Prescribing Nature?: The Cultural Geographies of Forest Bathing
Lead Research Organisation:
Royal Holloway University of London
Department Name: Geography
Abstract
Ecotherapy - loosely defined as a gathering of practices involving interacting with nature to promote mutual healing between the human mind and the natural world- is increasingly popular; 'prescribed' by medical professionals and wellness gurus alike. Interestingly its popularity has risen significantly in the context of both mental health and environmental crises, with many now turning to nature for healing, even to the extent of creating digital natures for this purpose. To date however, research tends to focus on scientifically measuring the psychological and physiological effects (heart rates, hormone levels, etc.) of being in nature, overlooking the value of first-hand embodied accounts of those undergoing ecotherapies.
My project responds with an interdisciplinary account of one ecotherapeutic practice; forest bathing (Shinrin-Yoku), a practice of sensory engagement with the forest, based in Japanese Shinto beliefs. Drawing together cultural geography's debates on nature and environment with emerging relations between health geography and medical humanities, I address three questions:
1. What understandings of nature are found in forest bathing?
2. How is forest bathing experienced at the scale of the body?
3. What are the politics of forest bathing practices?
Informed by feminist and creative geographical methods that foreground embodied experience and socio-cultural difference, I will build an embodied ethnography of three forest bathing cultures; its Japanese origins, its Western diffusion, and its evolving form as a digital practice facilitated by immersive apps/videos and well-being tools. Studying sites in Japan and the UK and digital sites globally, my project will i) complement scientific accounts of ecotherapy with novel cultural geographies of forest bathing; and, will ii) use feminist geographies of the body to respond to medical humanities' calls for embodied accounts of medicine/health that attend to ecological dimensions and to cultural and bodily experience and difference.
My project responds with an interdisciplinary account of one ecotherapeutic practice; forest bathing (Shinrin-Yoku), a practice of sensory engagement with the forest, based in Japanese Shinto beliefs. Drawing together cultural geography's debates on nature and environment with emerging relations between health geography and medical humanities, I address three questions:
1. What understandings of nature are found in forest bathing?
2. How is forest bathing experienced at the scale of the body?
3. What are the politics of forest bathing practices?
Informed by feminist and creative geographical methods that foreground embodied experience and socio-cultural difference, I will build an embodied ethnography of three forest bathing cultures; its Japanese origins, its Western diffusion, and its evolving form as a digital practice facilitated by immersive apps/videos and well-being tools. Studying sites in Japan and the UK and digital sites globally, my project will i) complement scientific accounts of ecotherapy with novel cultural geographies of forest bathing; and, will ii) use feminist geographies of the body to respond to medical humanities' calls for embodied accounts of medicine/health that attend to ecological dimensions and to cultural and bodily experience and difference.
People |
ORCID iD |
| Harriet Hawkins (Primary Supervisor) | |
| Roselle Knowles (Student) |