On our changing relationship with nature, the modern mental health crisis, and the reconciliation between scientific knowledge and direct experience.

I often find myself questioning something as ordinary as the expression spending time in nature. It is a phrase we use so naturally that we rarely stop to consider what it implies. As though nature were somewhere outside us, a place we occasionally visit before returning to our actual lives. But when did nature become somewhere we go, rather than somewhere we belong?

Perhaps this question offers a starting point for understanding why Shinrin-Yoku, Forest Bathing, and Forest Therapy Guides may have an increasingly important role in contemporary society.

For most of human evolutionary history, our ancestors lived within natural environments. The air, soil, plants, seasons, animals, and changing landscapes were not separate from human existence. They were its conditions. Yet over a relatively short period of our history, we have transformed much of our surroundings into built environments, developing cities, transportation systems, industries, and technologies that have profoundly changed the ways we live. These developments have brought extraordinary opportunities. Modern medicine, scientific discoveries, communication technologies, and increased access to knowledge have transformed human life in ways that previous generations could scarcely have imagined. And yet… alongside these achievements, another transformation has been taking place. Many of us have become increasingly disconnected from direct, everyday encounters with the natural world.

We live in an extraordinary period of technological development. Within seconds, we can communicate across continents, access an almost unlimited amount of information, or enter digital worlds that did not exist a few decades ago. Social media platforms have created new possibilities for connection, education, creative expression, and community building. At the same time, their design and patterns of use raise important questions about attention, social comparison, emotional well-being, and the growing amount of time spent engaging with screens. I do not believe technology itself should be regarded as the enemy. Like many human inventions, its consequences depend on how it is designed, distributed, and used. Nevertheless, we may reasonably ask what happens when our daily attention becomes increasingly directed toward digital environments, while our opportunities for unstructured, embodied experience become less frequent.

When was the last time we observed a small insect without reaching for a camera? When did we last walk without checking the time, recording our steps, or thinking about where we needed to be next?

These questions are not simply about technology. They concern our relationship with attention and the ways we experience our own existence. Here, mindfulness becomes particularly relevant.

Mindfulness is not necessarily about escaping the modern world or eliminating thoughts. Rather, it involves developing awareness of present experience, including bodily sensations, emotions, thoughts, and the surrounding environment, with less automatic judgment and reactivity. A forest provides countless opportunities for this kind of attention. The movement of leaves, changes in temperature, birdsong, the texture of bark, or the sensation of the ground beneath our feet can invite us to notice what is already happening. We do not need sophisticated technology to encounter these phenomena. And yet, for many people, slowing down sufficiently to notice them has become unfamiliar.

The increasing attention given to mental health worldwide invites us to consider not only what happens within the individual mind but also the conditions in which that mind develops and functions. Mental health is shaped by numerous interacting factors, including biological processes, individual experiences, social relationships, economic circumstances, cultural contexts, and environmental conditions. Urbanization, traffic, noise, pollution, limited access to green space, social isolation, economic pressures, and changing patterns of digital engagement may all form part of this wider picture.

Of course, it would be scientifically inaccurate to suggest that urbanization or technological advancement alone explains the contemporary mental health crisis. Equally, we should not assume that spending time in a forest can resolve mental health conditions or replace professional healthcare.Yet the environments in which we live are not neutral. Research in environmental psychology, public health, and nature-based health promotion has examined associations between exposure to natural environments and outcomes such as perceived stress, mood, attention, and aspects of physiological regulation. The strength and consistency of findings vary across studies, and important methodological questions remain. Nevertheless, the growing literature encourages us to consider natural environments as potentially meaningful contributors to human well-being. This brings me to a question I have explored repeatedly in my writing: if forests already offer opportunities for restoration, why would we need someone to guide us through them?

There is a tension I continue to encounter in my own thinking: the relationship between scientific knowledge and personal experience. On the one hand, science allows us to measure, compare, test, and critically evaluate the effects of human interaction with natural environments. It provides important tools for distinguishing evidence from assumptions and for questioning claims that might otherwise be accepted without sufficient examination. On the other hand, an encounter with the forest does not begin with scientific measurement. A person may experience calm beneath a tree without knowing anything about cortisol. Someone may feel deeply connected to a particular landscape without understanding the psychological constructs used to describe nature connectedness. The experience comes first. The explanation may follow, or it may never be needed by the person having the experience.

Long before humanity developed scientific instruments, forests existed. Trees exchanged substances with their surroundings, organisms interacted, and ecological processes unfolded without needing to be discovered or named by us. Science does not create these phenomena. It helps us investigate and understand them. Perhaps, then, the question is not whether we should choose science over direct experience, or direct experience over science. Perhaps the more meaningful task is learning how to allow both to coexist without treating either as sufficient to explain everything. A thoughtfully trained Shinrin-Yoku, Forest Bathing, or Forest Therapy Guide can help create conditions in which this reconciliation becomes possible.

