The People Leaders Podcast

Stress Relief and Mental Clarity: Forest Bathing with David Roland

• Jan and Michelle Terkelsen • Episode 148

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In this episode, I interview David Roland, a psychologist, writer, presenter, and certified forest bathing guide. We discuss David's extensive background, including his studies in clinical psychology focusing on performance anxiety, and his transition to nature connection and forest bathing. 

David shares his personal experiences with forest bathing, its origins, and its many benefits such as stress reduction, mental rejuvenation, and physical health improvements. We also explore the potential of forest bathing for team-building and trauma recovery, as well as practical tips for incorporating nature into daily life. Join us as we uncover the profound impacts of connecting with nature.

Episode Highlights

  • 00:29 Introduction and Guest Overview
  • 00:47 David Roland's Background and Achievements
  • 02:07 Personal Experience with Forest Bathing
  • 03:38 What is Forest Bathing?
  • 07:20 Benefits of Forest Bathing
  • 12:23 Practical Applications and Team Building
  • 16:30 Current Projects and Future Plans
  • 19:12 Practical Tips for Nature Connection
  • 24:33 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Useful Links
David Roland’s website - https://davidroland.com.au/
David Roland on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-roland-62863b23/

Get in touch with us at info@peopleleaders.com.au
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Connect with Michelle Terkelsen on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/michelle-terkelsen-creating-high-performing-teams-a992744/
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Speaker 1:

Welcome to the People Leaders Podcast, the audio resource for managers and business leaders creating high-performing teams. Join leadership and team development experts Jen and Michelle Turkelson each week as they explore both subjects from every angle. Through practical tips, valuable insights and compelling interviews with leadership experts around the world, you'll learn how to bring out the best in your staff and how to give your best as a leader.

Speaker 2:

Well, hello everyone. I am looking forward to this conversation. So it's just me flying solo today. Michelle's off doing something else. But the reason why I am flying solo is because the guest that I have is I know personally and I'm really excited to introduce you to him.

Speaker 2:

And the person that we've got on our interview today is David Rowland, and he is a psychologist, a writer, presenter, as well as a certified forest bathing guide. So, yes, there is such a thing. And he's a graduate of Sydney Uni with honours, gained his PhD in clinical psychology from the University of Wollongong, with his research focus on performance anxiety in musicians. So that's really interesting, david. I remember us having a little bit of a conversation about that, and David has worked for more than 20 years as a clinical and forensic psychologist before taking up writing, presenting and nature connection. He's also got a short course, move Forward with Trauma, which is also featured online course with Simon Sinek's the Optimism Library. Now, as I mentioned that David is an author, he's an author of three books the Power of Suffering, his memoir how I Rescued my Brain, which I totally recommend, as well as the Confident Performer. And, like I said, I am so looking forward to sharing David's experience with you, because I have had a personal experience with David, so I just want to bring you on, hi David.

Speaker 3:

Hi Jan. Thank you for the lovely introduction.

Speaker 2:

Oh, yeah, well, I'm just so stoked that you're able to come on.

Speaker 2:

David and I all know each other because we're both ocean swimmers in Byron and I have taken some of his forest bathing experience with friends of mine and it has just been incredibly transforming and also, you know, quite memorable.

Speaker 2:

And when I thought, you know, I had an opportunity to actually share this with the people that you know I work with, who work with us and who are listening to our podcast, I was just really excited, you know, because my experience with it, david, is that some of the activities that you do really invite us to, I don't know, go in to areas that perhaps we don't on a normal day-to-day, or even when we do reflective processes, they are different. And I remember one actual activity that we had done and I think we were meditating and I think it was just a short silent meditation and we were lying down in the sun and after that I physically felt quite different and it was just really interesting to experience and it not only just lasted, you know, that afternoon. It has stayed with me. So there's been some quite significant shifts and, yeah, that that's my experience from it, and I'm sure you've got others. So, david, can you tell us a little bit about what forest bathing is and also what led you to it?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, thanks, jan, and thanks for sharing that experience. I think I remember when that might have happened. As you said afterwards, something significant had occurred. Yeah, well, actually during the pandemic, like many people you know, I was trapped at home, but because I don't live in a city, I was able to get out and about and some friends were starting a new walking club just to explore our local area in ways that hadn't been done before and I just intuitively, I had like a thirst, hunger to get out into the forest. So I did that. But after a while I got a bit annoyed with people chatting all the time because I was in this beautiful nature and of course they're chatting about everything else other than where they are, so not being fully present.

