ICE-5 Shortened forest therapy with Wendy Wuyts

This workshop is part of ICE-5 Ecolinguistics in Action: Tackling real-world issues. More information is available at ice5.org

Wendy Wuyts (chaired by Mariana Roccia)

Shortened forest therapy

Duration: 60-70 minutes

Maximum participants: 20

I would like to offer a free (shortened) forest therapy guide. I am getting trained by the Association of Nature & Forest Therapy (ANFT). Since September 2019 and already guided 7 walks, in Belgium or Japan. I participated in forest baths in USA, Norway and England and share my reflections and stories in my blog (www.woodwidewebstories.com).

A Forest Therapy Guide facilitates safe gentle walks, providing instructions — referred to as “invitations” — for sensory opening activities along the way. These walks follow a standard sequence. Each walk begins with establishing embodied contact with the present moment and place. Next comes a series of connective invitations. The walks end with a ceremony of sharing tea made from foraged local plants. This practice integrates indigenous knowledge, shinrin-yoku and other ideas. A guide we pick our words for designing the invitations as carefully as possible. I am not only a forest therapy guide to offer mental health benefits, but also to restore/improve the relationship with the more-than-human world. During the tea ceremony I will also share some stories from my (then) 1 year journey on the path of the forest therapy guide and also how I feel learning ecolinguistics and being a guide are intertwined learning paths for me. Normally a forest therapy session is 2-4 hours. I would be happy if I can have a slot of 90 minutes (or more) to guarantee a deeper immersion, because 60 minutes would not be enough. Gathering and the introduction already takes 20 minutes, before the invitations start.

Wendy Wuyts is a Belgian PhD student in Environmental Studies at Nagoya University, Japan and a forest therapy guide with the Association of Nature & Forest Therapy (ANFT). She blogs about sustainability issues in Japan for Mo*, a Flemish magazine focusing on social and environmental matters globally, and has her own personal blog where she collects stories about trees, tree spirits and forest bathing (woodwidewebstories.com). In november 2019, Wendy’s first fiction book got published: ‘Als Meubels Konden Spreken’ (If Furniture Could Talk), which introduces the main character to the different dimensions and aspects of the circular economy and integrated ideas Wendy learned from an on-line course in ecolinguistics.