Can you make a living as a forest therapy guide?

“Can I make a living as a forest therapy guide?” is a question I get asked quite often from people who are considering a career change or are about to invest in an expensive forest therapy certification program.

 I totally get it. You're working a job that is killing your soul and you go to the forest as a way to heal, only to discover that there are people who are forest therapy guides and perhaps this is what you're meant to do!

That could very well be the case! I hope it is. But as far as making a “living,” — the answer is it's complicated and it depends on a number of factors. The more experience I get, the more nuanced my stance on this has become.

Here are some factors to consider before paying for that forest therapy certification or quitting your job! I don’t want to dissuade you at all, I just want you to be informed. In the wellness industry, there’s a lot of spiritual materialism and brainwashing that is used to take advantage of well-meaning people.

Grit

How entrepreneurial and creative are you? How much grit do you have? Are you ready to try a lot of different things and are you okay with some of them failing? How creative can you get in terms of collaborations and partnerships? Are you clear on the audience or the community that you want to work with?

Since starting the Forest Bathing Club, I’ve tried a lot of different offerings. I’ve done group sessions, corporate forest baths, private forest baths, and collaborations. I’ve offered mentorship programs and online classes. From the outside, it might look like a mess. But the entrepreneurial process is quite messy!

As a designer, I’m used to prototyping and learning what works and what doesn’t work. You learn through the process of doing and not thinking about it. Eventually you will find your niche, but you might have to try a lot of things before honing in on your core offerings.

Finances

How much money you need/want to make? Do you have a mortgage to pay? Are there other people who depend on you? Do you have debt or student loans? Do you want forest therapy to be a full time job or a side hustle/passion project?

When I quit my job at a design studio in 2015, forest bathing was not yet a term people knew. I had so much conviction that I needed to do this work. I took a leap of faith — but I had a strong safety net and a ton of privilege. I was able to move in with my parents to save on rent. I knew I wouldn’t go hungry under my mother’s roof. I had no one else that I needed to take care of.

Uniques

What other skills you bring with you? Are you an artist, yoga teacher, a gardener, or an engineer? Are you already a therapist and want to expand your practice to include eco-therapy? What can you bring to the practice of forest bathing to carve out a niche for yourself? Is there a community that you’re connected to that you can bring this work to?

Location

Like they say in real estate: location, location, location.

If you’re in a city where people need and want guided experiences in nature, you have a built in audience. There are lots of people in a city so you can have newcomers every week. Or if you live in a tourist hot spot like Hawaii or Tahoe, you can position yourself as a must-do when traveling.

When I lived in San Francisco, I had a thriving in-person forest therapy business and was even working with corporate clients. There are so many people in the Bay Area who love nature and want to try new things. Since moving to the forest in Southern Oregon, I haven’t led one in-person forest bath (though I have done a lot online!). The population is a lot less dense and people who live here are deeply connected with nature and less likely to spend their time on a guided forest bath when they could just step out their back door.

Trends

What’s happening in the world? What are people desiring at any given moment? In general all trends point to a reconnection to Nature.

Pre-pandemic, I was getting invited to guide forest baths at festivals which was fun and a great way to network, too. But will there be festivals in the future? Who knows! On the flip side, a lot of opportunities for digital forest bathing, which sounds like an oxymoron, but is a real offering.

There was once talk that forest therapy could become something that insurance companies pay for, like acupuncture. If that happens, that would be great for this business. But who knows!

Luck!

There’s definitely an element of being in the right place at the right time that can determine your success. Does a journalist discover you? Do you meet other partners or collaborators that help you along? What opportunities are naturally opening up to you?

I do believe that when you’re living your purpose, you exhibit a certain magnetism that draws people and opportunities to you. So if this is what you’re meant to do and you’re doing it in a good way, you may open yourself up to some magic. I sure have witnessed some miracles since starting down this path. When people ask me how it happened, I say, “the trees worked their magic.”