Speaker 3:

And I've got a meditation background which you'll know about since reading my memoir. I used mindfulness and meditation as one way of changing the way my brain was working. So I started leading walks. I said let's do periods of walking in silence. And for my last book, the Power of Suffering, I'd come across the concept of shinrin-yoku, which is a Japanese practice which literally translates as forest bathing. And it doesn't mean literally bathing in the water in the forest, it means bathing in the water in the forest. It means bathing in the atmosphere of the forest, and that's quite important because there's a lot of things going on in the atmosphere of the forest and also what we call blue spaces, like oceans and lakes and so on. And so that's when I started training formally with FT Hub, who are now about to become the biggest trainer of forest bathing guides in the world. They're part of a huge research project coming out of Europe. They'll train over 600 people to dispense this kind of work throughout the world.

Speaker 2:

And because you went to Japan recently. Was that right?

Speaker 3:

I finished the training in hong kong. Oh, hong kong, right, yeah, which sounds a bit odd to go to hong kong to do forest bathing, but it was the closest and the right time of the year for me to go, and we actually spent the whole time on an island. There's actually really heavily forested islands that are part of Hong Kong.

Speaker 2:

Right, and so maybe Japan comes from where it originated. Is that correct?

Speaker 3:

That's right. It originated in Japan in the 1980s and the Japanese have a long history of preserving forests for pilgrims and you know and believing in spirits that exist in natural objects, so in some ways that makes sense. But it was actually a government department that said we need to do something because our workers are distressed and we all know how hard Japanese employees work, and so they were actually looking for antidotes to just general life stress and work stress. And now in Japan they have designated Shinrin-yoku trails and they're like a one to two kilometers long and there might be a health center at the beginning where you can get a health checkup and you know doctors will prescribe, do what we call green prescriptions, where they say you need to go and do some Shinrin-yoku, and then they've got designated trails where they can go and do that either on their own or as part of a guided exercise.

Speaker 2:

Right. No wonder the population you know like we've got some of the oldest aging population in Japan, because they really know how to take care of their health. So what do you think you know from the research and also your experience and the benefits of it of forest bathing?

Speaker 3:

I think there's four areas of obvious benefits. One is the reduction in stress. We all know what stress feels like, and we all know what it feels like when we don't have it or we alleviate it, and so that's the first and most obvious one. The second one is rejuvenation, or restoration, and being in nature in the way we do with forest bathing or connection with nature. It restores our mental fatigue, or what's also called attention restoration, and so you know that when you've been working or concentrating on something, or traveling or doing a lot of novel things, your concentration level goes down, your quality of attention goes down, and nature practices actually restore that attention, and it seems to be that either viewing natural scenes or hearing natural sounds or, you know, experiencing some of the that, that forest atmosphere, is easy to do. We don't have to concentrate on doing that and it just seems inherently restoring for us.

Speaker 3:

The third area is that it's been shown to improve mental health conditions like depression and anxiety. And I guess the fourth thing is the physical benefits. One of the physical benefits is it reduces blood pressure, but also, very interestingly, there's in various natural environments organic volatile compounds, which are compounds that are just given off by the trees and other plants. They're just naturally there and that seems to have an immune boosting system for humans. And when we think about well, we've evolved with trees and we've mostly lived for most of our history in tree environments, it's not surprising that we've got a symbiotic relationship with trees and other plants and that their actions can be helpful. So there's at least four areas that we can identify confidently that the type of nature connection we do with forest bathing is beneficial.

Speaker 2:

And just from my experience you know, like when we talk about what it was like for us, like every experience that I've had with you, david, everyone has had such a positive and affirming experience from when they started to when they actually finished. So you know, we actually physically can experience those benefits, and not only those physiological benefits, but there's also insights that happen for people as well. So have you had experience of that when you've done it or when you've facilitated groups at all?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, definitely. And we've got to remember that forest bathing, when it's usually done as a group, like a guided group, it's got a strong social aspect, and so that social aspect is around being safe with other people, safe in the physical environment, and then, as you said, sharing your experiences. So we call that incorporation or integration. So we don't describe what experience you're going to have in nature, but you'll have some kind of experience and then, as you'll know, I offer the invitation to share something about that experience in any way you like. Like it can be verbally, it can be through gesture or body movement, or it can also be silence.

Speaker 3:

There's sometimes when silence is the right way to share and people come up with insights.

Speaker 3:

So, just as an example, you know, we often think that life should progress in a really straight and ordered kind of way.

