NatureMinded

Relationship lessons from nature

This text I wrote originally appeared on March 29th, 2018 on Healing Forest, an amazing initiative that aims to connect people and forests for both of their health. This text is edited by my dear friend and colleague Nitin Das, the man behind the well-loved film, India´s Healing Forests.

What can nature teach us about relationships?

There’s this place in my favourite forest, where big old beeches grow. It´s a special spot, because at the bottom of those beeches, there grows a thick layer of moss.

This is the place where I go to when I feel like I can’t handle it alone. When I need to be held like a baby. I go and lean against one of those beeches, with my feet pressed into the soft moss, and I swear, the tree closes in on me, like arms reaching around to hold me. I feel listened to, without any words being exchanged, and I feel consoled. There’s no judging. Only acceptance and compassion. As a thank you for listening, I value this forest, and do my best to protect it now and in the future. It’s probably exactly what the tree would want from me. A perfect exchange for our friendship.

Successful relationships are formed for mutual benefit.

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My son has also established a relationship with his nearby nature. One day he pointed out to me that of the two bushes next to his tree house, one was a nice one while the other was a naughty one. Maybe the thorns in the naughty bush has something to do with his judgement. So, according to this little man, the bushes not only have their own personalities, but he has also established a relationship with the bushes (one that is less close, obviously).

We quickly judge the personality of someone based on their behaviour towards us. A greater understanding would develop if we realise that personalities and qualities are shaped by the outer environment as well as the inner genetic make-up. In the design of nature, each and every life form has a unique role to play.

So for a deeper relationship to develop, one must start with a better sense of observation.

Kids

For the creatures or people, we do know, we often overlook their value and start taking them for granted. It doesn’t dawn to us that we are taking these people (or creatures) for granted before someone else recognises their uniqueness or, what’s worse, before we lose them.

When I was a newcomer in Hawaii, I found the myna birds, with their oversized heads and their yellow masks, rather comical looking. To me they looked funny and mischievous, always up to no good. I liked those birds. After some years, I had got so used to them that when my mother came to visit and wanted to photograph those little birds, I found it a waste of film. Sustaining a relationship requires a continuous effort, otherwise it loses its vitality.

And finally in nature and human nature, there are surprisingly many similarities. Though romantics often idealize nature, there is pain and suffering, continuous competition, sickness and loss in nature too. A relationship is incomplete without the acceptance of the imperfections.

Nature has a lot to teach us. Though we all fight for our survival: for sustenance, for shelter, for the possibility to maintain our species – the cycle of life would not be possible without interconnections, interdependence and impermanence.

Nature helps us to mirror our relationships within the human community and allows us to practice our relationship skills early on. Nature is a compassionate and patient teacher, as it doesn’t push us, but allows us to find it out ourselves. The relationship we have with nature, the backbone to our wellbeing, can teach us most about ourselves.

Conclusions from Workshop on Connectedness with Nature

On 4th of October 2018, the University of Antwerp, the Province of Antwerp and the Belgian Community of Practice Biodiversity and Health, together with many other organizations, including NatureMinded organized the Natuur op verwijziging (Nature on prescription) – event.
As the closing event of the Light on Green project and as part of the Healthcare and Natural Living Environment Chair, it is also a follow-up to the European OneHealth / EcoHealth workshop organized by the Belgian Community of Practice Biodiversity and Health in 2016. The meeting was mainly aimed at professionals from the health sector and the nature sector, but is also open to other interested parties. The main objective of the event is to promote cooperation between the health and nature sectors as well as cooperation on nature and health within these sectors. And, quite ruthlessly, to crowdsource input for future projects headed by University of Antwerp. The program included lectures by scientists and policy makers, thematic workshops and a market on which various initiatives (from research, policy and practice) were presented.

At the Verbondenheid met natuur (Connectedness with Nature) workshop that I had the opportunity to co-coordinate with Patricia Mergen from Plantentuin Meise, we had the pleasure to hear talks from different speakers from the field. Dr ir. Femke Beute from Lichtgroen Welzijn (NL) gave us the scientific prelude to connectedness with nature as a concept; Anna Leonard from Goodplanet Belgium and their their efforts as an organization to connecting different target groups with nature; Herman Vereycken from Terra Therapeutica and their work with Therapeutic gardens and garden therapy among prison convicts; Miet Vanhassel from Brussels Outdoor School and their unique effort to bring the Scandinavian Forest School practice to Belgium; and Patricia from Plantentuin Meise talk about a concept new to many, i.e. plant blindness. I also had the chance to share my thoughts on Forest Therapy as a way to reconnect with nature.

