Jim Garlits

Forest Bathing Jim Garlits

The succinct guide to Forest Bathing!People used to live closer to nature. Writers have for hundreds of years extolled the benefits of being immersed in the beauty of the natural world. We extol the cowboy on his rolling hills, the woodsman beneath his leafy canopy, and the fly fisherman lazily casting flies from midstream. But now more than ever, we isolate ourselves from the very environment which produced us, and it is taking its toll. In the early 1980s, Shinrin Yoku, forest bathing, sent nature-starved city dwellers into the forests of Japan laden with devices to monitor their heart rates and brain waves. The results were positive. Over the years, the technology has gotten smarter and the pool of data has grown into an ocean of the evidence we should have known intuitively: Being outside is good for us. But since then, a cottage industry has sprung up around forest bathing. People are spending thousands of dollars to become certified in the art of instructing their "students" to lay underneath trees and look up at the sky. And their students are paying hundreds of dollars to lay beneath those trees. I could have signed up for and taken these classes, printed business cards, and frisked you for money to go with me into the forest. I'm so adept at walking on trails and laying beneath trees, they once sewed an Eagle Scout badge on my BSA uniform. But I'm not going to charge you hundreds of dollars to follow me into the forest. I wrote this short, powerful guide for you instead, and it's yours for a song.