Forest Bathing + Forest Therapy: What It Is and Why You Need It (with Karen Richter)

This episode is all about reconnecting with nature through forest therapy. I chat with certified forest therapy guide Karen Richter about how nature can calm your nervous system, reduce stress, and transform your life. Literally, it can happen anywhere—even your backyard! Karen shares her inspiring journey from corporate life to becoming a forest therapy guide, her healing through nature, and why it's the perfect fix for your stress, grief, and burnout. Grab your coffee (or wine!) and let's dive into the wonders of forest therapy together. 🌲✨

00:00 Introduction to Forest Therapy
02:27 Stepping into My First Forest Therapy Session
02:40 Meet Karen Richter: Forest Therapy Guide
05:02 Karen's Journey from Corporate Life to Forest Therapy
09:10 Understanding Forest Therapy and Forest Bathing
12:13 Forest Therapy for Everyone
14:32 Experiencing Forest Therapy in Different Seasons
21:15 Healing and Creativity Through Nature
25:33 Upcoming Retreats and How to Get Involved
29:01 The Beautiful Fix Speed Round
34:07 Final Thoughts and Gratitude

Connect with Karen Richter and learn more about Forest Therapy at ConfidentByNature.com. 🌿

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Transcript

 Today, we're talking about one of the most powerful, grounding and restorative tools available to us all.  One that can instantly calm your nervous system, reduce stress and reconnect you with yourself. And the best part,  you're surrounded by it at every moment.  And my conversation with forest therapy guide, Karen Richter, we'll dive into what the heck forest bathing actually is and transformative.

But first, instead of just telling you about it,  Let me take you there. Come with me. 

[Forest Therapy Audio Clip]

That was me stepping into my very first Forest Therapy session last fall. And let me tell you, it was nothing like I expected.  So now let's get into it. Here's my conversation with Karen Richter.

One of my latest beautiful fixes  is something I discovered earlier this year, and it's called forest therapy or forest bathing.  It's a beautiful way to pause life and reconnect with nature anywhere.  So I wanted to bring one of my friends, Karen Richter, on today to help open your eyes to this life changing practice.

Welcome, Karen.  

Hello. So excited to be here. 

I'm so excited to have you here, but before we jump in, I want to share just a little bit about Karen so you can understand why I'm so excited to have her here. Karen Richter is a certified coach, forest therapy guide, and founder of Confident by Nature, a business focused on helping women reconnect with their authentic selves and embrace lives of confidence and fulfillment.

With over 20 years of experience in corporate leadership development and coaching, Karen knows firsthand the struggles of self doubt,  burnout, and feeling like you have to power through to succeed. I can certainly relate to that.  Her turning point came through a deepening connection with nature, a lifelong passion that became transformative as she faced her own challenges with stress, grief,  From camping and kayaking to forest therapy and scuba diving, Karen discovered that nature was more than a place of escape.

It was a powerful teacher and healer.  Today, Karen blends her professional expertise with her love for the outdoors, guiding women entrepreneurs and business leaders to shed societal expectations, reconnect with their inner strength, and rediscover their worth. Whether through immersive retreats, mindful nature practices, or her wise woman community, Karen inspires women to live fully, authentically, and unapologetically  themselves.

I am so grateful to have you here, Karen.  

And I am thrilled to be here. I just love what you do here at a beautiful fix and I'm just thrilled to, to be a part of it.  

Well, thank you so much. So let's dive right in.  Your bio is so inspiring and it's clear that you've had quite the journey,  but I'd love for you to share with us the turning point or pivotal moment when you made that shift from corporate life To Forest Therapy.

I'm assuming Forest Therapy maybe wasn't on your top 10 list when you were a little girl, things you were going to grow up to be. I don't know, maybe. But what was the aha moment for you that led you down this path?  

Well, it's funny because being a corporate executive was not a childhood dream either, but that's where I found myself. 

And I would say there were several different pivotal moments. It didn't just happen. You know, in one fell swoop.  Um, I had risen through the corporate ranks fairly quickly, found myself, you know, very successful. And along with that comes a lot of stress and long hours. And  I,  Loved it and yet it was draining me. 

I started my own business in  2008 and I thought that might be a shift from that  type a personality that we find in corporate,  um, having my own business.  And so much of what I did in my own business, cohesive outcomes. com was still working in the corporate world.  And so even though I had my own business, I was still a part of that corporate environment  and  I'd worked really hard.

