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Podcast Transcript: The Healing Power of Forest Therapy

Writer's picture: Jayne MorrisJayne Morris

Listen to our latest podcast where Jayne is joined by Monique Giroux, a Forest Therapy Guide and author of 'Lost Intentionally'. Monique shares her journey from a high-stress corporate career to a peaceful, nomadic lifestyle. They explore the concepts of forest bathing, mindfulness, and the benefits of reconnecting with nature to prevent and recover from burnout. Monique discusses how simple practices can help individuals slow down, breathe deeply, and find peace in their everyday lives. The conversation reveals the transformative power of nature and the importance of integrating these practices into daily routines, even in corporate environments.



Here's the full transcript:


Jayne: Season 3, Episode 8 with Monique Giroux, Forest Therapy Guide and author of Lost Intentionally. As we tiptoe into the autumn, often there's a beautiful period of late summer sun and warmth in the air that seems to beckon us into the UK park and woodlands to sit or to walk amongst the trees. It feels therefore like an apt time to weave in an episode about the benefits of forest bathing.

When I was introduced to Monique by Frank Bolaji Irowu, who joined us earlier in the season for our episode about poetry as a bridge out of burnout, I felt intrigued by Monique's story of trading in her business suits for hiking boots when she took early retirement after a 30 year corporate career in financial services.

Monique relays how she experienced anxiety for so many years that it had become a painful yet normalised part of her day to day experience. That was until she remembered how to breathe and rediscovered the joy of living life at a slower pace rather than being carried along by the rat race. Monique shares in this episode some simple tools that she uses with clients to help them to remember their ability to breathe, to notice the beauty of nature around them, and to experience the gift of slowing things down.

I hope you'll enjoy. Hey Monique, and welcome to the UK. I am excited that you're over here on this side of the pond from Canada, able to actually join me and enjoy British summertime, the sun has actually made an appearance. So at the time of recording this, we're nearly in August but your book has already been out for about a month.

And when this podcast goes live, people will definitely be able to get hold of it because it would have been on sale for a little while. Perhaps you can tell us the title of the book and we can begin there for our conversation today.


Monique: Oh, wonderful. And thank you so much, Jayne. It's great to see you.

It's great to be here. I'm thrilled to talk about my book: "Lost Intentionally, The Inner and Outer Journey of a Spiritual Nomad". And it is available on any online book retailer. I launched with Amazon on June 11th and quickly became a bestseller in Canada, which I was super excited about.

And it is a story about my travel journey, my journey with anxiety, my decision to leave corporate and go into this untethered lifestyle that I'm sure we'll talk a little bit about and really to pursue a life I don't need a vacation from.


Jayne: Yeah, a life that you don't need a vacation from. That's such an interesting statement because so many people I experienced living their life, living for the vacation, living for the weekend, living for the holidays. And then those holidays come and often they crash and they're absolutely exhausted and they don't actually even get to enjoy the weekend or the holiday or the vacation.

So living a life that you don't need a vacation from is quite a different framing for life than the conditioned norm. Can you speak a little bit more to what that means for you?


Monique: It is. And it actually my journey started on a vacation. I was in Bali with my daughter in 2019, we were on a 10 day wellness tour, which included meditation and yoga every day.

And by the end of those 10 days, I realised that I was sleeping through the night. And that I could take a deep breath and not feel pain. And that's when I realised that I had been living with anxiety throughout my entire career. So I made a commitment to myself at the end of that retreat. And it was to find a way to live a life where I can breathe deeply and find peace of mind.

And that kick started a journey of learning training, studying and it has completely transformed my life.


Jayne: And so that was four years, five years ago now?

Yeah, five years ago.

Five years ago, five years ago. And and still a nomad.


Monique: Now I'm a nomad. I am living I like to refer to it as an untethered lifestyle.

Some people tease me and say that I'm homeless, but my partner and I sold everything. My daughter went off to school to start university and my partner and I started this nomad lifestyle. And, we did a bit of a trial at first. We tried Costa Rica for the month of November. And found that we absolutely loved working away from home.

