Among Trees: A Guided Journal for Forest Bathing

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Description

The perfect companion to Shinrin Yoku, or as a stand-alone experience, this journal allows avid forest bathers to record and reflect on their therapeutic trips into the woods.

This journal will help you record the most poignant moments from your forest bathing sessions and expand your practice using a series of guided prompts drawn from the shinrin-yoku tradition. Once complete, you'll have a keepsake of your time among trees.

The perfect companion to Shinrin-Yoku, or as a stand-alone experience, this journal allows avid forest bathers to record and reflect on their therapeutic trips into the woods. The Forest Bathing Journal helps users record and learn from their experiences. In addition to pages for capturing the date, season, weather, and location of specific outings, it will also feature simple prompts that encourage people to record their observations. These prompts include new ways to describe the texture or shade of leaves, the particular sounds of footsteps over different materials on the trail, the animal life seen and heard, and subtle changes in mood or mental state throughout the course of the visit. Inspirational quotes and small science factoids on the benefits of forest bathing pepper the pages for added motivation and depth.

"Handsome. . . friendly." --New York Times Book Review

"Can help you add this delightful practice to your life and help you experience greater health on all levels." --New Spirit Journal

Forest-bathers can reflect on their experiences in the woods with this therapeutic guided journal, featuring prompts for mindful lines of thought and activity. MOVED TO NOVEMBER 2018 (27/06/2018 - SS)

Timber Press is devoted to sharing the wonders of the natural world by publishing books from experts in the fields of gardening, horticulture, and natural history. Founded in 1978, Timber Press is internationally recognized as the leading gardening publisher. Its books and authors have received awards from the American Horticultural Society, the Garden Writers of America, the Garden Media Guild, the National Garden Club of America, and more.

"Handsome. . . friendly." -- New York Times Book Review "Can help you add this delightful practice to your life and help you experience greater health on all levels." -- New Spirit Journal?

We know intuitively that being in nature makes us feel more relaxed, positive, and happy. What the science behind the Japanese practice of shinrin-yoku has shown is exactly how and why. As our global migration into cities continues to accelerate, people are recognizing that urbanized and artificial societies are detrimental to human health in many ways, and that we have a demonstrable need to be in regular contact with nature. Our primal connection to forests has developed over the course of our own history. Homo sapiens has spent 99 percent of its existence among trees and living out in nature--it's only during the most recent 1 percent of our history that we've moved into cities. As scientists have begun to study the ramifications of this, they've discovered that spending time in or near nature is actually critical to maintaining our overall health. We are not, as we so often try to convince ourselves, separate from nature. We are a part of it, and our nervous and immune systems have evolved to function at their best when we are near plants in particular. Modern life has so many distractions we often forget to simply look up and admire the majesty of trees and the subtle cues of changing seasons they offer. Making even a small effort to do so, however, often has what seems like a disproportionately positive effect on our mood or sense of well-being. Only recently, scientists have begun to ask why and to search for measurable indicators of the effect plants and forests have on our physical bodies. The results are astounding. After only a short forest bathing excursion (even just fifteen minutes), scientists have recorded lowered blood pressure, a reduction in stress hormone production, slower pulse rates, longer sleep cycles, and an increase in parasympathetic nerve activity (indicative of relaxation), to name a few. These benefits will often endure for several days after the trip has ended. For this reason, "forest therapy" is quickly--and rightfully--taking its place among other trusted forms of alternative medicine, and advocates in many countries are working to establish dedicated forest bathing centers in wilderness areas and to have this type of therapy covered by national health-care systems. All it takes to achieve these amazing physiological changes is to simply walk in the forest with a goal of giving it your full attention--or, as some would put it, waiting to receive the gifts it will give you in the form of increased awareness of the life and energy pulsing all around you. Forest bathing guides have developed dozens of exercises designed to help us make close and careful observations of the forest around us--some of which appear in these pages--but they all share walking slowly through the forest and simply committing to being present in the moment and open to receiving new sensations as a base. On some forest bathing excursions, we might be awed by the sheer mass of towering trees above, and on others fascinated by evidence of the smallest forms of forest life those giants make possible. All observations are of equal merit. There is no right or wrong way to forest bathe, no one technique. It's too intensely personal; the forest is such a complex ecosystem that everyone will be attracted to different aspects of it. The single most important intention to set for any forest bathing trip is to allow yourself the space to register how the experience affects one or more of your five senses. It's an interaction in the most profound sense, and you should allow yourself to feel like an active participant in the life of the forest. For example, we inhale phytoncides dispersed by the trees and in turn boost our natural killer (NK) cell production, and they gladly accept our carbon dioxide in return. We belong among trees, which, sadly, is a fact we have to remind ourselves of in the modern era.