LISTEN TO THE FULL INTERVIEW

Aromatic Vitality Founder, Maggie Yule sits down with holistic health expert, Frank Leonardi, to discuss the physical and scientific benefits of forest bathing. Frank leads regular Forest Bathing Walks in the Silicon Valley and Santa Cruz Mountains.

Hi world, this is Maggie Yule with Frank Leonardi of Dao Healing Center. We just got to the halfway mark on the trail we’ve been walking, and decided to record this interview. We are having some awesome conversations about nature, trees, and the forest and learning a whole lot.

Frank, we’ve had some really fascinating conversations on this little wander that we’ve had so far.

Yes, we have.

What comes to mind for me is your new adventure which is really an old adventure for you but a new step now, and that is forest bathing or forest therapy. I’d love to share with folks what that means, and your journey as a thought leader in that arena. 

Well I think this new concept of forest bathing or bathing yourself within the forest or forest therapy, is really an old practice. This is really where the trees become our therapist with all their majestic wisdom, and it has to be an ancient tradition of all cultures. In our lifetime, the Japanese stumbled or re-stumbled upon it, and called it Shinrin-yoku, which literally translates to forest bathing.

Like we were just talking about, the planet’s gotten warmer, we’ve gotten warmer and the earth is now welling up to help us. So it’s calling us back to a cooler, slower, more intentional way of being. Rather than racing around all over, up and down mountain trails as fast as you can, it’s about going slow.

Yes, slow it down.

Maggie and I probably just walked a little under a mile, but it took us an hour. The longer we walked and the more we tuned into the trees, the slower we began to walk. So, forest therapy is just the natural transition of tuning back into nature, to listening to what the tress have to tell us and what the earth itself has to tell us. It brings us back into that balance from the fast paced world, and in so many ways we can see the desire for slow movement in our culture. I liken it to the foodie movement that’s happened recently. You can’t cook fast, if you’re truly going to cook well. So there’s the slow food movement. Is that what they call it?

Yeah, I’ve heard it called that.

Yeah, I mean you can find slow food groups in San Francisco and in the San Jose Bay Area. They have actual organizations. So, you know there’s this welling up for change, starting with our disgusting food system and the plants saying, “We’re your life force.” That’s part of that reciprocity that needs to happen with nature. We need to eat plants. We need to poop on the ground so we re-fertilize the plants, and we need to continue that natural cycle or we are in for deep shit.

[Laughter]

No seriously, though. With this idea of forest bathing, it is a group activity designed to help people get back in touch with nature. We want to get them out into the canopy, whether that’s in a city park, or a botanical garden, or out in the mountains in the forest. Go any place where nature is present. Go somewhere there are lots of trees and plants growing and take your time to notice our brethren. I say brethren because in the forest therapy world we’re referring to natural beings using a term “more than human.” There are the humans, and then there are the more than humans. 

I love that.

The more than humans are all the sentient beings, whether they’re rooted or have two legs or four legs, it’s all part of a bigger ecosystem that we are an inescapably part of. It is a closed system that we are living in. So in a forest therapy walk, we take our time and intentionally walk through nature at a slower pace. During the walk, the guide offers invitations and these invitations are about using your senses. It is more than just looking at the trees. You can sit on the ground, you can touch the ground and you can touch the trees. It’s not just tree hugging, but literally touching them.

[Laughter] 

But you can hug them though, can’t you?

Yes, you can hug them if you want to but you know, we don’t want to just be tree huggers. We want to really love the trees. Instead of being fake tree huggers, let’s be tree embracers

I love it.

On these forest walks we can feel, we can touch and we can smell. But I mean don’t you just love the smell of the forest? As you’re walking and the scents of different trees and flowers waft by, every time you get a new feeling. And there are even things you can taste out here.

I was just going to transition into that, that aromatic piece, which is what we’re all about at Aromatic Vitality.

Exactly. In forest bathing, there’s an aromatic piece, where not only can you smell the forest, but if you open your mouth and breathe, you can also taste those aromatic molecules breathing into your body.

Yes, aromatherapy is all around us. Now, I understand you have a ceremony at the beginning, or at the end of your forest bathing ritual.

Yes, at the end.

That’s something I can’t wait to experience.

I call it a Tea Ceremony, but it’s not formal like traditional Japanese tea ceremonies are. In this case, we actually aim to use plants from the walk we take and that are in the area. We use those plants to make a tea, so that at the end of the invitations, we can actually ingest the plants that guided us on our walk. We do this in a very mindful way, sitting in a circle and just like cultures all across the world do. Again, it’s not a formal ceremony but it is done ceremonially. We share tea together because it gives us that full sensorial experience.

Most of us know that there are five senses, but forest bathing likes to keep it open for even more than that. After you’ve sat on the earth for a while, and touched the earth and touched the trees, and tasted what was in the air, and smelled the different smells wafting in, if you sit quietly you can open up to all sensorial possibilities. The world has given it names like intuition or physic ability, but it’s really just a natural state of openness.

