Forest bathing: The forest, and presence

Maybe, like many folks with a college degree, you do a thing called “hiking.”

It’s very popular where I’m at in the Pacific Northwest. Many a Seattle-ite enjoys rattling off what they did this weekend: hiking, skiing, trail running.

If you ask a professional in the Puget Sound region if they spend time in nature, they’ll reply with one of these REI-sanctioned activities. No disrespect meant to REI (God knows I love them), but these are all activities that outdoor “enthusiasts” seem to steal from nature. They are made into activities they can quantify — how many calories their watch tells them they burned, how fast they completed it, how many feet of elevation they gained, etc. — and of course, they come with the identity of Hiker, Skier, or Trail Runner. People love these identities in the PNW. They combine fitness with ruggedness, competence, and independence. All traits that I and my Northern European ancestors can appreciate a great deal.

(A quick note re: ability versus disability: In general, I’d say about a third of my caseload is consistently made up of folks who like to exercise and “do stuff”; i.e., travel and/or outdoor sports. Another third is generally chronically ill and/or disabled folks. Very different experiences of course. I’m going to speak to the exercisey folks quite a bit in this post, but I do address the idea of forest bathing for disabled and/or chronic pain folks as well.)

Identity is not presence

So here’s the Buddhist in me: if, as you are doing something, it is stroking your ego with identity-confirmation, you are not doing that something.

This isn’t a moral judgment. By my own standards, I’m almost never actually doing anything. Even as I write these words, I’m half-conscious of the fact that it’s for a work blog, which is attached to my identity as a therapist. This weekend I spent a bunch of time studying Spanish, and I’m always half-conscious of beautiful Spanish-speaking actors when I do that. My brain wants to be something like Gael García Bernal or Penélope Cruz. Later today I’ll be working on an online training for my business, and I’m doing that in part because I have a meeting scheduled with a coach on Wednesday morning; I want to be seen as a “good student,” or a hard worker, or something like that. 

Again, there’s no moral problem here. There is nothing wrong with the fact that I see myself as a therapist, admire beauty, or want to be competent. But that ego stroking acts to keep me out of what I’m doing, even as I’m doing it.

You see where I’m going with this. If you’re trying to build a sense of self around being “fit” or “thin,” and part of how you’re doing that is by getting into trail running, that’s your ego inserting itself. If you’re still skiing because your brain has gotten hooked on the project of being able to do 50% gradients and ungroomed slopes, that’s your ego.

And if you go for a “hike,” telling yourself that you’re “in nature” this weekend, then I would argue (with back-up from no less than the Buddha!) that you’re probably not going to be there, in the natural world. You’ll be covering ground (why do people hike so fast?!), oblivious to the trees, water, and stones surrounding you, focused on a destination and maybe a calorie count.

Shinrin-Yoku

I hesitate to use the Japanese word here for forest bathing. In part because I don’t want to turn this into a, “Wow, look at how wise the East is!” kind of moment. For all I know Germans and Nigerians and Hondurans have an almost identical concept of slowing the fuck down while surrounded by trees, and that’s what I’m getting at here. Also, for what it’s worth, forest bathing is not some ancient practice. The term was coined in 1982. It was part of an initiative by the Japanese government to combat the rising health toll of the tech boom.

But shinrin-yoku does mean “forest bath.” It means soaking your body in the forest. Not careening past it. Not “getting exercise.” 

Forest bathing is slow. Forest bathing means you engage all of your senses. 

If you’d like some science to back up the usefulness of aimlessly, slowly taking in the sights and smells of a forest, there’s plenty out there. Researchers have found that forest bathing boosts mood, increases sleep, strengthens the immune system, and lowers stress hormones. Japanese researchers have noted that we seem to have a particularly friendly relationship with the phytoncides produced by specific species of trees, typically evergreens. 

This is where, if you’re feeling really sciencey, you probably want to know: but wouldn’t exercise — going for a trail run, or mountain biking, say — produce the same benefits?

It’s a valid question, from a scientific perspective. But I would want to answer two ways. One is: I don’t know. Maybe, in terms of all of the physiological changes we can currently measure, running at full tilt through the woods would provide you with as many benefits as wandering slowly and aimlessly through the same trees. (Plus: THOSE CALORIES!!!) 

My other answer is this: are you sure that’s the right question? If, like many of my patients, you are a determined exerciser, what actually are you pursuing? I would guess it’s happiness, and you’re pretty convinced that you feel happier when you’re thinner, or have more defined muscle, or some kind of Skandi-sanctioned identity.* So . . . okay, straightforward question: is it working? Are you happy? Not just high while you’re in the midst of a hard climb/descent. Are you happy on Wednesday afternoon when your Monday boundaries have completely broken down? How’s Tuesday evening going for you? Hell, how’s Sunday since we all know you’re working on the weekends.

