<![CDATA[Cascadia Forest Therapy

<![CDATA[Cascadia Forest Therapy - Mycelia]]>Tue, 03 Mar 2026 09:57:14 -0800EditMySite<![CDATA[Being the Earth's Poem]]>Sun, 18 Jan 2026 16:44:06 GMThttps://www.cascadiaforesttherapy.com/mycelia/being-the-earths-poemby Michael Stein-Ross

There is a language of the body. Our bodies know even if our minds may have forgotten.

This is the way I used to think. But my thinking is shifting. I understand the value in helping people focus on a language of the body as a way to differentiate from the thinking mind. I have often thought of my role as a forest therapy guide to help participants leave the thinking mind as we slow into an embodied sensory experience. But doing so reinforces the separation of mind and body, which is a falsity.

Through my experience with somatic (meaning “of the body”) movement practices I have learned how to listen to my body. To let my body lead, as it were. Obviously, I haven’t removed my brain for these exercises. The brain is part of the body, and the mind, which we commonly understand to live in the brain, is thereby part of the body too.

I’m beginning to understand that referring to this thing called the mind bounds our story within a mind/body dichotomy. A more skillful use of language may be “awareness” or “consciousness.” When I say I listen to my body, what is more accurately happening is that my awareness is expanding beyond my brain – I’m allowing my consciousness to prioritize inputs from the senses that live in my body.

When forest bathing, the guide provides a structure and holds space for participants to not leave the thinking mind, but rather expand their awareness to include a wider set of sensory inputs. In this way, we can allow an embodied state of being. Thus and thus, learning how to slowly wander in the forest can open us to something larger. Though difficult to describe here, with practice our consciousness can expand beyond our bodies to include inputs we might otherwise think to be outside ourselves. Sounds, after all, don’t originate in our ears.

Poetry seems to me to be the vehicle for capturing and transmitting such an experience. But what if this opening to a wider awareness allows the Earth to dream through us, in a similar way to how poets often say the poetry does not come from us but is rather transmitted through us. Instead of me writing poetry to encapsulate an experience, perhaps, in my wandering, sitting, and being in the forest, I can come to embody the poetry of the Earth.

When we forest bathe, we can be the Earth's poem.

Photo by Jonathan Stein

Invitation

Touch the forest with tenderness. With each touch, pause, allowing your awareness to awaken and rest in that part of your body.

]]><![CDATA[Relational Practices]]>Mon, 12 Jan 2026 02:28:35 GMThttps://www.cascadiaforesttherapy.com/mycelia/relational-practicesby Michael Stein-Ross

As the practice of forest therapy matures, we have started to see different schools of thought and philosophical approaches emerge. In 2021, Amos Clifford of The Association of Nature and Forest Therapy (ANFT) proposed the term “Relational Forest Therapy,” as a way to define and differentiate ANFT's approach to training guides. Given that the guides at Cascadia Forest Therapy all happen to have been trained by ANFT, we primarily practice relational forest therapy as well. Yet, we recognize that definitions should be dynamic living processes – just as the beginning stages of forest growth offer space and opportunity for pioneering species, there is plenty of sunlit space remaining to contribute to the living definition of what forest therapy is.

Within that context, this post is a small contribution to the process of unfolding and becoming that we share.

In the spring 2024 issue of Tricycle magazine, Deborah Eden Tull shares excerpts from her book Relational Mindfulness. I couldn’t help but read the article with Relational Forest Therapy in mind. Let me connect some of her ideas to Forest Therapy.

Relational mindfulness is the understanding that the subtlest form of love is attention; it is about paying attention to ourselves, to one another, and to our planet with more intention. In so doing, we affirm who we are as a collective.”

She may as well be defining how I understand Forest Therapy. Relational Forest Therapy brings the practitioner into a space of intentional attention. Through our senses, we pay attention, we notice, and in so doing, we often come to affirm who we are as a member and being of the forest.

Relational mindfulness is not a doing, but an undoing, a process of inquiring, emptying, and remembering who we are, together. It is a practice of coming home to our bodies and listening to life as it unfolds moment by moment, relaxing into the innate power of receptivity rather than efforting.”

Relational Forest Therapy is neither a doing nor an undoing. Or perhaps it is both. Through the “doing” of slowing into deep sensory awareness, we may come to undo the cultural stories we hold that set humans apart from, rather than as a part of the forest. Coming home to our bodies through our senses, we relax into an allowing. We allow ourselves to be, without a need to do. In a guided session, the guide functions as the doer, so the participant can simply allow.

…relational mindfulness starts by listening within, without judgment, to what is arising within us.”

When I guide a forest bathing session and offer an invitation to share, I provide two guidelines for the sharing. The first is to speak from the heart. I say, “Speaking from the heart may mean pausing, and seeing what arises in your heartspace. And sometimes it means there are no words to share at all.” The second is to listen from the heart. When we listen from the heart, we give witness to the connection stories of others, to what has risen within the heart space of others. There is power in witnessing the stories of others, and there is power in having your story witnessed by others. It is in this way that we share, creating spaciousness, through permissiveness and allowance, to receive what might arise for each from the forest collective — teachings, connections, wonderings, and wonderments.

