Essex, to a house that backed on to Epping Forest, and a road—quite magically and prophetically—called Sylvan Way. The beauty of trees took on a different importance then. I spent many of my teenage hours among them, but back then the forest was a place to challenge myself away from adult rules and interference: my friends and I gathered there and experimented with making Ouija boards, kissing cute boys and choking on sneaked cigarettes. Now, as an adult, I can see how these green-teen afternoons, roaming the outdoors with my forever friends, shaped me. In the woods, I found my feet and experienced freedom for the first time.

  But when I reached my twenties, I moved back to the angry, concrete maze that is London and started spending all my time commuting to grey cubicles through dirty, stuffy underground tunnels. When I was feeling my most toxic and dulled, in an unhappy marriage and dealing with a bullying boss, I visited an aura reader for a magazine article I was researching. She said, “Your aura is green but struggling with the energy around it. You need to get out into the countryside, take your shoes off and wriggle grass beneath your toes. It will save your soul.” I ignored her, obviously. I was too busy for pastoral pleasures.

  In 2005, at the age of 29, I moved to an even angrier, concrete animal, New York City, to run a weekly magazine—eating all three meals of the day in the office, and relying on fake stimulants like espresso and slices of pizza to survive. I was grey; my life was grey. I hired a yoga teacher (and took classes in my grey apartment) but I was not healthy. Green was not to be seen, apart from in the beer at the St Patrick’s Day parade that lurched its way through Manhattan every spring. My marriage fell apart, I got divorced and I collapsed emotionally. A friend gathered me up and shipped me to a retreat in Mexico, where our days were ruled by the rising and falling sun, silent beach walks and bike rides through luxuriant forests to the water-filled sinkholes, known as cenotes. While we picked fresh fruit from trees and put flowers in our hair, I picked myself up. Nature had replenished my broken heart with sea shells, coconut water and the scent of frangipani.

  I witnessed the power of nature again in 2010, at the age of 34, when I took time off work to travel around Asia for three months with my second husband, Russell. We’d been struggling to get pregnant for about 18 months and this was a fertility tour of sorts, to de-stress and think about our options while looking after ourselves and being together. We wanted to re-engage with each other and the world. In Indonesia, I went to Elizabeth Gilbert’s Balinese guru from Eat, Pray, Love to ask for help. He told me that if I relaxed, meditated, got in touch with nature and opened a nail salon, I would have two children. Spoiler alert: I now have two children but I am not a manicurist.

  My most meaningful experience, however, happened in Japan a few months later, in the lush grounds of a Kyoto temple, where a local guide told me to walk leisurely through the bamboo trees in silence, stopping to smell the moss or to feel the suppleness of the different-shaped leaves.

  I felt like an Asian-inspired Wordsworth, meditating as I walked the undulating path, my senses hugged by a falling confetti of cherry blossoms. I could feel the anxiety, caused by months of worrying whether I would ever be able to conceive a child or not, drift away as I allowed myself to be washed in green. It was a powerful feeling, and one I d
ecided to try to bring home with me. Thirteen months later, I gave birth to my son.

  I reconnected with nature in a meaningful, life-saving way, and Forest Therapy: Seasonal Ways to Embrace Nature for a Happier You will help you to, too. It offers a simple prescription for a better life: get al fresco! A lot of what I will share with you is common sense; you simply need to be reminded about it. It’s a return to a way of living that previous generations—heck, even our parents—embraced more than we are now, and it’s paired with the wealth of research into mental, physical and emotional health that is now available to us.

  Why nature rocks

  These are just some of the benefits that scientists, academics and teachers have discovered occur when a person gets some forest therapy, also known as forest bathing, into their life. A life in the great outdoors:

  Reduces blood pressure and heart rate

  Reduces anxiety, anger, depression, obesity, PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) and ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder)

  Restores focus and attention span

  Improves sleep

  Strengthens the immune system

  Increases natural killer cell activity that fights tumors and cancer

  Increases energy and vitality

  Increases sensory awareness and perception

  Promotes a healthy mind-body-spirit connection

  Increases brain power and clarity of thought

  Increases self-esteem, empathy, kindness and compassion

  Boosts creativity and intuition

  Increases feelings of awe, wonder and gratitude

  Fosters healthier aging

  Instills a love of nature and an ecological mind-set

  Calms the nervous system

  Relaxes an overworked brain

  Today, I’m no fitness buff; I’m still a bookish nerd with a penchant for cheese sandwiches and Ferrero Rocher, so don’t for a minute imagine this book will demand the impossible and be nauseatingly earthy-crunchy or pious. But the mental and physical health benefits of being outdoors were too persuasive to ignore—even for someone like me—and my family and I have worked hard to fit more nature into our lives. I take weekly walks with friends instead of sitting in a coffee shop. I have romantic friluftsliv (a lovely word for the Scandinavian philosophy of outdoor life) moments with my husband. (This week we took a sunset stroll to the top of a scenic location to watch the International Space Station fly past—see, I’m still a nerd—instead of usual date-night dining.) When it’s safe, I take solo strolls along the creek near to my home to process my thoughts, dilemmas and to-do lists. All of these changes to my lifestyle have benefitted my relationships and myself to no end.

  The intent of these next 12 chapters is to encourage you and your loved ones to get outdoors with the specific intention of connecting with nature in a healing way, to open all the senses, and dynamically interact with the land, whether a city park or a country forest. The pages are filled with an elixir of sound judgement backed by science, inspirational anecdotes brimming with the mood modifiers and easy-to-do, fun ideas to tackle a long list of modern-day dilemmas, from fighting the “indoor childhood” crisis that’s harming our kids, to beating stress, to improving your complexion. And best of all, this essential cure—forest therapy and getting outdoors—is free and suitable for all ages.