I had a couple of  significant setbacks,  some significant loss and my way of dealing with that. Was working even harder,  working even more hours,  finding other ways to feel good about myself. And I,  uh, gained a bunch of weight and I started feeling unhealthy  and I. I did what I thought was a great idea. I took four weeks and went on a retreat to take care of myself  and  ended up with a heart issue that just sort of came out of nowhere.

I developed AFib  and looking back on it, I think it's because I was still  Just pushing through go, go, go  accomplish more achieve more. I wasn't allowing myself to rest. And now this heart issue was forcing me to rest. And that's when I  leaned into nature, which I've always loved nature. I've always.

Preferred to be outdoors and, um,  vacations involved a lot of outdoor activities.  But this was different. This was using nature to be healing and to be comforting.  And that's when I discovered that there was such a thing called forest therapy.  And  went through the certification program and became a certified forest therapy guide. 

So ecstatic that, you know, my health improved, my outlook on life improved. I felt much more in control, empowered, connected. And because of all that, I just wanted to share it with other people. And so that's when I started incorporating that into my business.  

Karen, I'm just sitting here just eating this all up because it's your story is so relatable.

It sounds so similar to mine and I know  the people listening, they're going to immediately identify with us. And it's interesting that nature, nature became your, your source of, you know, relief.  Well, well, for people that are listening that aren't familiar with forest therapy or forest bathing,  tell us a little bit about exactly what that is and why it's so powerful. 

So the word forest bathing actually comes from Japan. And I think a lot of ancient cultures have been connected to nature  through the millennium,  but in Japan, in the 1980s, there became a more  targeted interest in connecting with nature, and that was brought on because the Japanese culture was moving from an agricultural society to a, um,  Industrial society and people were leaving outdoors and working inside and all of a sudden Japan saw an uptick in diseases that other parts of the world were seeing a lot more stress, a lot more high blood pressure, heart attacks, depression, and so they did some research and they identified that spending time in nature actually Addressed these issues, actually helped people to lower their cortisol levels, their stress, um,  hormones,  improved their immune systems.

And so they called it forest bathing because they were talking about bathing in the environment. Um,  and then in the United States.  We've sort of  based, or at least the, I'm, I'm certified through the Association of Nature and Forest Therapy Guides, and  they based forest therapy on forest bathing, but took it a step further and said, let's see about having a reciprocal relationship with nature. And so it's spending time in nature, very. Mindfully, very intentionally slowing down, allowing yourself to just be so it's, it's not a nature hike.

It's not, um, learning about nature,  learning about it is all in our heads. This is an opportunity to experience it through other senses, not just our minds.  So we spend time getting more connected to nature and then learning about it.  We reap the benefits of it, health wise, cognitively, um, it's amazing what spending mindful, intentional time in nature can do for us. 

So it's, it's so interesting because sometimes what's all around us, what's right under our nose is exactly what we need, you know, that's, and I'll talk a little bit about my experience with forest therapy later, but so it's interesting. So forest therapy and forest bathing aren't necessarily. the same thing.

You're saying forest therapy is almost an extension, like the next level. It's taken it to the next level.  Correct. Yes. Okay. Okay. Well,  for my listeners that are listening, thinking I'm not so much the outdoorsy type, like, I don't know if this is for me. What would you say to them?  

One of the things I love is it's There's such an experience for all kinds of people.

There's people who are the exact opposite of what you're saying. The people that are saying,  I love nature. I'm always in nature. I always take a walk. You know, I don't need forest therapy. This is an opportunity for them to realize. There can be a deepening of that relationship. It can really deepen.  Um, and then it's also amazing to see the people that are uncomfortable in nature that haven't spent a lot of time in nature, and they might be a little afraid of the unknown, and it's such a safe, comfortable, um, opportunity.

To slow down and  get more familiar with nature and so often they realize it's not as scary as I thought this is, this is actually pretty cool to be here and  bars therapy could be done anywhere. It doesn't necessarily need to be out in the backwoods where People have to, you know, hike to get there. It could be in a local park.

It could be in your backyard. It doesn't have to be such a big stretch for people. 

I don't know if I'd heard of the word forest bathing was the first word I was introduced to  before maybe three, four months ago. I, I don't remember where I first heard of it, but I thought that sounds so interesting because I love nature. And then my son called me one day and said, mom, I'm going to be doing forest bathing.

