Old growth forest reduces stress

Petra Ellora Cau Wetterholm

May 28th is the so-called International Stress Free Day. This thematic day aims to raise awareness of stress and its negative effects, while helping to highlight positive ways to prevent and manage stress.

Forest bathing or Shinrin Yoku is a guided method that helps people reduce their stress using nature and the forest. Participants are guided to spend time in the forest and nature with all their senses and enter a so-called nature presence of just being. This contact with nature is not only stress-reducing, restorative and contributes to increased well-being, but also creates strong bonds and a deeper relationship between people and nature.

Petra Ellora Cau Wetterholm runs the Scandinavian Nature and Forest Therapy Institute & Shinrin-Yoku Sweden and trains forest bath and forest therapy guides in Sweden. She sends along some thoughts on the ancient forest in honor of Stress Free Day.

Old growth forest - the cradle of natural healing

"When I wander in between tall trunks where the lichen sways like a slender beard and the roots search down into the primeval earth, then the world becomes true. For a moment, life becomes a freer being, beyond demands and distinctions. Here I can only exist. And that is enough. The old-growth forest is wisdom and medicine for a world that has lost its way in a connected and divisive time.

Here, where the sun filters through branches that have grown for centuries, we breathe more slowly. The heart softens. The air is clear and the stillness is palpable and embracing. Research shows what we know inside, that our bodies respond and are stilled. There is something within us that recognizes itself, as if the old-growth forest speaks a language we once forgot but still understand. We just need to dare to be quiet and stop for a moment.

The old-growth forest has a quietly wild and free rhythm. There are no straight lines or traces of human haste - just nature's own patterns, where every fallen trunk and gnarled branch has its place. This organic disorder speaks to our own primordiality, opens us to contact, makes us remember a rich context where we are full enough only through who we are.

It is possible to rest here in the way that makes me available to the medicine of the forest, inviting the body to heal. The research is becoming increasingly clear on this point. Nature is a bit of a "best in test" to easily and effortlessly support the neurological shift we so badly need, for a parasympathetic activity of recovery and "just being". Once there, we are nourished and strengthened by sun, water and oxygen, natural substances released by trees, micro-organisms in the soil layers, by fractal patterns, the birds' chirping and things like running our hands over bark, stones and moss. When we balance nature, we want to walk on winding deer trails, leave the trail for a whim, meet a fallen dragon that invites us up, beyond the limits of time and space.

Japan has long had a vibrant and respectful relationship with nature. This is where shinrin-yoku, or forest bathing, was founded - the art of letting your senses bathe in the forest atmosphere. Spending time in this way fulfills a deeply inherited need to be able to sit back and let the living world make itself known. Research points unequivocally to what we already suspect, that we need the ancient forest. Not only to understand and rediscover our place in the web of life, but to maintain our own and the planet's balance and health. In a world that is constantly rushing forward, it is the older, deepest living and species-rich world that shows us the way."

Written by:

Petra Ellora Cau Wetterholm
Medical Psychologist
Certified Forest Therapy Guide
Shinrin-Yoku Sweden
Scandinavian Nature and Forest Therapy Institute