The Medicine of Forest Therapy

by Kathleen McIntyre, LCSWA

There was a time when humans turned to the forest for everything: food, shelter, stories, guidance, and healing. The Earth was teacher, healer, and relation. Our bodies remember this.

Forest therapy is a practice of remembering. It invites us to receive nature’s medicine: calm for the nervous system, clarity for the mind, nourishment for the heart. And in turn, we are invited to let this medicine flow back outward, shaping how we live, how we love, and how we care for the Earth.

So why call nature medicine? At its heart, medicine is anything that shifts our state toward greater well-being; whether that shift happens in the body, the mind, the emotions, or even at the level of the soul. Medicine can be preventive, helping us stay balanced and resilient, or curative, supporting us through stress, pain, or illness. Nature does both.

And the most astonishing part? Nature’s medicine doesn’t require effort. We don’t have to climb a mountain or hike long distances. Simply resting our attention on a tree swaying in the wind, or feeling sunlight warm our skin, can activate the parasympathetic nervous system, the part of us that says: You can rest here, you are safe.

Here are four ways forest therapy offers us medicine:

Nature Reflects Truth

In the human-made world, truth often feels blurred. Images are edited, headlines manipulated, stories distorted until it becomes difficult to know what is real. Surrounded by screens and constant noise, we can lose touch with our own inner compass.

But in the forest, truth is unfiltered. The call of a bird, the sound of water flowing, the feel of wind against your skin; these experiences are not manufactured or manipulated. They are real. And when we place ourselves in the presence of what is real, we begin to remember the difference between illusion and truth, between distraction and what deeply matters.

This is part of the reclamation forest therapy invites: by immersing ourselves in what is steady and true, we remember how to trust our senses, how to listen to the body’s wisdom, and how to live from the truths that rise within us.

Healing Through Presence

For many, trauma lives quietly in the body: tension in the shoulders, shallow breath, a heart that never fully rests. Forest therapy offers a container where the body can begin to soften. With the steady presence of the forest, even the simplest invitations: feeling the ground beneath your feet, noticing the rhythm of your breath, listening to the subtle language of the woods, can open the doorway for healing to gently unfold.

Each moment of presence is what it is, complete in itself. When we pause long enough to notice the warmth of the sun on our skin or the texture of bark beneath our fingertips, wisdom and connection become available. These are moments of remembering: remembering the body’s belonging to the Earth, remembering that healing can come in simple, grounded ways.

Community as Medicine

Forest therapy is not only an individual practice; it flourishes in community. When we gather together, something extraordinary happens: the forest speaks not just to us as individuals, but through us to one another.

What one person shares may be exactly what someone else needed to hear. Sometimes we search for words and cannot find them, then someone else speaks, and it gives voice to what was already stirring inside us.

In this way, awareness becomes communal medicine. Each person’s noticing is a gift, expanding the circle of experience, opening new pathways of connection.

A Path Toward Reciprocity

The medicine of forest therapy does not end with the individual; it ripples outward into how we live and the choices we make.

As an educator, I once believed that if people understood how ecosystems worked, how watersheds, carbon cycles, and biodiversity sustain life, and if they saw how human actions disrupt these systems in ways that circle back to harm our own health, they would naturally want to protect the natural world. I thought knowledge would be enough to inspire change.

But what I discovered was different. Facts, even urgent ones, rarely move people to act. What transforms us is connection. When someone falls in love with a tree, it breaks their heart to see one cut down. When they feel the Earth as a relation, reciprocity arises naturally, not from duty, but from a deep desire to care for what cares for us.

This is why the work of forest therapy and eco-therapy is so essential now. In a time when both humans and the Earth are longing for healing, this practice reminds us that our well-being is inseparable from the well-being of the natural world. And when we remember this, we begin to live with greater reverence, reciprocity, and care.

The medicine of forest therapy is simple and available to everyone. It’s found in slowing down, noticing what’s around you, and allowing nature to help you relax and restore. You don’t need special knowledge or equipment. You just need a willingness to be present.

If you’d like guidance as you begin, connect with a Heartwood certified forest therapy guide. A guide can help you move at a comfortable pace, deepen your experience, and discover how nature’s quiet medicine supports both body and mind.