And we've decided that it was something we wanted to try doing full time. And so less than a year later, we sold our house, we sold everything we own, and, um, we've been travelling and following our adventures, sometimes together and sometimes separately, all over the world. And it has led me to some pretty beautiful experiences, beautiful places, beautiful people, certainly has helped me deepen this practice of slowing down, living a more mindful life, living a more simple life.

Away from the stresses of corporate environment living in a very busy city and simplifying., Our mantra is keep it simple.


Jayne: Keep it simple. Yeah. And it's quite an opposite way of living to what most people have been conditioned as we, as I said, needing the vacation from life.

Whereas, your life almost sounds idyllic as if it is a vacation. And yet I imagine that wouldn't be for everyone. And for some people almost going to that extreme might be something that there's a lot of fear around or connection and attachment to people and places and things, or they've got responsibilities.

And I'm wondering from the learnings that you've had along the way and the practices that you've discovered that have supported you in that slowing down, because I know you coach people as well, where you've found people actually able to slow down and to maintain a way of living in, in the world that they burned out in perhaps without necessarily needing to become a nomad or to go to Costa Rica or to go off grid completely.

 

Monique: That's such a great point because I do feel that known what I know today, I may have stayed in the corporate environment longer and just worked in a different way. What I came to realise is a lot of my anxiety came from my own thoughts and pressure I was putting on myself.

 I was a high performing employee. I ran high performance teams and it really was about wanting to be successful. Like I came to realise through all of the inner work that I had been doing people are motivated by different things. People are motivated by a job title or making more money or getting a bigger house or, the travel perks of senior level roles.

For me, what motivated me was just wanting to be recognised. It was recognition. It was being known as being great at my job. And that awareness came from childhood. Yeah. And I think now that I have that realisation, I think I could go back into a corporate environment and be a very different type of employee and be able to manage my mental health in a very different way. I'm loving my lifestyle and I'm not, I'm not looking to go back to corporate, but I think I just in a way wish I had known what I know now about mindfulness and self care earlier on in my career and to be able to support my team in a different way also.


Jayne: I'm wondering because before we started recording the interview, you were sharing there's lots of different practices that you've built into what now enables you to stay in a place of groundedness and not be in that place that you experienced before of pain that came with the anxiety and the inability to breathe, to really deeply take a breath.

I'm wondering what from that you might like to share that would benefit those that maybe are still in the corporate environment and could benefit from the hindsight and the learning that you have that they could then put into place and experiment with and maybe explore and prevent their own burnout.


Monique: It was a long journey of learning to get to this understanding, but I think the main message is really having an awareness of your thoughts in your mind, getting to know yourself, and you can get there in many different ways. So to me, it's all about slowing down. And that might look different for different people.

And what really opened up my world was forest therapy. In the UK, it's known as forest bathing. Yes. In Japan, it's known as shinrin yoku. It's essentially all the same. It's like mindfulness in the forest. And although I had learned yoga nidra, restorative yoga meditation is something that I'm learning more and more about all the time.

I see a lot of overlap with forest therapy and the mindfulness practice. A lot of forest therapy is ancient wisdom. It's about reconnecting with nature. And by doing that, you reconnect with yourself. And by doing that, you reconnect with those all around you. So I think society today is set up in a way that we've become very disconnected.

I know when I worked in corporate, I was very disconnected with myself. This is what my anxiety was telling me. Listen to me, listen to my body. It's trying to tell me something and I just push through. And so I'm grateful for my anxiety because I think of it as an early warning system when I feel like this bubbling up in my chest, I stop.

And I know it's my body is telling me something I need to pay attention to. So for years I just ignored it. Now I don't. And now I have, all the things I had been looking for, peace of mind, and the ability to breathe deeply. So forest therapy I think was, and again I think people gravitate to different practices, but I think forest therapy and our love of nature is pretty universal.