Though the discussion at the workshop was very inspiring, these were the lessons that were taken further to the panel discussion afterward:

Health sector is moving toward nature because there are so many aspects of wellbeing are connected to nature and nature offers opportunities and solutions. Nature connectedness is one of these fundamental wellbeing questions.
It is very important to look beyond nature to what nature can mean and how it can be made meaningful. Thanks to a good interpretation, connectedness can be increased.
Designing and adapting spaces in the city so that they enable and invite contact with nature, even when living in the city.
Forest therapy goes beyond superficial contact with nature, thanks to the professional guidance, it provides a shortcut to create mindfulness moments.
Collaboration is key and should include very different sectors, including prisons and vulnerable groups, instead of the usual suspects.

Let us plant seeds to continue working across sectors on more connectedness: nature, education, therapies. We must move toward an ethics of life, promote awareness and think before we intervene with an ecosystem. Looking for nature and experiencing nature is (or should be) also a societal goal.

IFTDays Seminar 2018 Conclusions

The first international Forest Therapy Days was held in Karjalohja, at Elontuli course center in the beginning of August this year.

The seminar was a full day of sharing knowledge, life and work experiences, good practices and forest therapy methodologies. The presentations gave to us a possibility to travel the world and to discover how different and at the same time similar we are: facing similar environmental, social health or human challenges.

Dr Iwao Uehara from Tokyo University of Agriculture shared with us his story about how Forest Therapy in Japan was born and how it evolved during the last decades. Kirsi Salonen from Jyväskylä and Tampere Universities helped us to reflect on the Finnish nature experiences and ongoing research in comprehensive health experience field, relationships between wellbeing, self-acceptance and connectedness with nature, role of social support in rising awareness on nature positive influences and finding that nature, which comforts each of us.

Dr Heli Jutila from Finnish Natural Heritage Foundation, shared her experiences from the protected areas, highlighting the fact that even in the forest rich countries like Finland, we have to stay vigilant to preserve forest resources for future generations to be able to continue to enjoy forests as provisioning, regulating supportive, cultural ecosystem services for human health and wellbeing.

Iwao Uehara, foto by Sara Malve-Ahlroth

Heli Jutila, foto by Sara Malve-Ahlroth

Kirsi Salonen, foto by Sara Malve-Ahlroth

Adela and Marko from Luonnontie consultancy brought us on the path of how practically, with powerful tools like knowledge, compatibility and creation of feelings of safety we can get closer to forest paradise.

Film maker Nitin Das´ experiences and given examples showed us the importance of music, forest art and creativity in bringing more people into nature and of creating a global community.

Adela Pajunen & Marko Leppänen, foto by Sara Malve-Ahlroth

Marko Leppänen, foto by Sara Malve-Ahlroth

Nitin Das, foto by Sara Malve-Ahlroth

More speakers underlined the role of communities for personal development, healing processes in dependencies, life crises or searching for meaning of our lives. The examples from the Sápmi region stressed the importance of nature and culture based work forms for people whose culture is tied to the land. The SámiSoster´s Goaikkanas project is also the first work form that considers the Sami´s language and culture. Riitta Wahlström from Taiga institute provided us with some very practical tips on how to help others to respect and love nature more and how to use forest therapy to increase self-knowledge, to enhance social skills or to empower teenagers.

In the afternoon session we took a closer look at the well established American Association of Nature and Forest Therapy Guides and Programs (ANFT) approach, when Ben Page walked us through the ANFT growth story, their mission and ways of operating. From the same ANFT family, Petra Cau Wetterholm from Shinrin yoku Sweden shared great insights and considerations from her practice of taking forest therapy as treatment in public mental health care system in Sweden. Also a practitioner from the ANFT approach of Forest Therapy, Youmin Yap from Shinrin Yoku Singapore showed us, that we can also connect with nature though nature or forest therapy in urban settings.

Petra Cau Wetterholm, foto by Sara Malve-Ahlroth

Yap You Min, foto by Sara Malve-Ahlroth

Ben Page, foto by Sara Malve-Ahlroth

The Finnish Sirpa Arvonen gave us an introduction to her Forest Mind method, born from a combination of years of work experience around employee wellbeing in organizations together with her personal nature connection, all backed by scientific evidence.

Anders Mickos and Malin Heikkinen showed us how they have translated everything we heard in the seminar into primary health care and social services in Sipoo city. To close the day, Dr Liisa Tyrväinen from Natural Resources Institute Finland gave us a very informative high level update and statement from the world of research in her speech titled “How Convincing is the Research Evidence of Health Effects of Nature? “

Liisa Tyrväinen, foto by Sara Malve-Ahlroth

Malin Heikkinen, foto by Sara Malve-Ahlroth

Anders Mickos, foto by Sara Malve-Ahlroth

Our goal was to create a space where practitioners and scientists could meet to exchange experiences and help drive forward this fast-growing field. We succeeded in bringing together people from a variety of backgrounds: majority came from health and medical sector, nature sector (wilderness guides, nature educators) and the creative sectors. We also included academic researchers from different disciplines, forestry sector representatives from different countries, and from the corporate sector.

Though women were in majority, men made up a quarter of the participants of the retreat. European participants made up over 60% of the participants, with a majority coming from the host country Finland. In addition, participants came from different parts of Asia, such as Japan, Singapore and India. North-America, both USA and Canada, were represented as well.

Sara Malve-Ahlroth

Feedback from the long seminar day was mostly good or even excellent (95%), though the length of the day and some practical items about the organization received some criticism. We are thankful for all the feedback we have received that allows us to improve our activities next year.

The partner search of IFTDays2019 will be launched by end of September. Please follow the Facebook page of IFTDays and the website, which will be undergoing some renewals as well.

If you haven´t already signed up for the IFTDays email list, you should do so by explicitly stating this on an email to the address: foresttherapydays@gmail.com

More experiences in various languages can be read here (under construction):

How IFTDays 2018 came to be

We have been asked time and time again, what brought on IFTDays. Here is our story, written a while back already but got buried under all the other work.

The idea for this event started brewing in the hearts and minds of two Finnish forest therapy practitioners. Heidi Korhonen, a project manager from the southwestern coast of Finland and Katriina Kilpi, an expat Finn working as a consultant in Belgium, work as a Nature Connection Coach and a Forest Mind guide, respectively. The two exchanged experiences and realized how different their contexts were, and how these contexts shape their work as forest therapy practitioners.

Heidi was astonished to find how her work as a nature Connection Coach, which is based on ecopsychology and ecotherapy, was received in Finland. Although forests and nature at large are a crucial part of our culture and important to the general wellbeing of Finns, the value of Heidi´s work was difficult to establish.

Outdoorsy lifestyle is something typical to the Nordic countries and in Finland and forests have traditionally been a place for many utilitarian functions. Quoting Florence Williams in her book The Nature Fix: Why Nature Makes Us Happier, Healthier, and More Creative (2017, p.134): “Nature is where the Finns can exult in their nationalistic obsessions of berry picking, mushrooming, fishing, lake swimming, and Nordic skiing. They don’t watch moose, they eat them the way their ancestors did. And they do these things often”.

The forest has always been a place for the often introverted Finns to get away from the world and find peace. Was there no need for coaching for nature connection in Finland? The challenges in Finland made Heidi look beyond her home country. She established her work online, and as a result, her Forest Therapy Today website and social media has now a few thousand subscribers.

Katriina brought the Finnish Metsämieli, a method of forest bathing that includes elements of mindfulness and coaching, to Belgium under the name of Forest Mind. Belgium, one of Europe´s least forested countries, had not heard of forest therapy before. Trying to understand what she was up to, many tried to fit the label of life coach on her. However, where life coaching in nature, or wandelcoaching, as it is called in Belgium and the Netherlands, focuses on the dialogue between the coach and the coachee, Katriina´s form of Forest Mind focuses on the dialogue between the person and her surroundings. Both approaches are good, but different.

Forest Mind was not an instant hit in Belgium, though it was well received among those who came to try it. Katriina was met with surprised reactions, as people found Forest Mind to be very “spiritual”. But of course, there was nothing more spiritual about those walks except what people were experiencing as they were connecting with their natural environment in a more mindful way. Katriina felt she needed more work on her guiding skills and decided to let Forest Mind rest for a while and continued guiding regular nature walks, all the while sneaking in elements from Forest Mind.

Power of Global community

Feeling somewhat alone with their endeavors, both women stumbled upon the Forest Friends Facebook group put together by Nitin, a new acquaintance from India. They quickly learned that forest friends come in all shapes and sizes, ages, skin tones and cultural backgrounds. And, from different kinds of natural environments. The group and the newly found community made these two realize how much power there was in the global community and how much wisdom every individual had to share. Driven by their own nature connection and the belief, that helping people find their connection can be the key to solving many of the current challenges we are facing in the world, IFTDays started shaping up. And because the two had already learned to know people from various backgrounds and domains through their interaction in the Forest Friends community, they knew exactly who to contact first.

Dreaming big

The first ever IFTDays has come up organically. Friends invited friends, who invited their networks. Heidi and Katriina came across people in their work and studies, and as references in the works they read. After word got out, they were contacted by people who wanted to participate in the program. The efforts have been very well received, which is a sign of the right timing for this event.Though a number of practitioners and scientists whose work is tremendously important were not able to be fit into this first edition, we hope that the event itself is a testament to all the incredible individuals´ effort thus far and that in the following editions of IFTDays, all of this important work will become recognized.

Heidi and Katriina are organizing everything from “thin air”, meaning that no outside funding has been used. “We hope to change that in the next editions to make the event accessible to more people. We had to start somewhere and we are learning as we go along”, say Katriina and Heidi who have received inquiries for next year´s event from people who are not able to join them this year. “Give us a few more months, and we will start on that too. First we want to see what IFTDays 2018 will become”.

Katriina and Heidi: “We are the engines of IFTDays but we all make it. What drives us is the idea that everyone will return home from this event inspired and fired up by the experiences they have had, armed with new knowledge and contacts they can use to take this important work forward, as well as a feeling of belonging to a solid worldwide forest therapy community”.

1st International Forest Therapy Days 2018 (opening words by Katriina & Heidi)

Welcome, forest friends, to the first International Forest Therapy Days!

We have named this event International Forest Therapy Days. But as it happens, the definition seems to still hang in the air. Who practices forest therapy? A human being to a human being in the forest environment? Who is the therapist anyway? Theift up our moods, rejuvenate and calm us down at the same time. And the list goes on.

human or, as Amos Clifford so beautifully describes her, the more than-human world? Therapy has been defined as “the attempted remediation of a health problem”. Indeed, bathing in the forest air can decrease our stress levels, improve our immune function, lower blood pressure and high blood sugar levels, increase natural killer cells, l

Elontuli course center

Dr Cindy McPherson Frantz from Oberlin College and Conservatory has been researching nature connection for years. In a recent talk, Dr Frantz underlined that of the so called core social motives, the need to belong is one of the most powerful motivators of human behaviour. According to Frantz, there is evidence that nature connection fulfills this need to belong and thus meets our most fundamental psychological needs.

Dr Frantz also posed the question as an implication to practice: “How can interactions with nature be designed so that they maximize a sense of connection and belonging?” And further still, “How can the sense of belonging be used to motivate pro-environmental behaviour?” That is a valid question, as nature connectedness has been found to indicate pro-environmental behaviour.

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Acting in an environmentally friendly manner is urgently needed. After all, we have managed to use all the renewable resources of the Earth by August 1st, 7 months into the year on the Global Earth Overshoot Day. The same day was reached already in April this year in Finland.

But behavioral change is difficult, especially because we humans are an impatient sort of beings. We rush from one moment to the next, not really present in any. It often takes a crisis or disaster in our lives to stop the race and to pause.

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The beauty of forest therapy guides can be summarized as being the providers of a shortcut. A shortcut that makes us hit that pause button faster, without having to go through a crisis first. And guidance is sometimes needed to experience the sensation of connectedness, especially in challenging environments. A forest therapy outing, as we know, is not just a forest walk. It goes beyond the superficial contact with nature. A guide gently sets the pace to slow, and stops you to smell the roses. A guide shows the forest from a different point of view.

Sara Malve-Ahlroth

Lumber, Richardson & Sheffield (2017), have recently identified 5 pathways to nature connectedness. These are:

Contact, e.g. using the senses to listen to birds and smell the flowers
Beauty, e.g. appreciating natural scenery or engaging with nature through the arts.
Meaning, e.g. language and metaphors
Emotion, e.g. reflecting on your feelings about nature.
Compassion, e.g. behaving in an ethical and ecological manner towards nature

Most forest therapy approaches accidentally incorporate these pathways as they happen to focus on opening the senses; engaging with the aesthetic qualities of nature; finding inspiration in nature in symbolism and metaphors; seeking an emotional bond with nature and in the best case, extending oneself to include nature (Lumber et al., 2017).

IMG_20180810_181855 — Paying her respects at the ancient oak of Paavola.

Forest therapy not only exposes us to the physical and mental health effects of being in the forest, but also creates possibility for people to connect with nature. Sounds like a winner formula. No wonder that forest therapy and many of its forms are trending at the moment. But how do we make sure this is not just a trend? How do we make sure it reaches those who need it the most urgently but never know to look for it?

The scientific community might feel the audience breathing down their necks: all the eyes are watching. We desperately want to know how nature works on us & why nature works on us.

But research is not much if it’s not implemented into action. It is important to listen to the practitioners, the ones who bring the field forward.

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That´s what IFTD is about: creating a space for the exchange between research and practice at the seminar, but also a medium to learn and to try out these different approaches and styles of forest therapy at the retreat. Some want to experience a deep spiritual connection, while others simply long for a quiet moment in nature. Needs are different, so different styles are needed and welcomed.

And to underline the core message of IFTD, we borrow the words of Dr. Howard Frumkin (2017):

We need culture change. A deeply felt appreciation of the natural world and the human place in it, a sense of reverence and humility, and openness to awe and wonder, the ability to think in systems, a commitment to creating and preserving a legacy – these must be promoted as cultural norms.

These, he says, can be found in the wisdoms of indigenous people worldwide, in philosophy, art, poetry, and popular culture, from ancient Greece to the New England transcendentalists.

..and we might add: in the Japanese tradition of forest bathing, the Zen practice, India’s ancient wealth of knowledge, the traditional ecological knowledge and the cultural traditions being revived across the world.

And if we look deep into ourselves, in that individual nature connection in all of us.

Sara Malve-Ahlroth

-Katriina & Heidi –

Interview with Mr. Amos Clifford: Engaging in the healing dialogue between humans and other-than-humans

One of guest speakers of this summers´ First International Forest Therapy Days event is Mr. Amos Clifford, the founder of the American Association of Nature and Forest Therapy. ANFT has trained and certified 384 forest therapy guides across the globe. We are honored to have Mr. Clifford speaking at the seminar, and a guiding at the retreat. We had a chance to dig deeper into how he got started with the fastest growing Forest Therapy approaches with a certification program.

Here is an interview with him for your reading pleasure!

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“I grew up in the foothills of the mountains of Santa Barbara. The Santa Barbara Botanical Gardens were very near my home. In those days, there were no admission fees or barriers to prevent neighborhood children from playing there, so I did… a lot. Because the gardens are organized into sections that collect plants from specific bioregions, I unconsciously absorbed a lot of knowledge about plant communities and species.

In 2012, after several years of deep inquiry involving multiple vision fasts, I made a 10 year commitment dedicating the next phase of my life to bringing forest therapy into the world beyond the borders of Japan and Korea. I founded ANFT in 2012. I then spent a couple of years guiding many walks, giving workshops, and working with my mentees. I wove together many strands from my 40-year professional career to create what is now the Standard Sequence, Language of Invitation, Way of the Guide, and other
elements of forest therapy as taught by ANFT.

oc-gonzalez-448966-unsplash — Photo by OC Gonzalez on Unsplash

I suppose if I had not founded ANFT I would continue to explore and teach methods of healing dialogue between humans and other-than-humans. Because embodied awareness, imaginal sense, and development of the Ecological Self are central to the work of restorative dialogue with the more-than- human world, it would have looked a lot like forest therapy.

In the years 2009-2012 I was working in restorative practices, where my interest was unusual, because I was focusing on how to use restorative dialogue to heal relationships between humans and the other-than-human species we are harming, and also the landscapes and places that sustain us all. I developed the “Aloha Ropes” technique then, which is still used in the Council of Waters and Trees workshops that ANFT provides.

I don’t have a specific hero; my intuition has long been that when we choose a hero or singular role model (such as guru, for example) we risk dis-empowering ourselves. I am aware of a being who is known to me as Coyote who has been instrumental in my path and while Coyote is not really a role model (that would be a disaster!) he is a source of inspiration and periodic humbling that is very important to me. A role model to me is anyone who has fully embodied their unique medicine and is living from a place of authenticity.

My work is not separate from my life. It’s all in nature. In fourth grade I memorized these lines by the poet Robert Frost, from his poem “Two Tramps in Mud Time” (the one that also mentions the “path less taken.):

Yield who will to their separation
My aim in living is to unite
My avocation and my vocation
as my two eyes make one in sigh.

That has always been my aim and I’m happy to say that now that I am in my sixties I have accomplished that, specifically through the work of forest therapy and training guides”.

Introducing Nitin Das, the forest film maker from the Himalayas

You´ve probably already seen the beautiful promotional film of the International Forest Therapy Days. It has been made by Nitin Das, the forest filmmaker from India. Nitin has the exceptional ability to capture people’s attention by telling fascinating stories of uncommon people and extraordinary forests. Nitin is currently working on a series of films, one of which we get to premier at the IFTD retreat, that describe how forests heal people. On top of film making, Nitin engages people to connect with nature through different campaigns that he runs through the Healing Forest project, which he is the founder of.

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The fire to make films about healing forests was ignited by his travels to many beautiful places, which he noticed were quickly disappearing. When he came across an article in the National Geographic about forest therapy, he realized he had found a way to reconnect people with nature.

The lush rainforests of North East India have set the scene for Nitin’s fondest nature related memories. We are lucky enough to open a window to his memories though a film he has made of the area.

Screen Shot 2018-06-25 at 20.43.16 — Image by Nitin Das.

If Nitin was not making films, he would probably still be engaging with forests, by planting trees somewhere in the mountains. He finds his inspiration in nature, especially in the mountains, forests and rivers, which have always provided him with answers and showed him the direction. Nitin spends a lot of time in nature tending to his own nature connection. The magnificent Indian Himalayas are his favorite place. In the fascinating valleys and magical forests of the Himalayas one can truly feel the connection with nature.

Interview with Dr. Iwao Uehara

Interview with Dr. Iwao Uehara, the man from the pine forest

This summer, NatureMinded & Forest Therapy Today are organizing the first International Forest Therapy Days in beautiful southern Finland. This event brings together practitioners of forest therapy, as well as scientists, health care professionals and natural resource management representatives to discuss and better align their common interests. The seminar is followed by a 4-day-retreat where leading forest therapy practitioners will introduce different forest therapy practices. Participants to the entire event will receive certificates.

One of guest speakers at the seminar, and a guide at the retreat, Dr. Iwao Uehara, is a professor of Silviculture laboratory of Forest Science Department of Tokyo University of Agriculture. Dr. Uehara is the president of The Society of Forest Amenity and Human Health Promotion in Japan, a licensed counselor and a Shinrin-ryoho practitioner.

We had a chance to chat with Dr. Uehara about why he does what he does. Here is a short interview with him. Enjoy!

For Dr. Uehara, the foundations for his work within forest therapy was laid at a very young age.

“It was natural red pine forest in my home town, Nagano city. Every nursery and kindergarten children have to hike in the nature. I climbed up to red pine forest. I do remember the day and the smell of the forest”.

red pine tree — Dr. Uehara & the pine forest

His love for the forests became his occupation. His form of forest therapy, shinrin-ryoho, which translates as “forest amenity” is his own mixture to which he has gained inspiration from the book “Japanese forest and nature conservation” by Masataka Oomasa in 1973. Dr. Oomasa was a professor at the University of Tokyo, who researched forest soil. “But he introduced a small episode about a depressed girl who was in heavy depression condition, but with the help of walking in forests through the seasons, she recovered from this depression condition. This small episode in the book gave me a inspiration about forest therapy”.

Another inspirator was his teacher, Mr. Kenji Sasaki, who was a teacher for disabled students. He took the children to the local forest and taught occupational activities. Finally, another book that inspired Dr. Uehara, was Momo by Michael Ende in 1973. “Momo, the girl, has no license and only listens to others talking. But clients figure out their problems. She is a model of counselor for me. In the forest, forest and I just listen to the clients talking”.

Dr Uehara enjoys spending time in any forest, but there is one above others: that same pine tree forest in Nagano Prefecture, with which he has been familiar his whole life. In this forest, Dr. Uehara prefers to go to in the morning in every season. “Morning time, the air is clean, it is quiet, and peaceful”, says Dr. Uehara.

His second favorite forest is his own forest. “There are many animals and various species of trees living in my forest. They say nothing, of course, but I feel the words in their minds kindly. It is my peaceful time”.

Lucky for him, he gets to practice what he loves. If Dr.Uehara was not working as a researcher and educator, he would probably be a picture book writer or a novelist. “But I will publish picture books in this real life!”.

But it does not look like he will need to change jobs any time soon, as there is still much to explore in healing effects of the forests and forest therapy. “We have to keep learning and studying through our lives!”, urges Dr. Uehara.

Food for thought..

Neem eens een bosbad. Shinrin-yoku, het aspirientje van de natuur. Last van stress, vermoeidheid en een gebrek aan concentratie? Shinrin-yoku, de Japanse kunst van het bosbaden, belooft een oplossing voor alles waar de moderne mens aan lijdt. Nu nog een bos vinden, en de moed om uit die sofa te komen (De Standaard, 28/02/2018)

Winter post #2: Big splash in the bucket

This weekend my friends and I treated ourselves to a weekend at the sea at an ocean front apartment.

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Oostende was recuperating from a northwestern storm called Dieter that made some big waves and caused the gusts of wind to be mighty powerful. These gusts also brought ashore a bunch of seabirds that would normally not make their way to the coast. One type of seabird, on the other hand, made its business to get to know us much more intimately.

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We were walking down the shoreline, slowly making our way to the city for some fresh fish, when we suddenly crossed paths with a bird. This bird immediately headed towards us, directly to the feet of my friend, making a noise and not looking very happy at all. It seemed it had hurt itself – why else would it so fearlessly approach humans? And fearless it was, and very determined to be making contact with one of my friends. I quickly found the number for injured birds in Oostende and called them and as luck would have it, they answered and sent someone to pick up the bird immediately!

As I grabbed my phone, my friend picked up the bird who almost immediately stopped the weak attempts to peck at my friend´s glove covered hands and settled down in the warm woolen mittens. Turned out, this penguin resembling bird was a young razorbill (ruokki in Finnish, alk in Dutch).

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After the bird was rescued by one of the volunteers from the Middelkerke Vogelaziel, we continued our weekend of good food and wine, long conversations, laughter, and lots of kilometers covered walking in the sea breeze.

As we walked along the shore, we started noticing more and more trash that had washed ashore. It was incredible: everything from pieces of fish nets, ropes (heavy-duty and just normal-duty), lots and lots of plastic bottle caps and plastic bottles, and pieces of torn balloons.. Everywhere we looked, there was trash to be picked up. We noticed and adopted an old plastic baskets that once probably belonged to fishermen who had lost their fishing baskets from the deck to the sea. Now they had landed back on the shore and they served perfectly as our trash carriers.

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Cleaning up the shore or the forest is something I do regularly. I don´t go to the forest or the seaside with the intention of cleaning up, but I cannot help but pick up the trash that I come across.

I know it can feel useless as there will always be more trash to collect. I had to convince some of my friends to follow my lead. But in the end, we were all exercising our squatting muscles, picking up the trash.

This kind of catch could make one depressed, but to me it works just the opposite. It gives me a rush of hope and a feeling of empowerment. Afterall, I am making a difference. I can help to clean up that stretch of beach. What´s more, I can help out by making sure my crap doesn’t end up in the ocean, educating my children to protect the ocean and keep on picking up the crap that I come across. I can lead by example and hope that that example is contagious.

Similarly, us attempting to save that young bird, was a reminder that indeed, small drops can together make a big splash in the bucket. This bird was not supposed to be where it was, but nevertheless ended up on the Belgian coast being cuddled and fussed over by a group of Finnish women. She (or he) certainly made an impression on us – it was a lovely contact we had with this wonder of nature, and though we worried about how the poor thing would pull through, we knew it ended up in a warm and safe place where it had the best chances of making it out and back to where it should be.

oostende

Enabling daily explorations in nature

Growing up in Finland in a small town, we had a wonderful little forest close to and a big yard around our apartment building. There were varied terrains: stones and rocks, little hills and slopes, bushes, and trees to climb into. By spending hours and hours on that yard waiting for friends to come out to play, I had the time to learn the type of typical spots the wild strawberries would grow in, trace the surface of the rocks on the yard and know where most of the lichens grow, and to learn not to walk barefoot under the specific part of the yard where there were too many pine cones and needless to hurt your bare feet. With friends we played around in the small forest where we flipped a coin to help us decide the direction we would take and where we climbed the rocks and scratched our knees in the process.

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According to an article on a Finnish News site YLE, a child´s social environment, friends and hobbies might have a greater effect on the formation of one´s relationship with nature, more so than the place of residence.

Following this line of thinking, children growing up in the country side should grow up with a healthy relationship with nature. However, according to the environmental educator, Mari Elonheimo, interviewed in this piece, the types of hobbies a child has and the activities the family engages in, influences the role nature will play in a person´s life as an adult.

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Today there is a lot of talk about the alienation of children from nature. What with the digital world, the busy schedules of the parents as well as the children’s time consuming hobbies. On top of sitting inside, we spend a lot of time sitting in the car getting from place a to place b.

Enabling time to be outside exploring nature is of great importance. In fact, Elonheimo points out that in enabling a child’s relationship with nature to form, an educational approach is not necessary. What´s most important is that a child is given possibilities to explore nature. Only through being in nature and personally interacting with natural elements, a relationship can form. If a person has no exposure to nature, it is more difficult to understand it, let alone grow up wanting to protect it through one´s own actions.

One of the easiest and most effective ways to support this nature relationship, according to Elonheimo, is by transferring a parents love of nature to a child. The more nature has been part of a parent´s life, the more natural it is to transfer it to a child. This means enabling the time in nature, involving a child in activities in the natural world, such as gardening, berry picking, fishing, hiking etc. And rather than emphasizing the factual details, the names of the plants and birds and the like, it is important to allow the child to explore freely without needing to label things. Meri Elonheimo reports to have seen structural barriers to increase nature knowledge at schools, for example in holding on to the idea that factual knowledge about nature is essential. Understanding nature, i.e. understanding the necessity of it, will come through spending time out in nature and interacting with it. Although this knowledge enriches one´s nature relationship, it is not the most essential piece. On the contrary, the pressure of learning the details might work against one´s interest towards nature building up as one might feel overwhelmed by the factual details. And the earlier one can start, the better. According to a study, strengthening connectedness to nature is more sustainable when it takes place with kids younger than 11 years of age (Liefländer et al., 2015).

And though parents as teachers about nature to their own children is certainly a powerful combination, any trustworthy and reliable adult who is passionate about the topic, will work as well.

img_20160719_190346 — My kids and my dad gutting a fish at the summer house in Finland.

Nature nearby

To enable nature contact, what is needed is not daily exposure to wide wilderness or breathtaking landscapes, although these would surely intensify the effects (Joye, Y., & Bolderdijk, J. W. (2015)). Nearby nature is enough for nature contact to form.

It is important that we prioritize the time to be out in the nature to make it possible that a child develops an affinity for playing outside and becoming interested in nature. According to the World Health Organization Report on Urban green spaces and health – a review of evidence (2016), “there is a need for both small, local green spaces situated very close to where people live and spend their day, and large green spaces that provide formal recreational facilities (such as playing fields) and opportunities to interact with nature”.

pocket-park-paris-4 — Urban park in Paris providing spaces for people and wildlife

Michael D. Barton writes in Children & Nature Network about ERRAND TIME AS NATURE TIME: Finding a Way to Give Your Kids a Daily Dose of Vitamin N, and explains how he finds time in his busy life for nature in between errands: “One of my tricks for slipping in nature with errands is prework. Each day, I spend a little bit of time on Google Maps studying our neighborhood and our route for the day. When you do this, you should think about where you go to shop, run errands, drop off and pick kids up from school.”

This seemingly innocent and well-meaning activity sounds like it takes an awful lot of time. However, Barton makes the point, that we need to make nature a daily activity for children, even if it´s for a shorter period of time. This could mean taking the bike though a greener route instead of the car through the city. This might take double the time, but it accomplishes two (or more) goals at once.

If only we could bring nature closer to the children´s homes through parks and plantings that are made accessible and that invite exploration. It is necessary to let go of the fact that what is beautiful should not be functional. Where possible, nature in cities should be made accessible enough so that it invites people to interact with it, either through harvesting of edible plants, planting and maintaining, or by picking materials for play, e.g. leaves, stones and branches. It is a misleading message that nature should not be interacted with, but only passively admired. However, the protected areas, such as those in Belgium, where people are asked to stay on the path so as not to damage any of the forest floor, leave children cold. Fortunately, many forests in Belgium include a playing area (in Dutch, speelzone) in which children are allowed to safely interact with the surrounding nature. The next step then is to make the nature closest to us all more accessible and attractive.

keep-off-the-grass — No, this is not what we want. Source.

Adapted from YLE: Ystävät ja harrastukset vaikuttavat luontosuhteeseen enemmän kuin asuinpaikka.