Some of you might already know, and some of you might have wondered what the ‘+’ after the Forest Bathing+ stands for?
It has always been the TFBI’s ambition to offer a Forest bathing experience with maximum therapeutic potential for the participant.
About Forest Bathing+
In Shinrin Yoku, The Art and Science of Forest Bathing, Dr Qing Li describes shinrin-yoku as ‘bathing in the forests atmosphere or taking in the forest through our senses’.
At The Forest Bathing Institute, we practice Foresst Bathing ‘plus’. The ‘plus’ element was suggested to us by a graduate student from the University of Essex, who attended one of our sessions and noticed that we have additional therapeutic elements in our sessions on top of what is commonly referred to as forest bathing.
The ‘plus’ element in our forest bathing refers to a few emphasised and added ingredients, including greater emphasis on mindfulness and added elements of relaxing yogic breathing, grounding (or earthing), empathy, and others. We also emphasise the quality of our training and the personal development of those in training. The extra time and effort we put into helping those train with us are rewarded by guides running highly effective sessions for the public and vulnerable groups. Our university research results evidence the effectiveness of our training method.
Moreover, through our research projects, we scientifically measured the effectiveness of individual elements in our sessions, hence fine-tuning the sequences of exercises to achieve the most significant therapeutic effect.
As world experts in the field, we are always looking at the recent developments in forest bathing, green social prescribing, and nature connection and adjusting our sessions according to new data and research findings. We are also in touch with universities worldwide who seek our expertise in using nature to help the most vulnerable in society.
We are in discussion with circa 100 universities worldwide, local and central government in the UK, and countless experts in nature connection and Forest Bathing. TFBI have run sessions for over 20.000 participants and has participated in and co-authored three peer-reviewed studies showing the effectiveness of our type of Forest Bathing (you can find more about our research on our website).
In our FB+ sessions, we constantly take feedback from our event participants, researchers, academics, relevant experts, and team members to develop the most therapeutic sessions.
If you want to learn more about our sessions, you can find more information on what they entail and join one of the sessions we currently run across the UK here.