This is episode 1640.

Welcome to the Daily Meditation Podcast.

I'm Mary Meckley and I honor you for showing up for yourself today as you give yourself

permission to slow down.

How are you doing? We've been exploring this week the theme of forest bathing.

And you heard in the very first series, which was six episodes ago, the interview with Melanie Chukas Bradley and her book, The Joy of Forest

Bathing.

And then each week you've discovered a meditation technique you could do to help you do

forest bathing, whether you are in a forest, or whether you are walking around your home,

around your place of work, around your neighborhood, grocery shopping, applying these techniques

to simply connecting to your environment wherever you are.

And how this is an intimate experience when you observe places you spend time every day through the seasons.

You observe subtle changes and feel as though you're a part of your environment around you.

And this is really the essence of forest bathing.

Of course, the more you put yourself in nature, especially among tall green ancient trees, which we don't always have access to.

But if you do have access to a forest or woods, you can breathe in a lot of beneficial

phyton sites that are released from the trees. And as you exhale and release oxygen in the air,

this helps trees with the process of photosynthesis. So this is a beautiful symbiotic relationship

you can take part in when you spend time in the woods.

I remember when I lived in Tokyo, the largest city in the world, and I would go on the weekends

hiking in the forests. And these were forests where many of the samurai used to live and study and write poetry

as well as master. Their skills with the sword. And many other people would go to these forests as well.

...