FOREST BATHING:

Why the healing power of a walk in the woods will change your life

# forestbathing is big news on social media right now. Likewise #hiking and #biophilia. But a quiet walk in the woods or by the sea delivers far more than a photo opportunity for your social media feed.

Immersing yourself in natural environments can actually deliver serious health benefits.

Forest bathing or shinrin yoku, as it is called in Japan, can lower your blood pressure, blood glucose and stress hormones and relieve depression and anxiety.

Studies have also shown it can also increase brain cognition and boost our mood, empathy and creativity.

Shinrin yoku has become standard preventative medicine in Japan since 1982.

But the healing power of nature has been recognised for far longer than that. The ancient Greek physician Hippocrates called it vis medicatrix nature.

More recently, spending quiet time in nature has been scientifically proven to activate our parasympathetic nervous system which calms us down, lowering our heart rate and stress levels.

In turn, this helps alleviate the side effects of stress which can include headaches, inflammation, depression and impaired concentration.

Research has found forest bathing can boost our immune system.

One study found that 20 minutes of forest scenery significantly lowered salivary levels of the stress hormone cortisol.

Another study found that four days of immersion in nature, and the corresponding disconnection from multi-media and technology, increased performance on a creativity, problem-solving task by a full 50 per cent.

Forest bathing is meant to be meditative and requires the use of all five senses. The sight of the natural landscape, sounds of birds, wind and trees, touching natural textures, smelling the essential oils emitted by plants and tasting the air or even plants along the way (remember don’t taste any plants you can’t identify).

The aim is peaceful, mindful immersion and a temporary, restorative escape from our mostly urban existence. All good reasons to take a hike.