This weekend. And I was like, Oh my God, I've always wanted to do this. Like, come on up. He goes to Purdue just a couple of hours away from me. So I drove up and I experienced it immersed in a forest and it was beautiful. And then Karen, I did yours. When I first met you, you mentioned that you can do it virtually.

And I thought, how?  How could that work? How could I possibly do it virtual? I was thinking of my first experience and then I had an opportunity to do it with you in my own backyard  and that was equally amazing. Um, so when you say that you can do it anywhere, you literally can do it anywhere.   One of the things,  I wasn't sure about the timing of this episode because it's cold, at least I'm in the Midwest.

And I thought, well, I don't want to introduce people to forest therapy at a time where everyone's just hunkered down in their homes. But then you mentioned to me that, you know, it could be the perfect time to try forest therapy. Talk a little bit about About that.  So I think at first glance we think, you know, it's cold and wintry.

We don't want to be outside. Right. And it makes me think of that saying that the Scandinavians have about there's no such thing as bad weather. There's just bad clothing choices.  So, so true.  Forest therapy or nature immersions are not very active, so we're not using a lot of energy, so we do need to bundle up.

So when I do nature immersions in the winter, I do tell people to bundle up.  And then I think it's really eye opening, because some people think, you know, it's just dull and gray, and, you know, maybe it's white with some pretty snow, but it's, it's all just one color. It's not like The spring flowers and the pretty trees,  and when we slow down and look a little bit closer and realize there's really a lot to be seen, and there's a lot of different colors, and there's a lot of,  there's a lot more to be seen than we might take at first glance. 

And then the other things, if you're still concerned about being cold,  very often, whether you're meeting together, um, in person,  often we will do that where there's a place where we can step inside for a little bit to warm up,  or even if you're doing, like you did, a  Lead,  um, event.  If you're in your backyard, you can go out in your backyard to have an interaction with nature.

And then there's opportunities to share. We come back and and have a sharing of our experiences.  You can do that from in your house or in your car. Warm up a little bit before there's another invitation to go out and connect with nature. So,  um, even though a full event could be 2 to 3 hours, it doesn't necessarily mean that you're outside in the cold for 2 to 3 hours. 

Got it. I love that. So  we don't have to just duck our heads and run to the car and just try to constantly figure out how to get back inside. You're saying we should step outside and maybe look around a little bit. Um, cause you're, you know what? You're so right now that you say that. There is something very beautiful about these winter months.

Not only does it invite you to kind of hunker down inside, but when you're outside there's a cool crispness to the air, that a smell that's so unique to the season. Um, I think it's important to just You know, take a second to kind of look around. It makes me think, and I think I shared this story with you, of my father was an artist.

And when I was a little girl, I remember him, this was during the spring, but he asked me, Tracy, what, what colors are in that tree over there? And, you know, I was just kind of attitude. You're like, Oh my God, dad, it's brown. It's green. Like, just frustrated with the question. Like, what do you mean? It's of course, it's brown and green. 

He was like,  then you're not really looking. If those are the only two colors you see, you're not really looking. You don't see the silvers and the oranges and the browns. And I've never looked at a tree the same before. So you're kind of challenging us to do the same. Winter isn't all gray. It's not all one color.

It's not,  something to not feel awe about. 

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 [Forest Therapy Audio Clip]

Once again, that was a clip from my first forest therapy session. Now back to my conversation with Karen Richter. 

So  Karen,  when you go through forest therapy, there's something called invitations, which are just beautiful moments where you guys encourage us to, to do something like you kind of go on a task and it's a way to explore the outside,  which is really eyeopening.

It gives you that, that extra thing to kind of look for, might you have an invitation that you could share with.  Us today of, of a way to kind of get an idea, a taste of forest therapy.  

Well, sort of continuing what we've just been talking about, an invitation may be to go out and see how many different colors you can see. 

And  If, if you're not able to see many colors, maybe that means you need to get a little bit closer.  I'm thinking of your tree, you know, if your father had asked you that question in the winter and it had no leaves and it just looked like a brown piece of bark. Maybe you need to get closer and look to see how many different colors are in that trunk of that tree. 

That would be an invitation I would offer people up when. They might be thinking there's, there's no colors out there now.  

