Does Nature Experience Need to Be Organized to Become Therapeutic?

Imagine two people entering the same forest. One is participating in a professionally guided Shinrin-Yoku session. The other has decided to spend an afternoon walking among the trees, without a guide, a particular method, or even a clearly defined purpose.

The guided participant may be invited to slow down, engage the senses, notice the surrounding environment, and reflect upon the experience. The session has a structure, a duration, a facilitator, and an intention. The second person may wander along the forest path, stop to observe something interesting, sit beneath a tree, or simply enjoy being there. No one has designed the encounter, and no particular outcome is expected.

Both individuals encounter the same forest, but their experiences may unfold differently. One is supported by a carefully organised process, while the other has the freedom to respond spontaneously to whatever captures their attention. Neither experience necessarily tells us more about the person’s relationship with the forest, nor can we assume that one will produce greater physiological or psychological benefits simply because it has been professionally facilitated.

This raises a question that deserves closer scientific and philosophical examination: does organising an encounter with nature increase its therapeutic potential, or does it simply change the way that potential is experienced?

Research comparing guided and non-guided forest experiences provides an interesting starting point. In a study conducted by Kim and Shin (2021), 37 university students participated in either guided or self-guided forest therapy experiences. Rather than relying primarily on physiological measurements, the researchers examined participants’ written reflections to identify differences in their experiences. Both groups described sensory elements of the forest, including sounds, visual experiences, touch, and smells. However, participants in the self-guided group referred more frequently to introspection, while those in the guided group more often described emotional changes and social interaction.

These findings are particularly interesting because they suggest that professional guidance may not simply increase or decrease the benefits of forest engagement. It may influence the character of the experience itself. A person walking alone may have more opportunities to follow an internal process of reflection without responding to instructions, other participants, or a facilitator. A guided group, meanwhile, may create opportunities for shared experiences, interpersonal connection, and emotional expression that would not necessarily arise during a solitary visit.

Of course, the study was small, and its findings were based on the content of participants’ reflections. Differences in the frequency of particular words or themes do not establish that one experience was therapeutically superior to the other. Nevertheless, the study encourages us to question an assumption that can easily enter discussions of guided nature-based interventions: that adding professional facilitation necessarily increases therapeutic effectiveness.

What if guidance does not make an experience more therapeutic in a general sense, but instead directs attention toward particular dimensions of an experience while allowing other dimensions to become less prominent?

An even more direct comparison was published by Zhang and colleagues in 2026. Their pilot study examined guided forest bathing, unguided forest exposure, and an urban outdoor comparison activity among graduate students in Beijing. The researchers investigated changes in emotional states following a three-hour experience. All three groups showed reductions in several negative mood measures, and the forest groups generally demonstrated favourable patterns compared with the urban group. However, the researchers did not find a statistically significant additional benefit of therapist-guided forest exposure over unguided forest exposure for short-term emotional regulation.

The study was exploratory, with only 26 participants included in the final analysis, and its findings cannot establish that guidance has no additional benefits. It also did not determine whether differences might emerge over longer periods, among people with different needs, or when outcomes other than immediate mood changes are considered. Nevertheless, the result is important because it challenges the expectation that a formally organised experience must produce stronger short-term psychological effects than relatively unstructured exposure to the same natural environment.

Perhaps the question is not whether guidance works, but under what conditions, for whom, and toward which outcomes it makes a meaningful difference.

We may be looking for a universal answer to a question that is fundamentally dependent on the individual and the situation. A person who feels unfamiliar or uncomfortable in a forest may experience a carefully facilitated session as supportive. The presence of a guide may reduce uncertainty, help with orientation, offer reassurance, and introduce possibilities for sensory engagement that the participant might not otherwise consider. Another person, particularly someone who already has a strong personal relationship with forests, may experience instructions or group activities as interruptions to a process that would have unfolded more naturally in solitude.

Could it be that the therapeutic value of guidance depends not only on what the guide introduces, but also on what the participant needs—or does not need—from the guide?

There is an interesting difference between making an experience available and directing how it should be experienced. A guide may invite participants to notice the textures of leaves, the movement of air, or the sounds of the forest. Such invitations can help redirect attention away from habitual patterns of thought and toward immediate sensory experience. But attention is not necessarily passive before an invitation is offered. Human beings are already perceiving, interpreting, and responding to their surroundings, even when they are not consciously practising mindfulness.

