What forest bathing is — and what it is not
Forest bathing is the translation of the Japanese shinrin-yoku, literally something like “bathing in the forest atmosphere”. The Japanese forestry agency coined the term in 1982 — originally to bring the population back into the forests. What is meant is not sport and not a hike with a destination but the deliberate, slow lingering under trees: looking, listening, smelling, feeling. Whoever confuses forest bathing with a brisk round has not understood it — here the way is expressly not the goal; the lingering is.
The research: phytoncides, cortisol, killer cells
The first field study was presented in 1990 by Yoshifumi Miyazaki at Chiba University: stays in the forest measurably lowered the stress hormone cortisol. The best-known trail has since been followed by the Tokyo physician Qing Li. To ward off germs and insects trees give off terpenes — so-called phytoncides — whose inhalation, in his studies, increased the number and activity of natural killer cells; this effect lasted at least seven days after the forest visit. Add a lowered blood pressure, a dampened activity of the sympathetic nervous system and better heart-rate variability. Forest bathing does not replace therapy — but the data deserve to be taken more seriously than the feel-good term suggests.
How a guided session works
A forest-bathing session usually lasts two to three hours for a very short distance — often hardly more than a hundred metres into the forest. Certified course leaders (trained, for instance, at one of the forest-bathing academies) guide you through simple exercises: an opening meditation, the conscious perception of a single tree, breathing and grounding exercises, at the end often a tea ritual. That is not necessary — forest bathing can be practised alone — but the guidance helps beginners actually to slow their inner tempo.
Forest bathing in the Bavarian Forest
Few Central European landscapes are as suitable as the Bavarian Forest: around 6,000 km² of largely uninterrupted forest, Germany's only primeval forest in the national park and forest guides who have been out here for more than two decades. Guided sessions exist among other places at the Großer Arbersee — and the best thing about it is at the same time the simplest: you need little more than the forest itself and the willingness to become slower.
