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!