Research on attention and natural environments gives us reason to examine this more closely. Berman, Jonides, and Kaplan (2008) found that interactions with natural environments, including walking in nature, could improve performance on certain measures of directed attention compared with urban experiences. Their work was informed by Attention Restoration Theory, which proposes that some natural environments engage attention in ways that may allow effortful attentional processes to recover.

What makes this finding relevant to our discussion is that the restorative effect was associated with interaction with the natural environment itself, rather than requiring a professionally guided mindfulness or forest therapy session.

Yet it would be premature to conclude that all forms of attention to nature produce equivalent outcomes. There may be meaningful differences between observing nature spontaneously, deliberately attending to sensory experiences, and following instructions intended to cultivate mindful awareness. These forms of engagement may overlap, but they do not necessarily involve identical psychological processes.

In fact, research by Richardson and Sheffield (2017) suggests that the way we attend to nature can matter. Participants who were invited to notice three good things in nature each day over five days reported sustained improvements in nature connectedness compared with a group asked to record factual observations. The intervention was relatively simple and did not depend on a professional guide accompanying participants through a natural environment. Yet it introduced an intentional quality of attention that appeared to influence how participants related to nature.

This finding offers another perspective on what organisation might contribute. Perhaps the most important element of certain nature-based interventions is not the presence of a facilitator, nor the complexity of the programme, but the introduction of a particular way of attending to the natural world.

However, we should question whether such intentional attention is always necessary or desirable. When we ask someone to notice three beautiful things, to become aware of their breathing, or to explore a particular sensory quality of the forest, we are already shaping the direction of their experience. We are highlighting certain possibilities and temporarily placing others in the background.

This may be beneficial. But what might have happened if we had not intervened in the person’s attention at all?

Perhaps the participant would have noticed something entirely different. Perhaps they would have become interested in an unfamiliar insect, remembered something from childhood, experienced an unexpected emotion, or simply enjoyed a period of mental quietness. These experiences might not correspond to the guide’s intended invitation, yet they could be personally meaningful.

There is something worth questioning here: when we organise an encounter with nature, do we necessarily make the experience deeper, or do we sometimes make it more predictable?

A structured Shinrin-Yoku session usually involves decisions made before the participants arrive. The facilitator considers the location, duration, pacing, sequence of invitations, opportunities for rest, and ways in which participants might reflect upon or share their experiences. These decisions are important for safety, accessibility, and the coherent delivery of a programme. But they also introduce a framework through which the forest is encountered.

Every framework makes certain possibilities more accessible while potentially limiting others.

If participants are invited to focus on sounds, their attention may become more sensitive to the acoustic environment. If they are invited to walk slowly, they may notice details that would otherwise pass unnoticed. If they are invited to reflect upon an emotion, they may become more aware of their internal responses. Yet each invitation also redirects attention from whatever the participant might have been experiencing independently.

Could it be that the skill of guiding lies not only in knowing what to introduce, but also in knowing when not to introduce anything?

This brings us to the philosophical relationship between structure and freedom. Structure can provide support, but it can also create expectations. Freedom can allow spontaneity, but it may also generate uncertainty. Neither is inherently superior, and the experience of each may vary considerably between individuals.

For someone who finds it difficult to slow down, a guided session may provide permission to do so. The structure of the programme may help them temporarily step outside the habits of productivity, urgency, or constant mental activity. For someone else, however, a scheduled programme with a succession of invitations might reproduce precisely the sense of obligation from which they hoped to find relief.

What happens when we turn slowing down into another activity to be completed? Can an invitation to experience the present moment become something that a participant feels obliged to perform correctly? And if someone feels that they should become calm, mindful, or emotionally restored during a session, might that expectation interfere with the very experience the programme seeks to support?

These questions do not diminish the value of intentional guidance. Rather, they suggest that the way an intervention is facilitated may be as important as the activities it contains. A guide who understands the difference between offering an invitation and imposing an expectation may create space for participants to experience the forest on their own terms.

