Welcome to the forest!
If you have been gifted a Forest Connection Kit, this is your guide to using it and creating your own remote forest immersion. Use the shortcut buttons below to jump to tutorial videos and activities or simply scroll through the page at your leisure.
What’s in the box?
Instructions for Planting A Moss Forest
Creating a Forest Aroma
Making Forest Pot Pourri
There are so many wonderful smells in the forest: damp earthiness and wet leaves in the understory, warm and woody tones from tree trunks and bracken, sweet smelling perfumes of spring and summer blossoms, citrussy notes from the pines towering overhead… Spritz the pine cones in your kit with the essential oils; cedarwood and pine. Breathe in the aromas of the pot pourri and imagine you are unwinding deep within the forest.
Forest smells give our mind a sense of place. The pot pourri should help to transport you there. Smells are evocative and aid relaxation, but there’s more to it than that. This video explains more about the science behind feeling good in the forest and why I used these essential oils…
Shinrin Yoku – Forest Bathing
Shinrin yoku or Forest Bathing–
A practice popular in Japan. A complete forest immersion that brings connection with nature and a break from our daily busy lives: the traffic, pollution, technology, constant demands and 100mph stimulation.
Parks in Japan are designed with forest bathing in mind. Paths that lead you through trees, with resting points, allowing you to spend the optimum time in nature to gain long lasting health benefits. Whether you are someone who relaxes through the rhythm of walking, or from being still, taking time to really notice your surroundings and be present is a wonderful way to connect with the living world around us.
Enter the forest through your Imagination
Forest rituals
People have gathered in forests, lived in forests, worked in forests, and passed through forests for many years. The forest has been utilised in so many ways, and in amongst all that activity rituals have developed and been passed down over generations. People find ways to connect with nature. Monks have bathed in secret wells, fruit growers have wassailed, conkers have been bested, campfires have been sung around…there are so many examples.
Why not create your own little ritual using your forest finds? Be as creative as you like. Incorporate song, movement, art, or simply take time to explore.
Use the player below to fill your room with birdsong. Safely light your candle and watch the flame flicker. Create a ritual; a moment to reflect on, or celebrate, the forest. Examine the ‘forest finds’ in your Kit. How do they feel in your hands, against your skin? Follow the veins on leaves with your finger, snap a twig and hear its resonance. Are there seed pods, what trees are they from? Blow out your candle to signify the end of your ritual.
Join Ruth exploring the forest with her mum, Judy from her care home.
Wild Clay
Investigate your wild clay. How does it feel: dry and crumbly, hard and rock-like, soft and squishy? Examine the colours. Can you see the grey of the clay, or is yours yellow, pink or brown? Are there traces of iron or fragments of leaf litter?
Drawn from the earth, this clay is made from the rocks that went before it. We are all made of stardust; all matter is made of atoms, merely arranged in different combinations. As forest matter decays it is broken down into its base elements: liquids, gases and minerals. Processes like mineralisation mean these elements become rocks. Over time, weathering breaks down those rocks, forming clay. It is a rebirthing of the forest!
Sensory play with clay
Add a little water to your clay to make it malleable. Play with it. Mould it. Shape it. Feel your connection with these elements of forest. Roll it into a worm, or a ball. Press dried flowers into it to leave a trace impression. Stand a small twig in your lump of clay. Whatever you choose to do with it, leave it on your desk/shelf/window sill to dry. Let it be a reminder of your forest experience and a prompt to just stop and take a moment from your busy day.
Turn dirt into a thing of beauty
In Japan, there is a practice of making Dorodango, beautiful polished balls made from mud. This video shows one I made with wild clay. Perhaps this is something you’d like to try with yours?
*This clay has been gifted from owners of a private woodland.
Megan’s Forest
Unable to visit the forest in person, Megan embarks on a remote forest immersion, using creative visualisation to explore a sensory landscape. Join her in a gentle amble through the natural world and connect with nature through her detailed observations and insightful imaginings.