Published on June 9, 2025
How can reconnecting with the natural world shape the way we live?
Evergreen is inviting guest writers to share their perspectives on how better public spaces can solve some of the most pressing issues cities face. The series continues with Emily Pleasance, a certified Nature and Forest Therapy Guide and the founder of the Forest Bathing Club.
Emily is an ecopsychology practitioner, expressive arts therapist and fine artist. Her work focuses on deepening the relationship between humans and the more-than-human world through sensory, embodied practices. She works with organizations like Evergreen to offer programming that fosters ecological awareness and emotional resilience.
“I’ve been in nature before, but never like this.”
This is something I often hear after someone’s first session with the Forest Bathing Club. Often, it’s even said by people who already consider themselves “nature people” — hikers, gardeners, paddlers, campers. I understand this well. I’ve been all those things, too. I once believed that being in nature meant being in relationship with the Earth.
But what I’ve learned is there’s a difference between using nature as a backdrop for activity and being in a reciprocal relationship with it. The practice of nature and forest therapy opens up something people didn’t even know they were longing for.
The term “forest bathing” is a translation of the Japanese practice shinrin-yoku, which emerged in the 1980s to support human health through immersion in nature — literally “bathing” in the forest atmosphere. Science has since confirmed that phytoncides (essential oils from trees) boost immune function and reduce stress.
But what we offer at the Forest Bathing Club is more than just a walk in the woods. It’s not a hike, and it’s not fitness focused. Nature and Forest Therapy, the practice I’m certified in, is an evolution of shinrin-yoku. It’s a relational, embodied practice — one that helps us remember ourselves as part of a living, breathing world of relations. It’s not just about the gifts we receive from nature, but about how we remember ourselves as part of a living, breathing world of relations.
Sessions at the Forest Bathing Club are slow and spacious. I guide participants through sensory invitations that support presence in their body and connection with the land. The pace is intentionally slow. We’re not trying to get anywhere — we’re practicing being here. There’s silence, stillness, laughter, and moments of reflection, often leading to feelings of awe, grief or unexpected insight.
Each session is shaped by the land we’re on, the season and those who arrive. Some moments are solitary while others are shared in community. The invitation is always to be in embodied dialogue with the living world — not just asking what we can receive, but what we might offer in return.
The journey back to deeply felt connection with the living world is rarely linear and never individual. I’ve spent long stretches of life caught up in systems that pull us away from the rhythms of nature. It’s easy to lose touch with where our food comes from or the fate of our waste. It’s easy to get swept up in prioritizing productivity over presence.
We are not meant to live this way. I believe many of us don’t know that we carry a quiet ache — grief for what has been lost: ritual, belonging, ceremony, participation in the web of life. This grief shows up as restlessness, numbness or isolation. We hunger for meaning, for ancient rhythms, for places that remind us how to be human amongst life, not above it.
When the pandemic came, the human world paused, but life didn’t. The trees grew, the birds sang; the rivers flowed. The usual noise of our lives quieted just enough for us to notice the stories of other beings. That pause decentered humans from the story and reminded us that we’re part of a much larger narrative.
I remembered. My body remembered. My life changed. And through guiding the Forest Bathing Club, I’ve witnessed it change others, too. I’ve seen grief soften, joy return — in connection with moss, birds and water. People remember they belong.
Some may think I’m speaking in metaphor when I say you are nature. But this is not a metaphor.
You are part of the living fabric of Earth. And if there are any skeptics still reading, modern science affirms what ancient wisdom has always known. Dive deep enough into quantum physics, ecology or systems theory, and you’ll find the same truth — everything is relational, everything is connected. This knowledge is not new, it is ancient. It lives in the cosmologies, stories and practices of Indigenous peoples across the world who have carried this understanding of interconnectedness since time immemorial.
As Turtle Protectors founder Carolynne Crawley once told me, “We all have a responsibility to offer reciprocity.” Carolynne and the Turtle Protectors remind us that being in reciprocal relationship with the natural world is not passive — it is a sacred responsibility.
At the Forest Bathing Club, the invitations offered are gentle openings. Guided support to remember how to be in relationship with the more-than-human world. Most of us have been taught how to be with people — but not how to be with trees or rivers, whose languages are older, slower and woven into the land itself.
The reason this work matters is simple: we cannot tend to what we do not feel connected to.
To face the ecological crises of our time, we must first feel our connection to the Earth — not as an idea, but as a lived, felt truth. From this connection, empathy arises. It grows a care that extends beyond self-preservation and into kinship with the more-than-human world. The ecological crisis is not just an environmental or political issue — it is an existential one. If we are to survive and help all life thrive, we need to rebuild our relationship with the natural world that sustains us. And like any meaningful relationship, it takes time, attention, repetition, vulnerability, listening, shared experience and reciprocity.
This is why the Forest Bathing Club has evolved. What began as a simple offering has grown into member gatherings, private walks and intimate group sessions. As a soon-to-be psychotherapist, I now work at the intersection of nature connection and mental health. Our wellbeing and the planet’s wellbeing are inseparable.
We’re living through a time of profound uncertainty. Many are experiencing what’s now called climate anxiety — a deep emotional and bodily response to ecological loss, fear and disorientation. These responses shouldn’t be surprising; they’re understandable reactions to challenging times. But we don’t have to navigate them alone.
Through ecopsychologically informed therapy and Forest Bathing Club offerings, I help people make meaning of their emotional responses to the climate crisis. Grief, rage, love, and hope can all be pathways to connection, resilience, and care—for ourselves, each other, and the Earth.
To be fully alive, whole human beings, we need a diversity of practices that support our well-being — movement, nourishing food, creative expression, meaningful relationships and connection to the living world around us.
Just as we care for our physical and emotional health, tending to our relationship with the land should be part of our personal ecosystem of care. Nature and Forest Therapy offers a space to slow down, reconnect and remember our belonging.
Seeing a therapist who is ecopsychologically informed — like myself — can be a vital part of your mental health care team. This practice is not a luxury — it’s part of how we stay rooted, resilient and responsive in a rapidly changing world.
Because if we can feel that we belong to this world, if we can remember that our skin is not a boundary, but a meeting place — we begin to care differently. We begin to act differently. We stop being ‘nature people’ and remember that we are nature itself.
If you’re curious to try forest bathing, here is a place to begin: Are you in your body? Can you feel the beat of your heart? The rise and fall of your lungs? Can you feel where your feet meet the ground or the weight of your body? Gravity is a gesture of Earth’s embrace. Do you know you are a part of this world? This is where it begins.
Visit the Forest Bathing Club online for more information about the practice and to learn more about programming. Or register for Forest Bathing Club dates at Evergreen Brick Works this summer.
We also encourage you to learn more about the Turtle Protectors, whose volunteer-led work restoring and protecting turtle habitats in Toronto is an example of embodied reciprocity in action.
