Forest Therapy
Imagine with me that you are meandering through a pine scented forest, watching the sunlight filter through the tree branches, making dappled patterns on the forest floor. You see a squirrel race to the top of an oak tree, chittering as he goes. A doe and her spotted fawn step gingerly across your path, their eyes wide with wonder that you are visiting their woodland home.
Listen to the lyrics of the bird song in the branches above you. Feel the cool breeze wafting up from a rushing stream, combing its gentle fingers through the static-filled tangle of your thoughts.
Spend an hour here, quiet and uninterrupted by the tasks of the day. Breathing easily and deeply. In and out. Filling your lungs with life-giving oxygen and giving your fevered brain the clear message that everything is okay. Feeling it calm and settle. Feeling your heart rate slow your limbs relax, and your mind clear. This is forest therapy.
Since the 1980s, when Japanese researchers discovered measurable health benefits in its subjects who spent several hours of quiet immersion in a forest area, countries all over the world are instituting forest therapy programs to improve the health of their people. It has been scientifically proven many times over that forest therapy lowers blood pressure, heart rate, and cortisol (the stress hormone.)
It has been shown over and over that forest therapy significantly decreases anxiety levels, increases clarity of thought, and has a measurable impact on stress-induced symptoms and diseases. And, in our program at Border Mountain, it sets the stage for deeper emotional work by relaxing the left, “monkey mind,” part of our brains to allow us to access the feelings in the right brain that will lead us to the wounds that need to be healed.
Our well-defined trails lead through the forest and along the water to bring each person who walks along them to a place of peace and calm within themselves, centering them for each coming day, taking the time to immerse in nature and re-calibrate for the next steps in our journey of the heart.
Visit Border Mountain
Join us for a retreat and bring your curiosity and your willingness to experience something new and wonderful. You will be glad you did!