Trees are very powerful and support those who support them! But fair warning: nature provides, but not necessarily in the ways you might think you want. The path of listening to the trees does not always make sense when you're having to deal with the logistics of late stage capitalism.

Integrity

Are you making money off of stolen land and some appropriated traditions? Will you see forest therapy as a money making opportunity and create a line of clothing or perfume? Do you have systems in place to give back in reciprocity? Are you helping all people experience nature connection or just ones who can already afford it?  Forget what the email marketers and personal business gurus tell you and trust your gut. If something feels icky, it probably is icky!

I do believe connecting to Nature is the most important thing we as humans can be doing on the Planet at this time. I also see how capitalism destroys everything in its wake and when you take something as pure as nature connection and try to make money on it in a capitalist sense, the essence gets diluted.

If you truly listen to Nature, you’ll start to understand collaboration and reciprocity. You’ll see that making a living off of something the forest gives freely is inherently icky. You will grapple, grieve, feel the pain of the Earth, and begin to understand how capitalism lives inside of you and has programmed you to be  extractive and opportunistic. There’s a lot of grey area and we all need to make a living at this point, but can you align your living with Life? That’s the challenge and something to ask yourself every day.

It is a radical act but the only hope for the future of our planet. I hope you’ll join me on this quest for greater harmony.

 May we all find ways for our work to be supportive of Life.

Let your dog be your guide

I got a puppy for Hanukkah last year and life has been better ever since! I highly recommend getting a puppy as an antidote to the pandemic blahs. Our puppy Mesa is a rez-cue from the Navajo nation. She comes from a long lineage of sheepherding dogs.

“Ohh we got a working dog?!” my fiancé said to me. He was barely onboard with getting a dog at all, let alone one who has so much energy and is born to work and not chill like a little lap dog.

Mesa does need a lot of exercise, but I do too. We go out for an hour romp in the woods every morning, but the dog trainer (I use Good Pup and it’s the best!) warned against exercising her too much too soon.

“With these working dogs, some people will just run them all day long to tire them out, but then they never learn how to relax and then they can’t calm down,” she said. She recommended a good jaunt in the morning and then a slower walk (more like a sniff) later in the day.

It dawned on me that that’s what I need too! As a former cross-country runner, I was trained like a working dog. I never learned how to slow down and relax until I started forest bathing. Forest bathing helped me shift my focus from running miles to experiencing the world around me. But then I went overboard — I stopped exercising and would only go for slow sensual strolls. After a few years, I learned that a balance is best for me. Like Mesa, I need my exercise in the morning and then can go out again for a forest bath later in the day. Like most false binaries in life, forest bathing and exercising is not an either/or but rather a both/and situation.

Mesa has upped my forest bathing game in other ways, too. She loves to dig holes in the dirt and then sniff the around. I don’t think she even knows that smelling dirt is akin to taking an antidepressant. She just enjoys engaging her sense of smell and letting that guide her. As we’re learning with COVID and our loss of sense of smell, we too have a powerful ability to smell and can even follow a scent trail while blindfolded. Let your dog inspire your sense of scents.

Maybe it’s because she’s teething, but Mesa loves to have a stick in her mouth. We can also engage in the world around us but putting things in our mouth and licking them. Lick a rock (but please DON’T be like Mesa and swallow it!) or chew on a stick, a piece of grass, or a fresh fir tip.

Mesa doesn’t follow the trail like the rest of us — she runs around and makes her own path. We too can blaze our own trails (in some cases — in sensitive environments, it’s best to stay on the trail) instead of just blindly following in others’ footsteps (are you picking up on the metaphor here?!)

So, in short, you don’t need any fancily trained forest bathing guide to take you out. Just get a puppy and you’ll be doing just fine! There’s even a book on forest bathing with your dog!

The anti-gift guide

It’s the time of year where everyone is sharing their gift guides. I used to love gift guides. I’m a sucker for a well-edited list of beautiful things. But this year, I’m not giving in to any of it. I will not participate in the capitalist notion that I buy so therefore I am.

