Moments in Nature Help Restore Body and Soul
When I signed up with a friend for a forest bathing session, I knew little more than it would have nothing to do with getting wet (though our guide, Deborah Ackrich, did mention that a bit of rain can make it particularly special). Would we learn facts about plants and wildlife? Follow a marked trail to a landmark or viewpoint? Instead, Deborah immediately took us off trail and we wandered into nature itself, with our eyes closed and dense layers of leaf litter and humus underfoot, to embark on a journey of connection.
WHAT IS IT?
Forest bathing, developed in the 1980s in Japan, is the practice of going out into a natural setting with no goal except to experience it through all of their senses. It became part of the country’s National Health Program to reduce stress for city workers who had been displaced from their rural upbringings. Since then, numerous studies out of Japan and countries around the globe have shown reductions in cortisol, anxiety and blood pressure, and other measurable benefits to the body’s parasympathetic and immune systems, with these effects lasting up to five days after the forest bathing experience.
The most recent studies on the subject reveal that phytoncides, the microscopic volatile organic compounds that give plants and trees their aromas and flavors, are released into the air, and their powerful antibacterial and antifungal qualities are transferrable to humans nearby.
NATURE AS THERAPIST
“Forest therapy takes it a step further where we see nature as the therapist and, as guides, we are there to help others enjoy the physiological and neurological benefits of being in nature, but also to help them establish a reciprocal relationship to learn from it and protect it,” Deborah says. She is certified through the Association of Nature and Forest Therapy (ANFT), an international organization that has trained over 2,500 guides in over 65 countries. She offers sessions in Los Angeles and Ventura counties through her company, Heart Felt Nature and Forest
THERAPY EXPERIENCES.
Deborah’s connection to nature prior to being trained in forest therapy came primarily from Sunday suppers at home inspired by her edible garden, and helping source local ingredients for the healthy, ancestral-based meals she has prepared for students and their families at Manzanita School in Topanga and Topanga Mountain School in Woodland Hills.
She also docents at Leonis Adobe Museum, a historic ranch in Calabasas, where she teaches school groups and others how harvests of corn or acorns were and still can be transformed, through careful processing by hands and simple tools, into nourishing ingredients for meals. For the final project of her ANFT certification, she used her culinary experience to incorporate several native plants into a menu for her family, featuring sage bread with fennel jam, fennel cakes with wild mustard pesto (using the greens of the plant) and panna cotta infused with pineapple weed (also known as wild chamomile).
Personally, in this state, I felt the way I imagine my children did when they were young: intuitively exploring their environment with a trusted guide (aka mom) to fuel their curiosity with open-ended questions and observations
HEIGHTENING AWARENESS
“The progressive format for the forest therapy sessions is meant to gradually heighten your awareness, starting with settling you into the space and then moving you out of the visual into the other senses,” says Deborah. “Next in the process is what I call looking away from where you need to go and entering a liminal, dreamlike state where you are open to whatever presents itself.”
Once in this state, there are “invitations” to playful activities or quiet reflections. In our session, we silently collected rubbings with crayons onto a piece of paper from different surfaces—rocks, trees, leaves—with the opportunity to trade colors with others in the group as we worked, then share our creations at the end of the activity. “Coming back to a communal component at each step allows the participants to share with each other what they have witnessed without pressure or judgment,” says Deborah.
Personally, in this state, I felt the way I imagine my children did when they were young: intuitively exploring their environment with a trusted guide (aka mom) to fuel their curiosity with open-ended questions and observations, but also to eliminate any worry of what would come next or when time would run out. This is what having a guide in this experience feels like—being able to wander and explore until being gently called back to the group, in this case with the soothing sound of Deborah’s wooden flute.
“One of the joys for me is when people in my sessions are reminded of the playful things they used to do as a kid,” Deborah tells me. “One participant said the stomping we did in the session brought back memories of Thanksgivings with family, stomping in the leaves.”
WHAT CAN NATURE TELL?
Beyond a transactional relationship that seeks knowledge, resources or vistas from nature, Deborah’s prompts led me to a deeper experience, asking questions such as, “Who am I in this space and what can nature tell me about itself and about me as I open myself up to it?” And nature answered, through scent, sound, movement, texture and color, but also with wisdom.
Deborah shared an experience leading a session with a group affected by the Palisades fires. Some of them pointed out old trees that were thriving despite having fire damage. “They were inspired by the resiliency of the trees,” Deborah says, “and that’s nature presenting itself as therapist and offering its wisdom.”
The session culminates in a celebratory time of food and drink, to help us transition out of the dreamlike state and add the final and arguably most pleasant sense to the experience: taste. A simple tisane, made with herbs from Deborah’s garden or plants she foraged from the area during the session and steeped into a thermos of hot water, offers refreshment and its own health benefits, in the form of antioxidants.
I can still remember the lupin flour and cocoa cookies sprinkled with fennel pollen that we enjoyed with a lemon basil tisane, both made by Deborah from local ingredients and infused with her love of nature and intentions for our group.
For more with Deborah Ackrich, follow her on Instagram: @heart_felt_nature_therapy.
