Becoming a Guide: What It Means to Hold Space in the Forest

by Julie Sczerbinski

When people hear the phrase forest therapy guide, they often imagine someone leading a hike, pointing out plants, or teaching facts about the natural world. In reality, guiding is something quieter and more subtle. It’s less about giving information and more about opening a doorway, inviting people into their own relationship with the forest.

So, what does a forest therapy guide do?

A forest therapy guide doesn’t act as a teacher or expert. Instead, they serve as a companion, offering gentle invitations that help participants slow down, awaken their senses, and notice the living world in fresh ways. A guide may invite you to listen to birdsong, follow the movement of water, or sit in stillness with a tree. These invitations are not instructions to “get it right.” They are open-ended doorways for exploration and discovery.

The guide’s role is to create a safe container, to hold the time and space where participants can lean into their own experience. By setting the pace, crafting simple invitations, and fostering a sense of welcome, a guide makes it easier for people to cross the threshold from everyday busyness into presence with the more-than-human world.

Guiding is as much about who you are as what you do.

The qualities that matter most often arise from a personal practice in:

• Presence: the ability to be grounded, mindful, and calm, even when participants feel restless or uncertain.

• Compassion: meeting each person where they are, without judgment or pressure.

• Humility: remembering that the forest, not the guide, is the true healer and teacher.

• Attunement: reading the language of the land and sensing the needs of the group and adjusting accordingly.

Cultivating these qualities is a lifelong practice. In many ways, becoming a forest therapy guide is a journey of becoming more present, learning to listen, to hold space, and to trust in the wisdom of the natural world. And this is why the role of the guide matters so much.

In today’s world, so many people are moving fast, feeling disconnected, or carrying heavy burdens. Forest therapy offers a gentle antidote: time to slow down, to breathe, and to feel held by something larger than ourselves.

Forest therapy guides are needed not because people can’t walk in the forest on their own, but because we often forget how to pause, how to listen, and how to trust our own senses. A guide helps create the conditions where remembering becomes possible.

At its heart, guiding is an act of service.

It’s about holding a space where people can reconnect with the living world and in doing so, rediscover their own wholeness.