“I suddenly started seeing it, like: Wow, it’s everywhere. Even in the parking lot! It made me fall in love with the nature in Belgium.” In this Inside Forest Bathing interview, Finnish Forest Mind trainer and researcher Katriina Kilpi, with glittering eyes and using a waterfall of words, only interrupted at times by laughter or a short moment of contemplative silence, takes me on a winding journey. Crossing various continents, taking me to the indigenous people of Hawaii; introducing me to the Finnish well-being method of Metsämieli-Forest Mind; sharing insights from her passion project International Forest Therapy Days and research in the field of nature and health. Katriina: “It’s really all inter-connected. Perhaps we should not talk about connecting with nature, but about connecting with life. Life on Earth.”
Interview by Marjolein C. Groot, 13 October 2023
Falling in love with the Earth
Katriina: “For some reason, until about my twenties, I was just in love with the Earth. I was a lucky kid that, unlike many of my peers at that time in Finland where I come from, got to travel a lot. I got to see the Victoria Falls, the city-nature of Singapore, and a lot of other places, and just fell in love with the Earth. I guess my parents were not really aware of the environmental disaster that was already happening, and neither was I. In fact, I was fascinated by earthquakes and tsunamis!”
Nobody had told me
After a number of twists and turns, Katriina ended up at a Finnish Polytechnic to study Environmental Management. For the entrance exams, she had to study the report ‘The State of the World’. Katriina: “It just completely kicked my ass. I felt like a big secret had been kept from me. Nobody had told me! What’s happening on this Earth?” Katriina’s adoration turned into slight panic and an urge for humans to take action.
It daunted on her that while we humans are concerned about trivial things, what truly matters was nature. “Looking at my little brother, who is 15 years younger than I, made me wonder how much time do kids actually get to spend in nature?” The field of environmental education then really got her interest. Katriina: “It introduced me to the idea of nature connection.”
Indigenous people knew of it all along
During her studies in Finland and while conducting field research for her Master’s thesis in Urban Planning in Hawaii, Katriina became interested in indigenous people and their relation to nature. Contact with the Sámi in the European North, the First Nations people in Canada and Native Hawaiians in Hawaii, had her trying to understand what nature connection means to them. Katriina: “The concepts of education for sustainable development that I was being taught at university were anything but new. I realized that indigenous people knew all of if all along.”
Doing ‘something with nature’
Life took her to places, but the questions around nature connectedness were always at the back of Katriina’s mind. However, it was only years later in 2015, when after some years in social media and technology research, when Katriina was laid off and got the opportunity to continue on the path of nature. Katriina: “The golden cage door opened and I flew right towards my passion. I did not know how or what, but I felt that my next steps had to have ‘something’ to do with nature”.
First, Katriina trained as a nature guide through the Belgian Flemish organisation Natuurpunt CVN. However, nature guiding was never her goal. “For me, it’s always stressful to be in those type of guided nature walks, in which you feel you want to remember all the different species and their functions.” But something pulled her into that training, very intuitively. “It made me fall in love with the nature here in Flanders”, she recalls.
It’s everywhere: even in the parking lot
Until that, Katriina had been bashing the lack of nature in Belgium, saying that unlike in Finland or Hawaii, there’s no real nature in Belgium. Katriina: “But of course there is! It’s just fragmented and under pressure.” She adds that, as a result of intense wood production, the Finnish forests are practically all fields of trees. Katriina: “And Hawaiian nature – though mesmerizing – has also been severely altered by the human hand. But it is all nature. I suddenly started seeing it, like: Wow, it’s everywhere, even in the parking lot.”
Metsämieli-Forest Mind
Other nature-based trainings followed. In Finland, where her roots are, Katriina found several. She chose to train as a Forest Mind guide. ‘Metsämieli’, in English: Forest Mind, created by Sirpa Arvonen, is a Finnish wellbeing method. Katriina: “Forest Mind is really a set of exercises to train your mind skills, designed to utilize and intensify the natural healing effects of forests. Forest Mind leans on a mixture of mindfulness, cognitive behavioural psychology, positive psychology, and some coaching. The Forest Mind walks have a forest bathing element to it, as they too use sensory exercises to accelerate the settling down into the present moment.”
This is what I what I want to bring to the world
Katriina loves taking people on a Forest Mind walk. “I feel most of us are so clueless about the processes in ourselves, and it’s also new to me to be so aware of myself and my mind. It has had tremendous impact on my quality of life. I feel like this is what I want to bring to the world.”
Despite being in the field for quite some years now, Katriina still feels she has a problem with literally guiding somebody’s connection to nature. Rather, she would guide a kind of pure mindfulness in nature. “I am super happy to say: Hey, let’s just slow down and notice the air.” She likes to bring everything in a neutral way. Katriina: “Like, you go figure it out for yourself what works for you. That’s coming really from my own experience. I would not have liked someone telling me how I should be viewing the life around me. I already had my own intimate nature relationship. It would feel very “old world” to have someone tell me how to do it right.”
