Forest bathing is almost absurdly simple
June 18, 2025
CP Photo: Mars Johnson
Elizabeth Mick, left, attends a forest bathing demonstration led by Kathryn Hunninen, right, at Frick Park.
At 9:30 a.m. on a cool Saturday morning, the air surrounding the Frick Environmental Center is thick with birdsong and the smell of wet bark. A group of strangers gathers loosely around the stone fountain, adjusting their jackets, sipping coffee from tumblers, unsure how the morning will unfold. They’ve come not to hike, or even to walk exactly — but to bathe.
Forest bathing, or shinrin-yoku, as it’s called in Japan, isn’t about logging miles. It’s not about flora identification or whatever high-performance mindfulness trend TikTok is pushing this month. It’s not metaphorical, either.
It is, quite literally — and almost absurdly simply — about being in a forest with your senses on.
“Forest bathing is a process of immersing in nature by slowing down and opening the senses,” Kathryn Hunninen, Senior Manager of Special Initiatives and a certified forest therapy guide with the Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy, tells Pittsburgh City Paper. “It is different than a nature walk or hike in that we are not teaching about nature or science, and there is no specific goal, destination, or expected outcome.”
CP Photo: Mars Johnson
Kathryn Hunninen, Senior Manager of Special Initiatives with Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy, poses for a portrait at Frick Park on June 9, 2025.
CP Photo: Mars Johnson
Frick Park
CP Photo: Mars Johnson
Frick Park
Hunninen leads the sessions alongside her colleague, Patty Himes, also a certified guide and longtime Parks Conservancy staffer. Himes was Hunninen’s co-participant at the very first forest bathing session they attended years ago — and now, the duo helps guide the city’s growing interest in mindful nature connection.
From the fountain, the group heads toward the South Clayton Trail, which eases them into the new Sensory Nature Trail. The terrain is gentle, and the pace is glacial.
And yet, there’s a structure.
Participants are gently guided through what are called “invitations.” “It is a slow-moving experience where participants are encouraged and supported by the guide to be present and connect with their bodies through sensory-based invitations,” Hunninen explains.
The first invitation of the morning is called “The Pleasures of Presence”. There’s no script, just a suggestion to be present with all your senses: listen for the furthest sound. Feel the bark. Hear the rustle. Smell the mulch and the dampness. Notice where your feet are. Notice that you’re noticing.
Sunlight filters softly through the trees. The forest is very alive this time of the day: squirrels dart across the underbrush and chipmunks flicker between shadows. Deer, red foxes, raccoons, skunks, and even coyotes call this forest home, even though you might not see them. Next, Hunninen offers the invitation: wander a bit and see “What’s in Motion.” Not just birds flapping around or leaves blowing in the breeze but also the small stuff: ants tracing a root, your own breath, the subtle shift of your shoulders as you finally start to loosen up.
To regroup, Hunninen doesn’t call out names. She belts out an owl call, soft and cupped through her hands. It is a low, echoing “whoo-whoo” that drifts across the forest, equal parts ancient and delightfully silly.
CP Photo: Mars Johnson
Kathryn Hunninen, Senior Manager of Special Initiatives with Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy, poses for a portrait at Frick Park on June 9, 2025.
At some point, she invites everyone to introduce themselves to a tree. It’s a prompt that might make city-dwellers roll their eyes. Until they do it. Hands trace the grooves of ancient bark, fingers brushing over moss and lichen. Eyes close. Someone crouches at the base of a towering oak, their breath deepening, letting the forest in.
“When on a guided experience, we offer opportunities to share what we’re noticing with the group,” Hunninen says. “Sharing is a way to build community and connection, but there is no pressure for participants to share in any particular way. Passing is equal to sharing.”
“The invitations themselves are invitational,” she adds. “Basically, [that] means people are free to do what feels best to them.”
Before she became a guide, Hunninen was experiencing what many come here trying to shake: burnout.
“In 2016, Patty and I participated together in a forest bathing session at a conference in central Pa. and felt a deep connection to the experience,” she says. “I was overwhelmed by the positive impact it had on my body and my emotional response during the session. At that time, I had been experiencing some personal difficulties and professional burnout and the forest bathing session did inspire a moment—a shift in my thinking.”
In 2022, after the Conservancy received a grant to expand its wellness offerings, Hunninen and Himes trained to become certified forest therapy guides through the Association of Nature & Forest Therapy Guides & Programs (ANFT). It was a six-month training with a four-day immersion workshop, and a permanent shift in how Hunninen moved through the world.
