Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Forest Bathing: a Natural Way to Be Balanced and Healthy
342 Plays1 year ago
Season 3, Episode 8. In this episode, I am privileged to interview Robin Hancock, a trained and certified Forest Bathing nature guide who lives in the mountains of NW Georgia, USA. If you have listened to my podcast before, you may have heard me talk about the benefits of Shinrin Yoku (the Japanense phrase for Forest Bathing). Robin is much more knowledgeable about this topic than I, and in fact has a business where she organizes and leads Forest Bathing experiences.
You can find her on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/renewalbynatureguides, or at her own web page http://www.renewal-by-nature.com/
I am sure you will find much of interest in both this podcast and on her website.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Forest Bathing
00:00:05
Speaker
Have you ever bathed in the forest? I don't mean setting up a tub and filling it full of water and scrubbing your back and your toes and all that. I mean what is called forest bathing, or in Japanese, shinrin yoku. Now if you listen to my podcast for a while, you might have heard me mention shinrin yoku once or twice, but today I have a true expert in the field. Robin Hancock, she is a trained and certified
00:00:35
Speaker
forest bathing guide, one of only 2,700 in the entire world. So if you're interested at all in reconnecting with nature, which you're already a part of, just we tend to separate ourselves, then give a listen to this particular podcast. Robin has a great deal to tell you, and I'm sure you'll find it interesting and intriguing. Stay tuned.
Meet the Hosts
00:01:07
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the podcast. The full spectrum holistic health podcast is all about holistic health, what it is, various holistic and alternative health therapies and practices, and how those may help you to be a healthier person. I want to thank you for choosing to listen today. We know there are many podcasts out there for you to choose from, but I'm glad you are here.
00:01:32
Speaker
I'm host for the podcast, Dr. Anthony Burton. I'm a Ricky Master, EFT therapist, meditation teacher, sound therapist, and a shamanic practitioner. My personal goal is to help people be healthier in mind, body, and spirit. And that's why I'm here. A large part of what I do is educational in nature because so many people are unaware of the power and efficacy of various holistic alternative therapy.
00:02:02
Speaker
In these podcast episodes, you will hear information that inform you, perhaps enlighten you and help energize and balance you. Of course, it won't always be simply my opinions and ideas. Occasionally I will be interviewing knowledgeable, interesting guests from a variety of areas of holistic, complimentary, and even allopathic health practices. So kick back, relax, open your mind and listen.
00:02:33
Speaker
Spectrum Holistic Health is a complementary health and wellness business located in northwest Georgia, USA. Check out the website at www.spectrum-holistic.com for more information.
Robin's Journey to Forest Bathing
00:03:00
Speaker
Robin Hancock grew up and spent most of her adult life in the metro Atlanta area. She moved to Ella J. Georgia in May of 2023. She has two grown children and three grandchildren, all of whom are very hard. She spent 30 years working for the state of Georgia as a public servant and has recently retired for the second time from the pet sitting and dog walking business.
00:03:24
Speaker
Because we're love for nature in the outdoors, Robin became a certified guide for the Association of Nature and Forest Therapy in November 2016. As a member of the sixth cohort trained through this organization, he is one of the first 50 guides certified globally in a current network of more than 2,700 guides in 62 countries around the world.
00:03:48
Speaker
As an outdoor enthusiast, Robin has always been aware of the benefits intrinsic to being in nature. While experiencing profound personal losses over the course of a few years, Robin naturally turned to the forest for comfort and spiritual retreat. It was there that she discovered the wisdom that resides there, or rather within herself, as her spirit was quieted enough to listen. That was her gift from the forest.
00:04:15
Speaker
As the owner of her own business, Renewal by Nature, Robin offers guided experiences to lead others toward that same type of wholeness. The forest is the therapist, but Robin opens the door. Now Robin, welcome to Full Spectrum Holistic Health. Thanks for having me today, Tony.
00:04:36
Speaker
I'm happy to have you. You know, I've seen a lot of your pictures on the line, photographs I guess you take outside your home in L.O.J. and beautiful stuff. Your deer and all the other animals that come up there. Great shot. I love the one that you had recently. I think it was called The Nurse by the Mom. Yeah, it was really very special. Yeah.
