“You don’t get wet during forest bathing,” I’d said, when my partner asked why I was leaving my swimming costume in the cupboard. “Unless it rains.”
Now, I’m not so sure. The pool before me is luminous with lime-green algae. I imagine slipping into it, feeling the syrupy waters slide over my bare legs and mud spurt between my toes. My hair would grow heavy with slick, decaying plant life as I lowered myself in all the way up to my collarbone, my forehead, my crown…
The group leader’s invitation to feel our way through the forest glows bright in my mind as I approach this natural spa for wood nymphs. But even before I reach out, I know I’m about to touch dry land. There is no pool; only a lush clearing. I stroke the grass which, from only a few feet away, looks liquid green. It’s impossibly soft, like the finest cashmere, and so thick that I might sink into it after all.
The soft thump of a drum pulses through the trees.
It’s time to go back.
From behind trunks and amidst ferns, the forest bathers emerge: retirees looking to reconnect with nature after decades of office work; life-long Thetford residents, out to explore the 18,730 hectare forest on their doorstep; foragers; aspiring healers; the curious. While we come from different walks of life, all of us are here to find breathing space. Earlier, we heard how the phytoncides released by trees have been shown to boost immunity and lower the levels of stress hormones [1]. Simply by inhaling, we are strengthening our defences. The meditation we perform at intervals throughout the morning focuses our attention on deep, slow breathing—a practice which, in itself, helps to reduce stress [2].
Back at the clearing, we form a circle. Nicky, founder of Sound and Ground, lays down her drum and invites us to share our experience of exploring the forest through touch. We’ve already sharpened our visual sense—looking for movement and stillness among the trees—and enjoyed a meditative walk, noting the transition underfoot from mossy cushioning to crunchy gravel and sand. Little is said on tactility specifically, but one participant describes an upturned tree. The roots, she muses, must have been underground for hundreds of years; now they’re exposed to the air, to our sight. Perhaps there’s a lesson here about the inevitability of change, and embracing the new opportunities that arise when a storm rips the ground from beneath us.
The session ends with a round of foraged tea, made from young pine needles and thoroughly scrubbed rosehips. My fellow bathers remark that the brew freshens the palate, though my taste buds are mainly picking up subtle notes of Turkish Delight. Nicky wonders if any of us want to choose a tree and give it an offering of tea as a gesture of thanks. While this sounds rather New Age, it’s part of the tradition of Shinrin-yoku, the Japanese practice of forest bathing, which ends with a tea ceremony [3]. None of us volunteer, though I would have liked to spend another minute or so looking closely at the writhing branches of the tree opposite.
The way the branches twist around one another triggers a memory of one of Nicky’s earlier comments about the ‘wood wide web’, an underground network of fungi, bacteria and tree roots, which was mapped for the first time in 2019 [4]. The network allows fungi to draw carbon from trees, and trees to drink up nutrients from fungi, but it also enables trees to share resources and even communicate [5]. In Underland, travel writer and academic, Robert Macfarlane, reflects:
Our growing comprehension of the forest network asks profound questions: about where species begin and end, about whether a forest might best be imagined as a super-organism, and about what ‘trading,’ ‘sharing’ or even ‘friendship’ might mean between plants and, indeed, between humans. [6]
Ideas of mutualism, support and togetherness infuse our meditation today. In our circle, we imagine roots shooting down from the points where our bodies touch the ground. We picture our roots spreading, soaking up wisdom from the trees and each other. It’s a particularly vivid way of grounding ourselves.
After the others have gone, I re-trace our steps, camera in hand. It’s far from easy to find the route again. Everywhere looks the same; everywhere looks different. Rather than assuming that the trees are malevolent, ‘a system of Chinese boxes’ designed to baffle and entrap [7], I come to the conclusion that the shifting paths are a result of my lack of attention during the early part of the walk. Once I reach the point where I started to focus on exactly where my feet landed, the scenery becomes familiar. There’s the shelter, drawing to a point like a witch’s hat.
There, speckled mushrooms squat among the stubble of emerging heather.
And there, the serpentine branches of a tree twist into a tight embrace.
But I can’t find the pool that isn’t a pool. It has dissolved into the forest like a mirage. Efforts to follow my earlier path lead me instead to the uprooted tree, its branches pronging like antlers, its loamy mouth gulping in the phytoncide-rich air.
For the first time this morning, I’m acutely aware not only of the spaces between trees, but of the thousand unseen things that teem (team?) in that apparent emptiness. Even though I’m on my own out here, I’m not lonely. I’m not even alone. The thought is surprisingly comforting.
I pour dregs of foraged tea onto the exposed roots of the toppled trunk and amble back in the direction of daily life.
[1] Qing Li, ‘Effect of forest bathing trips on human immune function’ in Environmental Health and Preventive Medicine, 15:1 (2010): 9-17 <https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2793341/> [accessed 23.09.22]
[2] Emma Seppälä, Christina Bradley, and Michael R. Goldstein, ‘Research: Why Breathing is So Effective at Reducing Stress,’ in the Harvard Business Review, September 29, 2020 <https://hbr.org/2020/09/research-why-breathing-is-so-effective-at-reducing-stress> [accessed 23.09.22]
[3] The tea ceremony is discussed in Joanne O’Connor's article, ‘Trees of Life: Forest Bathing Blossoms in Britain’ in The Guardian, 6 May 2018 <https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2018/may/06/japanese-art-of-forest-bathing-comes-to-england-holidays> [accessed 23.09.22]
[4] Claire Marshall, ‘Wood wide web: Trees’ social networks are mapped,’ BBC News, 15 May 2019 <https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-48257315> [accessed 23.09.22]
[5] Robert Macfarlane, Underland: A Deep Time Journey (London: Hamish Hamilton, imprint of Penguin Books, 2019), p. 97. See also the lovely video on the BBC site: <https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/science-environment-44643177> [accessed 23.09.22]
[6] Macfarlane, Underland, p. 98.
[7] Angela Carter, ‘The Erl-King’ in The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories (London: Vintage, 2006), p. 97.
Many thanks to Nicky of Sound and Ground for the forest bathing session and for granting me permission to write this post. You find book your own session here: https://www.soundandground.co.uk/events.php Please note that Nicky does not endorse bathing in strange green pools, imagined or otherwise.
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