In an urban environment, sitting in an office all day, you're pretty much surrounded by your microbial cloud only. Step among the trees, though, and you'll swap microbe populations with all sorts of organisms. There are many types of trees that give off phytoncides these are pine, cedar, spruce or fir (studies done in Europe).

Stress can play havoc on your body in ways that you don’t realise.

Sometimes you may not even feel stressed, but your body will be telling you something different by the way that it’s coping with infections etc.. during a nature and forest walk you can increase your NK cells which decrease your stress hormones.

Creating your own quiet place in Nature - What is a Sit Spot? 

It’s somewhere that you can go, to listen, clear your mind and slow down.  It is somewhere you can sit and observe all that is around you, where you can become one with your surroundings, not separate from them.

I had no intention of creating a mandala that morning, I had a list of chores that needed to be done…

“Music of Nature, is what one hears or feels when one is fully immersed in nature, awed by what one is observing. It is much more than sound”. Hazat Inayat Kahn (1882 - 1927). Sufi musician and mystic.

I almost always go barefoot when I am outside.  I have done this for many years.  Have you ever tried it?

It isn’t a “Hippy thing” that I am doing. 

It is a conscious choice that I make. 

I don’t go barefoot in town on the pavement and concrete.  It is the earth that I want to feel under my feet. 

The concrete isn’t alive, it’s flat and dead.

But walking on the earth there are subtle movements that I feel underneath my feet, even an earthworm at times!

Connecting back to Nature - Podcast.

Sometimes the most simple things are the hardest things to do. Like taking time out before going to bed and looking at the stars and the moon!

“I took a walk in the woods and came out taller than the trees”. - Henry David Thoreau

You may be surprised by how different things look when you change your perspective…

The other day I looked at a flower from the underneath, looking upwards at it.  I usually observe flowers from looking down, taking in the centre and the petals and then smelling them and enjoying looking at the stamens.

By looking at the flower this way I could see how the petals sprung out from the base of the flower and how they were uniformly interlinked with each other and I was able to marvel at the magnificence of this.

I knew then that Nature and Forest Therapy was something more than just sitting or strolling in nature. 

There is a real sense of connection and healing that happened for me and continues to happen to this day.