00:05:00
Speaker
As a holistic health practitioner and an energy therapist, I have known about force baby for a few years. I even did a brief podcast on Shinwenyoku a while back, but I can approach your level of knowledge and training in this therapeutic and healing modality. So I am eager to hear you explain more about this. So to start off, why don't you tell us about
Understanding Forest Bathing
00:05:28
Speaker
exactly what forest bathing is and where it originated and why. Okay well forest bathing is the literal translation of the Japanese term shinrin yoku and so that translates into English as forest bathing or being immersed in natural surroundings and what I do basically is take people out
00:05:57
Speaker
The short way to explain this is that I take people out into natural environments, and it's about a three-hour experience during which I offer a series of invitations for them to experience nature through their senses, get some out of their head and into their bodies. Sounds very, very soothing. It is, yes. Now, shinry yoku is a Japanese word, so that means, I'm assuming that forest bathing came from Japan.
00:06:24
Speaker
Is forest bathing practiced in the West in the same way or very similar to how it's practiced in Japan? Because I know that many heaving practices do change as they migrate between cultures like yoga in India is different from yoga in the West in America and Reiki the same way. So can you tell me about that? So yeah in Japan it was actually started by the Japanese government
00:06:53
Speaker
If you remember the tech boom in the 1980s, people were literally working themselves to death. That term, I think there's a term for it. Karoshi, I think, is the way you pronounce that. And people were literally dropping dead of heart attacks.
00:07:10
Speaker
and stroke due to stress and not eating they would just drop dead at work basically at their desk and so the Japanese, I know it sounds odd like we don't work that way in the United States but the Japanese government wanted to do something about that so they took big forests that they I guess they already had and they designated certain ones as
00:07:35
Speaker
forest-baiting or shinrin yoku trails and they would have like instructions along the way about how people could get immersed in their natural surroundings. So they're not guided the way they are here. I was trained by the Association of Nature and Forest Therapy. That was founded by a fella named Amos Clifford and he realized that shinrin yoku or forest-baiting needed to be westernized because we accept
00:08:05
Speaker
things a little bit differently than they do in the East. So he took it. Um, he has some therapy background and stuff like that as a counselor. So he kind of took what he knew from, from just his life experience and developed what we call a standard sequence in which the guy offers invitations and varying kind of, there's a progression in other words to the invitations.
00:08:33
Speaker
So the first two invitations are always the same but there's invitations, the participants go out and do the invitation however they see fit. There's no right or wrong way to do that. They all come back together and then share what their experience is based on prompts and then there's a series of those anywhere from say four to six in a standard walk and then we end with a little tea ceremony and it's not as formal as you would
00:09:03
Speaker
have you know as a Japanese tea ceremony again it's just a very kind of casual informal tea ceremony but that's the way it was kind of you know westernized was to give it more of a just more of a not even a therapy feel but just more of a some some guidance along the way rather than it being a solo
00:09:26
Speaker
experience. Yeah, I think that many Americans prefer a structured experience.
Sensory Engagement Techniques
00:09:33
Speaker
Not all, but many do. I was going to ask you about the invitations because I wasn't really sure about exactly what an invitation is. So can you describe one invitation to me and tell me what it's about? Yes.
00:09:48
Speaker
I think one of my favorite invitations, and I do invite people to go out and have conversations with trees and notice textures and things like that. But I think my very favorite invitation is called Imaginary Bouquet. And unlike going out into your garden and clipping flowers and gathering a bouquet or buying one at the grocery store, you can
00:10:16
Speaker
put anything in your imaginary bouquet. So I invite people to just wander. And anytime that they notice something that they really just are drawn to, they can put it in their imaginary bouquet and come back to the circle with that.
00:10:31
Speaker
So it can be something like the clouds against the blue sky on a beautiful fall day, or the rolling terrain. So it can be anything. It doesn't have to be anything. Like a burn zone or something. Yes, or even sounds.
00:10:48
Speaker
and textures and things like that. So anything can go in and imagine you're okay. And that's one of the reasons I really, really love to invite people to do that because the options are limitless. So the typical bathing experience you said would have some of these invitations in it and you're going to be out for how long now? Well, it's a three hour walk. And how far are people walking?
00:11:18
Speaker
It's not strenuous at all. It can be done literally in a parking lot as long as there's trees, but generally I do them in parks or along a trail. We typically don't go further than a quarter of a mile. Some walks I've done, they're more challenging from point A to point B along a path.
00:11:43
Speaker
And those can be a little bit more challenging because I have to kind of gauge the distance between, you know, that each invitation will take from the beginning to the end. Typically it's more like a hub. I send people out and back. We might change locations once or twice during a walk like that, but typically it's in the same area. So say an acre might be a typical, um,
00:12:10
Speaker
area that we might span over the, over the wall. Well, it sounds like the kind of thing that anyone could participate in. So the walk through nature, primarily through wooded areas. Now, what about people with limited mobility? People with, you know, walkers or wheelchairs or canes, you know, how do they do?