A guide does not need to teach a forest how to be a forest. Nor does a guide possess the authority to determine what another person should feel, discover, or understand during an encounter with nature.

The role of a guide is more subtle. Through carefully considered invitations, mindful pauses, sensory exploration, appropriate pacing, and opportunities for reflection, guides may help participants encounter their surroundings in ways they would not ordinarily choose or notice. For someone unfamiliar with forests, a guide may provide reassurance, orientation, and practical support. For another person, the value may lie in the opportunity to share an experience with others. For someone already comfortable in nature, a guided session may offer a different perspective, a new way of attending, or simply permission to slow down.

The guide also carries responsibilities. These include considering physical and emotional safety, respecting individual boundaries, accommodating diverse abilities and needs, and recognizing when a participant requires support beyond the guide’s professional competence. A guided experience is not psychotherapy merely because it may feel therapeutic. Forest guides must remain aware of the boundaries between well-being facilitation and clinical practice.

An equally important responsibility is preserving the participant’s agency. Not every invitation needs to be accepted. Not every silence needs to be filled. Not every experience needs to be interpreted. A guide may open a space for discovery, but the experience belongs to the person having it.

It is important to acknowledge something that may initially appear contradictory in an article exploring why guides are needed. People do not necessarily require a guide to benefit from nature. Many individuals develop profound relationships with forests through childhood experiences, daily walks, solitary observation, cultural traditions, or simply living in close contact with natural environments. These relationships are no less meaningful because they developed without professional facilitation.

Indeed, one of the possible longer-term outcomes of guided Shinrin-Yoku or Forest Bathing may be that a person becomes increasingly comfortable engaging independently with nature. This raises an important ethical consideration. The purpose of guiding should not be to create dependence on a guide, a method, or a commercial service. Rather, it may be to support individuals in developing their own relationships with the natural world. A meaningful guided experience should therefore be understood not only in terms of what happens during the session but also in terms of what participants may carry into everyday life.

Another dimension deserves attention. When we discuss the benefits of nature, we often concentrate on what nature provides for humans: reduced stress, improved mood, relaxation, or increased attention. These are legitimate research questions. Yet when forests are discussed primarily as instruments for achieving human well-being, we risk overlooking their ecological existence and intrinsic value. Forests are not merely therapeutic settings. They are living ecosystems, composed of complex relationships among plants, animals, fungi, microorganisms, water, soil, and countless ecological processes. The relationship between guide, participant, and forest is therefore not simply a relationship between a service provider, a customer, and a location. It involves responsibilities toward people and place. Guides can encourage environmental awareness, care, and respectful engagement, while recognizing that human well-being and ecological well-being are interdependent. This is one of the reasons I consider the principles of co-creation, co-responsibility, and co-being important within nature-based guiding practices as established by within the trainings offered by The Mindful Tourist. We do not stand outside nature, arranging experiences within it. We participate in relationships that already exist.

It may be that the deeper question concerns how we have arrived at a point in human history where guidance may help us rediscover something that once formed an ordinary part of daily existence. We have developed remarkable technologies to understand, measure, and transform the world. Yet many of us now seek structured experiences to reconnect with environments from which human life emerged. There is something both beautiful and unsettling about this. I do not believe the answer is to reject modern life, romanticize the past, or suggest that everyone should seek refuge in forests. Nor should we portray guided nature experiences as solutions to complex social, environmental, and mental health challenges. But we can recognize that the capacity to pay attention, to experience meaningful relationships, and to feel connected to the living world deserves a place within contemporary discussions of well-being. A well-prepared Shinrin-Yoku, Forest Bathing, or Forest Therapy Guide may contribute to this process through mindful facilitation, ethical practice, environmental knowledge, and respect for the individuality of human experience. Not because people have forgotten how to exist in nature entirely, but because the conditions of contemporary life do not always make that relationship easy to maintain. And… the most meaningful outcome of a guided experience is not that someone learns how to participate in another forest bathing session. 

Perhaps it is that, one ordinary day, while walking past a tree on the way to work, they stop. They notice. And, for a brief moment, they no longer experience nature as something separate from themselves.

Adapted from the chapter “Why We Need Forest Therapy Guides” in Your Guide to Becoming a Forest Therapy Guide, by Milena A. Guziak.

The Mindful Tourist®
Nature-Based Intervention, Mindfulness & Wellbeing

https://themindfultourist.net/