Whether it’s a small business or large online monolith, everyone is trying to get us to consume. And we’re more than consumers. We have to be! We’ve been consuming everything in our sight on this Earth for too long and it’s about time we learn to be creators and healers and regenerators.

I saw a billboard recently near Bishop, California that said something like “Artists need to create at the same scale society has the capacity to destroy,” and later learned it was from Metabolic Studio.

We aren’t here to be consumers. We have a deeper purpose. A deeper reason for being and when you uncover that, it’s the gift of a lifetime that keeps on giving!

Here are five ways you can transform your holiday gift-giving!

Think in closed loops

What can you give that creates zero waste? What can you give that regenerates the Earth instead of destroys it further? There may be some companies who are doing good work but make sure it’s not just green-washing. What about planting trees or making something from this year’s harvest? I’ll be gifting acorn flour muffins and hoshigaki (hey when you’re lacking for physical touch, why not massage a persimmon?)

Give the gift of Nature

Spending time in Nature is one of the best ways we can love the Earth. Why not take your loved ones out to the forest and spend some quality time together? Leave your phones at home and slow down. Make a mandala and give offerings to the Earth. When you give to the Earth, you give to everyone.

Found nature objects like feathers and homemade remedies like cottonwood bud salve make sweet gifts!

Make something!

The best way to quell the desire to consume is to make something…anything! Bake cookies, learn to knit, make a wreath…whatever it is, it has special healing energy when it comes from your heart and hands and will make the best gift. I’m gifting lots of DIY natural plant dyed garments this year.

Give it all away

What if we used the holidays to give away things we no longer need instead of gifting new things? Have a coat drive and give to organizations you want to support. On a spiritual / metaphysical level, when you give, you open yourself up to receive something greater. It’s all about reciprocity!

The best stuff is vintage

People often ask what to wear while forest bathing and I believe the best stuff is either vintage or made by hand. The more natural the fabrics, the closer to the Earth you feel. Both Patagonia and REI have pre-loved sections on their websites. Ebay and Etsy and great resources and I’m sure there are cool vintage stores wherever you are.

How to survive winter

As a person with Seasonal Affective Disorder who chooses to live in a snowy climate, I think a lot about how to make the most of winter. Covid makes it harder, but we can do this. Here are some essentials:

Load up on vintage sweaters

Besides underwear and some shoes, my entire wardrobe is vintage. It’s the only way I feel good about shopping. There’s already so much stuff on this Earth and vintage is way better quality. Whether you deep dive on Ebay or Etsy or head to your local thrift store, I highly recommend adding some FUN to your winter wardrobe with silly sweaters, old puffy coats, and anything else that puts a smile on your face.

Get outside every day

Working from home in the winter means it’s really easy to not go outside all day long. But you must!! I like to take lunch break walks when the sun is shining. Snowshoeing and cross country skiing and even sledding are fun too.

Wear the right footwear

You’d think this was obvious, but I’m still learning this one. No one likes having cold feet. I invested in Sorel winter boots and Smartwool socks so that my feet will love me. I have YakTrax that I put over my running sneakers so I can run on icy roads. I also really love Manitobah muckluks and rubber duck boots!

Bring Nature inside!

Make wreaths and other nature crafts to hang inside all winter. Forage for mushrooms and brew mushroom tea (or just buy Chaga and Reishi from your favorite purveyors). I love to add cacao to my mushroom brews for some extra heartwarming goodness. Also, drink elderberry syrup and all the herbal remedies to boost your immunity.

Fall into a creative hole

Whether you’re drawn to writing, music, or art, get your creative juices flowing. I find that I need a little of the winter blues to help me do my most creative work. Winter is the time to incubate new ideas and receive visions that you can birth into the world in 2021.

What are your winter must dos? I would love to hear.

Go to nature to develop your intuitive superpowers

I cheated on a personality test. What does that say about me?

Well let me explain. In design school, we all had to take a Meyers Briggs personality test. As I was filling in the multiple choice answers, I could tell which answers I thought I was “supposed” to mark to be the upbeat popular girl I always thought I “should” be.

