Shinrin-yoku
A young Indian man drove me
around the National park in the USA, and said how he feels good when he is in
the forest. He listens to the trees and feels very content when he reaches home
within the forest itself.
It was Meskwakia elders who
had taught me about the importance of connecting with trees and animals and
especially to talk to the trees and listen to them. When I lost a colleague in
an accident, the elders asked me to go to a secluded area and talk to his
spirits, in the presence of a tree.
Over the course of working
with indigenous people I have come to respect their connection with the
Universe, which is the world that surrounds them. Ticuna Indians always send me
greetings from the Forest and often invite me to go walking with them in the
Amazon forest.
So I was very pleased to
read about Shinrin-yoku. In their website they state:
Go to a Forest. Walk
slowly. Breathe. Open all your senses.
This is the healing way of Shinrin-yoku Forest Therapy,
the medicine of simply being in the forest.
This is the healing way of Shinrin-yoku Forest Therapy,
the medicine of simply being in the forest.
The treatment is just being
in the forest.
Researchers are finding
that the forest dwellers are some of the healthiest people. Yanomami in the
Amazon has the most diverse Microbiome in the world. Ticuna by and large do not
have Diabetes or Hypertension or other diseases of “civilization”.
Carl Gustav Jung and
Laurens van der Post, great observers of the collective consciousness of the
Indigenous people had noted the sane way of their lives. In the name of
progress the outsiders destroyed them or continue to destroy them, but at least
some enlightened people such as the followers of Shinrin-yuko in Japan is
learning from what has been available for thousands of years in the forests
around us.
I am not suggesting that we
live like the Ticuna or adopt a Ticuna style diet. I think we have to
understand what has caused all these diseases of “civilization”, not to mention
the too often used word STRESS..
Why are we all so stressed,
when the word was not associated with emotions until Sir Hans Selye popularized
it in 1950s!
Something has gone wrong
with our societies. We want to work, but others want us to work more, we want a
comfortable life with our families but the society wants you to sacrifice your
family and friends so that you have enough money to spend .. But not time.
I think people should
understand their priorities. For a starving man, a full meal is a priority but
an over worked, obese office worker, the meal is a symptom rather than a
priority. What made him obese? Why does he not have time? What forces him to
stay where he is? To suffer more punishment? Can he get out of it?
Lifestyle Gurus abound,
more people practicing Yoga in the USA than in India, its birthplace. Money as
an objective rather than a hobby.
More people should go for a
walk by the river, watch the waves idly staring into the horizon, walk through
the forest or be under the canopy of trees.
Both Carl Gustav Jung and
Laurens van der Post would have agreed:
The Indigenous people say,
Man is not the supreme creation of the Great Spirit but he is one of the many
supreme creations of the Great Spirit.
Let us learn to respect some
of the other great creation.
For a starter, go and be
with a tree, in some silence, you can talk to them and
Feel solace..
