As many of my friends know I am 32 going on 90 so I have no shame in saying that I have spent an hour of my Friday night watching gardeners world. I love the pottering, the plants and I do love Monty Don. Tonight there was an interesting piece about how the Japanese are telling people to do ‘Forest Bathing’. This, as far as I can see is heading to the forest and fully immersing yourself in it. The Japanese are returning to the woods as their busy crowded city lives are making them stressed and the woods seem to be the cure.
To me this is just common sense, I think modern humans have been around for about 200,000 years. We only stopped roaming around about 3,500 years ago and have lived in built up areas for about 200 and yet we wonder why these cities seem so alien to us. I am definitely not against cities (as long as we succeed in making them environmentally friendly) but each time I go to one my slight discomfort and complete excitement remind me that this is not home.
The ladies on Gardeners World went on to say that there is hard evidence that we need nature. We should not need hard evidence, this is something that we all know with every fibre of our bodies if only we stop for a second to listen.
This was a very interesting interview but what amazed me was not that being in the beautiful forests of Japan relieved stress but that we are currently so out of touch with ourselves that we need scientific studies to tell us so.
Rewilding my family 