Forest Bathing Brings the Spa Outdoors

Not every wellness experience happens indoors. A small but growing number of Vermont guides are leading clients into the woods for forest bathing — the practice, borrowed from Japan, of slowing down and immersing the senses in a natural setting. Sometimes it even includes a massage in the open air.

The concept is disarmingly simple. There is no hiking goal, no fitness metric, just a slow, mindful walk with attention paid to the light, the sound, the smell of the trees. Research has linked time in forests to lower stress and blood pressure, but practitioners tend to lead with experience rather than data: people simply feel better after a couple of unhurried hours among the trees.

Vermont, with its endless woodlands, is well suited to the practice. Guides here weave in breathing exercises, quiet observation, and sometimes bodywork on a table set beneath the canopy. It reframes wellness as something the landscape itself provides, free and abundant, if only you slow down enough to receive it. In a hurried world, being told to do nothing in the woods can feel like a radical prescription.