Weekly playtime assignment: shinrin-yoku
Holland and her cousin walking through the woods between cabins.
Our short message for you this week is to go find some trees to wander in. In a nutshell, that's what the pracitice of shinrin-yoku or "forest bathing" is all about. Here's more...
I'm currently reading the book Comfort Crisis. It's got hundreds of awesome messages in it (I have stars, circles and underlines nearly everywhere) and the first one I want to share with our AR community is this notion about forest-bathing...the art of sitting or walking in the woods and "taking in nature". In reading Comfort Crisis - and the way the author articulates this message - it's apparent to me that shinrin-yoku is definitely part of the core curriculum here at Advanced Recess and it's something we all should be doing. It's as simple as stepping out your front door and finding some nature to walk through and enjoy. Shinrin-yoku was first developed in Japan and one study found that people who spent about 15 minutes sitting in and then walking through nature experienced all kinds of drops in the measurements that doctors care about: blood pressure, heart rates, stress and drops in levels of anxiety, stress and hositlity and depression.
This all seems pretty intuitive, right? But, sadly, time outdoors is significantly declining. Studies show that the time we spend outdoors has declined over the past few decads and American kids play outside 50 percent less than their parents.
In short, we need to get out and play so our kids do the same. We need to have new daily experiences outside. This also helps explain that time seemed to move slower when we were kids because we were experiencing so much newness and living in the present. We were out there playing and we need to continue doing that.
On this note, I'll leave you with a final story about Holland (who was my inspiration for Advanced Recess). The other day on the way to soccer she was in the car and singing along to "Our Last Summer" from Mama Mia. With a glisten in her eye she turned to me and said: "I'm going to have a Mama Mia kind of summer in Maine and I can't wait". She then shared with me a few things that she's looking foward to there and, in a nutshell, she was daydreaming about wandering through the woods, riding her bike and jumping in the lake. And, I just loved this. I loved that she was daydreaming about good oldfashioned play in the woods.
So, let's get to it. Your assignment today is some shinrin-yoku. Go get it and report back. Your A+ and AR stripes await!
