Today I'm going to be talking about the benefits of spending time in woodlands and forests. This could be called forest immersion, forest bathing or shinrin-yoku, which literally means forest bath. It was the Japanese who first coined this phrase in 1982, and it means bathing in the forest atmosphere or taking in the forest with all of your senses.

If you are interested in nature connection and spending time in nature, you may have noticed a massive increase in people offering this as a form of therapy, ecotherapy, or simply just to take stressed-out people into nature to make them feel better and really connect with nature and themselves. This is of course, what the Creatrix Journey is all about, spending time in nature and connecting with all of your senses to the elements and the nature around you and expressing it through creative writing. 

So I'm obviously a massive fan.

Here are the highlights:

(01:53) How forest bathing helped me

(04:57) Take your shoes off and connect to the ground

(05:27) Forest bathing can improve wellbeing in general 

(07:58) Too much time online can contribute to health problems

(09:32) The forest school movement

(12:39) Nature prescription

(15:43) The Creatrix Journey retreat 

Connect with Claire:

To find out more about the Creatrix Journey go to: 

https://creatrixjourney.com/

Weekend Creatrix Retreat in Wales: https://creatrixjourney.com/walk-and-write-retreat/

To download our free creative writing guide: https://creatrixjourney.com/free-writing-guide/ 

Instagram: @thecreatrixjourney

Facebook: The Creatrix Journey 

Meet the host:

Claire Winter is a journalist, ICF accredited coach, Nordic Walking instructor, speaker, and podcaster who loves being out in nature. She is passionate about sharing the healing medicine of walking and writing with people. 

She wants to make an impact helping women to connect back to nature, ignite their creativity and share their stories and light with the world. She is on a mission to build a movement of women around the world who create the time and space to walk, write, journal, and create. 

Studying Social Anthropology as her first degree Claire has always been fascinated by ritual and ceremony to mark important moments in life. Now a regular columnist for the Female CEO magazine, she started her career at ITN and has worked in radio, TV, online and in print. 

Claire truly believes you can walk your way to happiness. She is a dedicated Earl Grey tea drinker and often spends her weekends going on long walks or paddle boarding with her family, friends and dog Leo.

Produced by Phoebe Winter @phoebewinter