For the POTS, chronic pain, and disabled crowd

If, like many of my other patients, you are disabled, or have some type of serious curtailment of your body’s physical freedoms, I would invite you to consider: why not just go sit in the woods? If you could have nearly every benefit of exercising in the woods by just sitting in the woods, what’s stopping you? Is it some idea that it’s not good enough, or ambitious enough? I know getting there can sometimes be its own task, and unfortunately I don’t have a simple way of remedying that. Also, if you have the added hassle of being fat, then of course you run the risk of thinner people being assholes, and that does genuinely suck. But why let them keep you from your own damn world? The trees are as much your inheritance as theirs.

Forest bathing: one ecotherapy (among many)

I’ve struggled to figure out how to write about both ecopsychology and ecotherapy. The more-than-human world, our animal cousins, and the plants and rocks and waters we depend on for our very existence are just so damn big. It’s hard to know where to start.

So it is with trying to select one way of doing ecotherapy. There are many options: forest bathing, yes; but also horticultural therapy, wilderness therapy, volunteering on conservation projects, animal-assisted therapies**, and care farming. Hell, while I might be a vegetarian, I’m 100% convinced that fishing is a form of ecotherapy.

I have a sneaking suspicion that the “where do I even start?” vibe I feel when trying to talk about ecopsychology is the exact same “where do I even start?” vibe we often feel when trying to think of a way to address our broken relationship to the more-than-human/natural world. I think it also mirrors the news and information overwhelm I talked about in my last post.

So if you feel cut off from the natural world, I get it. And if you don’t feel sure where to start to try to address that, I get that, too. Consider this post my plug for forest bathing: get thee to the woods. Maybe walk slowly, or even just stand there. Imagine that: standing still and breathing! If you want to be serious about engaging all five senses, bring a thermos of warm green or herbal tea, breathe in the trees, and see if you can taste something that isn’t jam-packed with salt and/or sugar.

* I want to be clear, with my little digs at Skandi culture in the Northwest, that I mean them in good fun. My (Californian) husband has accused me of being almost a caricature of a Northwesterner with my ferocious “there’s no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothes” attitude.

** That’s right! Adorable dogs hanging out with little kids while they practice their reading is a form of ecotherapy!

Fancy Animals

Prince Harry and Meghan arrive back in UK, six years after leaving royal life behind

Montana man reportedly asked to leave parents’ home before opening fire

Scientists Have Created a New Category of Heat Waves: “Snow Eaters”

Will Trump's latest beef plan make your hamburger cheaper? Not much, experts say

First preview drops for 'Brothers' as 'True Detective' stars reunite on Apple TV this September

At least 1,500 missing after deadly Nepal-Tibet floods

Six headlines . . .

I selected the headlines above from sources as varied as Fox News and Mother Jones, CNN and NPR. 

A lot of ink has already been spilled on the subject of news overwhelm. In fact, when I started this post, I assumed I’d put a bunch of links to research articles about it. I am nothing if not predisposed towards science-backed information.

But I noticed something in the articles I came across. The articles acknowledge that we’re all exhausted and stressed out, and that a constant inundation of negative facts only stresses us out more. And they point out that it seems to be contributing to increased disengagement from news, which is a problem; while it may be negative, real news is sometimes relevant to our own choices and political decision-making. Since we seem to instead be filling our time with endless reels of young people whose mental health is clearly crumbling playing video games live 24 hours a day, it doesn’t seem like we’ve replaced the news with anything useful.

But beyond acknowledging the obvious, research articles continue to suffer from the same prejudices most in the industrialized, neoliberal world have: they fall back on solutions that involve will power, more technology, or both. They offer suggestions that involve willing ourselves to stop doom scrolling or, potentially, an app that sets timers on our screen use. All of it lands on individuals, as their responsibility, and all of it (this is the ecopsych/ecophilosophy insight) keeps the conversation in the same terms that the overwhelming technology set in the first place.

. . . and a zoo?

Recently, I’ve gotten into a TV show called The Zoo. It follows zookeepers and animals at the Dublin Zoo, as well as some trips that some of the zookeepers take to where the animals they love originate from.

There’s so much I could say about how non-human animals have been impacting my thinking lately. I’ve been getting so into it that my next philosophical project is to read this book and write about it over on my personal blog/newsletter. (That’s here, if you’re interested.)

