Why did I start forest bathing?

I always loved being in nature when I was a kid. If it was the weekends or school holidays, you’d find me climbing trees, building dens, clambering up hills and getting covered in mud.

But it was Long Covid that kick-started my adult journey back into nature: it made me yearn, more than anything, to be outdoors (rather than having to spend days, weeks, months sick in bed). And so when my body relearned to walk, it was to the trees I went. Panting, breathless, I would arrive at my local park and collapse on a bench. And then a miracle would happen. The wind would caress the skin on my face. The starlings would nonchalantly sing their favourite songs. The low winter sunlight would paint the grass a golden hue. The trees would creak overhead, whispering, in the breeze, ‘we’ve got you’. And then my breath would slow. And my body would relax. And time would stand still.

And it was in these moments that I would realise, in a whooshing surge of clarity, that not only was I ‘in nature’ at that very moment, and that nature was doing its very best to heal me, but that I was nature – I was part of this ecosystem like everything else. I depended on everything around me, and they, in turn, depended on me.

And so began my learnings and meditations on nature. My quest to understand trees, and the communities they nurture; to decipher the fungal merchants connecting the trees underground; to understand how birds spread the seeds of young aspens, birch and rowan; how everything is connected in a symbiotic dance of life…

…and death. Because nature teaches us, of course, that everything is impermanent. As the moon rises and the tides turn, and the seasons change as we orbit the sun, so things are born from the soil, grow up reaching for the sun, and return to the soil – their lives lived – to nurture new growth. And if anything can help us feel that everything is actually alright in the world, then perhaps it is this.