Forest Bathing

Shinrin yoku — Japanese for forest bathing — is the practice of immersing one's self in a forest or other natural environment to relieve stress. Practitioners walk slowly through the woods, marveling at the shades of green.They aren't there to bike down a hill or hike up a mountain. The journey is their destination. It is enough simply to be outside, to inhale the scent of pine.

I like the imagery involved, the idea that one can slide into a forest as if into a tub of warm water.  That its beauty will surround and calm and lift up.

A walk in the suburbs is not always a bath in the forest. It's too fast, too purposeful. Often, there are no forests involved.

But even the briefest and most cursory stroll works its magic. I leave the house with fists clenched, brow furrowed. I return renewed and refreshed, reminded that we are not just creatures of rooms and screens. That after all, we are born of earth and will return to it, that every visit there is going home.