Shinrin-Yoku

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Sunday October 15

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1:00 PM     4:00 PM

Shinrin-Yoku

Sunday, October 15: 1–4pm
Peak leafpeeping!

Instructor Bios:
Deborah Denome is an Educator,  Horticultural Therapist, Herbalist and Certified Forest Therapy Guide.  She is passionate about the expansion of human consciousness as it informs our Interdependence with All Things.  Deb's greatest joy is in helping individuals to deepen their own relationship with the Earth, each other, and our own true nature.  She finds  Forest Therapy/Shinrin-Yoku to be a profound yet simple and accessible path to expanding these connections.

Since 1997 Deb has served as Director of Shimmering Light Farm & Renewal Center, a non-profit educational organization that explores, models and inspires more conscious and restorative ways of life.   Her previous corporate career was in international training and publishing and she was the 2008 Canandaigua Athena Award recipient for her work promoting women in leadership. Deb is blessed to live and play at Shimmering Light Farm in South Bristol, NY.  Here, overlooking Canandaigua Lake, she raised three fascinating young adults, tends abundant herb gardens, and dances as often as possible.

Teresa Benoit Keyes has been an advocate for wild spaces since she penned her first activist letter to the town supervisor, demanding a stop to the “murder of trees” in the beloved forest behind her home.  She was 8.  Over time, she has consistently been involved in various preservation and conservation efforts aimed to protect resources and ensure a robust coexistence with the natural world.  As a Yoga Alliance RYT-200 certified yoga instructor, Teresa found the healing potential of present-moment awareness was magnified when she brought her practice outdoors.   As a Certified Forest Therapy Guide, she finds forest bathing amplifies that energy exponentially, creating a profound experience connecting -- or more accurately, reconnecting -- one’s body, mind and soul with those more-than-human residents of the woods.
 
Teresa leads invitations that awaken all the body’s senses, beyond the five we’re most familiar with (sight, sound, taste, touch, smell).  Through a combination of guided experiences and quiet reflection, Teresa helps participants find their equilibrium and reclaim their inner peace.

Description:
Our species evolved in forests. We spent the first several million years of our existence in them. Then, a couple of millenia ago - in evolutionary time scale, only yesterday - our adventurous spirits inspired a global exploration. This morning we invented cities. A bit before the noonday break we became industrialized civilizations. Now, suddenly, while our genes are still living in the forest, our bodies live in the busy, stressful conditions of modern civilization.

The problem: According to the World Health Organization, stress is the health epidemic of the 21st century and is responsible for many forms of chronic illness. Add to that separation from nature and the wisdom we learn when we are intimate with nature's ways.  

A natural solution: Forest therapy, also known as shinrin-yoku and forest bathing. In the 1980’s, Japan recognized the physiological and psychological dangers of stress and sought out a new way to combat it. This was the beginning of shinrin-yoku, roughly translated as ‘taking in the forest atmosphere’ or ‘forest bathing.’

Over 30 years of research later, pioneering physicians and other health care providers are prescribing Forest Therapy for its proven benefits, including: reduced stress, enhanced immune response, improved and stabilized moods, sharper cognition, increased creativity, sense of belonging, and more.  That’s right,  time in Nature makes you happier, healthier, and smarter!  
 
This is not new or unique to Japan, as all of our ancestors lived in direct connection with Nature.  Shinrin-Yoku helps us reclaim and strengthen that connection.

Whether you are in Nature all the time or are reluctant to walk in the wild alone, on a Shinrin-Yoku Forest Therapy walk you will be skillfully guided into a gentle, enjoyable, full sensory experience of our natural world.  Your mind can rest as you sink into invitations that engage your senses...taking in the images, sounds, aromas, breath, touch and wisdom of the forest.  Insights received are often profound.  Walks are concluded with a tea ceremony of wild, forest plants.

$30.00