Jayne: Yes. I don't think I've yet met anyone who doesn't enjoy being near trees, even if they might have a phobia of spiders or bugs or, even looking at a tree. It's an invitation to take a breath, I feel. And yet, as you say, so many people aren't connected in that way to the aspect of themselves that is nature.


Monique: And we are all nature, we are, and this is what I, one of the things I love about forest therapy is it's a remembering of who we are. We were meant to be outdoors, we were meant to walk in the grass and in the sand, bare feet, feel that dirt under our fingers, gardening and having our hands in the soil. And we've lost that along the way.

And so it's such a gift to reconnect with that. And one of the practices that I've been really focused on over the last year is is mindfulness and meditation. And one of my main teachers is Thich Nhat Hanh, who sadly passed away two years ago, but he has monasteries all around the world.

And I've learned from the monastic community about Thich Nhat Hanh's teachings. Unmindfulness and our connection to earth and our connection to nature and, like you said, we are nature. He calls that interbeing. We inter are with every living being on this earth and we're connected. So what happens to our trees affects us as humans, what happens to nature affects us and vice versa.

And so we call it in forest therapy, the more than human world. So there's a reason why we feel so good when we go for a walk in the woods. I always say it's like nature's conspiring to make us well, there are so many things happening that we're not even aware of as we walk through the woods.

So for example, if you walk through a grove of coniferous trees, you're inhaling something called phytoncides. And phytoncides are chemicals that trees produce to fight disease. And so as we're walking through the forest, we're inhaling these phytoncides, which then boost our immune system. When we're standing by running water, like a stream or river, we're inhaling negative ions. And negative ions increase the blood flow to the brain. The colour green is the easiest colour for our eyes to process. It's very calming for our eyes. The sound of birds through our evolution, we know when birds are singing, it's a signal that we are safe. So just by walking, just being in the presence of nature, it is healing, it's restorative, it's calming.

 And it's been very well researched, especially in Japan, how forest therapy or forest bathing has many physical and emotional benefits. It's incredible. And it's just right there for us. If we advertised that there was a pill that you could take that could, reduce your levels of cortisone and could reduce your blood pressure and your pulse rate and reduce your adrenaline and stress hormone, help you sleep better, improve PTSD and ADHD, um, decreased scores for anxiety, depression and anger.

Imagine if there was a pill that did all that how successful would that medication be? And that is just, that's, this is what happens when you have no time in nature. Yeah, it's incredible. It's free and it's available to us.


Jayne: Yeah, I need to literally bring more of it in. One of the guests a little earlier in the year in July Dr. David Hamilton he began his career in pharmaceuticals and cardiovascular medicine and he speaks quite a lot about the benefits of nature, the sort of level of the body's physiology. And just today before our interview, I had seen a post that he had done about trees. And it was so serendipitous, really.

And he was speaking about the studies that show how important it is to have trees in our towns and our cities, but also surrounding our towns and our cities and and it's something that we have in place, but in the UK is largely at risk, these green, what they call green belts. We're typically encroaching into the green belts to build more housing and then doing away with the very thing that actually sustains us and can help to restore us as you suggest, um, and yet if we individually, and then collectively can reocgnise the benefits that nature around us has for us, like you say, if it was a pill, people would be paying a fortune for it. And all they need to do is go outside and find the nearest garden or park.


Monique: That's right.

Yeah. Or even bring it indoors. There have been studies on the benefits of just even having pictures of a forest on your screensaver, for example. That's right. Yeah, we're bringing plants into your home and natural elements into your home. We sometimes bring forest therapy into seniors homes for that reason, and give them the opportunity to touch and hold the pine cones and smell the leaves of trees and and bring that sensory experience into the home.

For some people, they're not able to go outdoors. A lot of people are working from home, and they're at their desks at home they can have plants around them, and so there are other ways to bring nature to you if you're not always able to go to it.


Jayne: I'm curious in terms of the bathing aspect of forest bathing, of the sort of the yoku, of the shinrin yoku because I've never trained in that practice or approach. Does the bathing part literally, for me, bathing is like some, I think of sunbathing. So lying down on a towel and absorbing the sun's rays, for example, is that what typically is part of forest bathing or is it when you suggested mindfulness and I took a little journey in my head of walking through trees or is it both of those things or something else entirely?