Photo by Valerio Massimo Fiocchetto on Unsplash

An invitation (to practice listening from within):

Sit or stand in nature. Slowly close your eyes and bring your awareness to your heart space. When settled in your heart space, open your eyes and allow your gaze to rest with a being of the forest. Allow and notice what arises in your heart space. Tenderly send it on a string from your heart to the forest being. Close your eyes, turn your head or body, and repeat.

]]><![CDATA[Participant]]>Mon, 15 Dec 2025 08:00:00 GMThttps://www.cascadiaforesttherapy.com/mycelia/participantby Michael Stein-Ross

A dance
A slow dance
But not always slow
But slow

Sensual
Perhaps not romantic
But loving
Like a caress
With tenderness
Slow-like
Not missing any of the feels,
The sensations

A softness
A depth
In the moment of time
In the space inhabited
Slipping gracefully into embodied participant
An earthly being
Kin of all

Photo by HLS 44 on Unsplash

Invitation

Find a place to stand where you can see the top of a tree. Start in stillness, and slowly allow yourself to mirror the swaying treetops. Enjoy the dance.

]]><![CDATA[Being with No Name]]>Tue, 09 Dec 2025 04:54:12 GMThttps://www.cascadiaforesttherapy.com/mycelia/creature-with-no-nameby Michael Stein-Ross

So it is that in this forest, there is but one being who roams about with no name. The villagers dare not name this creature, because they know that a name carries with it a spirit. To name this creature would be to unleash its spirit and to unleash this last remaining spirit would be to lose the mystery.

Indeed, this being lurks in the outskirts of the village, in those places where the signs of humans begin to fade. We know this is true, because on occasion a person will happen to see, or smell, or otherwise sense this being with no name. And in sensing, they come to know. But back in the village, upon return, they do not discuss the being they encountered. And so, one might go about their daily work in the village, interacting with others, never quite knowing if a fellow has also at one time sensed the unnamed being. Yet, by and by, most adults come to sense, and to know, and, understandably, to change. The children, however, who aren’t allowed to venture that far alone, don’t sense it, and don’t know it. What they do sense, instead, is the change in the adults who return.

—--

I have at times, while forest bathing, sensed something mysterious passing nearby. When it happened, I didn’t know what it was, and I didn’t try very hard to figure it out. Instead, I allowed the mystery. Inspired by these experiences, I wrote this very short story.

Photo by Oskar Kadaksoo on Unsplash

Invitation

Find a place to sit with nature. Permit your senses to notice something new -- something that you cannot name. Allow the mystery to unfold.

]]><![CDATA[Flipping Over]]>Fri, 28 Nov 2025 18:38:54 GMThttps://www.cascadiaforesttherapy.com/mycelia/flipping-overby Michael Stein-Ross

I learned the word "non-acquisitive" today as I read Maria Popova’s post “Gary Snyder on How to Unbreak the World.” She quotes Snyder’s Turtle Island:

The nub of the problem now is how to flip over, as in jiu-jitsu, the magnificent growth-energy of modern civilization, into a non-acquisitive search for deeper knowledge of self and nature…

Made me wonder. What if we added a bit of curiosity to make the phrase “inquisitive non-acquisitive?" Besides being fun to say aloud, this could be an interesting way to describe forest bathing.

As a guide, I often invite people to open not just their mind, but their whole self, to a sense of curiosity, of wonderment. I reckon curiosity is what leads to wonderment, as much as entering the forest with an intention of curiosity sets a nurse log beneath our senses, allowing wonderment to take root. It is an inquisitive nature that we nurture in forest bathing.

I also often describe forest bathing as a non-extractive process. We do not enter the forest from outside the forest to harvest, mine, or otherwise extract anything we ourselves didn't first put there. Instead, with an intention of reciprocity, we allow the balancing of our relationship with the forest, so eventually we can no longer tell who was the last to either give or take. When the boundary between giving and taking is blurred, there is no acquiring, no accumulation.

Forest bathing, then, is inquisitive as well as non-acquisitive -- an approach, I would think, to Synder's “search for deeper knowledge of self and nature.” And perhaps one that will help flip over some things that could use flipping.

Invitation

Slowly wander among the forest beings.
Find ways to flip over. Allow yourself to both flip and be flipped.

]]><![CDATA[Introducing Mycelia]]>Thu, 27 Nov 2025 21:51:25 GMThttps://www.cascadiaforesttherapy.com/mycelia/introducing-myceliaby Michael Stein-Ross

The members of Cascadia Forest Therapy are open to experimenting with ways to grow our regional culture of nature connection practices. Most of all, we love sharing time in the woods with our neighbors, but sharing our ideas in a blog may be another way to nurture our collective practice. We invite you to imagine each blog post as a thread that does the work of forest fungi for our culture — makes new connections, decomposes old stories that no longer serve, brings nourishment to the minds and hearts of others — together weaving a fabric to be used as a gauze for cultural wounds, a parchment for writing new stories, a canvas for collective artistry.

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