By Sharon Rose, Manjimup
To echo that wonderful commercial from Planet Ark, about prescriptions of tree plantings in favour of medications and away from technological devices: Has anyone heard of "Forest Bathing"?
This is a practice developed in the 1980s in Japan and is about the scientific and health benefits of being surrounded by nature. As a consequence millions of people in Japan regularly take walking tracks through the forest to immerse themselves mindfully in the natural world to combat the stress associated with the modern lifestyle.
South Korean researchers have produced much literature on this science and places for forest bathing or "Shinrin-Yoku", are now being established world wide. I feel our south west forests have much potential to link in with this movement; the benefits of which we maybe take for granted when living and working on the land.
http://www.shinrin-yoku.org/shinrin-yoku.html
To echo that wonderful commercial from Planet Ark, about prescriptions of tree plantings in favour of medications and away from technological devices: Has anyone heard of "Forest Bathing"?
This is a practice developed in the 1980s in Japan and is about the scientific and health benefits of being surrounded by nature. As a consequence millions of people in Japan regularly take walking tracks through the forest to immerse themselves mindfully in the natural world to combat the stress associated with the modern lifestyle.
South Korean researchers have produced much literature on this science and places for forest bathing or "Shinrin-Yoku", are now being established world wide. I feel our south west forests have much potential to link in with this movement; the benefits of which we maybe take for granted when living and working on the land.
http://www.shinrin-yoku.org/shinrin-yoku.html