00:12:31
Speaker
So that's a good question. Typically what I do when I do my public walks and schedule those in the fall and in the spring, there are venues that I know are accessible and I'm always sure to schedule a walk at one of those venues that are accessible so that people without
00:12:55
Speaker
abilities like I have. I have to remember that not everybody has the same ability. They're able to participate in at least one of those venues. So when you choose these locations, these are, you already have places that you have agreements with, like organizations to use their land or their property or their park? Right. I always get permission from the property manager. That's something that
00:13:22
Speaker
was included in my training. We don't want to be trespassing, of course. So oftentimes they'll be at city or county parks or even private property. There's somebody over in near Glaresville that I am going to partner with and do walks on her property. She's given me permission to do that. So that's nice. Yeah, that's really nice. And I try to partner with people like that. And without sounding,
00:13:51
Speaker
like I never do this, I'll say that working with counties and cities sometimes becomes a little bit bureaucratic. Oh, I've dealt with that. So right. So sometimes it's easier to, and not always. I mean, some cities, I did walks in Atlanta, in Atlanta City Parks and DeKalb County Parks, and they were lovely to work with.
00:14:19
Speaker
Sometimes there's like private gardens that are delighted for me to do walks there. Dunwoody Nature Center is a place that solicited me to come do walks there. Woodland's Garden of Decatur, which is a nonprofit organization, was delighted when I approached them about that. And I still get to those two venues.
00:14:39
Speaker
as I can now that I've moved to LJ, it's not as convenient, but I still get down that way. But I'm developing new relationships and partnerships in the LJ and North Georgia area as well. Well, I know what you mean about dealing with government organizations. They're not that they're bad.
00:14:55
Speaker
but they are sort of high bound at times and they're stuck within within what they perceive to be the rules. Like I've offered to do free meditation classes at a local library. They have a resource room and it's not always used. I said, look, I could, I could come in to do free meditation. No, you're a business.
00:15:13
Speaker
Well, yeah, but I'm not charging anything. So, yeah, sometimes it's difficult dealing with local governments. So, when someone does participate in the forest bathing experience, do you include the practice of earthing?
00:15:29
Speaker
Earthing is not really a part of forest bathing, although I do invite people and I model this as long as it's not freezing cold and the ground's safe enough. I often, I usually wear sandals to my forest bathing walk, so they're easy to slip on and off. And I invite people to do that if they want to. So that's an added benefit that we can tack onto it, but it's not
00:15:55
Speaker
Really, no, it's not part of it necessarily. The earthing, yeah, it's a very wonderful practice. I know that I've encouraged people to do that. People who are feeling like they're just not centered, you know, even if they just want to go out into their backyard and lie down on the ground for 10 minutes. Just lie on the grass. It's very, yeah, that's a lot of contact with the earth. I do that from time to time. I'll be out in the woods and I just literally lie down just to get, you know, as much contact as possible.
00:16:23
Speaker
Of course, in the summertime, we do have triggers here in the south. We do. You have to be careful. Avoid the pine straw, please. Leaves are always a better idea for that type of thing. What sort of benefits can a person receive from forest bathing?
Health Benefits of Forest Bathing
00:16:38
Speaker
Do you have any favorite stories of the results of forest bathing that you could share with us?
00:16:43
Speaker
Are you violating with privacy? Yeah, no, I can talk about some of that. So the things that have been medically proven are just that our biometrics improve. And this is a lasting improvement. So people that spend a few hours out in the forest, even if you're just like camping and not really doing it intentionally, your blood pressure lowers, your pulse rate lowers,
00:17:12
Speaker
your heart rate variability improves, which means that the numbers get bigger on that. That's actually a
00:17:19
Speaker
good thing for your heart rate variability to be higher. If you are exerting yourself, your heart rate should go higher. And if you're not exerting yourself, your heart rate should go lower. That's the variability as well. And then it's within the beat as well. There's a difference in the spacing of the beat or something like that. And the waveform, the sinus rhythm. Yeah, I don't understand all the scientific part, but I know that that's part of it. And so those biometrics improve.
00:17:49
Speaker
there have been people that have reported things so I always send out or try to send out an email afterwards and a lot of times you know thanking people for coming to The Walk and oftentimes I get anecdotal stories back. One of my favorites is that a woman told me that The Walk was on a Saturday and she told me that she always goes to the store on Sunday morning to the grocery store that she
00:18:12
Speaker
hated to go to the grocery store. It was a chore that she absolutely just detested doing. So she reported that she had gone to the grocery store and gotten back home the next morning after the forest bathing walk. And she realized that she hadn't gotten all up tight at a grocery store that hadn't seemed like such a chore. And she was in her kitchen putting away the groceries and said, oh my gosh, like, you know, thought to herself, I didn't hate that.
