Shinrin-Yoku: Forest Bathing Year-Round, Indoors and Outdoors, for All

The introduction and four chapters respectively follow Japanese relationships to forests, forest bathing since pioneer studies in the 1980s, standard practices, indoor variations and future implications. 

Shinrin-yoku gets practitioners to grasp forest sights, smells, sounds, tastes and textures during on-site breathing, meditation, qigong, t'ai chi or yoga routines and on wildlife-mapping walks. Japan has scented, wind-rustled azaleas, bamboo, beeches, black and umbrella pines, camellias, cedars, cherry, chrysanthemums, cypresses, fig, firs, gingkos, laurels, oaks, rhododendrons, spruces, walnuts and wisteria. The green archipelago's forests include earthy scents from non-pathogenic Microbacterium vaccae ("microbacteria [first cultured from] cow [dung]") and hot-spring, rainy, waterfall smells of petrichor ("rock essence"). 

Birdsongs, in crowd-pleasing, 2,500- to 3,500-hertz frequencies, join shinrin-yoku sounds of roaring waterfalls, rushing rivers and wind-kocked bamboo in the Ministry of the Environment's 100-soundscape archives.

Shinrin-yoku knows natural silence, "free of man-made noise," similar to the red stone-marked "one square inch of silence" in the Hoh Rainforest, Olympic National Park, Washington. 

Natural silence leads to natural-tasting, shinrin-yoku fare of angelica, bamboo and fiddlehead-fern shoots, bracken, burdock, butterbur, day-lily, knotweed, lotus root and royal fern sansai ("mountain vegetables"). Dr. Li mentions forest bathing opportunities in beautifully forested Australia, Bangladesh, China, India, Malaysia, New Zealand and Sri Lanka; Brazil and Costa Rica; and Congo and Morocco. He notes similar shinrin-yoku in beautifully forested Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, Romania and United Kingdom; and Canada and the United States. 

National and state forest cabins and lookouts, national and state park lodges and public parks offer forest bathing opportunities for shinrin-yoku practitioners in the United States.

Potted azaleas, bamboo palms, chrysanthemums, English ivy, gerbera daisies, golden pothos, mother-in-law's tongue, orchids, peace lilies, red-edge dracaena, spider plants and succulents put forest bathing indoors. 

Bowled cedarwood shavings, essential oil-scented candles of sumac wax and rush wick and essential oil-scented reed diffusers queue up carbon dioxide-absorbing, oxygen-releasing, phytoremediating (air-purifying) forest bathing. Cedar, cypress, false-arborvitae, pine and spruce essential oils release, as phytoncides ("plant kills [predators and rots]"), basil-scented, dill-smelling beta-pinene, lemony D-limonene, piney alpha-pinene and resinous camphene. Heated whirlpools and hot tubs serve up the negative ions that forest bathing sends the way of shinrin-yoku practitioners near hot springs, rivers, streams and waterfalls. 

Charley Harper animal and plant artwork, essential oils, family animals, houseplants, mountain vegetables and warm soaks turn park and forest bathing into shinrin-yoku during downtimes indoors.

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

forest path with bamboo fence
Arashiyama Bamboo Forest, western Kyoto, central Honshu Island, central Japan; Thursday, August 10, 2006, 10:54:51: oliveheartkimchi, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bamboo_forest,_Arashiyama,_Kyoto_(oliveheartkimchi).jpg; olivia cheung (oliveheartkimchi), All Rights Reserved, via Flickr 2 https://www.flickr.com/photos/66741799@N00/217978453

Li, Qing. 2018. Forest Bathing: How Trees Can Help You Find Health and Happiness. New York, NY: Viking.