Awakening Your True Nature Through Forest Therapy
by Kathleen McIntyre, LCSWA
Step into a forest, and you’ll find a community both complex and simple. The trees, rivers, stones, and birds each belong to an intricate web of relationships, yet at the heart of this richness is a truth: every being is wholly themselves.
Forest therapy invites us into this same clarity. It is not merely time spent outdoors, but a practice of slowing down, opening our senses, and entering into relationship with the living world. In this relationship, we are offered the chance to return to our wholeness, to remember and reclaim our true nature.
Forest Therapy as a Mirror
Forest therapy is an invitation to soften into a relationship with the natural world. This softening may first feel like quiet observation but it gradually deepens into dialogue, a conversation that moves not through words, but through presence.
In this shared space, the forest becomes a mirror. Just as the oak tree is wholly oak and the wind is wholly wind, we are reminded that we too hold within us a core that is steady, whole, and unshakable. This essence is our true nature, waiting patiently to be remembered.
Forest therapy offers us a way back, not through effort or striving, but through resting in the honest company of trees, wind, and water. In their presence, we are gently guided toward remembering who we truly are.
Shedding What No Longer Serves
When we are held in that honest presence, we begin to notice what we carry that is not truly ours. Just as a tree releases its leaves when the season turns, we too can recognize and release the layers that no longer serve us.
These layers may be subtle: an old belief inherited from family, a cultural expectation about how we “should” live, or protective habits we once needed to feel safe. At the time, these patterns may have helped us survive, but over the years they can harden, weighing us down and clouding our connection to our true self.
Forest therapy offers the spaciousness and clarity to simply notice, to see these patterns with compassion. When we bring them into the forest, they often feel out of place in the clarity and stillness. With awareness comes choice, and with choice, the possibility of new patterns. In this way, the practice helps us release what no longer supports us and gently return to the freedom of our authentic nature.
Awakening Clarity, Reclaiming Self
As these layers soften and fall away, a wider perspective begins to open. What felt confusing or heavy gives way to a sense of clarity and ease. Forest therapy awakens us to what has always been here: the wise, spacious self that sees with compassion and acts from truth.
In the company of trees, water, stones, and sky, we remember what it means to be fully alive. We remember that our essence is not something we must earn or prove, but something we reclaim by returning to relationship with the living world. Forest therapy offers this awakening: a remembering of our true nature and a homecoming to ourselves.
Give Forest Therapy A Try
Perhaps the best way to understand forest therapy is not through explanation, but through experience. Words can point us toward its gifts, but the living world herself does the real teaching. When you next find yourself near a grove of trees or along a quiet path, notice what shifts when you pause, breathe, and allow yourself to simply be. That moment of presence may be all the beginning you need. Or better yet, schedule a guided forest therapy session with a Heartwood certified forest therapy guide.