Stress and trauma are inescapable parts of the human experience. And yet how we process these events and how we integrate these experiences into our lives, is very dependent on each person and their unique life circumstances. As a primary care physician with a passion for mental health and trauma healing, I think about these issues on a daily basis. My journey with exploring the health benefits of nature started several years ago when I read The Nature Fix by Florence Williams. I was well acquainted with the healing benefits of nature in my own life, yet I did not realize the amount of scientific study that was ongoing in this area. As a scientist myself, I was elated to find there was actual evidence supporting what I intuitively knew from my own experience: Nature is an incredibly powerful healer. I was particularly fascinated with forest bathing and knew in my gut this would be an important part of my journey.
It was several years before I could start my own journey to becoming a forest therapy guide, but I was finally able to complete my training this last year as part of the Red-Tailed Hawk cohort through ANFT. As I began my own regular practice of forest bathing, and leading others in doing so, one part of the practice in particular stuck out, and that was the power of forest bathing in healing trauma and toxic stress.
Our modern world predisposes us to unnatural levels of stress over and over again every single day. The onslaught of stimulation in our modern society to our nervous system is not natural to our bodies or biological makeup. Think of the difference in your body when you are on a walk in nature vs. sitting at your desk staring at your computer screen. Using myself as an example, when I am walking on my favorite trail, I am relaxed, upright. My chest is open, my arms are swinging by my side, I might have a slight smile on my face. I am smelling the earth deeply, a relaxed gaze in my eyes as I glance around and maybe occasionally stop to examine a flower or mushroom more closely. It is quiet and still. Maybe punctuated by an occasional birdsong or the wind in the trees. My body feels at ease, relaxed, peaceful as I move. I am gazing around, taking it all in. Mentally alert but my body is relaxed.
Now, I think about how I spend the majority of my time in my day job as a clinician and public health officer — I am hunched over a desk, alternating (depending on the day) between meetings, emails, writing documents, and seeing patients. It’s noisy. There are smells there too, but in the clinic, they are never pleasant; typically a combination of chemical disinfectants and other odors of illness and infection. The last few years I have been wearing a facemask of the time, so I actually can’t smell much of anything. Rushing around, multi-tasking, stiff, stressed, moving 100 mph to get an ever-increasing number of tasks done so I can then go home and collapse on my couch with my aching back, neck, and joints, and numb out to mindless TV because my brain is so fried from the 10 hours of intensity in windowless, fluorescently lit beige office settings to do much else. Sound familiar? What contrast there is between these two states of being, and so many of us spend the majority of our waking hours in the latter category.
So why do we “feel” so different in these different environments? The answer is both simple and complex. The simple part of the answer is that these bodily responses to our surroundings are all somewhat automated by our autonomic nervous system, particularly our vagus nerve and its branches. Likely you have heard of the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system – well, they are actually the same system, the autonomic nervous system (aka the vagus nerve), they are just two sides of the same coin, in essence. The sympathetic nervous system is commonly known as our “fight/flight/freeze/fawn” system, the one that senses a threat and kicks us into high gear; whereas the parasympathetic nervous system is known as the “rest and digest” system, and is the system at play when we are relaxed, asleep, etc. I bet you can guess which one is most active in the two scenarios I described above. Chronic stress in particular causes dysregulation of our autonomic nervous system which in turn can cause a whole host of deleterious health effects. In short, our bodies respond to our surroundings. They give us signals: “I am happy here (the forest)” or “This is terrible and not natural, and it hurts me” (most workplace/office settings). Yet we suppress our body’s signals, particularly those of the warning variety. We were taught, beginning in childhood, to sit still, be quiet, and follow the education pipeline to success. Very few of us were taught how to listen to the signals of our body, heart, and mind. We hold in tension and stress and anger and sadness, and eventually these manifest in the body as chronic pain, chronic disease, mental disturbances, and addictions — or some delightful combination of all of the above.
Where it starts to get complex/interesting, is in our efforts to understand the relationship between our vagus nerve and trauma, chronic stress, and development of post-traumatic stress disorder or PTSD1. In the past, the prevailing theory was that impulses from our brain traveled top down our spinal cord through our vagus nerve in one direction. Yet now we know that it is in fact a bidirectional flow, and that signals travel BOTH ways, from our brain to our body and our body back up to our brain. In fact, 80% of these impulses actually come up the vagus nerve from our body to our brain2. This is why being in our bodies — or being embodied, as we would say in forest therapy — is so incredibly important. We can’t think or talk our way out of stress and trauma – we have to settle into our physical self and let these signals flow from our bodies to our brains. Only then may we feel safe enough to examine and release painful memories.