Growing up, I thought being an extrovert was what it was all about — being able to light people up with my presence and enjoy big parties. In my mind, being an introvert was akin to being a loser with no friends. No one would want to be an introvert, right???

And so, surprise surprise — I got my test results back and I was an extrovert. But no one who really knew me believed that test. “Of course you’re in introvert,” my dad said, “as a kid, you would spend hours alone in the basement entertaining yourself.” (I had a whole workshop in the basement and would only come out of it for meals).

For the longest time I thought being an introvert was a character flaw. It wasn’t until I learned how to connect to nature that I began to see my introverted tendencies as being my superpower. I had to restore my relationship to the Earth in order to understand myself and also be better able to relate to others. I haven’t taken the Meyers Briggs test again, but I have a feeling I would be a proud introvert now.

Truth is, all of us have an introverted side — sometimes it’s just not that well-developed. When we nurture our introverted side, we develop intuitive abilities and tap into the magic that surround us. Here’s how anyone can begin to develop their superpowers:

Empty out the thoughts in your in head

It’s impossible to tap into your intuitive abilities when you’re mind is clogged with other thoughts. If you’re like me, you might be highly sensitive or empathic and may take on stuff from other people without realizing it. When you’re not aware of your own sensitivity, it can feel like you’re getting a lot of confusing messages. To clear it out, imagine that you’re emptying a thought with each step that you take until you feel completely free. (This may take a while!). Another way to do this is to go into child’s pose on the Earth and imagine all the thoughts in your head draining back into the Earth.

Say a prayer from your heart

Spontaneous prayer in Nature is a great way to tap into your personal Truth and see what’s really going on for you. Pray to a tree or an open field. Share your gratitude and then ask for something that you’re yearning for. You may be surprised at what comes through. After your prayer, pay attention to see what starts to unfold.

Cut chords to anything holding you back

Pick up a stone and use it as a chord cutter to energetically cut any ties to relationships or ways of being that are not in your best interest. Make a big cut through the air from the top left to the bottom right and from the top right to the bottom left. You can do this again and again. Imagine what you’re cutting yourself loose from. When you’re done, place the stone back down and step through a portal embodying yourself who is free from all that is holding you back.

Absorb the good vibes from negative ions

Walking on the Earth, absorbing the fresh air from waterfalls and the ocean, and being on mountaintops are all ways to absorb negative ions. When we get our share of negative ions, we feel good. Our energy is restored. If we’re introverts in an extroverted world, we could always use some of this restoration. When we are filled up, we’re better able to share our gifts.

Connect to the sun, the moon, and the four directions

Introverts aren’t lonely! It’s disconnection from Nature and our true selves that make us lonely. When you’re connected to the trees, the spirits, the sun, the moon, the stars, and the elements, you feel like you have a lot of friends with you at all times (super important during these socially distanced days).

Make a practice of connecting to the elements and beings of the more than human world. Greet them daily. Talk to them. Talk back to the birds. See what happens when you invite Life in.

Play make-believe

In western culture, we’re pretty cut off from our imagination. From a young age, we teach kids the difference between make believe and the real world. In other cultures, there is more grey area. Where does imagination come from? I believe that if we can imagine it, then it is real. When we do shamanic journeywork or spirit journeys, we practice “suspending disbelief” and strengthening our connection to the imaginal realms. Being outside supports that childlike sense of wonder and play — so give it a try! Eventually you will learn to trust what you cannot see and therein a lot of your intuitive abilities exist.

How to transform your walk in Nature

If you know anything about forest bathing, you know that this practice is about slowing down and engaging your senses. It’s a mindful practice of bathing in the forest atmosphere. We walk slowly. We sit in sit spots.

Here are some other prompts or invitations to transform your daily walk into a magical, medicinal experience. Try it by yourself or with loved ones:

Look for something you’ve never seen before

Why haven’t you seen it? Did it just show up? Have you missed it before?

