2022 Forest bathing Walk:
My Sober Girlfriends
~A Practice in Receiving Nourishment and Touching Calm~
Saturday, May 14 (9:00 - 11:30 am)
Location:
Oxbow Park / Gresham, OR
Nurture a sacred connection to the natural world and promote well being.
Let wonder and awe bring you into the present moment.
Embrace the magic and beauty of our Earth home..
No experience necessary; just an open heart and willingness to connect.
Forest bathing is a nature connection experience inspired by the Japanese practice of Shinrin-Yoku. These immersive experiences offer the chance to break away from the stress of daily life and to find healing and nourishment through intimate engagement with the beings with whom we share this Earth home.
While offering a renewed sense of interconnection with the natural world, forest bathing also allows access to beneficial nervous system states that can support our long-term health and well-being. Research has proven that forest bathing boosts immune strength, improves cognitive functioning, and reduces stress, anger, anxiety, depression, and sleeplessness.
Offered through a series of guided invitations, the walk will help participants move beyond the chatter of the thinking mind and find a deeper sense of embodied engagement, enabling access to new ways of being and a transformed relationship to self and others. This intentional practice of embodied presence cultivates access to powerful experiences of curiosity, awe, and wonder that are essential for resilient engagement with this era of dramatic change and transformation.
On This Walk You will:
Experience the restorative and healing power of slowing down and spending time in the natural world.
Learn practices to reconnect to the natural world to help you cultivate peace and calm.
Wander among spectacular trees and notice the magic and mystery all around you.
Irene Bailey, a certified guide with The Association for Nature and Forest Therapy, will lead the walk.
WHAT IS FOREST THERAPY?
“Forest Therapy is a research-based framework for supporting healing and wellness through immersion in forests and other natural environments. Forest Therapy is inspired by the Japanese practice of Shinrin-Yoku, which translates to "forest bathing." Studies have demonstrated a wide array of health benefits, especially in the cardiovascular and immune systems, and for stabilizing and improving mood and cognition. We build on those benefits and look beyond, to what happens when people remember that we are a part of nature, not separate from it, and are related to all other beings in fundamental ways”.
-Association for Nature and Forest Therapy
“If you will stay close to nature, to its simplicity, to the small things hardly noticeable,
those things can unexpectedly become great and immeasurable.”
—Rainer Maria Rilke
Guide:
Irene Bailey
Accesibility:
Oxbow Regional Park in Gresham is not ADA accessible.
Optional Reading:
Your Guide to Forest Bathing by M. Amos Clifford
(available at Multnomah County Library or Powell’s)
You Provide:
•Transportation To/From Oxbow Regional Park
•$5 entry into Oxbow
•Warm & Comfortable Layers for Walking Outdoors
•Rain Gear
•Water Bottle
***Once registered, you will receive more information about the in-person walk, including a list of what to bring to stay warm and where to meet.
Cost:
$30 - $40
Members: $30
Guests: $40
*No one will be turned away for lack of funds.
Apply for a full or partial scholarship here.
Offered rain or shine.
Enrollment is limited to 12 people.
Current COVID-19 protocols will be followed by all participants.