Exactly. All right. I will give that a try for sure. , Karen, you mentioned that this was a source of healing for you.  Can you tell us a little bit more about how, uh, what that healing maybe looked like or felt like when you turned to forest therapy? 

So, I can feel the effects, and I, I would say I, I felt this all my life, you know, it felt very calming to go into the woods. I liked to hike, I liked to,  to see new things.  And this has just allowed that to intensify. And so if I'm feeling stressed out or concerned, I can go into nature and feel supported,  feel comforted. 

I find.  all of the chatter in my mind sort of goes away and I can become much more creative. I can listen to my intuition, which I often feel very disconnected from.  And so I would find  great ideas just popping into my head when I allowed myself to just Go sit and be quiet in nature,  and it just seems like nature always knows what I need.

So,  you know, sometimes it's creativity, sometimes it's comfort, sometimes it's motivation, inspiration.  There's a, there's a message that I can find every time I slow down and spend some time and it doesn't, again, it doesn't have to be out in the forest.  It can be.  We've done some little forest therapy in the parking lot of a big, you know, box store where it's all paved, and there's just a tree with some weeds around it, and to just spend a little bit of time,  maybe in Maybe that's another invitation.

The holidays are coming up. It can be very hectic. It can be very stressful for a lot of people. And if you're out doing some holiday shopping,  just spend a moment with that lone tree in the middle of the parking lot and just,  I wonder what it wants to tell you. I wonder. What message it has for you  to spend a little bit of time with it and see how you feel. 

Because I think you said it, it slows you down. It really requires you to get still and I have found that getting still is where all the answers, all the answers are, is where you start to get in tune with you and your body and nature and and a lot of answers come to you that way. I mean when I did forest therapy both times it was hands down one of the most relaxing Meditative experiences.

I, I've ever felt, I felt like I had been to a day spa,  only, you know, it, it was outside and it was some, at a place that I've been my whole life, but it felt different to me. It just, it was just, I can't explain it, but I mean, we have access to nature all around us. You don't have to go and get an appointment and go inside of a building,  you know, just get still. 

And I love what you said about meditative.  I think so many of us would like to meditate. We, we buy into the benefits that meditation provides. And yet we find it very difficult.  We get very stressed out perhaps when we're trying to meditate. Am I doing it right? I've got all these other thoughts and you know,  where.

Forest therapy or nature immersion. I use those terms interchangeably.  You don't have to do it right. You don't have to stop.  It's a sort of a moving meditation. And so it gives us a lot of the same benefits as meditation, but without that stress of I'm sitting here and I need to meditate and I need to do it right. 

Right. And I need to stop all the thoughts, which is not, that's probably one of the biggest misconceptions  about meditating. Your mind's going to do what it's going to do, but yes, when you're doing force therapy and you're immersed into nature, it kind of naturally does it, you know.  Yeah.  So, all right. So Karen, I know that you offer immersive retreats and nature practices for women.

Can you tell us more about what's coming up for you and how listeners can get involved?  

So I do offer these remotely guided nature immersions like you were a part of, and I offer a quick little one hour introductions, and then I also offer longer, you know, full length two or two and a half, maybe three depending on how big the group is, uh, three hours, um, Remotely guided experiences.

I'm in eastern Pennsylvania. I'm also doing some in person nature immersions and always looking for more land, more places that would would welcome such an event.  And then I'm really excited about  in November, I will be hosting in a nature immersive retreat in Costa Rica.

Oh,  

and what I love about this is  a lot of women that I worked with. Feel like they've sort of lost touch with themselves over the years, you know, they've, they've had to be what society expects of them, or they've put everyone else's needs first and sort of lost touch with their true essence.  And this land that we're going to be on has that same story.

It was  a farmland.  The jungles had been cut down, and non native grasses had been planted, and lots of pesticides and chemicals had been used. And luckily, about 50 years ago, the gentleman who owned the land realized  the land is asking him to, it wants to return to its, its,  uh, wild nature.  And so he worked for years to figure out how to regenerate and get it back to its wild place.

And he has done it. It's a beautiful cloud forest in the mountains. The animals have all returned. And so we will be having  nature immersions.  On this land that has such a story of regeneration and rejuvenation for us, and it tells us that  we too, no matter where we are in our lives, no matter how long we've been the non native grasses, we can reclaim our true essence. 