Notice all the things of a certain color

Green? Red? Purple? White? Rainbow? What do you see differently when you’re focused on one color?

Find an object that you would like to interview.

And then actually interview it. If you’re alone, ask questions and “hear” what the object has to say. If you’re with someone else, take turns responding on behalf of the object. Have fun and trust what comes up.

Collect sounds

You can do this by pretending to collect sounds or actually recording on your phone if you happen to have it with you. I like to collect sound bites like some people collect photos.

Look for what isn’t there

This one can be heart breaking and bring up some climate grief. But it’s important. What’s missing from this landscape? What was once there that is no longer here? Take a moment to reflect on why.

Find evidence of time passing

Whether it’s the seasons or the years, what has changed over time? What are some things that mark time? In my neighborhood, there are wagon tracks from when the settlers first came West on the Applegate Trail. There’s also an unfinished railroad tunnel.

Buzzwords for the new paradigm

Here are the Forest Bathing Club, we’re aware that business-as-usual isn’t working — in fact it’s a complete disaster. Pretty much everything we (as westernizers, people of empire) have been doing is resulting in unhealthy land and unhealthy people. We simply cannot go on for much longer or else we will all become toast.

Climate change is here. Our soils are degrading. More pesticides than ever before are being pumped into food. Society is at the verge of collapse and already has collapsed for many people with the realities of wildfires here on the West Coast and covid everywhere. It’s a lot to grapple with and it can be paralyzing.

But here’s the thing: we can change. All the solutions are here. It’s just time to get to work. It’s time to put our egos and personal issues aside to join together. When we work to heal the planet, we also heal ourselves. It’s one in the same thing because we are nature!

Beyond the eco-paralysis, there’s a lot of work to do (and grief to feel). So let’s get started.

A new paradigm calls for a new vocabulary. Here are some words to get us started. These are very brief introductions to very vast subjects.

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Drawdown:

Drawdown is about getting to the point where the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is declining instead of increase. There are lots of known solutions to climate change that are safe, equitable, and low tech.

Trees are really great carbon sequesters so planting more trees is an important way to lower greenhouse gases. Another big one is to restore the soil. Instead of plowing and using pesticides, support the soil biology with things like cover crops and compost!

Check out Project Drawdown for more on climate solutions and Kiss The Ground for more information on restoring soil.

Regeneration:

This is about making something better than it was before. Instead of “leave no trace,” the idea is to leave a positive impact.

An example of regenerative practices is transforming degraded land into healthy food forests. John Liu made a film about re-greening the Loess Plateau in China that is all about regenerating the land and restoring biodiversity.

Permaculture:

This term was coined by Bill Mollison in Australia. It refers to permanent agriculture, or a way of growing food and tending land that does not degrade the land but actually regenerates it while creating food sovereignty.

Permaculture takes a systems design approach and has a set of principles that work for any location and any scale. The first principle. “observe (and interact),” is a lot like forest bathing. It’s the idea of just being to the land and listening to it before doing anything. Imagine what the world would be like if we took a year to observe and learn before doing any big projects! A great way to practice this principle is through nature drawing and journaling.

Permaculture is about relationships between everything (as opposed to just focused on the self) and cultivates an ecological state of mind. In this mind state, we are intimately connected to the more-than-human-world.

A popular way to learn about permaculture is through a permaculture designs course. I had the joy of taking a permaculture course with Siskiyou Permaculture and learned a lot from Hazel, one of the co-inventors of permaculture. I recommend anyone who is ready to take their connection to nature to the next level to find a course to take. Check out the Permaculture Institute of North America.

It’s important to note that indigenous cultures all over the world lived permaculture, wild tending the land, and that we need to support indigenous land management and restore traditional ecological knowledge (TEK). We have a lot to learn from Native Americans about how to live on this land in a good way,

Social Permaculture:

When we take the principles of permaculture and apply them to communities, we get social permaculture: the application of permaculture principles to human relationships, communities, and social systems. Adam Brock gets into this in his book Change Here Now: Solutions for Personal and Community Transformation.

