The Forest Breathes First

By Jade Earthshaker

I found this last night and it has been sitting with me since. It is a slow walk through shinrin-yoku, the Japanese practice of forest bathing, and what stayed with me is how it treats the forest as something you take in rather than something you cross. I spend my weekends leading a mindfulness hiking group, and I am beginning to see the difference between moving through the trees and letting the trees move through me. Somewhere in the middle it explains that a forest releases compounds into the air and the body answers them back, a conversation that has been going on the whole time, quietly, underneath everything else. Eight minutes, headphones, somewhere green.