fight (or flee) at the drop of a hat. (Just think of the tension and anxiety you feel in a traffic-snarled commute.) Researchers were able to document a very important connection:
Shinrin-yoku soothes your unease and helps calm you down after agitation.
Later studies have also shown that green surroundings have a favorable impact on chronic stress.
Important Info
And for those who suffer from debilitating anxiety or illnesses, later studies have also shown that green surroundings have a favorable impact on chronic stress. An experiment carried out in the 1990s at Hokkaido University showed that shinrin-yoku led to a significant lowering of the levels of blood sugar in people suffering from type 2 diabetes, on average a change from 179 mg/dL (before a walk in the woods) to 108 mg/dL (after). Does the length of a walk matter? In this experiment, apparently not: Subjects walked between two miles and four miles, but the length of the walk had no impact on the results.2 Good news for those of us who just don’t have the time to walk for hours every day, as much as we would like to!
BUT YOU CAN’T TAKE IT WITH YOU
Around the world, researchers back up the claim that a simple walk in the woods works wonders. As much of the world’s population now lives and works in cities, the question for researchers then became how different urban environments might effect one’s sense of well-being. Finnish researchers in Helsinki, in a study published in 2014, investigated just that. In three groups, participants traversed busy city streets, a green space in the middle of the city, or a wooded area. Would they feel restored? Filled with vitality? More creative? Hands down the wooded area made people feel the most restored, vital, and creative, but the city park also had a marked positive effect on the participants’ well-being. Another striking observation? Stress levels not only went down, they went down quickly.3
People feel better after taking a walk in a park, but can these feelings be measured? In the United States, researchers at Stanford University studied the psychological effects of experiences of nature on both thoughts and feelings. Subjects were divided into two groups, each of which was to take a fifty-minute walk in the Stanford area in either a high-traffic urban setting or in a park. A series of psychological tests was conducted before and after the walk. Those who had walked in nature reported lower levels of anxiety, fewer depressive thoughts, and fewer negative feelings. Higher scores in memory tests showed that their intellectual capacity had also increased. Another study made by the same group of researchers investigated the effects of walking in the woods on common urban ailments such as depression and negative thinking. This study too showed measurable physical effects on the activity of the brain: lower levels of activity in the subgenual prefrontal cortex (sgPFC), the part associated with self-centeredness and chronic worrying.4 Walking in nature isn’t just a feel-good exercise.
A walk through the woods also helps those suffering from chronic physical pain. In a South Korean study, patients suffering from serious chronic pain participated in a forest-therapy program. These patients showed marked physiological improvement in two areas: heart rate variability (HRV)—the measure of time between each heartbeat and an important factor in maintaining the autonomic nerve system—and natural killer (NK) cell activity, which strengthens the immune system. Participants said they experienced lower levels of pain and felt less depressed, and they described feeling that their quality of life was better.5 Interestingly, these results are not about the effects of physical exercise or meditation in nature—just hanging out in nature, leisurely walking through the forest.
Don’t just take my word for it. Scientists have weighed in. Whether you call it shinrin-yoku or a walk in the woods, immersing yourself in nature will:
Strengthen the immune system
Ease pain
Lower stress
Have a calming effect
Control blood-sugar levels
Reduce depression
Improve mood
All from a walk in the woods!
You might have already discerned a small but important problem: You can’t take all of these positive benefits with you. On your lunch break, you’ve just walked out to a park and filled your lungs with the fresh scent of pine trees. You’ve returned feeling restored, soothed, and ready to tackle the afternoon’s tasks. But as you leave the green, light-filled setting and enter an unhealthy indoors environment, you begin to feel that familiar, dispiriting energy drain. It’s back to grabbing a chocolate bar or a cup of coffee and our old friend willpower again.
How can we break this cycle? Ever hear the well-meaning but impractical advice “Either you move to the country or you move the country to you”?
The first suggestion works for people attracted to the idea of sitting on a tree trunk in the middle of the woods whittling willow flutes, making calls on bark-hewn telephones, and now and then stirring to shoot a deer for dinner. But if you don’t have a job that puts you directly in touch with nature, then this solution is not feasible—most people need to live and work in urban areas. As for the second suggestion, the idea of bringing the country closer to the city and even indoors reminds me of tragic stories I hear about wild animals accidentally entering the world of humans. A raccoon can carry disease. A bear is cute until she is protecting her cubs. A wild animal can cause loss of life and property, not to mention the animal potentially losing its own life. Moving out to the country—or moving the country indoors—just isn’t feasible. So thanks for that advice, but no thanks.
WHAT YOU NEED, WHERE YOU NEED IT
As I said before, our bodies are wise. What we most want around us is precisely what we need most from nature: light and plants. I’ve joined these into a single concept and developed a method: Forest Air.
Experts have demonstrated clearly that incorporating plants and specially adapted light indoors has a huge positive effect on people’s physical and mental health, almost as powerful as the effect of actually being out in nature. The effect has been noted in the workplace, in schools and institutions, and across people in all age groups, occupations, and life situations, from doctors, laboratory technicians, and teachers to students, children in preschool, and hospital patients. In essence, it can be argued that it is a universal medicine.
Not to be a contrarian, but I have to argue that no, it isn’t. Do you claim to have given medicine to a fish you’ve released back into a river, or to a captive mouse you’ve set free in a forest undergrowth, or to a disoriented bird you’ve helped get out of a house? What you deserve real praise for is that you returned them to the environment to which they are best adapted to live—the only surroundings in which they can grow and thrive. And I think you deserve no less for yourself.
YOUR NATURAL ENVIRONMENT AT HOME, YOUR NATURAL ENVIRONMENT AT WORK
I’m not suggesting that you carry whole trees into your house (although by all means do so, if you have the space). Nor am I talking about putting some sad little potted plant in a corner. What you get with Forest Air is a small area of living plants that grow in a controlled and predictable way and that you can take care of yourself with minimal effort. And you’ll get the same health benefits as you would from a walk in the woods. You experience a shinrin-yoku just where you are, every day, without having to go out into the woods.
Say you get a headache