Monique: I think it's both of those things. So when I travel I meet forest therapy guides wherever I go, and I met a beautiful guide in Sydney, Australia, Mayou and Mayou is Japanese so I learned so much from her and my visit with her. She talked about how shinrin yoku in Japan is a little bit different from the practice now that we're seeing, in the West and in other places.

She said in, in Japan, bathing is a way of immersing yourself in whatever experience you're doing. So she said you could be bath bathing, which means when you're in your bath, you are enjoying the sensation of being in your bath. You could be cloud bathing where you're just laying on the earth and looking at the clouds in the sky.

So to me, it's just being fully present in whatever you're doing. That's definitely what forest therapy is. It's typically a two to three hour experience when you go with a forest therapy guide. So we as guides have been trained to take people on an experience that helps them really sink into the mindfulness aspect.

We call it, we have activities that we call invitations. People are invited to walk very slowly. And notice what they're noticing and really spend time, if it's a bird call, then just stop and really take in that bird call. I know one time I stared at the veins of a leaf for 10 minutes and I was in awe of the perfection, that's called fractal patterns in nature, repeated patterns.

And in this leaf, I just thought the entire universe is in this leaf. I was just in awe of this leaf. And so these are the experiences that people have often for the first time, because we never walk that slowly in life. And a lot of times when in the forest we're walking the dog, or we're riding our bike or we're going for a run.

It's not slow, mindful walking. It's a very different experience. And so having a guide can help people slow down and really be immersed in that focused activity, whatever it might be. And then we take time to share as a group, and that further deepens the experience because everyone is having their own experience.

And then you come together and you share and the insights that come from the sharing are very touching. It can be very emotional for people because they're not used to slowing down. And all of a sudden the emotions start to come to the surface because the body's been trying to tell you, to communicate with you and we're just moving too fast through life. So when you slow down, this is when you can hear that voice. Yeah. Intuition and have those feelings and start to process some things. And that's where a lot of the healing happens.


Jayne: That makes a lot of sense. You referenced the sort of remembering that happens where we connect back to what we really already know.

I'm thinking of a client very fondly that I worked with about 10 years ago who started a practice for herself of her own intuition of meeting a tree in a park that she felt a connection to. And And she's honoured it for years of going and meeting this tree. And, we sometimes laugh about tree huggers in the UK.

We call them, people that literally go and hug trees. I'm one of those people, but maybe, and I was going to nearly said without the Birkenstocks and the, but I love Birkenstocks too. So that's not actually true. And I've got them on today. So that's true. But there's something I feel usually it's not when there's people around, it's usually just if I'm on a walk and I feel Oh, there's something about that tree.

And I might not put my arms around it and embrace it, but I might just put my back up against it and just remember the strength that's in me that the tree represents and almost reassures me of or I almost feel like there's a gifting that trees can also give us, there's a, I don't know, there's a sense of abundance to them that I never feel like I'm taking something that it doesn't have to give, so I guess I find it easier sometimes to go to a tree for that resourcing than to a person who's maybe already overstretched or busy or, I think some people find it hard in their lives to ask for help or to ask for support because so many of the people around them that they would go to ask are also overburdened, overwhelmed, busy, and yet the trees, they're there for us, with that kind of open arms, and we forget that we can go to the trees.


Monique: I love that. I love that. One of our invitations is called meeting with the tree. Okay. And so the way I would lead that invitation would be to go to a tree that speaks to you or has your attention, the tree that you notice and greet the tree as you would a new friend. Yeah. And introduce yourself and this could be out loud or it could just be in your mind's eye.

Introduce yourself to the tree and you can share gratitude with the tree. You can share a problem that you might have on your mind or you can sit at the base of the tree and lean against the tree like you did. And trees have an essence. Trees have energy. When you're near a tree, then you become a part of it's energetic orb. So there definitely is a connection that happens. And there have been some really beautiful experiences that my clients have had with that invitation in particular. And then afterward, and usually we do that for about 20 minutes, so everyone's off with their tree on different parts of the area that we're in the forest.

