The Easy Ritual That Busts Through Stress (Hint: You Probably Already Love It)

Close your eyes and imagine a great big forest. What do you see? How does it smell? Does this visualization affect how you feel in the present moment?

Mr. Akiyama's claims inspired scientists at Nippon Medical School in Tokyo to study Shinrin-yoku in a laboratory setting. By comparing cerebral activity from a person in an urban setting to that same person in a forest environment, they found that forest bathing did indeed relax the body and slow brain activity. Those who committed to engaging in two to four hours of forest bathing on two consecutive days also inhaled antimicrobial compounds emitted by trees and plants. This resulted in an increase in white blood cell activity by 40 percent, and a follow-up revealed that the body retained a 15 percent increase1 in these cells over the course of a month.

The average American now spends 93 percent2 of their life inside: 87 percent enclosed in buildings and 6 percent in a vehicle. Since the 1980s, there has been a 20 percent decline in visits to U.S. national parks and a cultural shift away from nature-based recreation in favor of things like the indoor screen time. In 2008, the world reached the tipping point where more people were living in urban areas than outside of them.

These sobering statistics have led author and nature advocate Richard Louv to coin the term Nature Deficit Disorder. The phrase speaks to how our alienation from nature has resulted in the diminished use of our senses, created attention difficulties, and ultimately coincided with higher rates of illness. All of this points to the fact that time in nature, and forest bathing in particular, is more important now than ever before.