Speaker 3:

And when you go into the forest and we might do an activity with trees and I might suggest people you know, take your head out of it, just feel your body gravitating towards a tree anywhere in this vicinity and then get to know that tree and I might provide some suggestions about that. And it's interesting people don't always go for the most straight, biggest tree. They'll often go for a crooked tree or a small tree or a sapling or a tree that's had obviously some hard times and they'll identify with that. And then they might say in the sharing well, you know, I chose, I just felt drawn to this tree because here it was growing straight and then it had to go left and then obviously a branch had been taken off, but it still made it to the top. And that's an inspiration for people to realize that actually, just like human beings, we don't have this straight trajectory in life. Life dishes out unexpected curveballs, just as it happens in nature. So we're no different and they're no different.

Speaker 2:

And you know, like when we talk about, when we've had conversations in the past, david, you know like I always go back to. Can you imagine you know like a senior leadership group? Or you know like I always go back to. Can you imagine you know like a senior leadership group, or you know HR, business partners to suggest this for teams who have gone under a significant change or restructure of a certain amount of stress. You know, to actually get that attention restoration. You know, because some people, especially senior leaders, have, you know, decision fatigue and to be able to reset the. You know that physiology, your mental, emotional is so impactful. But also to hear from other team members their experience of the same activity and when we often do team building activities, that's the interesting part, that, oh, you saw that in that scenario or that activity. And that is where you can really peel back that level of connection, as you mentioned, but also develop your own level of awareness around yourself and what you're drawn to and what senses light you up.

Speaker 3:

And we know that when we share those kinds of insights or experiences that we're having with others, we either find, oh, it's really common to other people too, I thought I was the only one or we find, oh, they've got a different perspective on it. Oh, that's quite helpful. I wasn't looking at it like that, and I think you know a useful concept that psychologists use is the three systems of emotion. And the three systems of emotion the obvious one is the fight-flight response, which is the threat-based emotions like fear, anxiety, and that's when we're feeling threatened in some way, and in our modern society that's more likely to be social threats or, you know, psychological threats rather than physical threats. The other one is the drive-based emotions, and that's the sort of stuff that gets us up going in the morning, achieving things you know, pursuing goals, and that's mediated by the dopamine system in the brain. So that's why we get such a sense of reward or achievement.

Speaker 3:

One of the difficulties or sorry costs of the dopamine system, if we keep activating that, is that it wears us out. You know our body needs to rest and recover, just as it does our mind. So the third system is that rest and recover affiliative, quieting down, not trying to achieve anything system. And when we're doing nature connection not adventure nature connection where we're hiking 30 kilometres a day or climbing mountains, not that kind but just gentle nature connection it really activates that calming, that restorative, that social connecting system, those emotions. And in an evolutionary sense, that system came later than the other two. The threat-based obviously has to be important because we've got to survive, and then the drive system's critical because we've got to find food, we've got to find shelter, we've got to find a sexual mate, you know those sorts of things. But the third system is important because we need to have a break from the other two. And so that's where nature connection, whether you do it personally or whether you're doing as part of a team building exercise, is really valuable.

Speaker 2:

Oh well, I even use some of the activities that you have shared with me. I do that by myself now, so it's something that I can continue to do and to be mindful of, continue to do and to be mindful of, and you know, I just think that as a team, it is just such a wonderful opportunity to deepen the level of self-awareness, but also the understanding of others reset. There are just so many benefits to it. You know, I really encourage people to have a look at it. So what are you working on now, david? Is there anything that you want to share with us, because I know you're always up to something.

Speaker 3:

Well, I think there's probably another book in the offering, but I'm, you know, in the research stage. But something I'm particularly excited about is that, you know, in our area, as you know, we've had a lot of natural disasters We've had floods, we've had wild. You know we've had a lot of natural disasters We've had floods, we've had wildfires and we've had multiple ones of those and still people are physically displaced but there's a lot of psychological trauma still surrounding natural disasters and we've got to look at ways of helping people move through that experience. That's cost effective. You know you can't.

Speaker 3:

There's only so many trained mental health professionals. So one of the ways we're looking at doing that is through forest bathing, nature connection, and that's the type of nature connection where we do, you know, activities that connect our different senses to the environment we're in. So I'm part of a research project which we think is a world first, where we'll be taking people that have been diagnosed as traumatised from recent natural disasters and combining a nature connection process, group process, with some compassion-focused skills, because that's been helpful to help people accept and feel at ease with the flow of life, and so that'll be starting. We'll be starting working on that in the second half of this year.

Speaker 2:

How exciting and so meaningful it's such a meaningful project. So where could people find you, David? So if someone has piqued their interest about their team, you know it's such a meaningful project. So where could people find you, David, you know. So if someone has, you know, piqued their interest about their team, or they're a HR business person, they just want to find a little bit more. Where's the best place, do you think?

Speaker 3:

I think if they go to my website, which is just mynamecomau, or find me, on LinkedIn.

Speaker 2:

Either of those two ways would be good to communicate with me directly. Okay.