And at the end, I invite them to express thank you by asking the tree how it would like to be thanked. And you just get this feeling you get sometimes you know I've had a tree ask me to move a branch that had fallen nearby. And sometimes it's just a hug but sometimes even you get a sense of the name of the tree or a story that the tree tells.

It's really been so fascinating and beautiful, these connections.

When we do our practicum as Forest Therapy Guides, it's actually a six month programme, it's pretty intensive, and we have a series of assignments, and one of the requirements is that we find a sit spot.

And the sit spot is a place we go, every day, if we can, at least for 20 minutes, that's the same spot. And what ends up happening is, in a six month period, you're going through two or three seasons, depending on the timing and in Canada, certainly, we go from fall on all the beautiful colours of the leaves changing to winter and all the leaves fall.

There's so many beautiful insights from even just that season. The leaves are falling or giving us permission to let go. And then into the winter, and then you see all the trees are bare, snow starts to arrive, you see the wildlife a little bit more clearly in the snow.

And then into the spring and renewal and fresh starts. And so the reason we do that as part of our training as guides is to really be effective as a forest therapy guide. We need to embody that nature connection within our own lives to have that authenticity to have that partnership with the forest.

Whenever we guide a walk, certainly, the way I was trained is we asked the forest to support us. And so it's always a guided experience as a collaboration with the forest. And we say the forest is the therapist. I'm not a therapist. The forest is the therapist. I just open the door. I just guide and an experience for our participants, and everyone has their own experience.

And so there are a number of really beautiful invitations. This one with meeting with the tree is one of my favorite ones. But each one is to deepen that connection with nature, and to help slow down to really be able to I like to say to see. When I finished my forest therapy training, I felt like I saw the world with new eyes.

I saw this world that was right in front of us, I wasn't aware of.

So it was really very transformative.


Jayne: Yeah, I can feel like the sense of that through you sharing it. And yeah, just as you were speaking thinking about the different trees in my life that have been significant. I don't know, there will be moments where there's been a particular tree that I'll remember that was in a garden or somewhere that I passed by and that sort of stood out, or as you say, almost spoken.

 When you were speaking, I was actually thinking of song for some reason as well, that I, when I water my plants, I will intentionally appreciate my plants. And I like to think that as I'm watering them, I'm, yeah, communicating with them, speaking to them, just being appreciative of them being there.

And and I've heard that there are actually studies that show that singing to your plants helps them to grow. And I was just imagining that with the trees that in terms of that thanking the trees that you referred to. Again, I don't know why I keep thinking about this when there's not anyone around, probably just because of the perception of society at large of people hugging trees and singing to trees.

And maybe I need to do some work on that so that I start to shift my own inhibitions, maybe so that I would maybe more freely do that or express that or talk about that. Because I've probably been a bit of a closet tree hugger that I need to come out and be more open about it. So maybe this podcast is the beginning of that.


Monique: I would love that.


Jayne: I did once have a conversation with based in the UK, a lady called Holly Worton, and I'll need to connect the two of you she talks about the deepening of connection with trees and the listening and the kind of the communication that can be twofold.

So when you said about the story, the tree telling its story, she has documented stories that trees gifted her and the sort of the wisdom that's come through that. And sometimes the world's not quite ready for the revealing of that internal knowing that we have, that was once there in terms of our connection with all beings in nature. And yet I think we're all remembering in our own way so I'm hopeful that this conversation maybe offers a bit of a bridge from what might have been perceived as the woo.

 And when you when we think about how out of whack the corporate world is, it's in desperate need of remembering the woo, and I'm hopeful that it could be a bit of a bridge and meet somewhere in the middle that feels comfortable, that feels doable, that feels okay. Hugging might be a step too far for me, but I could go and I could walk through a park and be slower in my pace and more mindful about how I might take in nature around me and be experimental and explorative about what that might bring. The deepening of the breath can only benefit us, especially those of us that are feeling like you, you related to that sense of anxiety of your former life.

