Forest Therapy isn’t just a walk. It’s a deep experience with nature in community with others. It is a practice. You notice things you normally wouldn’t notice and receive the benefit of a guide who can introduce you to experiences you wouldn’t consider on your own. A guide doesn’t talk about the plants, trees, and life around you as a naturalist might; although sometimes, they do. As a Master Naturalist, I know the names of the trees and plants, for the most part. Yet, it’s not about their names. It’s about knowing them in a very different way.
A guide offers invitations. The invitations that are presented in a forest therapy walk open the senses, slow us down and get us ready to receive what the forest, preserve, park or arboretum, has to offer. The tea ceremony at the end of every walk further strengthens community with something foraged that day or could-have-been-foraged locally. Could you do this on your own? Perhaps. Will you? Probably not. It’s why I felt the urge to create this 12-month experience for you.
With all the benefits of being led by a guide, maybe the question you’re asking is why would a guide offer you 12 Months of Virtual Forest Therapy that you can do on your own?
Well, it isn’t an ‘either or’. It’s a ‘both and’. While a guide and a community deepens the experience, this is a practice that, when done regularly, even on your own, changes you.
This event takes you through 12 walks, designed month by month, considering the seasons and the spiritual essence of what being in nature means. You can start anywhere and just keep going. Activities are called invitations because you get to choose how you use them, or even if you use them. Find the invitations you love; discard the ones you don’t. When you attend a guided walk, see what the guide offers as invitations and incorporate them.
May the forest be with all of us, as a beautiful, regenerative example of how life sustains itself. The natural world needs us as much as we need it!