Speaker 3:

And your surname. Do you want to just spell that for people? Yeah, so it's. David and Roland, without a W, r-o-l-a-n-d. Great and so anyone who wants to Google that name will quickly find me.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so is there anything else? Wants to google that name will quickly find me. Yeah, so is there anything else? So people who are listening, they might start to. You know, just consider perhaps running an activity like that, but in the meantime, is there something that you might want to leave them with that they might be able to do themselves?

Speaker 3:

you know, on the weekend or you know when they're listening to this so I think there's some practical and immediately accessible things that people can do, both as individuals and as groups or teams. And the first thing is to introduce nature into your home and work life. So in any way you can bring nature into that, you know. It can be pot plants, it can be pictures, it can be recorded sounds of nature. It can also be the essential oils of plants, like some of the tree oils have been found to be really beneficial, as I said, for the boosting the immune system.

Speaker 3:

And the second thing I would suggest people do as an individual is find a sit spot. And a sit spot is anywhere that's accessible to you, so there's not too many barriers to getting there. Where you just be, you just sit and you might want to do journals or write, but actually just sit and start to observe nature around you. So I've got a sit spot. That's on the front porch where I live and the goblins come every afternoon, you know, and hang off the telephone wires. There's a lot of birds, you know getting having their last chat before they go to bed. But there's also a spot further down the road where I walk the dog and without the dog that's a really nice place to sit because there's a creek. And the idea is to try and do that as frequently as you can so you can observe the changes in weather, changes of season and the way animals and plants adapt to those things.

Speaker 3:

And I think the second thing to do is to start to notice nature more with your senses and I would encourage, encourage people to actually go on some guided forest bathing walks, or you know if there's an Indigenous practitioner who's offering that, because it's there. Once you've experienced that nature's there but we're not observing it. And observing it I mean with not just eyes, but with our nose and with our ears and with our body, you know tactile, and once you start to observe in that way, you didn't realize how much nature was around you and also what you can experience because your sensory perception has expanded and so everything else goes along with that, and I'm just thinking of people who are working in corporate environments and things like that.

Speaker 2:

Usually they do have a view of the outside, even just sitting down, like you suggested, for a couple of minutes and looking out, looking up, looking at a tree, looking at some nature. Even though it might sound simple, it is amazing what it does to your physiology.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, and that's what we call taking a nature break. And so that could be, you know, just stepping outside the door where you've got a view of nature, or you can feel the breeze on your face, or you can smell something on your face, or you can smell something, and that can just be a few minutes. I'm not a smoker, but I understand now why smokers want to go outside, and I think part of the reason is they just want to get outside and, you know, experience that breath of fresh air from the nature. So taking little short nature breaks.

Speaker 2:

I love that because that was an issue when the smoking, you know like policies came through. You know, like several years ago, is that people were complaining well, all the smokers, they go out and they have a break. How about us? We're stuck inside. However, there is something about naming it like a nature break, like something to reset the nervous system to enable you to be a better performer, and I think more and more organizations, the more research perhaps because left brain logical will support this. As opposed to just seeing it as just one way of getting out of work, it's actually one way of enhancing the work that you do.

Speaker 3:

Yeah. So if you go back to that idea of attention restoration, that's what a nature break will do. It will give you a break from this concentrated activity that you're doing possibly you know the sensory overload that you're getting and then give you a brief respite from that. But then, as we know, nature seems to have this restorative effect. So you'll come back a better performer after the nature break.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, okay, so we really encourage everyone. And this is the thing, isn't it, david? Like sometimes we know these things, but it's the doing of it and that's where discipline comes in. It's like yeah, okay, I'm gonna do that. You may not do it every day, but if it's like monday, wednesday, friday, or or just start to take some action in that direction, you will absolutely notice the difference.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, you know, and a nature break when you're going home could be walking the dog or having some reason. You know if you need a reason other than the idea of you're going home, could be walking the dog or having some reason. You know if you need a reason other than the idea of you just going outside and staring into space yeah it can be walking the dog or taking your garbage bins out, or needing to speak to the neighbor about something that's right.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, there's always something underlying, isn't it? Yeah, beautiful. Well, thank you, david. That's been a wonderful conversation and, even though I know a lot about it, anyway, it's just again reinvigorated my motivation to continue this. You know, yeah, long term, I just think it is an incredible health benefit to be able to you know, I don't know use and utilise, and by having a facilitator, it just deepens the experience. So, yeah, I really encourage people to check it out, okay. Well, thank you, david, and I'll see you in the ocean.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I'll look forward to that.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, okay, thank you.

Speaker 3:

Thanks Jan.

Speaker 1:

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