Why Spending Time among Trees is Important

Realign your senses

1

Let me tell you about about my forest. It is not about emotions it engenders, but the senses. The lush green, bursting at the seams, and summer scent of pine, and thyme. There is the crunching of pine needles underfoot, the breeze ushering the trees forth, and back.

You were mistaught about the five senses in school. In reality there are more than five, of course. Along with sight, touch, smell, taste and hearing, there is the sense of balance, and sense of time, among others. There is common sense, too.

The purpose of getting you to scan so far, though, is not to show you how the forest can help you keep the five senses so present and alive, as well as show how sense of balance and common sense are so important, but to immerse you into a new concept — of leaving emotions behind, focusing on the senses, and experiencing them.

The forest is a wonderful place to start this conception (and turn it into a concrete perception). A forest has so much nature stuffed into it, yet is not distracting, offers so much, yet remains a backdrop. Here, and later in your own favourite forest, focus on changing your ever-elusive search for an emotional happiness, and turn that emotion into a sense. Make Happiness one of your senses, and activate this sense, like opening your eyes, or tasting it. Create a sense of Happiness and Contentment, rather like your sense of balance, and try the concept of leaving all the emotions behind.

Emotions are what people have when they lack control, and emotions are driven by fear — even ‘good’ emotions. Find your own forest, a real one, and seek, then use your sense of Happiness to lift you to the tree tops. If you casually reframe the Happiness as a sense, you don0t need to overthink it, Think of how you activate, and train other senses.

If you are able to add the sense of Happiness to your senses, then Happiness will be sensed extrinsically, around you, instead of searched for intrinsically, within.

Look around the forest. Look how many canopies it has, how many layers, which protect and nourish each other. Learn more about the forest to help you feel lifted by it.

No midas touch is needed, but passivity is not an option, either. Seek what will bring that sense of good feeling,

Happiness, however, is not an achievement you must constantly strive for, or found at someone’s expense. It is not about using your imagination, or creativity but experiencing. Make Happiness one of your senses. It is a sense of well-being, when there is harmony, and you can sense that harmony around you, and have contributed to it.

Breathe deep, among the trees. Listen to the squirrels clicking. Look at the shadows left behind as the tall trees soar. Drag your hand along a branch and feel how soft needles or leaves are. Sense the Happiness.

The forest is giving to you. It is lowering your mental and chemical toxin levels. It is helping you sense Happiness.

And the trees in the forest really are giving — they release chemicals that help them fight off bacteria. These chemicals are very good for you.

So when you take in the aroma of the trees, take in also the Happiness of harmony.

The forest activates your senses, helps you mentally, and physically. Think of your sense of Happiness in the harmony around you, and reach out to your environment. Take it home with you so that others may feel Happiness is a sense, and not an emotion or intellectual appraisal. Train yourself.

the ant
carries the speck of sawdust
away