There'll be many I'm sure listening who when they notice their breath, they'll notice it's quite shallow. It's up in their chest. It's not deep. It's not grounded. And actually if being around trees or plants or bringing trees or plants in or having images of them enables them to experiment a bit with what might that mean and how might I feel, there's a difference when I breathe fully.


Monique: So 100 percent and it helps to regulate the nervous system. It also helps with grounding. I know, I really miss the trees and nature if I'm away for too long, and if I am starting to feel a little bit of stress, what works for me every single time is taking off my socks and shoes and walking on the earth, walking on the grass, walking on wet sand, that actually does recalibrate the system. There's all kinds of health benefits to earthing and grounding. There's a great movie about it. I did want to go back to the comment about corporate and I think that a big part of my practice is with corporate clients. I take teams out to gather into the forest and I remember when I first started feeling a little nervous about doing that.

But my experience has been quite beautiful in helping teams really open up and let themselves be vulnerable in their sharing. And, I remember I did this invitation where we were on a beach at the edge of a forest and everyone picked up a stone. And I said that they could either share gratitude with the stone or share worry with the stone.

I spent a lot of time getting to know the stone like feeling the temperature and the texture and even smelling it and just getting to know that stone. And then, when they felt ready, they could release the stone into the water. And I remember this one young man he was in tears and he said, I just feel like I'm part of something so much greater, and that's I think what forest therapy can do for people.

Kind of takes you out of your day to day, what's on your mind and brings you right into the present moment and makes you realise that we are part of this beautiful planet, the galaxy. It's just there's so much that we're just a small part of it. And so I quite like sharing this with corporate teams, for that reason, takes them out of the office.

Again, it reminds them that this is there to support them whenever they need it. Many people have come to me afterward and have said, because of that experience they now are very intentional with their time in nature, they experience nature in a very different way. It's very slow. It's very mindful and that makes me happy.

That's why I do it. I also do it because I do believe that there's an ecosystem repair that happens. When you fall in love with nature again, you're going to do everything to protect it. And with this climate crisis that's underway and all the issues with the environment, I think the more people that can fall in love with nature again the better.


Jayne: Yeah, absolutely. I couldn't echo that more. Noting back again to the conversation with David Hamilton, cause he shared about how nature rewards us in terms of our bodies and homostasis through what's released internally for us when we drop into that sense of love and appreciation of all that is, of nature, but of course we're included in that, so there's a positive sort of reciprocity and I think there is, if we're all beginning to do that a little more, it's what will tip the scales and the balance and I love that you bring that to corporate organisations.

I love even more that corporate organisations respond to it and are seeking it out. A good number of years back I was involved technically like a general manager and operations manager of a retreat centre. I'd like to think I was a bit of a guardian of the place and the space.

And the logo is two trees, two oak trees, and it's called 42 acres. And they at that stage we're offering out the space for organisations to come to. I think sometimes these things are ahead of the time and ahead of the readiness and I'm really glad to see that in the last few years has started really flourishing.

So I feel like there's a shift that's happening. There's a change in thinking that's occurring. But no doubt it's occurring because of these sorts of conversations. So I'm really grateful that you took the time to come and have a conversation like this with me so that I can start to share more of this out into the world and play my own part in, in tipping that balance and bringing people back to the nature that they already are.

And that sounds like your book is playing a wonderful part in that. Encourage people. I'll share the link in the show notes from the podcast so that people can find it.


Monique: Thank you, Jayne. Yeah. There's a whole chapter about forest therapy, the training, the experience, some stories about connections with the more than human world.

And so thank you. Thank you for the opportunity to share my story, talk a little bit about forest therapy and I encourage you to hug those trees.


Jayne: Yeah, openly and with people watching. Or even better, barefoot.


Monique: Yeah, exactly. I love it. so much, Monique. Thank you so much, Jayne. It's such a pleasure to be here.


Jayne: Really grateful. Thank you. Thank you.

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