Skogluft (Forest Air). Jorn Viumdal

system. Participants said they experienced lower levels of pain and felt less depressed, and they described feeling that their quality of life was better.⁵ Interestingly, these results are not about the effects of physical exercise or meditation in nature—just hanging out in nature, leisurely walking through the forest.

      Don’t just take my word for it. Scientists have weighed in. Whether you call it shinrin-yoku or a walk in the woods, immersing yourself in nature will:

       Strengthen the immune system

       Ease pain

       Lower stress

       Have a calming effect

       Control blood-sugar levels

       Reduce depression

       Improve mood

      All from a walk in the woods!

      You might have already discerned a small but important problem: You can’t take all of these positive benefits with you. On your lunch break, you’ve just walked out to a park and filled your lungs with the fresh scent of pine trees. You’ve returned feeling restored, soothed, and ready to tackle the afternoon’s tasks. But as you leave the green, light-filled setting and enter an unhealthy indoors environment, you begin to feel that familiar, dispiriting energy drain. It’s back to grabbing a chocolate bar or a cup of coffee and our old friend willpower again.

      How can we break this cycle? Ever hear the well-meaning but impractical advice “Either you move to the country or you move the country to you”?

      The first suggestion works for people attracted to the idea of sitting on a tree trunk in the middle of the woods whittling willow flutes, making calls on bark-hewn telephones, and now and then stirring to shoot a deer for dinner. But if you don’t have a job that puts you directly in touch with nature, then this solution is not feasible—most people need to live and work in urban areas. As for the second suggestion, the idea of bringing the country closer to the city and even indoors reminds me of tragic stories I hear about wild animals accidentally entering the world of humans. A raccoon can carry disease. A bear is cute until she is protecting her cubs. A wild animal can cause loss of life and property, not to mention the animal potentially losing its own life. Moving out to the country—or moving the country indoors—just isn’t feasible. So thanks for that advice, but no thanks.

      WHAT YOU NEED, WHERE YOU NEED IT

      As I said before, our bodies are wise. What we most want around us is precisely what we need most from nature: light and plants. I’ve joined these into a single concept and developed a method: Forest Air.

      Experts have demonstrated clearly that incorporating plants and specially adapted light indoors has a huge positive effect on people’s physical and mental health, almost as powerful as the effect of actually being out in nature. The effect has been noted in the workplace, in schools and institutions, and across people in all age groups, occupations, and life situations, from doctors, laboratory technicians, and teachers to students, children in preschool, and hospital patients. In essence, it can be argued that it is a universal medicine.

      Not to be a contrarian, but I have to argue that no, it isn’t. Do you claim to have given medicine to a fish you’ve released back into a river, or to a captive mouse you’ve set free in a forest undergrowth, or to a disoriented bird you’ve helped get out of a house? What you deserve real praise for is that you returned them to the environment to which they are best adapted to live—the only surroundings in which they can grow and thrive. And I think you deserve no less for yourself.

      YOUR NATURAL ENVIRONMENT AT HOME, YOUR NATURAL ENVIRONMENT AT WORK

      I’m not suggesting that you carry whole trees into your house (although by all means do so, if you have the space). Nor am I talking about putting some sad little potted plant in a corner. What you get with Forest Air is a small area of living plants that grow in a controlled and predictable way and that you can take care of yourself with minimal effort. And you’ll get the same health benefits as you would from a walk in the woods. You experience a shinrin-yoku just where you are, every day, without having to go out into the woods.

      Say you get a headache while you’re hard at work at your desk. You could just take an aspirin, but if you notice that your computer screen is too far from your eyes or your chair is too low, contributing to the headache, you would try to adjust them. We often try to organize elements of our environments so that they are in harmony with our bodies’ wants and needs. It is a course of action that will potentially stop you from feeling ill in the first place—quite different from taking an aspirin. In the same way, give yourself the chance to see, smell, feel, and touch plants in your everyday environment and provide yourself with good lighting. You will agree: It is not a luxury but rather a daily ingredient that gives you an improved quality of life. Which is something you deserve.