The ability to decline an invitation, remain silent, move at a different pace when appropriate, or simply observe may be essential to preserving the participant’s autonomy. In this sense, good facilitation may involve a certain restraint: recognising that the participant’s relationship with the forest does not belong to the guide and does not need to follow a predetermined emotional or psychological trajectory.

Yet we should also avoid idealising the unstructured experience. Not everyone arrives in a natural environment feeling safe, comfortable, or capable of engaging with it freely. Physical limitations, unfamiliar terrain, previous experiences, weather conditions, or uncertainty about the environment may influence how a person responds. For some individuals, professional facilitation can reduce practical barriers and support participation that might otherwise be difficult.

The value of a guide may therefore be more apparent in accessibility, confidence, social inclusion, and the quality of support than in immediate physiological changes alone. But these outcomes need to be investigated rather than assumed. A professionally organised session is not automatically inclusive simply because it has been carefully planned, just as an unguided experience is not automatically accessible simply because it does not require payment or formal participation.

There is also the question of social experience. Many guided Shinrin-Yoku sessions take place in groups, while research comparisons sometimes contrast guided group activities with solitary forest exposure. This creates a methodological challenge. When participants report greater social connection following a guided programme, is that change attributable to the forest, the guide, the group, or their interaction?

Would similar social benefits occur if the same participants spent time together in an urban park, a community centre, or another supportive environment? Does the forest contribute something distinctive to the social experience, or does it provide a setting in which ordinary interpersonal processes can unfold differently?

A systematic review and meta-analysis by Coventry and colleagues (2021), which examined 50 studies of structured outdoor nature-based activities, found evidence of improvements in several mental health outcomes, including depressive mood and anxiety. However, the review also highlighted variation between interventions and limitations in the available research. It remains difficult to determine which components of these programmes are responsible for particular outcomes and how their effects compare across different populations and settings.

This uncertainty is especially important when we attempt to attribute benefits specifically to professional guidance. If an intervention combines natural environmental exposure, physical movement, sensory attention, group interaction, reflective activities, and facilitation, we are examining a complex experience rather than a single therapeutic mechanism.

To better understand the contribution of guidance, research would need to compare experiences that are sufficiently similar in their environmental conditions, duration, physical demands, and social context, while varying the specific component being investigated. Even then, the presence of a guide may alter participants’ expectations, sense of safety, or willingness to engage, making it difficult to isolate guidance as a single independent influence.

Perhaps this complexity is not merely a methodological inconvenience. Perhaps it reflects something fundamental about human experiences: they do not consist of entirely separable components.

A forest, a participant, a guide, and a group do not exist as independent influences once an experience begins. They interact, respond, and continually shape what unfolds. The participant’s response to an invitation may depend on the weather, a memory, a sound, an interpersonal encounter, or an unexpected observation. The guide may adapt the session in response to the participants, while the participants may alter their behaviour in response to the guide.

In such circumstances, should we understand facilitation as the delivery of a fixed intervention, or as participation in an unfolding relationship between people and place?

At The Mindful Tourist, this question is particularly relevant to how we understand the role of Nature-related Guides. We do not consider the guide to be the source of the forest’s therapeutic potential. Rather, the guide may help establish conditions in which participants can explore and develop their own relationship with the natural environment.

This requires preparation, ecological awareness, attention to safety, ethical responsibility, and sensitivity to individual differences. But it also requires humility. The guide cannot know in advance which aspect of the experience will be most meaningful to another person. Nor can the guide guarantee that a participant will feel relaxed, connected, grateful, or restored.

The guide may prepare the conditions for an experience, but the experience itself remains the participant’s own.

Perhaps this is one of the most challenging aspects of facilitating nature-based experiences: accepting that an invitation may lead somewhere unexpected, that silence may sometimes be more appropriate than instruction, and that the absence of an observable response does not necessarily indicate the absence of a meaningful experience.

If we accept this, another question follows. Should we evaluate guided nature-based interventions only according to what happens during the session, or should we also consider what participants become able to experience independently afterwards?

A person may attend a guided Shinrin-Yoku session and discover a different way of noticing the natural environment. Later, while walking alone, they may spontaneously engage their senses, become more attentive to seasonal changes, or choose to spend time outdoors without needing to follow a formal protocol.

In that case, the guided session may have served as an introduction rather than a permanent requirement. Its lasting contribution may be the development of an independent capacity for nature engagement.

