Although I have heard of “forest bathing,” I have not actually experienced it until this past month. Having graduated with a degree in clinical mental health therapy, my daughter was interested in nature as a therapy tool and I recommended forest bathing. I wanted to experience it with a certified guide so I booked two tickets from the Friends of the National Arboretum (FONA) for a Saturday morning at the U.S. National Arboretum. According to the FONA site, forest bathing, or shinrin yoku, is the simple practice of taking in the woods through the senses. The benefits are immense: boosted immunity, lowered blood pressure, and improved attention and mood.
Unfortunately, in the interim, my daughter was offered a position in another state and was not able to attend but I promised her I would write about it here so she could know what it was like.
This particular event was from 9:00 am to 11:00 am and even though the instructions said that it would take place despite light rain or snow, I thought for sure it would be cancelled. The forecast called for rain, and I kept looking at my phone for the cancellation email. Seeing none, I drove to the Asian collection within the Arboretum and met my guide, Paul Jarris. There was a light drizzle but I was prepared with my umbrella, poncho, backpack, weatherproof shoes, and water bottle.
We gathered in a circle and introduced ourselves. Although the event was sold out, 8 showed up. Probably the rest did not want to come out in the rain. All of us were new to forest bathing. Everyone was a DC resident except for me and Paul.
Paul is a certified forest therapy guide. I had hoped that my daughter could ask the guide about forest bathing training and the science behind it. For me, I wanted to learn forest bathing techniques — not just walk in nature.
Forest bathing has ancient roots in Japan. In the 1980’s, many Japanese were working too hard, were too stressed. The director for the Japanese Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries knew of the health benefits and employed it as a government sponsored initiative to help stressed employees and improve preventative health care.
Paul briefly talked about this history, the process, the health benefits, and what forest bathing was not. It was not a hike, it was not plant identification, and it was not meditation. Meditation turns your attention inward while forest bathing turns your attention outward.
We walked a few minutes on an asphalt road to the crepe myrtle grove which is like being in a forest but not a true forest. As we walked, he asked us to think back to our happy times in childhood.
“I like to start with that because almost all of us have some childhood memory when we don’t have the inhibitions of an adult,” explained Paul. “We’re just in a more natural state. It is one of the ways to remind people of that, to get them a little bit out of their head and back into their memories and feelings, that notion of getting out of the adult mind and into the child mind, the creative mind, the less inhibited mind.”
I tried to think about this as we walked but the group was quickly coalescing and we ended up talking with each other. By the time we got to the crepe myrtles, the rain stopped. For August, it was a beautiful cool morning — the weather could not have been more perfect.
In a grassy clearing surrounded by tall, pink and red blooming trees, Paul instructed us to close our eyes while standing and to focus on our senses. He asked us to listen to the sounds far away and nearby, feel the feet on the ground, feel the breeze and our clothes against our skin, taste the air with an open mouth, and smell the air and the freshly washed grass and trees. We did this for about 10 minutes. We then opened our eyes and shared what we experienced. I noticed or had not noticed before that there are sounds in the distance (trucks) as well as nearby (birds) but also that there was “taste” (a bit of moist earth), and “touch” — the wind slightly caressing the arms. I became aware of layers or dimensions.
This was our first “invitation” called “Pleasures of Presence” or “POP.” Invitations are suggestions by the guide to focus on something and can differ depending on your guide.
“This really gets you to open your senses and it really does start to get you into the forest and all the ways that nature enters and causes the healing,” said Paul. “You can see how people are noticing things like, wow, I’ve never thought of sound as far away or close or the different levels or layers of sound or how vivid things are when you open your eyes.”
After each invitation (four in all), we shared our experiences. Our small size was ideal because we each had enough time to talk. Although the Arboretum caps forest bathing around 16 people I think we were lucky it rained which culled it down to 8. Depending on the space in other locations, groups can be small or large but small makes it more personal. I was struck by how quickly we opened up and talked with each other. However, I do not know if that was because of the nature setting, the small size, or the fact that we were all women except for Paul and another gentleman.
The second invitation was to walk around to see what was in motion. Paul said to not worry about time, he will make a “coyote call” when it is time for us to come back. I walked around the grove, looking at the crepe myrtles. I noticed the bees high up, buzzing around the flowers. At eye level, a few spent blossoms fell loose and dropped to the ground. At waist level were long branches of leaves and flowers swaying in the breeze. We observed for about 10 minutes and then heard the “coyote call” which was really Paul making a loud sound. We came back to the clearing and standing in a circle, we shared what we saw, felt, and thought.
Paul explained that the “what’s in motion” invitation is a way to slow down for you to begin to notice everything around you that you typically take for granted or don’t think about. “Everything’s moving, even on calm days, including the insects and the leaves.”