Because forest therapy is a practice of embodiment, those of us who have suppressed our body’s needs for many years for the sake of our career, our family, or just because of societal norms, can be a bit triggered by the awakening that begins to happen with regular forest bathing practice. The noticing that our modern industrialized lives have caused us such pain and distress can be quite traumatic in and of itself. I was skeptical at first when I heard that many repressed emotions can come up for participants, and one might experience a range of reactions in people while guiding a walk. And then it happened to me. On my immersion retreat this past spring, I recall tears pouring down my face as I circled with a group of strangers to gather, share, and listen. Just three days of settling into a peaceful, non-judgmental space centered around nature caused a release of stored memories that I didn’t even realize I was holding onto. What a humbling and revelatory moment this was for me. I had been in a great mood before the retreat, not sad or depressed at all, quite cheerful and excited, really. But I had a lot of pain that I needed to let go of, even though I was not consciously aware of it when starting the retreat.
Because the body bears the burden of traumatic events3, it only makes sense that we must release these traumatic events by way of the body, through embodiment practices. Body-centered practices, such as EMDR, Somatic Experiencing (SE), Hakomi, Yoga therapy, Breathwork etc. can all help release stored tension, stress, and painful memories that often we are not able to speak about because we just cannot find the words. And even if we do find the words to speak about a traumatic experience, sometimes speaking about it is retraumatizing. Research done by Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, a renowned trauma expert, demonstrates that trauma affects a certain area of our brains, a part of the left frontal cortex known as “Broca’s area” that affects speech and language. Without a functioning Broca’s area, you cannot put your thoughts and feelings into words. We know this from many decades of studying the brains of stroke patients who have had this area of the brain affected and then become non-verbal. Patients recalling flashbacks of their traumatic events had immediate cessation of blood flow to the Broca’s area of their brain as demonstrated on fMRI scans. This objective finding is corroborated by many studies demonstrating that trauma victims are unable to recall specific details surrounding their trauma, and even if they do, are unable to talk about it because they literally can’t find the words. It has now become common knowledge that traditional “talk therapy” is not the best way to treat the majority of trauma patients.
While nature has been used by humans for centuries for health improvement purposes, research around nature’s benefits in trauma healing is a very nascent field. A study4 conducted by the Sierra Club and Univ. of Michigan researchers in 2013 found that veterans who participated in extended group outdoor recreation experiences reported significant improvements in psychological well-being, social functioning, and life outlook one week after the outdoor experience with evidence that these outcomes were still present one month later. Another study5 followed eight Danish veterans during a 10-week nature-based therapy course (NBT includes mindfulness and nature-based activities, similar to forest bathing, but is followed by individual therapy sessions) and found that veterans were able to transfer use of nature and nature-based activities to their everyday lives, and found remedy for their PTSD symptoms simply by being in nature. One year later, participants were still participating in nature-based activities on their own.
Many trauma survivors describe forest therapy as a perfect grounding practice and invaluable recovery tool6, particularly useful for trauma survivors who have a tendency to dissociate or not feel at home in their bodies. Additionally, in the Danish study, veterans described nature as a place without expectations: “[Nature is special] because there are no demands and expectations to you. Well, there is a tree, and I am sitting here, no expectations, no questions, no nothing.”
Forest therapy, from my experience as a trauma survivor, physician, and guide, deserves to have a seat at the table as an effective practice in trauma healing and release. There is much potential for further research and understanding in this growing area of inquiry, especially considering how much collective trauma the world has experienced the last few years. The objective nature of nature itself is what makes forest therapy so unique and special for healing. The mantra “The forest is the therapist; The guide just opens the door” from ANFT founder Amos Clifford flows through my mind every time I lead a walk. Almost all other forms of healing depend on your relationship to another human to guide you through it. But forest therapy, while still involving humans, is less about your relationship with the person guiding you and more about your relationship with your inner self, your body, and your surroundings. It is the self-study of therapeutic approaches. There is no right or wrong way to practice forest therapy, it is all open-ended answers. This container of non-judgement is truly the safest space for trauma release for many of us; Because who has ever felt judged or unsafe with a flower, a rock, or a butterfly?
I look forward to a future where we can all enjoy the healing connection between the earth, our bodies, our hearts, and our minds. After practicing regularly for the last year, it is my professional opinion that forest bathing is the perfect way to guide people to their healthier, less stressed future selves.
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1 For more information on this check out Polyvagal theory by Dr. Porges.
2 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5859128/
3 van der Kolk, 2014
4 https://content.sierraclub.org/outings/sites/content.sierraclub.org.outings/files/SIERRA_REPORT_6_13_Exploring%20the%20benefits%20of%20outdoor%20expereinces%20on%20veterans%20(1).pdf
5 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5193293/
6 https://www.mentalhealthtoday.co.uk/blog/awareness/how-nature-has-grounded-me-in-the-here-and-now-during-trauma-recovery