Shinrin-Yoku — The Quiet Beneath the Trees

There are places where the noise seems to stop.

For me, that place has always been amongst trees.

I can walk into woodland carrying all the ordinary worries of life, money, work, responsibilities, the endless thoughts that seem so important when you're caught up in them, and something changes. Not gradually. Almost immediately.

I forget them.

I notice the ground beneath my feet. The smell of damp earth and bark. Moss creeping over fallen branches. Lichen clinging to trees. Light finding its way through leaves. Tiny worlds quietly carrying on whether I am there to notice them or not.

And for a while, I feel connected to something more.

The art of forest bathing

Shinrin-yoku is a Japanese term usually translated as “forest bathing.”

It doesn't mean swimming, of course. It means immersing yourself in the atmosphere of the forest, slowing down and experiencing it through your senses rather than simply walking through it with somewhere to get to.

There is something beautifully uncomplicated about that idea.

No destination.
No achievement.
Nothing to prove.

Just being there.

Long before I knew there was a name for it, I think this was something I instinctively understood.

Something I can't quite name

Woodland does something else to me too, and this part is much harder to explain.

Sometimes it makes me want to cry.

Not because I'm sad.

It feels more like a longing, a need for something I can't put into words. Almost a memory of something I can't actually remember. A feeling that perhaps there was once a time when I was more connected to the earth, to the world around me, or simply to myself.

A time when I was somehow more than I am now.

I don't know exactly what that feeling is.

Perhaps that's why I keep returning to roots, trees, weathered surfaces, earth and ancient places in my work. Perhaps I'm trying to find my way back to something I've never quite been able to name.

Amongst trees, I don't feel the same need to work it out.

I feel okay with who I am.

Painting Shinrin-Yoku — Forest Bathing

That feeling eventually found its way into a painting.

Shinrin-Yoku — Forest Bathing wasn't intended to be a literal picture of a forest. I wanted it to hold something of the feeling of being inside one.

Layers overlap like bark, moss, shadow and filtered light. Earthy colours appear and disappear beneath one another. The surface is textured and weathered,imperfect, changing and alive.

Much like woodland itself, there are things partly hidden and things waiting to be noticed.

And perhaps that is what I love most about forests.

They ask nothing of us.

A tree doesn't care what we do for a living, how successful we are, how much money we have, whether we've made the right decisions or whether we've figured out what we're supposed to be doing with our lives.

We can simply stand beneath it and exist.

For a little while, the noise disappears.

The worrying stops.

I belong to something larger than myself.

It is peace.

Shelly
Earth Root Studio · Art · Nature · Connection 🌿