The third “invitation” was to find something to focus on for about 10 minutes. I had noticed that there was a sunny grassy clearing outside the grove with a small area of tall weeds. I wondered why the weeds were growing there and not anywhere else. As I got closer, I discovered a tree stump so wide it could have been a children’s bed. I sat on the stump looking at the weeds, the ants, and the singular pokeberry growing out of a crevice. It had been a very old tree; I tried counting the rings but there were too many.
At one point, I put my hand into my pocket to get my iPhone and realized that it was simply a reflex to pull it out and look at messages. Fortunately, I caught myself and stopped. It went without saying that the phones should be off during forest bathing.
When we came back, I described the tree stump and how it made me think of time past, little time left, death, and the many generations before us. Paul said the tree had been there since the Civil War because staff found Civil War artifacts near it after they had to cut it down due to disease. He explained that there is so much to see and think about when you look at a plant or a tree, everything it supports, the whole ecosystem, but just looking at it and how it developed — there’s such a story there. He said it is wonderful when people take some meaning from that into their own life. Our group in particular went very deep, tying back lessons to life. “It’s so rewarding to see a group get like that and not just be superficial and say “Oh, I noticed the green leaf, a red leaf, and a purple leaf.” He told us that in one forest bathing group there was a woman whose middle-aged son had recently died. She said her son came to her through a big oak tree which symbolized strength, and her son had that strength. She felt her son was telling her, “I’m okay, Mom, and you’re going to be okay.”
For the fourth and final invitation, which Paul called the sit spot, he gave us mats for us to sit on in front of something. I sat under the shade of a crepe myrtle and looked at a very tall but dead tree with no branches or leaves. Although I could not see anything from my vantage point, I knew it must be home to wildlife and full of insects. As I sat looking at the tree I thought about life and death again but also invisible life. Life we cannot see whether it is insects in the wood or spirits (the Arboretum was home to indigenous people many years ago).
Hearing the coyote call, we came back to a large blanket on the ground. As we sat on the blanket and shared our experiences, he distributed plastic cups and offered us our choice of cinnamon or mint tea from thermoses.
In traditional forest bathing, the event ends with tea and a snack. If this were in Japan, the guides may gather twigs and leaves from the forest to brew a tea for a formal tea ceremony. However, because of the recent pandemic, Paul now uses disposable cups and because we were in an arboretum where picking was prohibited, he brought the tea.
We spent time talking about life in general and it was not until it started to sprinkle again that some of us got up to leave. Interestingly, it was as if we had made fast friends in those brief 2 hours. And the time did fly. Paul explained that ending with tea is a way for us to transition back to real time. Because we spent 2 hours looking at trees and plants, we were in “subliminal time,” where you do not have a sense of time but are very focused on the here and now.
To me the words “forest bathing” are not truly descriptive of the experience or have little meaning to people who have not done it. I know the words cause confusion. Forest bathing is really “immersion in nature” or “nature immersion,” composed of three major parts: 1) disengagement from your daily routine (go to a place in nature where you can focus on nature and turn off your phone and other distractions); 2) connect with nature through listening with all of your senses and looking at some particular part of nature; and then 3) transition back to daily life with tea and/or snack or something reflective like reading a poem.
As we experienced forest bathing at the Arboretum, Paul cited numerous studies that showed the positive impact. There are too many to recount here but since the 1980s, there have been studies in several countries that examine the physiological and psychological effects of forest bathing. Here in the United States, within the National Institutes of Health’s National Library of Medicine’s PubMed database, there were 3 results for a search of “forest bathing” in 1965 (before that, zero). In 2025 there were 3,096 results. For an easy read of the studies, the Association of Nature & Forest Therapy, which provides training to certify guides, lists studies by impact such as general well-being, cancer, cardiovascular, mental health, immune system, pain, pulmonary disease, sleep disorders, stress burnout, and more. There also are several books written about forest bathing as well as its impact on people’s health.
In Japan, there are more than 60 designated forest therapy trails. It is estimated that one-quarter of the population uses these trails. In some of them, researchers obtain vitals from volunteers before they enter the forest and afterwards. They have found correlations with stress and blood pressure reduction, improved mood, increased energy, improved sleep, increased concentration and increased immune cells in the body.
Here in the United States, there are forest therapy trails although none in the DC metro area. However, one does not have to be on such a trail to experience forest bathing. Paul remembers a forest bathing experience in the rose garden right in front of the Smithsonian Castle with cars whizzing by.
If you have never gone forest bathing, I recommend doing it with a certified guide to see what it is all about. Once you learn the concept, you can just go to your backyard for 20 minutes and still reap the health benefits. For forest bathing events, check out the local public gardens, park systems, and arboreta such as:
U.S. National Arboretum (through the Friends of the National Arboretum)
Hillwood Estate, Museum and Gardens
Green Spring Gardens
Fox Haven Organic Farm and Learning Center
Nature Forward
Brookside Gardens.
