Ep 89. A Walk in the Woods

Not Another Anxiety Show

Kelli Walker

Therapy, Health & Fitness, Mindfulness, Health, Alternative Health, Mental Health, Anxiety, Claireweekes, Counseling, Brenebrown, Research, Meditation, Panicattacks, Science, Selfhelp, Stress

4.8 • 655 Ratings

🗓️ 28 August 2017

⏱️ 3 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this episode Kelli briefly chats about the benefits of what the Japanese refer to as forest bathing.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey guys. Welcome to Not Another Anxiety Show. I'm your host, Kelly Walker. In today's episode's a little
0:18.1	different because I'm going to encourage you to engage in a little experiment if you're feeling up to it and curious about trying something new.
0:26.2	And if not, that's okay too. Sometimes we just have enough going on.
0:30.7	But if this sounds at all interesting, I encourage you to walk in the woods or a green space like a park if you're in the city, three days this
0:38.3	week for 20 minutes each of those days. And if you can notice how you feel before, during, and after
0:45.0	the walk, that's a bonus. Now, keep in mind, there are no right or wrong results. Maybe you find
0:52.2	that you love walking in the woods. Maybe you find that you
0:55.0	can take it or leave it, or maybe you find that you absolutely hate it because you're covered with
0:59.1	bug bites from head to toe. Either way, there's value in this experiment. So where did this crazy
1:07.0	idea come from? Well, a study, of course, which was published in 2009 by Japanese researchers
1:12.5	in the Environmental Health and Preventative Medicine Journal. And for this study, researchers
1:18.1	compared people who walked for 20 minutes a day in urban areas to those that walked for 20
1:22.9	minutes a day in wooded or green areas. And what the researchers found was that those who walked in the
1:28.7	forest saw a noticeable decrease in stress hormones like cortisol, heart rate, and blood pressure.
1:35.7	Forest bathing, as the Japanese call it, stimulates our parasympathetic nervous system,
1:40.5	aka the rest and digest response, which is the exact opposite of that, oh, so fun,
1:46.6	fight or flight response. Now, forest bathing is something that has really resonated with me
1:53.1	and was a big part of my healing process and is still a part of my everyday life.
1:58.5	And while it doesn't necessarily cure a stressed out, sad, or angry mood,
2:02.7	I often end the walk feeling a bit lighter and having a bit more perspective than when I started.
2:10.2	Not always, but often a walk in the woods is balancing or centering for me.
2:15.2	And I get that this is not everybody's thing.
	...

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