Wow. That sounds like paradise. It, it just sounds.  Beautiful. So, um, where can people go to find out even more information or sign up for, for any of the things that you just mentioned?  

So my website is confident by nature.  dot com. Okay.  And that has, um, links to  different activities that are going on and things they might be interested in. 

And I'd love for people to check it out.  

Absolutely. And we'll make sure that we include all of that in the show notes. Um,  so Karen, I think we're kind of to the end. Thank you so much for everything. But before we close out, let's have a little fun with a game. I like to call The beautiful fixed speed round.

I'll ask you some quick questions and all you have to do is answer with the first thing that comes to mind.  All right, no pressure.  Okay.  You're ready?  I am. Okay. What makes you come alive?  

Ah, new experiences, new places. I love to travel and try.  new things.  Love it. Favorite song?  Oh, I'm not good at favorite things because I have too many buried, uh, I would say  I really love classical music.

Yes. I'm a big  chamber music fan.  If I want to sing along really loud, I would say that's probably 70s folk music. And then if I want to dance, that's probably 80s alternative music.  Awesome. All right. Favorite book. 

 I read a lot  lately. Lately, probably the last 30 years has been  more personal development books.  Um,  right now I'm listening to Outlander on  Audible, which I have not seen the television show and I'm really enjoying that. 

Is that, is that the one where she goes, where she goes back in time? Back in time. Oh, yes.

Okay. 

Yeah, that's powerful.  

And so the book that I probably read, this is also a long, long time ago. I really loved reading the Thorn Birds.  

Oh,  Meggie, Meggie. That is, that has to be, oh my gosh, that has to be one of my favorite, favorite, like TV movie series from all time. I've watched that show so many times.

I play the theme song on the piano. It's just, it's so beautiful and it's so frustrating and it's so just everything, but it's such a beautiful, beautiful love story.  Yes. Okay. Now I'm gonna have to go pull that one out.  Okay, so favorite quote or affirmation?  

I love quotes and affirmations, and that's why on my social media, at least once a week, I'm sharing some kind of affirmation or quote. 

I would say right now, especially with my planning around this retreat, my favorite quote is probably, um,  Paulo Coelho, that says, Maybe the journey isn't so much about becoming anything.  Maybe it's about unbecoming everything that isn't really you.  So you can be who you were meant to be in the first place.

Oh, my gosh. Is that from The Alchemist?  

I believe so. Yeah. 

Oh,  see, that just resonates. I know this is supposed to be a speed round, but that just resonates so deeply because, um.  That's a whole 'nother podcast, but human design, that's what it's all about. It's about deconditioning, you know, just getting away from everything that you've just been taught.

And okay.  Love that. 

That's where the forest helps you or the, or nature helps you. 

Hmm.  Wow. Um, favorite place. I think I may know the answer to this, but favorite place to reset or recharge.  

Anywhere outdoors, 

especially if it has water involved,  even 

better 

creek in the 

mountains, stream river. Yes. Okay.  What's your guilty pleasure?  Chocolate.  And beer.  Oh, nice, nice.  Karen, any other beautiful fixes you'd like to share? Something that just fills your, your,  your spirit, just instantly uplifts you, makes you smile, makes you feel. 

It sounds so simple or too simple and people normally is. Yeah. So I think it's easy for us to sort of poo poo it. Yep.  But just have truly just stop  and take a breath and look around you. And even if you're indoors, look at a natural being. It could be a plant. It could be an animal.  It could be shells that you have in a dish,  but just spend a moment glancing at them and it's amazing how that can just reset your whole system and bring some calm and some clarity.

So, I just encourage people, whenever they can, just take that moment and interact with a natural being. 

Beautiful.  Beautiful. Well, Karen,  thank you so much for sharing this beautiful fix with us today.  I'm sure listeners are feeling inspired to try it for themselves. I highly recommend that you guys check out Karen's website and you immerse yourself in nature as soon as possible. 

So forest therapy is truly a beautiful fix that offers peace, grounding, and reconnection to nature. I encourage you to give it a try. Whether you're able to join Karen's retreat or simply take a walk in nature today, the beautiful fix. Is waiting for you.  Thank you, Karen.  

Thank you. Thanks for all you do with a beautiful fix. 

Before we wrap up, I want to leave you with one last moment from my forest therapy session. Just a moment of gratitude to take with you. 

[Forest Therapy Audio Clip]