“Becoming guides and offering forest bathing programs has been an incredible journey and unique way in which Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy is helping to connect people to their parks and support their wellbeing,” she says. “We are grateful to be a part of a great community of guides in Pennsylvania and the Pittsburgh area that are doing this work.”
Since then, the duo has led walks for public school teachers, grief support groups, teens, and the 10.27 Healing Partnership. Recently, they completed training to support youth-focused walks and have begun helping schools and nonprofits introduce forest bathing into their curriculum.
CP Photo: Mars Johnson
Kathryn Hunninen, Senior Manager of Special Initiatives with Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy, poses for a portrait at Frick Park on June 9, 2025.
CP Photo: Mars Johnson
Elizabeth Mick participates in a forest bathing exercise at Frick Park on June 9, 2025.
CP Photo: Mars Johnson
Bethany Wells participates in a forest bathing exercise at Frick Park on June 9, 2025.
The science, Hunninen says, is catching up to what the trees already know.
“Reduction in cortisol. Reduction in symptoms of depression and anxiety. Improved sleep quality. Improved immune system function,” Hunninen says.
“Research has indicated that immersing in nature environments/viewing natural scenes can relax the frontal lobe/require less executive attention to process information,” she adds, “which they believe is connected to effects including attention restoration, increased creativity and working memory, and reduction in rumination.”
According to research compiled by Forest Bathing Central, part of the benefit may come from exposure to phytoncides — volatile organic compounds, or natural tree oils, emitted by plants and trees to protect themselves from insects and bacteria. Turns out, they’re good for us, too. They help fire up our immune system by boosting natural killer (NK) cells, the ones that fight off viruses and tumor cells. Phytoncides like alpha-pinene and beta-pinene also help lower stress, improve sleep, keep your mood steady, and even lower blood sugar. Not bad for a walk in the woods.
A 2022 study by Dr. Qing Li in Environmental Health and Preventive Medicine found that forest bathing sessions significantly increased NK cell activity and levels of anti-cancer proteins. These benefits lasted at least seven days and sometimes up to 30 days.
The best part is that you don’t need a long session to see results. You don’t even need a guide. You just need to pay attention, and maybe spend 20 minutes.
“There are studies that have shown measurable changes in the brain in as little as five minutes of exposure to nature,” Hunninen says. “We often reference the studies that have shown time spent in nature for even 20 minutes per day can provide great benefit … that you don’t necessarily need to go on a guided one or two-hour experience in order to integrate these practices into your life on a regular basis.”
Forest bathing opportunities in Pittsburgh extend beyond Frick Park. The Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy also offers guided sessions in Riverview Park, Allegheny Commons, and West End Park. Phipps Conservatory, Pittsburgh Botanic Garden and North Park’s Latodami Nature Center also offer these sensory-based experiences.
And forest bathing doesn’t necessarily require vast wilderness or an expanse of green.
“There is some research that indicates that being in a forested environment … can provide greater benefit for forest bathing participants,” she adds. “However, there is also research to indicate that a key factor to maximizing benefit is sensory immersion in a natural environment where you feel safe and wherever you can access nature.”
Even a view counts.
“Being in a forested area or on a trail, sitting on a park bench, in your yard, looking through a window at trees or a garden, viewing natural scenes, or even watching a nature webcam,” she says. “Studies have shown that benefit can be gained from any of these settings, even though a forested setting may provide greater effects on physical indicators.”
CP Photo: Mars Johnson
Bethany Wells participates in a forest bathing exercise at Frick Park on June 9, 2025.
At the end of the session, the group sits quietly in a circle. Like something out of Alice in Wonderland, Hunninen pulls a tea set from her satchel. She takes out a tumbler of forest tea she made from scratch, and pours the steaming brew into tiny ceramic cups.
Hunninen makes Hemlock tea by collecting the young needles and twigs from the Eastern hemlock tree, rinsing them clean, and simmering them gently in water. The tea is high in Vitamin C and known to boost the immune system and support respiratory health.
She explains that the type of tea she serves changes with the seasons. Other popular concoctions include white pine, spicebush, dandelion root, rose hips, and bee balm. Regardless of the plant, her goal is always the same: to encourage people to slow down and taste the forest.
The tea is pointedly herbal and grassy. Grounding. Like the morning itself.
For the first time in days, maybe weeks, your shoulders are where they’re supposed to be. There’s no epiphany. No sudden craving to grow kale or delete Instagram.
You befriended a tree, listened to an owl call, and almost cried over a patch of moss.
None of it felt strange.
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