Social forestry:

The basis of social forestry is that our forests are lonely and we’ve lost our way of living with the forest. It’s a way of life that cares for the land and supports healthy human culture at the same time. Seasonal work cycles, festivals, working with hand tools, and land stewardship is all a part of the social forestry web.

(I’m currently in the process of editing Tom Ward’s (aka Hazel) manuscript on social forestry and have signed up for a social forestry internship this winter).

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May these buzzwords be the beginning of a new way of being and may we all care of ourselves, each other, and the whole planet.

Five ways to beat screen fatigue

At the beginning of quarantine, I completely got on board with the popular notion of, “Okay no problem, we will just do it over Zoom.” 

 We Zoomed through birthdays, Passover seders, and funerals. My partner and I shared the news about getting engaged on a Zoom call. Heck, I was even featured in a New York Times article about how screens won.

I quickly offered virtual forest baths and then a whole 8-week course of Zoom (it was really great btw and more on that soon). And then August hit and I was burned out like never before. 

I told myself I would take off the month and then be ready to engage with screen life again. But now it's late September (okay how did that happen so fast?) and my eyes still glaze over every time I try to read an article on the computer.

I was even suckered into buying blue light glasses (which looks really cute on Zoom calls but jury's out if they actually help my eyes). I can't tell you how many FREE summits I've signed up for and then ghosted on because I couldn't bring myself to sit in front of my computer. 

When I found myself leading a virtual forest bath indoors because the air quality was too bad from wildfires, I bemused at how far I have strayed from leading groups of people outside. And then I watched the Social Dilemma and immediately deleted Instagram from my phone.

Screens aren’t going anywhere for as long as coronavirus is a thing, so there’s no getting rid of screen life. But we can be proactive and make sure we’re the ones in charge (not the screens). Here’s how:

1. Remember to breathe

Some 80% of us have “screen apnea” — which means we don’t take full breaths when we are looking at screens. When we don’t breathe fully, it can trigger a fight or flight reaction which, if prolonged, has negative effects on our health. And none of us need that right now.

So take full belly breaths as you answer your emails and sit on Zoom. Also, try shaking your body and making any animal noises. We need to keep coming back into our bodies because screen time is such an out of the body experience.

2. Take a social media cleanse

Take a moment to examine your relationship to certain social media apps. When do you use them? How do you use them? How do they make you feel? What do you give and what do you get from these apps? These apps are not benign — they are literally designed to be highly addictive — so have compassion with yourself. If you need this for work or like some aspects of it, you can get back on after a week or a month. I recommend stopping cold turkey without doing the whole “goodbye, I’m taking a break, etc.” But do what feels best for you.

3. Create your own workout/exercise/stretch/meditation routine

Don’t get me wrong, it’s so great that there are so many apps and websites for online workouts and such. Tools like Headspace and Calm can be a life saver. I personally love to do yoga, pilates, and HIIT classes with Glo. But I do notice that I don’t feel totally in my body because a lot of attention is still being connected with the screen. So I try to do a few workouts a week where it’s just mean tuning into my body and going with my own flow without any screens (okay maaaybe I do still use Spotify for some groovy tunes).

4. Make something!

Do you notice that a lot of what you’re doing with screen time is consuming content? Balance it out by creating something with your own hands. Pick up a pen and draw. Sing a new song. Create an altar in Nature. Cook a healthy treat for your family. Learn to knit or weave or anything else you’ve been wanting to do. Bonus points if it uses materials from Nature and is zero-waste.

Did you know that the same places that offer forest bathing in Japan also offer soba noodle making and other crafts to restore attention? We need to come back to a simple, handcrafted way of life because it’s better for the Planet and better for us, too.

5. Go outside.

This may seem like a no brainer, but especially as it starts to get cold outside, we need to remember to spend at least 20 minutes outside every day. Leave your phone at home or put it on airplane mode. Practice tuning into your senses. Breathe. Greet the four directions. Give offerings. Feel the physical world around you that is not the virtual realm.