00:18:40
Speaker
Which was, you know, that's a big win for some people. Oh, yeah, because for shopping in general can be such a real terror for some people. I know that I am one of those people who hates holiday shopping because I hate going into a mall or someplace like that and being stuck in the crowd. It just feels so frantic, right? Yeah. And it's like you're stuck in there and you can't really leave easily.
00:19:07
Speaker
Right. But she had been putting, you know, she was in this mindset still from the walk the day before. She just kind of like everything rolled off her back, it seems like. So things like that have happened. I heard from someone who actually I heard about this during a walk that someone during the walk
00:19:27
Speaker
And I think it was during a conversation with a tree that she decided to leave a relationship that wasn't working for her any longer. You know, people here, and what I think it is really, Tony, is that people, when they get quiet enough to listen to themselves, that they
00:19:49
Speaker
It matters. They can just become still enough. They can hear that inner voice. And so I think that's what this person heard that morning, really. And having a conversation with a tree, of course, if you're verbalizing something out loud to a tree, the tree's not judging, right? So I think people really open up and once you verbalize something and get it out,
00:20:17
Speaker
And then you hear what you're saying. You hear yourself. You hear yourself. And so that was something that was really rewarding to me as a guide that I realized that I had guided this person to leave a relationship. And I believe it was an abusive relationship. I'm not certain, but whatever the reason, it was a valid reason. And that person was able to make that decision that they needed to make.
00:20:45
Speaker
Yeah, you know, I'm a shamanic practitioner and from my own experiences communing with nature as a shamanic practitioner, I know that such encounters with nature and the energies that dwell in the forest can often be very emotional.
00:21:03
Speaker
It can be enlightening, sometimes a little bit disturbing. I once sat beside this big old oak tree, huge. And remember, it was a double oak tree, two that had grown together. And each one was really big. I could barely stand it with my arms. And
00:21:22
Speaker
I was very sad at the time about something so I spoke with the oak tree and she spoke back to me and I received her wisdom and I quite literally sat there and sobbed because I realized what she was saying to me was truth and it was good advice. And so I'm assuming that this sort of thing that you just got
00:21:47
Speaker
you just told me about was that sort of thing? Yes, yes. And I do believe that trees have wisdom. Think about how old some of these trees are and what they've seen and what they've, you know, what's going on around them. And the fact that they're stationary is it really kind of leads to me, that's really special because they're reliant on
00:22:16
Speaker
on what's been brought to them in a way. But yet they're sturdy and they've always been there. And I think that there's just a special connection when we can be welcomed by a tree enough to sit and talk with it. I do think that it can impart its wisdom on us.
00:22:38
Speaker
Well, you know, scientists have in the last few years come to know that trees communicate with one another through the network of mycelium, you know, the mushroom fibers that are all down in the ground. Most of the time people think about a mushroom, they think about the fruiting body that's above the ground, you know, the little white or red or orange or whatever thing that they see growing on a tree or stomp or out of the earth. They don't realize that there are hundreds of miles
00:23:07
Speaker
of mycelium fibers underneath the soil that act like nerves. They facilitate that communication between the various plants. And it's amazing how much nature does talk with, share information among all of its living things.
Nature's Wisdom and Communication
00:23:29
Speaker
if a tree has is being attacked by say an insect it will actually put out a signal to other trees right so that they can emit a chemical barrier then against that insect and so they they do they help guard each other um and then and then the mother trees also you know guard the saplings and then when the mother tree it's time for sort of you know uh fall and and
00:23:57
Speaker
She continues to feed the earth right through the decay, but that allows the baby trees, the saplings to have their chance at seeing the new mother trees. So I think that's a really neat cycle. Food for thought. How often do you lead these forest bathing excursions?
Scheduling Forest Walks
00:24:20
Speaker
How does a person go about being part of one? Are they seasonal or do you hold them year round?
