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You're listening to LifeKit from NPR.

Hey, everybody, it's Mariel.

Isn't the forest a magical place?

Like when you really venture into the woods and you see these century old trees

towering over you, sunlight twinkling through them and spiders weaving their elaborate webs,

the smell of pine needles is in the air. Birds are tweeting. You hear a mysterious sound that you're

not going to pay too much attention to, but you really hope is not a bear. There is a moment of awe that happens when you step into a forest.

And I think a lot of us can sense that forest bathing or taking in the forest through your senses

makes us feel better and calmer.

I was surprised to learn that there are decades of scientific evidence backing that up.

A lot of the evidence comes from Japan, where the term forest bathing originated in the 1980s.

Over many years, researchers have shown in peer-reviewed studies that time in the forest is a kind of medicine.

Forest bathing helps your immune system by increasing your levels of

anti-cancer proteins and immune cells that kill tumors. It's been shown to lower blood pressure

and stabilize blood sugar. It can help with depression. It can lower adrenaline and turn down the

dial on your body's fight or flight response. What we could see in the data was that as soon as somebody came into proximity of a tree

and they were just present and mindful, paying attention and appreciating the tree,

that basically their parasympathetic activity, which is the relaxation response in the body,

was increased.

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