If you really want to feel at peace with the world, walk though a beautiful forest
Increased greenspace exposure is associated with decreases in heart rate and blood pressure
In order to get to one of my favourite and, these days, one of my most regularly visited east coast surf spots, it is necessary to walk through a forest for ten or 15 minutes. For all the years I’ve been yomping up and down this path, I’ve never really given it much thought – it’s simply been a means to an end. Surfing can turn you into a strange, vacant, single-minded creature, blinkered by the desire to get into the water as quickly as possible to the extent that you tend not to notice very much about the world around you. Well, apart from wind speed, wind direction and how big the waves sound as you get nearer to the beach. Look, is that a rare golden oriole over there in the bushes? Sorry, don’t care, it’s supposed to be four-foot and clean and it’ll be getting dark soon.
A couple of weeks ago, however, I managed to do some sort of mischief to the rotator cuff in my left shoulder – one of the important bits that makes it work. Prognosis: no paddling surfboards (or taking things down off high shelves, or, it seems, washing under my right armpit) for about a month, maybe more. So now when I walk down the path to the beach, I’m a little less bothered about what the waves are going to be like when I get there. If anything, I want them to be small or blown-out or both, just so I don’t have to suffer the agony of missing good surf. (Yes, surfers have suffered from FOMO for way, way longer than it’s been an acronym.)
One side effect of being temporarily dry-docked, though, has been a slight improvement in my ability to notice what’s going on around me whenever I’m by the sea. Turns out this forest I’ve been walking through for more than a decade is actually very beautiful. Who knew?
Not only is the forest beautiful, I’ve also discovered that the act of walking through it has the effect of mellowing
me out. Yes, I know, the simple act of going for a walk is supposed to have all kinds of health benefits, but the feeling I get after walking for half an hour through, say, central Edinburgh, is nothing like the feeling I get after a half-hour walk in the woods. In the past I guess I’d always assumed that it was the surfing at the end of this walk that made me feel like a tired-but-happy Zen master, and to a certain extent it probably was, but now surfing is temporarily out of the picture, I can see that the trees have an effect too.
One consequence of having a scientist for a little brother and a medical professional for a wife is that I can never, ever get away with making an unsubstantiated claim like “walking in the woods is more relaxing than walking through the centre of town” and leaving it at that. Beset on all sides by ferocious rationalists, footnoting is required. Fortunately for me, last summer two academics – Caoimhe Twohigbennett and Andy Jones of Norwich Medical School at the University of East Anglia – published a paper in the journal Environmental Research with the catchy title “The health benefits of the great outdoors: A systematic review and meta-analysis of greenspace exposure and health outcomes.” They accepted that their overall findings had been somewhat limited by the fact that some of the 143 studies they had looked at were of “poor quality;” and, without wishing to stereotype, it’s easy to imagine that more than a few of the people researching such a hippy-dippy subject might not necessarily be blessed with minds like steel traps. However, based on the studies they thought were credible, Twohigbennett and Jones still felt able to conclude that increased greenspace exposure is associated with decreases in heart rate and blood pressure and a reduction in cases of stroke, hypertension, asthma and coronary heart disease.
Specifically regarding time spent in the presence of trees, I now realise that I am embarrassingly late to the party. Since 1982, the Japanese Government has been promoting shinrin-yoku or “forest-bathing” as a form of therapy. Between 2004 and 2012 they spent about $4 million studying the physiological and psychological effects of forest bathing and designated 48 therapy trails based on the results. The trick, apparently, is not to exert yourself; just lounge around or stroll about in the presence of the foliage.
By the time you read this I should be in the Cairngorms, staying with friends who just-so-happen to live beside a very large forest. They also have the mother of all hammocks at the bottom of their garden, slung between two enormous Scots pines. If my shoulder isn’t fixed after a few days there, I’ll be contacting the Japanese Government and the University of East Anglia to ask the reason why.