00:24:27
Speaker
Well, typically in Atlanta, I did them in the fall and in the spring. The winters can get, you know,
00:24:35
Speaker
Winters are iffy. You can have really, really cold days in the winter and mild days in the winter. So that's kind of hard to schedule those. And people in Atlanta aren't as prepared for cold weather as they are, say, in North Georgia. So the other thing that happens is in the city, it's a bit warmer than it is here. So typically, I schedule walks in the fall and in the spring. But now that I'm in LJ, I'll probably consider doing them
00:25:04
Speaker
sporadically year-round. I'm still doing a couple in Atlanta here and there and I've got a couple of conversations dealing with people who are property owners here. They're always out on my website under bookwalk and that's just how to how to find walks. Occasionally they'll be advertised in little
00:25:25
Speaker
you know, like little city or county newsletters as well. The little flyers that you pick up outside restaurants and things like that. Yeah, just various places like that. But my website always has them. And I also have a Facebook presence and you can just look that up on radio. Well, I'm definitely going to put your website in the notes, the text notes for the podcast. Oh, great. Thank you so much. You know, some people don't like to walk in the rain. And you probably counted that sometimes. But for me,
00:25:56
Speaker
I have always loved walking in the rain. Of course, it can get messy, but if you're in the forest, there shouldn't be too much mud. It's mostly, you know, the ground is covered with leaves or needles or whatever, but I love the smell of the earth after the rain. It's called petrichor, and I love that. I like the word, but I love the smell of the earth after rain. It's a special smell, and I'm glad that you talked about weather because
00:26:21
Speaker
dangerous you know hazardous weather is something I will cancel a walk for but if it's just gonna rain I love because it opens up a whole new possibility for invitations like the raindrops right and so I just tell people to you know bring up bring an umbrella put a raincoat on if you want to come on we're gonna do it anyway and some of my most delightful walks have actually been in the rain and I too I'll go hiking in the rain I just put on a
00:26:49
Speaker
on a weatherproof running cap and head out to the woods. And it is a special smell. My dog actually, I can't hardly take her for a hike after it's rained because she's too busy sniffing to want to make much progress down the trail, so. I think it livens up the smells. It does. I think it kind of like, you know, it poisons everything and it brings the smells up. So yeah, that is a really special time.
00:27:16
Speaker
To me, it's like a culmination of all the elements, much like, and it's kind of a metaphor, too, of what happens when, to me, what happens to people during a forest bathing walk is bringing our spiritual, our body, you know, our souls, our minds and our bodies all together in one place, in one practice. And it, it
00:27:46
Speaker
It offers a wholeness. There's a wholeness in that. A lot of times we're just in our bodies, say if we're out running along a trail. We might be just in our bodies.
00:27:58
Speaker
Our minds could be somewhere else totally. Or maybe listening to music. Or sometimes we're just in our head and we don't even notice anything else. Or we might be in the middle of a spiritual practice and all we're doing is that spiritual thing at the moment. But to me, when we're out forest bathing,
00:28:18
Speaker
And it brings people, like, just reconnects us with nature. And think about it, we are nature. So when we get reconnected to that, it's like remembering. There's a remembering in that, right? We've been extracted from that for so long, from our food sources and just living
00:28:40
Speaker
in nature that when we get reconnected, there's a re-memoring. And to me, that brings everything back together for us. I agree. I agree with you wholeheartedly. We don't need to have everything wrapped in cellophane. Right, right. Well, I want to thank you very sincerely for taking the time to speak with me and to share some of your experience as a forest bathing guide with all my listeners.
Join the Experience
00:29:08
Speaker
Now, my friends, you can find out much more information about these forest bathing experiences by going to Robin's website. I'm going to have it in print on the description for the podcast, but I'll tell you it's www.renewal-by-nature.com. And I want to encourage you to drop by there.
00:29:33
Speaker
And there is contact information there, right? Yeah, absolutely. It's in my footer. Um, there's my email address there as well as my phone number. You can call or text that phone number. And, um, if I don't answer, I'll call you right back if you leave a message. Okay. And you said you have a Facebook presence as well. Absolutely. Yeah. You can just, um, type in renewal by nature. There's my logos, a little kind of a green multi-colored
00:29:59
Speaker
flower of sorts. So yeah, you'll, you'll know it's, it's, you've gotten to the right page when you see that. Okay. Well, that sounds great. I want to thank you again. And yeah, maybe I get a chance to participate in one of your walks someday. Thanks, Tony. And I hope that you can make one, one of these days. I am planning on scheduling a few here, so I'll let you know about those. Great. Thank you. Thanks for having me today.
00:30:27
Speaker
I want to thank you for being here and listening to the podcast today. I hope it's been interesting and informative and thought provoking. If you did find it interesting, please be sure to return for another episode and tell your friends about it too. I appreciate if you do that, you can share directly from most podcast platforms and subscribing to the podcast would be great. If you want to tell me you liked the show,
00:30:54
Speaker
or that you hated it, that you agree or disagree with me or anything else really, go for it. Just leave a message for me on your podcast platform. Until next time, stay safe, stay healthy, and keep an open mind. Namaste.