A Forest Therapy Experience
I-Renew is focused on making renewable energy and sustainable living more accessible to all Iowans. We hear from a lot of people about what motivates them to adopt renewable energy and sustainability. Anywhere from economics, security, justice, spirituality, to community. Sometimes, in all of these motivations, we can still lose touch with what is at the heart of our efforts. What if there was a practical way to shift your perspective so that your renewable energy and sustainability efforts were driven by love? By appreciation? By gratitude? By all the same things that drive you to care for your family, your kids, your friends?
Recently, I-Renew hosted an event called A Forest Therapy Experience. Emelia Sautter, Cedar Rapids-based Certified Nature and Forest Therapy Guide, donated her time to lead this event. She gave a talk on what Forest Therapy is (defined as “a research-based framework for supporting healing and wellness through immersion in forests and other natural environments”) and then facilitated several “bodyfulness” experiences (called “invitations” by Guides). Slightly different from standard mindfulness cues, invitations incorporate a body-awareness that is sensory.
Forest Therapy Walks can follow a “standard sequence”. During a Walk, there’s a set of invitations that are all designed to bring you into a calmer, more open state. Being a trauma-informed framework, Guide’s will never claim to know what the experience will be for you. And, taking their lead, I won’t promise that Forest Therapy can do anything specific for you either. But, my experience with Walks has been: they call my attention to aspects of the natural world around me in a way that disengages my normal analytical, discursive mind. They slow me down. They bring me into the present moment. They make me feel more in touch with myself. They make me feel more connection and love for all the life around me. From this place of love and connection, I have so much gratitude that makes me want to give back to those around me, and to preserve the sacred land and life all around us.
All this can sound like we’re diving into the realm of the metaphysical, but the physiological benefits of this process have been measured by hard science. On a walk, your breathing equalizes and your sympathetic nervous system relaxes, reducing the levels of cortisol and adrenaline in your body, making you more open to creative insights and your engaging body’s natural healing and rejuvenation state. Your blood pressure normalizes - if it was too high, it comes down. If it was too low, it comes up. Your immune system is boosted. Your natural-killer cells, your first line of defense in your immune system, are increased.
What does all this have to do with renewable energy and sustainability? I trust, by this point, you’ve begun to see how a practice like Forest Therapy can help provide you with more meaning and purpose in your efforts to be more renewable and sustainable. When we recycle or put something in the compost, maybe that will be an action we associate with love? When we buy organic vegetables from a local farmer, at a farmer’s market or at the Co-op, maybe we’ll be grateful to the vegetable, and the farmer, and want to give back to the feedback loop in a way that feels meaningful to us? Maybe when we convert our house to renewable energy, we’ll recognize it’s an action that’s connected to something larger, something that transcends simply saving on our electric bill?
Personally, my mantra of late has been “we can only do this if we all work together.” It’s frameworks like Forest Therapy that give voice and reality to that vision of truly working together, truly being in community, truly being connected to life around me. This calls on me to be in relationship with all this life around me. That means practicing reciprocity - not just being a taker. And, when it comes to the natural world around us, maybe it’s time to stop extracting resources from it without thought, and engage in a relationship of equitable giving. Whatever practice or framework you choose, I hope it helps you to find more connection and love in all of your actions, in whatever way is most meaningful to you. And if you’re like me, that would put a whole new perspective on the drive to make renewable energy and sustainability more accessible to all Iowans.
Written by David Gustafson, I-Renew Board member. You can reach him directly at david@irenew.org.