But one of the things about animals that keeps rising to the surface for me is what, in a certain light, you could call their limitations, but in another light, you could simply call their immanence. Immanence is a philosophical concept describing “a type of causality that does not operate from outside its effects.” That is, our immanence is all of our constraints. Things as simple as gravity, but also the material realities of complexion, the body we’re born with, and the economic situation we’re born into.

That is, all animals — human and non-human alike — are bounded and specific. They cannot simply opt to do something different than what they are. 

One of the examples I keep coming back to is gorillas. On the show, while introducing a particular species, the zookeepers will list off the various threats that species faces in the wild. At the top of the list for every single species is habitat destruction. Over the course of the show, you get to know the Dublin Zoo’s resident gorillas, and then in a later season, one of the zookeepers goes to Africa to see them in their natural habitat.

The zookeeper, Brendan, is a delightfully enthusiastic nerd. And he does get to see some gorillas in their own world. Even via television, I found the encounter unsettling. When they first come upon a silverback who seems ambivalent about their presence, you can feel the gorilla’s aggression and sheer size. His sounds and body language convey exactly what he means: back the fuck off. 

When I first learned of gorillas’ status in the world — their rapidly collapsing populations — I didn’t understand why conservationists couldn’t simply create reserves and gather up all the gorillas and put them there. 

But then I learned more about how gorilla society operates. There’s some debate amongst scientists whether they should properly be understood to be “territorial” (meaning they actively stake out a specific territory for their group), but regardless of this question, they like a LOT of space. Specifically, the males like a lot of space. In fact, one of the most consistent themes I’ve picked up on in the show is that males of virtually all mammal species have complicated relationships to 1) space (they like lots of it), and 2) other males. (Cue screaming online debate about natural vs. social construction of gender.) Male gorillas, once they reach sexual maturity, cannot simply live in a cramped reserve, shoved up against other male gorillas. Silverbacks are immanently constrained by their own physiology and psychology. If another sexually mature gorilla — Silverback #1 — comes into Silverback #2’s space, they must fight. It is not optional. It is not something we can talk them out of, explaining that they’re driving their species to extinction because the surrounding Ugandan and Rwandan human populations are simply growing too large to accommodate their need for space. The gorillas cannot escape who and what they are, and if humans want the species to continue, we will have to find ways to preserve enough space for their physiological and psychological needs.

No, you cannot simply will yourself off your phone

Going back to the research I read earlier . . . The reason I feel so frequently frustrated by conversations about news overwhelm is that they treat humans as though we were somehow more than an animal. 

Let me say this clearly: you are no more than an animal. You’re kind of a fancy animal — no non-human animals I’m aware of could read these words — but that’s it. You’re just a fancy animal.

When you open up a web page with a bunch of headlines on it, your brain does a number of things. One of which is determining prioritization. Because all of the information is coming at you with the same signal type, your brain starts off by suggesting that all of the information is equally important. Which, of course, it isn’t. The fact that respectable news organizations cover shit like British royalty and celebrity non-news is ridiculous. But in the moment, you cannot classify it any differently. 

And here’s the rub: you’ll tell yourself that being aware of this problem will allow you to overcome it; that’s the fancy part of your animal nature talking. “Fancy you” thinks that as long as you know that news overwhelm is a problem, you can somehow overcome it. “Fancy you” thinks that as long as you know that climate change is a real problem, that differentiation meaningfully distinguishes the Nepal-China floods and Snow Eater heat waves, from Trump’s ongoing reality TV show.

I concede that you are a little bit fancy. Hey, I’m a little bit fancy, too! Here we are, communicating across time and distance through written language! But that’s about it. Your awareness that climate change is happening doesn’t change anything. Your awareness that phones are addictive doesn’t change anything. You are, at the end of the day, a Silverback who can’t control his temper.

Ecopsychology

I want to write a blog post about ecopsychology.

Hmm. Should probably first include a basic definition of “ecopsychology.”

Several minutes spent poring through books. Unfortunately, I see that they actually all seem to presume a knowledge of this basic definition.

Open a new tab on my laptop. This happens without thought or even conscious intention.

My computer defaults to DuckDuckGo, something I set up awhile ago because I don’t want my searches to, by default, use AI and extra natural resources.

For a brief moment, though, I start to bring my cursor to the part of the window where you (used to) enter the web address you want to navigate to, but which, increasingly, I just type questions or sentences and the internet seems to read my mind. (I realize I have no idea what the name of this window is! An ever-extendable worm of letters and less-than-half-aware curiosity.)