This possibility deserves further research. We need to understand not only whether structured experiences produce immediate improvements in particular health measures, but also whether they influence longer-term patterns of nature contact, autonomy, nature connectedness, and everyday well-being.

Might a successful guided intervention eventually make itself less necessary?

There is also a philosophical question about whether therapeutic value must always be enhanced. In healthcare and intervention research, we often seek to determine which approach produces the greatest improvement, the strongest effect, or the most sustained benefit. This is understandable when resources are limited and interventions need to be evaluated responsibly. But when we apply this logic to everyday encounters with nature, we may begin to assume that the experience must always be improved through additional structure.

What if an unstructured encounter is not an incomplete version of a guided experience? What if it is simply a different form of engagement, with its own possibilities, limitations, and value?

We should be cautious about creating an implicit hierarchy in which professionally guided encounters are treated as more advanced, meaningful, or therapeutic than ordinary contact with nature. Such a hierarchy would require evidence that is not currently sufficient to support it as a general claim. It could also unintentionally reinforce the belief that people need specialist instruction to benefit from experiences that may already be accessible to them.

At the same time, we should not dismiss the value of professional guidance simply because nature exposure can independently support aspects of well-being. There are many situations in which carefully designed facilitation may be appropriate, helpful, or necessary. The question is whether we can recognise that value without attributing to the guide effects that may arise from the natural environment, the participant’s own engagement, or the interaction between multiple elements.

Perhaps the most useful distinction is not between an effective guided experience and a less effective unguided one, but between different pathways through which people encounter nature. Some pathways provide structure and support. Others allow greater spontaneity and personal exploration. Their suitability may change with a person’s circumstances, experience, needs, and intentions.

This brings me back to the question of whether nature needs to be organised to become therapeutic.

The research suggests that natural environments can influence aspects of human physiology, attention, and mood without requiring a professionally facilitated session. Research also suggests that intentional activities and particular ways of engaging with nature may shape the experience and its outcomes. However, evidence does not justify a universal conclusion that guided experiences are either superior or unnecessary. Their additional value remains dependent on what is being measured, the characteristics of participants, and the nature of the facilitation.

What interests me beyond these findings is the possibility that our desire to organise nature experiences reveals something about our own relationship with uncertainty. We create methods, phases, invitations, and expected outcomes partly because structure helps us understand, communicate, and reproduce experiences. Yet natural environments are dynamic, and human responses to them are not entirely predictable.

Perhaps this is precisely why a relationship with nature cannot be fully organised.

We can design a session, but we cannot design every moment of attention. We can offer an invitation, but we cannot determine what another person will discover. We can create a supportive environment, but we cannot prescribe the meaning that an experience will acquire.

It may be that nature does not need to be organised to become therapeutic. Perhaps organisation is one of the ways we make its potential more accessible, while recognising that this potential is neither created by the guide nor confined to the guided experience.

And the more demanding question for those of us who design and facilitate nature-based experiences is not simply how much we should introduce, but how much we are willing to leave open.

If the purpose of guiding is to support a meaningful encounter between a person and the natural world, how do we know when our guidance is helping that relationship unfold—and when we are beginning to stand in its way?

References

Berman, M. G., Jonides, J., & Kaplan, S. (2008). The cognitive benefits of interacting with nature. Psychological Science, 19(12), 1207–1212. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2008.02225.x

Coventry, P. A., et al. (2021). Nature-based outdoor activities for mental and physical health: Systematic review and meta-analysis. SSM – Population Health, 16, 100934. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssmph.2021.100934

Kim, J.-G., & Shin, W.-S. (2021). Forest therapy alone or with a guide: Is there a difference between self-guided forest therapy and guided forest therapy programs? International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 18(13), 6957. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18136957

Richardson, M., & Sheffield, D. (2017). Three good things in nature: Noticing nearby nature brings sustained increases in connection with nature. PsyEcology, 8(1), 1–32. https://doi.org/10.1080/21711976.2016.1267136

Zhang, Z., Gao, Y., Huang, X., & Ye, B. (2026). Comparing guided and unguided forest bathing for graduate student stress management: A pilot study. Frontiers in Psychology, 17, 1759571. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2026.1759571