I heard someone recently refer to this state of openness as, body radar. I really liked that, because we’re constantly giving off energy and absorbing energy. How do we perceive those energies? Using our body radar, by using the five senses we’re familiar with and also those subtler senses that we don’t even have names for.

During forest bathing, something also occurs called a gas exchange.

Yeah, I’ve heard about gas exchange. Trees exhale oxygen that’s good for us and we exhale carbon dioxide that is good for the trees. 

Exactly, but it’s more than that. We don’t even know how many gases are exchanged, and the scientific world is starting to see new possibilities for healing. Scientist are now saying that just a few hours in the forest can increase the cells necessary for fighting infection. In just a few hours, those beneficial killer T cells in your blood go up exponentially. If you spend even four days in a cabin in the woods, your T cells can increase up to 70%.

Oh wow, and how long does that last?

They’ve measured people who’ve had a 70% T cell increase over four days and they measure them again thirty days later and their increase is still 30 % higher.

Wow, that’s awesome.

Yeah, so if you just went in the woods once a week after doing a four day retreat, you’d probably be able to keep your killer t cells 30% higher. We’re looking for all these cures for all these degenerative diseases that we’re suffering from, but if you come and sit and nature, that could be the most powerful medicine this planet has ever seen. That’s what’s really exciting to me about forest bathing.

Okay, I have to interrupt because what I didn’t say before is that Frank is an experienced acupuncturist who has been practicing for a very long time. How long have you been practicing?

This will be my twentieth year.

Wow, twentieth year. So as you give this advice, it’s not just coming from the Average Joe. This is someone with more than twenty years as a health practitioner. 

Yes, this will actually be my 30th year of practicing natural medicine. From nutrition body work, shiatsu, acupressure, reiki, and all the other things that I’ve done in thirty years. In that time, I’ve looked at practically every healing modality on the planet, and those that seem to be the most powerful seem to be those that give us the most. You know, they say that health is not the absence of disease, but the vibrance of life.

Vitality.

Yes, Vitality. Exactly.  

We want to be vital, we want to enjoy this life. We want to live every moment to the fullest and we don’t just do it through excitement and more more more… We do it through what one of my teachers calls “modest joy”. This is the idea that you’re not riding a roller coaster or something, but find deep contentment, and how easy does that come when you sit in the woods? It’s pretty easy to do nothing, and just hang out, and be. 

Just to be.

Yeah, just being. We rush off to our yoga classes and our meditation classes and rush back to our lives, and it doesn’t get to the heart of it. I’m not saying to stop doing yoga or meditation. Please do all those things, as much as you can. Go to yoga, do meditation, get massage, get acupuncture, take your herbs, but don’t forget about the awesomeness of nature. All those things pale in comparison to the awesomeness of nature.

True story. So, I understand you’re going to be leading some forest walks soon. Is that right? Maybe we can chat more about that in another interview too.

Yes. That would be great. I’d love to break down what a walk is like in a bit more detail. I’d like to talk about what a walk is and what it isn’t, because you know it’s not about exercise or cardio.

Although you get a lot of those benefits though, right?

Yes, you can but what I will be focusing on is more the mindfulness, the intention of tuning into our senses and just being in nature. The invitations I mentioned earlier are a way to be focused on that. After we’ve sat in nature for a while and observed what is in motion around us, the intentions bring us back to that. You know, because nature is always moving in circles.

Right now, it’s moving all around us. We have that little breeze coming through.

Yes, and with all that movement, the mind wanders. After a while you might get fidgety, and you might want to move your body and maybe even say something. So on our forest bathing walks, we embrace all of that. Then, we come back to another invitation which might be just saying hello to a tree or even introducing yourself. Maybe you are asking that tree for something. Maybe you ask nature a question, something you really are looking for in life. Or maybe you just what to wear to work tomorrow.

[Laughter]

But the tree’s answer would probably just be to wear nothing.

We can just hang out with nature and it can teach us how to communicate. There’s so much going on with nature. Maggie and I were just talking about the mycelium, the vast networks of root systems that live below the earth. We can’t see the mycelium, but when you sit on the ground and use your imagination to go down into the earth you can imagine all that amazing network of activity and information below us. There’s so much going on that we don’t even think about, and it’s like a mirror reflecting all that is going on inside of us. We don’t often think about that.

It is amazing. I was just sharing with Frank that I’ve been listening to a book called the Hidden Life of Trees, and what I’m learning from that book is blowing my mind. It makes perfect sense though, knowing that underneath the earth there’s an amazing network of communication. There is a root network below us that has existed for a very long time.

There is so much more to be discovered, both in nature and within ourselves.

UPCOMING WALKS

Saturday October 20th 10am-1pm at Sanborn County Park. (Free)

Sunday November 4th 10am-1pm at John Nicholas Trailhead. ($30)

To register please email frank@daohealing.com.