I am about to switch to Google, because (again, without thinking) I want the AI summary.

I hesitate, noticing what I’m about to do. 

I type into DuckDuckGo, “what is ecopsychology?”

This seems as good a place to start as any.

Sometimes patients ask about the word “ecopsychology,” which is on my website. Often, there’s an impression that it has to do with forest bathing, or maybe the wilderness trips troubled teenagers are sometimes sent off on. And these are not incorrect impressions; but they also oversimplify things.

Ecopsychology does indeed have to do with our relationship to what we often call “nature,” “the natural world,” or what I prefer to call the “more-than-human world,” after David Abram. But I wanted to make explicit my little moment with my laptop because it actually encapsulates the separate threads that make up ecopsychology.

For one thing, the ways I interact with my computers and phones demonstrate the seamlessness (e.g., thoughtlessness) we develop with the objects of our lives. I don’t think much about opening tabs on my computer; command + t is an automatic gesture repeated myriad times every day, because the computer is as much a part of my animal body’s reality as my coffee mug and my hair ties. 

The eco- in ecopsychology means roughly what you probably think it means; it’s abstracted from ecology (in English, originally oecology, from the German Ökologie). What a lot of folks don’t realize is that eco-, etymologically, doesn’t refer to “nature,” or trees, or anti-pollution activism. Eco- comes from the Greek oikos, and it means something like “home, habitation, dwelling place.” Here is what Ernst Haeckel, the zoölogist who coined the term Ökologie had to say about it:

“By ‘ecology’ we understand the comprehensive science of the relationships of the organism to its surrounding environment, where we can include, in the broader sense, all ‘conditions of existence.’”

Returning to my opening description of typing words into various search bars on my computer, we can see our computers and smart phones and laundry hampers and cars and light switches are as much a part of our conscious “surrounding environment” as are the trees and ocean producing our oxygen.

But that word conscious is doing some very heavy lifting. Because of course, my body needs clean air, and unpoisoned water, and healthy food, and integration with other animal bodies, and time even with plant bodies. My body knows its needs quite well, even if my modern lifestyle has obscured these needs behind a scrim of light and false promises of interactivity.

Psychoecology

Before it was called “ecopsychology,” though, the field of course had to develop. That largely started in the 60s, with Robert Greenway. Greenway, interestingly, first coined the term “psychoecology,” which I find interesting because it re-orients the intention of the word. 

One of the things I don’t like about the term “ecopsychology” is that it sounds like it’s just one of many approaches to psychology you could decide to focus on: cognitive psychology, depth psychology, social psychology . . . You know, whatever you like!

But ecopsychology isn’t something in which you or I get to decide whether or not we’re interested. Like the science of climate change, you can be interested or not; but the consequences will impact you, your descendents, and all of the other living creatures of the world. 

Greenway’s term points towards ecology and uses psycho as a modifier which, as a description of the actual situation, sounds a hell of a lot more accurate to me. The field addresses the connections between human minds and the natural environment, the human-made world, and animals. But just as importantly, it offers a fairly radical re-orientation to the world. Instead of placing ourselves at the center, and obsessively trying to optimize how the world impacts us, ecopsychology calls that anthropocentrism into question, highlighting the sickness of such self-centeredness.

Earlier, I said this: “our computers and smart phones and laundry hampers and cars and light switches are as much a part of our conscious ‘surrounding environment’ as are the trees and ocean producing our oxygen.” Part of how I see ecopsychology is as a remedy for the unconsciousness most modern people have towards the natural world. It seems like a form of insanity of the highest degree to be captivated by a small rectangle that stresses me out, while ignoring the deaths of species and the efforts of my beleaguered neighbors to save rivers and forests that would meaningfully contribute to my own wellbeing. 

How bizarre — how pathological — to be more concerned with my phone’s re-charging speed than I am, say, with the wildly imbalanced populations of deer and large predators out here on the Olympic Peninsula. The deer carry ticks, and they are absolutely everywhere, because we (the humans) have driven their natural predators away. I or my husband or someone else I care about could easily contract Lyme disease as a result of this imbalance. And yet . . . And yet, I do not involve myself with any local efforts to address the deer over-population problem. And yet, I am currently preoccupied with how quickly I can get my phone to re-charge. My phone, which I also spend a strange amount of time trying to get myself off of.

Speaking of which . . .

Sometimes at the end of a post, I offer you a quick invitation to pause. 

Maybe consider whether you want to stay on your screen after this. Maybe you do! And maybe it’s time for a break, time to stop scrolling and clicking and reconnect with the real world.