Join Todd Lynch, certified Association of Nature and Forest Therapy guide for “Forest Bathing in Our Times”, on Thursday, April 21, 2022, from 2 PM – 3 PM. You can register for this free event, here.

One of the ways to access the benefits of the outdoors is through Forest and Nature Therapy. As a practice, it began in the 1980s in Japan – called there Shinrin-yoku or Forest Bathing. By that time, the Japanese government realized that as the country’s population became less agrarian and more concentrated in cities, public health began to reflect this move through rises in cancers and stress-induced illness. The Japanese government initiated a series of studies and programs to understand this diminishment in human health and found that exposure to nature, and in particular, forests, held potent mental and physical health benefits for people. There have been many health studies correlating exposure to green spaces and improved health outcomes. One published in Frontiers in Psychology by Dr. MaryCarol Hunter showed that after 20 minutes in nature, test subjects’ stress hormone levels reduced significantly.

Todd Lynch is a certified Forest and Nature Therapy guide through the Association of Forest and Nature Therapy training program. It is a 6-month intensive course that includes pre-requisites in Wilderness First Aid/CPR as well as native plant identification. As an artist and landscape designer, Todd has collaborated on healing gardens, native, medicinal plantings, and art installations across the US. He has received multiple Massachusetts Cultural Council grants for environmental art installation and education. Todd has also lectured at universities, garden organizations, and apothecaries about medicinal plants in the landscape and has served as a design critic at the Conway School of Landscape Design, Smith College, and UMass Amherst. He blogs about the intersections of landscape, wellness, and art on Instagram @ecotropy.

Part of the 2022 Opioid Task Force’s CAM Education Series.