Forest Therapy as a Heart Opener
Can the forest be a mood enhancer?
Recently I entered the forest with a chip on my shoulder. I was feeling cranky, frustrated and defeated. As my friend and I began walking down the path, I was still complaining about my morning and we were working out the details of some upcoming events we were planning. We had made the decision to explore a different area of the forest than we usually spent time in practicing forest therapy, and as we came upon a beautiful pond with it’s surface rippling in the wind, I felt the tension begin to slide away.
We took up a spot on the ground on the far side of the pond, finished our event planning discussion and then settled in for the first forest therapy invitation, Pleasures of Presence. Knowing that my friend had accepted this particular invitation from me (the guide) and the forest (the therapist) several times, I decided to change it up a bit. After about 10 minutes of observing the forest using our eyesight, and then closing our eyes and exploring the place with our sense of hearing, smelling, feeling and tasting, we began to imagine ourselves as trees. We considered what our roots might encounter, how they might connect with other beings in the forest, and how the tops of our branches experience the wind. Upon opening my eyes, I thought “Being a tree must be so tranquil. They have nowhere to be, no one to please. They can just be.”
Being a Tree
Upon opening my eyes, I thought “Being a tree must be so tranquil. They have nowhere to be, no one to please. They can just be.”
That was it. That was all I needed to pull myself the rest of the way out of my stupor. During our next invitation, What’s in Motion, I began to notice that although the forest was so near a busy road that I could see and hear the traffic, I was fully immersed in the magic of the forest. I was only really hearing the birds’ songs, the wind moving the leaves through the trees, and I was seeing the way the forest floor was waking up from it’s winter slumber with little green shoots coming up all around me.
Tim Burton’s Ferns
It was during an invitation in which we were exploring what the forest smelled like that I first discovered what we later called ‘Tim Burton’s Ferns'. These were just ordinary ferns poised in a magical way as they made their way up out of the ground to join the rest of the forest in waking from winter. I could not stop looking at, touching and photographing them. They were pure whimsy with their coiled, furry stems and glistening hairs. Like something straight out of a Tim Burton film.
Wind Messenger
Later, while I was feeling the wind on my face, and considering sending a message on it to other beings, I began to remember my connection to this planet and ALL of it’s inhabitants. This was the moment that I recalled that my only job is to love. To love other humans and all other beings too.
Green Mansions
We were later joined by another forest friend and we went out and explored how the forest seems to have “rooms” in which our senses were piqued differently every 20-30 feet down the path. We named the “rooms” in each of our little portions of the forest and then took one another on a tour of our ‘Green Mansions.’ This level of imagination, induced by our friend and family member, the forest was just what my inner child needed to overrule the adult part of me that was unhappy when I had entered the forest just 2 hours earlier.
After savoring the scents, textures and flavors of oranges, dark chocolate covered almonds and Hershey kisses together, we brewed a small pot of tea and thanked the forest for inviting us into it’s magic that day. Just as we began to pour our tea, it unexpectedly began to softly sleet and the sound of the tiny frozen rain drops hitting the pond and forest floor was a calming music to our ears.
There is science that supports my experience that time spent in the forest practicing can positively affect our mood:
