There are as many joys as there are horrors to be found as you click your way down an internet rabbit hole. A gentle winding river of comforting silliness can quickly hit the rapids and waterfalls without warning, and from out of nowhere the meandering Skeptic is submerged in pseudoscience.
Foliage of consent
As a lover of both the great outdoors and internet nonsense, I thought I’d struck social media gold when a friend shared a story about the inaugural Scottish Tree Hugging Championships. Considering the strict limitations on human contact we’ve had to endure throughout the pandemic, encouraging the hugging of inanimate objects seems like a much safer, and more environmentally-friendly option. Not to ignore of course the potential risk of splinters for over-zealous forestery-fondlers, and the unlikely scenario that Dutch Elm Disease mutates into a human-contractable form, this seemed like some frivolous fun, in the same vein as air guitar and extreme ironing competitions.
With the actual event taking place on the afternoon of Friday the 22nd July, the website also mentioned a special activity in the morning: A ‘Guided Forest Bathing Walk’. Now, those four words don’t usually spend much time in direct company, so further investigation was required. Onwards further down the rabbit hole to the An Darach Forest Therapy website.
Ramblers Synonymous
Their description of the practice is as follows:
“Forest Bathing is a health-promoting practice that involves spending time outdoors in nature, sitting peacefully or walking slowly and leisurely through the woods or forest, immersing yourself in the natural environment and mindfully using all your senses”.
So, you can think of it as a sort of free-range, woodland-themed mindfulness experience – less Bear Grylls and more Bear Chills.
The website also performs a (perhaps unintentional) bait and switch when describing the origins of Forest Bathing. It did indeed originate in Japan, and is referred to there as ‘Shinrin-yoku’, but it has not been around for centuries as is implied. The concept of getting out and about in nature for the good of your health is nothing new, but the specific term Shrinrin-yoku was coined in the early 1980s by the head of the Japanese Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries, to encourage more visitors to the forests, so it’s only as ‘ancient’ as the invention of the mullet, which coincidentally also advocates a healthy mix of business at the front and party at the back.
Forest and Recuperation
Let’s be very clear hear though: Getting out and about in nature is undoubtedly good for you in terms of physical and mental health (if done safely). In general, the air is less polluted if you’re away from the urban sprawl, and in most cases when you’re out and about in nature you’re less likely to be sedentary. That is of course assuming you don’t take your Forest Bathing to the next level and use the ‘Sit Spot’ practice (you can of course follow the hyperlink there, but the clue’s very much in the name). There’s a widely shared paper that states that spending at least 120 minutes a week in nature is associated with good health and wellbeing, even when taking factors such as age, gender, and socioeconomic status into account. Unfortunately, it relied on a one-time response from those surveyed, plus their own evaluation of their general health, so, while it’s not 100% bulletproof let’s go with the generalisation that a bit of outdoor time is a good thing.
The An Darach Forest Bathing site however pushes that concept way above the canopy:
There is a wealth of scientific evidence to support the benefits to our health that immersing ourselves in nature in this way can bring.
Panacea of Trunk-quality
The health benefits page you’re taken to immediately broadens the scope from specifically Forest Bathing out to the wider topic of ‘Nature Connection’, and points to two specific areas of health: Mental & emotional benefits, and physical benefits.
Amongst the cited mental & emotional benefits are reduced stress and improved mood, and in both cases they point to Forest Bathing-specific studies, firstly a gathering of trends in research related to Forest Bathing, and secondly, a comparative study of physiological and psychological effects of Forest Bathing.
Unsurprisingly, they find that doing something nice in a healthy environment is beneficial. Unfortunately though, they choose to ignore the elephant in the room (or forest if you prefer) that neither of these studies makes any attempt to compare Forest Bathing to any other activities – not even ‘normal’ walks in the forest, which I enjoy on a regular basis, especially when we stop for a picnic. Next time we do that I’ll be sure to take note of my stress levels before and after my peanut butter sandwich and flask of coffee.
If you’re looking for stress reduction without conifer-contemplation or pond-pondering then it’s easy enough to find ‘scientific evidence’ for the effectiveness of many other activities, like surfing (not the internet type), playing video games, housework, masturbation, swimming, taking a bath, boxing, and watching television to name a few.
Abloom with a view
In terms of claims of physical benefits, there are some common-sense examples which again seem legitimate, citing such things as cortisol and dopamine responses. Once again though they fail to make any comparison to any other pleasurable activities.
One claim which did raise an eyebrow (and my cortisol level) was ‘faster recovery from illness’. It pointed to a pioneering study by Roger Ulrich which compared patients recovering from gall bladder survey who were assigned to either a room with a view of nature or a room with a view of a brick wall, with one of each room type on both the second and third floor. The study appears to show slightly better recovery times (quicker discharge) for those in the nature-view room.
The small sample size is somewhat concerning, with records of only 46 people (two groups of 23) harvested from a 9 year period of patient data. It also mentions that assignment of patients to rooms was done simply based on which room had a bed available, which certainly gives the impression of a random nature. However, one factor which may have escaped notice is that on both floors the room with the wall-view was closer to the nursing stations than the room with the nature-view. It’s therefore not entirely unreasonable to suggest that if there was a bed available in both the wall-view and nature-view rooms, a patient deemed as potentially requiring some closer monitoring may have been deliberately placed in a room closer to the nursing station, which could of course skew results, particularly over such a long time period.
Aside from my nit-picking though, it doesn’t require a great leap of logic to assume that anything that’s done to mitigate the somewhat disturbing clinical environment of a hospital would be of benefit to patients. Unfortunately the An Darach Forest Bathing website blot their copybook at the foot of this section by referring to an endorsement for spending recovery time in a forest from Pliny the Elder in 35AD, presumably unaware of the Sawbones Podcast, which looks at the history of medicine and frequently refers to Pliny’s somewhat random and uninformed ‘cures’ (goat faeces and vinegar for treating snake bites anyone?).
Fleece of life
As with many such fads, Forest Bathing seems mostly harmless, and could even be good for your headspace if regular indoor mindfulness isn’t quite hitting the mark, but it points to a larger trend of attempting to both medicalise and monetise regular enjoyable activities. It’ll cost you £20 for a guided Forest Bathing walk , and if you want to become a guide there’s a very formal training course you can go through for the bargain price of €1360.
If the thought of separating yourself from that kind of cash is raising your stress levels, then why not give it a miss and do something enjoyable that won’t cost you money instead? There’s plenty of options out there!
