Photo credit: Jeanne Christie
I recently returned from spending eight days in the forest, embarking on a new adventure. I’m spending the next six months training to become a certified forest therapy guide. “A certified forest what?!?!,” you may be saying to yourself. Trust me, no one was more surprised than me that this was something I felt drawn to do.
Until a couple months ago I hadn’t even heard of forest therapy, or forest bathing as it is more commonly called. But when I read this article that a dear friend shared with me, something deep inside of me said “Yes! This!” I was so filled with excitement at the notion of forest bathing that I spent most of that day perusing the Association of Nature and Forest Therapy (ANFT) website and the next week filling out the application to attend one of the upcoming training programs.
A funny thing happened, though. By the time I hit the Submit button on the application, I felt decidedly lukewarm about it all. What happened to all that enthusiasm I initially had, I wondered. As I said to my husband that evening, if I don’t get accepted, then I don’t have a decision to make. And if I do get accepted, I can decline. I wasn’t obligated, financially or otherwise, to move forward with the program.
A couple weeks passed and I received an email. Of course I had been accepted into the program and with genuine heartfelt appreciation for what I would bring to being a forest therapy guide. Shit! I wrestled with my options but not for long. I pretty quickly decided against the training. It was a significant amount of money and I felt it would be a distraction from my coaching practice. I responded to the acceptance email and deferred my participation.
Instead, I decided I would read Your Guide to Forest Bathing by M. Amos Clifford, the founder of ANFT, thinking perhaps I could embark on some forest therapy of my own if I felt so inclined. I did just that on a “retreat day” I gave myself, where I don’t do life, I just do me. As I read the book that familiar feeling of enthusiasm rose up in me just like it had when I read the original article. But it wasn’t just enthusiasm; it was much more than that. It was joy.
Again, shit! I really wanted to do this. In that moment, two things became very clear to me. One, I had let fear talk me out of the training. This was way out of my comfort zone. And two, I knew without a doubt that forest therapy was my next step even though I couldn’t articulate why exactly this was important to me.
I reached out to the contact who had sent the acceptance letter and asked whether there was still room in the August training cohort. As luck would have it, there was. I was both thrilled and scared, which reminded me of a favorite quote from Danielle LaPorte:
“Joy lives at the edge”
Through this experience—both the journey in committing to the program and in completing the initial 8-day intensive workshop—I have learned that joy doesn’t happen in the space that’s familiar and comfortable. Joy arises when we push ourselves and experience something that makes us slightly uncomfortable, when we move in the direction of our fear.
Even though I’ve completed the initial workshop, there are still many edges for me to meet as I dive into the six-month practicum portion of the training. No doubt there will be moments when I question why I chose this path and back off from an edge, and moments that fill me with joy as I move through an edge and face my fear. It won’t be easy but no adventure ever is.
As the famous mountaineer George Mallory said:
“What we get from this adventure is just sheer joy. And joy is, after all, the end of life.”