  Learning to fit more nature into your life should not be a race or a challenge; there isn’t a distance marker you have to tick off, no pedometer to check, but the longer one devotes to it, over time, the more beneficial the relationship becomes. Forest Therapy is definitely not written for wilderness men, cowgirls, mountain climbers or white-river rafters. This isn’t the book for adrenaline junkies, competitive runners or speed demons—or for hylophobics (people who have a phobia of forests), for that matter. But it is written for people who find themselves in all types of toxic environments or dead ends and want to live better. Urban dwellers might try to argue that there is nowhere to connect with nature near them, but they should think creatively. Parks, city farms, museums, galleries or the grounds of historic landmarks, retirement home gardens and so on; you don’t need the Stanley Park or the Redwood Forest to roam around in, you can get your foresty fill wherever there are trees and there is time and good intent.

  If we can get behind the principle that being in nature is good for both body and soul, then Forest Therapy will help you turn it into a process, a practice, not just something we think sounds nice but we can’t make time for. Like yoga, meditation, prayer, working out, participating in a book club and many other worthy endeavors, developing a meaningful relationship with nature takes time and is deepened by returning again and again throughout the cycles of the seasons. We will all benefit from introducing the outdoors into our weekly routines. We just need to relearn how to do it. We need to be reminded of just how good puddle-jumping, mudcake-baking, tree-climbing, squirrel-chasing, blossom-breathing and forest-foraging feel.

  Answers and advice will be given to uninspired fathers wanting to reconnect with their families, bookworms looking to shake off their cobwebs, cooped-up kids needing to let off steam, stressed-out professionals wanting to stop and smell the flowers and worn-down mothers needing a rejuvenating boost. We all know that getting outside is good for us. Our ancestors did it. We should too. This book will help you live your most unforgettable, fabulous al fresco life, because nature really is the best medicine.

  1

  Sold on Science and Statistics

  Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.

  Albert Einstein

  There’s a wealth of science and statistics to back up why we need the prescription offered in this book immediately. Yes, the benefits of a walk in the woods and a gulp of fresh air might be so commonsensical that it seems nonsensical to turn it into a wellness revolution but, as a generation of parents and partners, worriers and workers, we are lost.

  In the US, visits to state and national parks have declined per capita over the last twenty years. Research shared by the Harvard School of Public Health warns us that American adults spend more time in vehicles than outdoors. Parks and playgrounds are noticeably quieter than they were even ten years ago, and shopping online has become a national pastime while sitting in dark rooms playing computer games has become a close second. A government agency across the Pond, Public Health England, proves our nature inertia has gone global, releasing a study showing that people in the UK are 20 percent less active today than they were in the 1960s, and if current trends continue, by 2030 we will be 35 percent less active. Just think of all the beauty, wonder and health benefits we are turning away from, and what this will do to future generations.

  We know this can’t be good for us on any level, but we are unsure how to reverse it. How can we busy, harassed, city-dwelling, suburban-surviving folk really embrace nature in a deep and meaningful way when we’re all so busy staring at our screens and rushing from building to car to building just to keep up with the world around us? How would it even be possible to re-engage with the changing seasons, the sounds of nature and the tonic of silence?

  But we know we have to find a way, right? Because, as well as never having been so discombobulated, we have never been more aware of the need—as we scroll social media or read newspaper headlines alerting us to the dangers of our sedentary, cloistered, indoorsy, electro-obsessed lives—to revert to the ancient rituals of our parents and grandparents, and of our forefathers, to live more simply. And we need to do it now.

  I’ve noticed how making time—even ten minutes a day, if that is all you have—can make a difference. I know personally how hard it can be to put down my phone, turn off the television and turn down a glass of wine, but I also know that when I do turn off from these man-made distractions to take a walk around my garden or take the kids to the park, my mood improves, I have more energy and I’m definitely a less stressed-out human being.

  Mother Earth loves Mother Nature

  All a
round the world, people are starting to put names and practices to the art of reconnecting with flora and fauna. Facts and figures about the importance of nature to our mental and physical well-being started to emerge on a global stage when it was introduced as part of a public-health initiative in Japan in 1982. The Japanese Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries coined the phrase shinrin-yoku (translated into English as “forest bathing”) and turned the idea of taking a mindful, elevated nature walk into a national pastime; one that would enhance health, wellness and happiness when participants opened all five senses to their sylvan surroundings, breathed deeply and walked thoughtfully, connecting with nature at a pace that allowed healing. Over the subsequent eight years, Japanese officials spent millions studying the physiological and psychological effects of shinrin-yoku, and uncovered positive effects on immunity, blood pressure and stress levels that could last up to a month following each “bath” in the woods. This led them to designate 48 therapy trails specifically for the purpose.

  Elsewhere, wellness experts are on to this very real need, with tree-bathing clubs and mindfulness nature-walk groups sweeping the most fashionable parts of the United States as well as the stressed bigger cities and the country hippy havens of the United Kingdom. The re-emergence of the Scandi-trend of friluftsliv (translated as “free-air life”) is pushing hygge-minded folk out into the world again all over Europe.

  In 2017, the United Nations’ World Happiness Report declared Norway to be the happiest country on earth, with the government’s focus on physical and mental health and freedom considered determining factors, as well as the emphasis on creating positive social spaces that bring people together in nature, like parks and nature reserves. In the same report, Canada came seventh, while the United States came fourteenth, and the United Kingdom, nineteenth. Surely this tells us something? That we not only have things to learn from our Norwegian neighbors but that our 21st-century national psyches need to be reconfigured too, to include more outdoor living, social support and focus on self-care, mental health and feeling better and stronger using what is available to us. We may be richer financially than Norway, but we have some catching up to do where it matters: in the wealth of happiness.