Forest more, stress less
Hi, hello from the Department of Landscape Architecture. My name is Martina, and my dissertation is researching forest therapeutic trails and their effect on stress reduction in people of working age.
Forest therapeutic trails are specially designed trails in a forest environment that are designed to maximize the positive impact of the forest on the physical, and most importantly, the mental health of visitors. In addition, the ecological aspect of forest therapy is very important in my research, as I believe that it is possible to find new uses for the forest in this way without destroying or replacing it.
To understand the nature therapy of which forest therapy is a part, one simple question needs to be asked (and answered).
Why do we feel relaxed in nature?
We can certainly find more answers. I’m sticking with the theory of evolution. The point is that humans appeared on planet Earth almost three million years ago. Since then, our ancestors have continued to evolve in a natural environment. It wasn’t until the mid-18th century that intense urbanisation came hand in hand with the intense industrial revolution. And people began to move to cities in large numbers, enlarging and densifying them, often building new ones. Although from our perspective the Industrial Revolution may seem to have taken place in the distant past, from an evolutionary perspective it was only a brief moment. In fact, for 99.99% of our evolution, humans lived in natural conditions. It makes sense, then, that all of our organs — brain, lungs, muscles — are perfectly suited to being in nature in the first place. For movement on soft, uneven surfaces. For the sounds of nature, for the wind and the natural light that changes colour and disappears as evening falls.
I’d like you to take a moment to think about how you feel after a hard day. Personally, my head is usually pounding. I’m hungry, but I have no desire to eat. My legs ache, my eyes burn and my hands shake a little. I can feel my heart beating faster than necessary and that makes me nervous too. Maybe you feel the same way.
Do you have it?
Now click on this link, put the volume up and turn on the radio.
Look at the photo, breathe in and breathe out. Imagine the wind on your face and the light changing. Can you smell the pine trees? The dirt and the warm grass? You can even sit down and rest your back against the rough and firm bark of a tree… everything inside you slows down and calms down.
That’s simply how forest therapy works.
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Let me explain the same with a diagram by professor Yoshifumi Miyazaki and his team:
But besides the forest, I also like dates. So I want to present the main ones that the experts led by Yoshifumi Miyazaki in Japan came up with.
The cortisol levels of the 115 subjects studied dropped by an average of 12.7% when they stayed in the forest for 20 minutes.
Parasympathetic activity, which is responsible for the transition to a resting state, increased by an average of 103% in the 454 subjects studied over the same length of time.
But my research also draws on other theoretical concepts that together form a comprehensive framework for understanding the effects of forest therapy on human health. These are:
Biophilia theory, first articulated in 1984 by American biologist Edward O. Wilson, which assumes an innate human need for contact with nature, based on our evolutionary development.
Attentional restoration theory by the Kaplans, which states that human attention is limited and depleted, while the natural environment has the unique ability to restore mental capacity.
And the psychoevolutionary theory developed in the 1980s by Roger Ulrich, which posits an evolutionarily encoded unconscious response in humans to the natural environment that immediately reduces the level of stress hormones (primarily cortisol) in the body.
My tested hypotheses are:
-Specific characteristics of the forest environment (e.g. stand density, tree age structure, biodiversity, or terrain morphology combined with plant composition) significantly influence the therapeutic effect of forest trails.
-Forest trails with a predominance of natural sounds show a higher therapeutic potential in relation to geomorphology and vegetation than trails with a higher proportion of anthropogenic noise.
The aim of my work is to develop the concept of forest therapy in the Czech Republic. In particular, to develop a methodology for designing therapeutic trails. And on the basis of it to create a pilot project of such a trail, including besides the selection of a suitable location, programme content and infrastructure, also a detailed design of the whole trail and all its details.
If you would like to learn more about the topic and my work, please feel free to contact me at the faculty email: alince_dvorakova@af.czu.cz