Huge layer of things
In Katriina’s view, forest bathing is something natural, not something you have to be taught, per se. “It’s a realization of sorts. Something I can do if I just take the time to practice it, so it becomes a habit. Mindfulness is the same thing in a way. You slow down and notice what’s there, and just let it be. It becomes a habit when you do it often enough. You just have to want to make it a habit”.
But in a country like Belgium, or any other western country for that matter, this is easier said than done. Katriina: “There’s a huge layer of things that we’ve learnt, like: ‘Don’t touch that, because it’s dirty’, or: ‘Don’t go there, stay on the path!’. So first, you have to go through the practicalities of where to go forest bathing, so that people can do more than just view nature while standing on the path in a neat row”.
More than just stress release
Katriina knows that forest bathing can be much more than just stress release. “Even from people who only came for the stress reduction, the comment often is: ‘Wow, I have never looked at nature like this before.’”
Since one’s relation to nature is so personal, Katriina recognizes that the concept of offering guided forest bathing walks doesn’t land well always, and can even cause some resistance.
Katriina: “I felt and experienced this in Finland, where forest therapy still hasn’t broken ground, really. People probably feel, like I did and still do, that they know how to do this and that it can’t be taught by outsiders. Personally, I also didn’t believe anyone in Belgium was able to impact my nature relationship.”
However, Katriina admits she was wrong and did learn a lot of appreciation of nature, living in Belgium where things she took for granted in Finland and Hawaii are not present. Katriina: “For instance, Belgians tend to be more sparing with resources like water and energy, because anywhere they look, they are reminded they need to share the space and resources with others.”
Nature-on-prescription
For the customers of Belgian health insurance company CM, Katriina offers resilience walks, inspired by Forest Mind. Katriina: “The concept of ‘nature-on-prescription’, in which doctors prescribe spending time in nature with a trained nature & health professional, is well on its way in Belgium.”
Creating awareness on nature’s positive health effects
Together with Dr.Yannick Joye, the only Belgian whom Katriina knew was active in environmental psychology at the time, she started the research and consultancy cooperation NatureMinded in 2016. Katriina: “The science behind nature’s mental and physical benefits always fascinated me, and with NatureMinded we aimed to create awareness amongst people and companies on nature’s positive health effects at home, at work and in public spaces.”
She says there was a lot online on the topic already, and the media was slowly following. “For me, it was always clear it was going to blow up. I knew that this was where I had to be, and I found all the right people.” Soon, NatureMinded started to get the first projects.
Passion Project: IFTDays
In 2018, together with other experts and practitioners working in the field, Katriina helped bring about the International Forest Therapy Days (IFTDays). It brought together practitioners and scientists of forest therapy to learn, share and experience the healing effects of forests. Katriina: “This was the first time I got to experience forest bathing led by a Japanese practitioner and a guide from the Association of Nature and Forest Therapy Guides and Programmes (ANFT) guide. Everyone was looking into science on the topic at that time, I felt it was the ‘new religion’.”
With the IFTDays, practice and science were brought together for the first time around the topic of forest bathing in the west. Katriina: “From the beginning, we said we are going to roll with the punches and just change as the world changes. So we’ve went from an offline event to an online event to a yearly event to a monthly online circle with different speakers. It’s free, everyone can join, share knowledge, connect and nurture the forest bathing, or forest based wellbeing practice – community.” For Katriina, it’s her passion project: “It’s all about beautiful encounters with people who have a personal connection to forests, and sharing that connection, experiences and knowledge.”
In heaven
Since about four years, Katriina also works for BOS+, a growing forest organisation in Flanders. Katriina: “We try to reinstate native forests, biodiverse forests, and work with companies to plan new forests. We also work in South America and Africa. We do a lot of environmental education, create materials. Everywhere where trees and forests of the world are impacted, that’s our field.” Recently, BOS+ started working together with the Flemish State on a programme to improve nature connection, wellbeing and environmental behaviour. Katriina: “I focus on the guides, such as what makes a good guide for the programme.” She smiles. “I am in heaven, since the curious researcher that is also part of me, gets to go to work.”
Connecting with life, life on earth
Katriina says that her many years of working in the field of research and promoting forest based wellbeing practises have connected her more to herself.
“A huge win. I feel that as soon we are not in contact with ourselves, we start acting out outside. Not necessarily by going out and consuming at lot, taking out all your needs on material things – which does happen, too. But for example by just pointing the finger at others and getting exhausted through all the measures many are not taking.” For Katriina, connecting with nature is about making peace with yourself, which hopefully will ripple out.
She tries to be present with people. To be kind, to be really mindful about her own turf, about what’s actually happening there. Katriina: “This is also about nature, because it’s my core.” She tries to favour pure, organic food. “To respect my body, which is also part of nature. This little piece of land called Belgium is so under pressure that I want to make choices to support activities that regenerate rather than deplete.”
For now, her garden opens into a forest, which she can see from her window. “Almost every morning I go for a walk with my dog in that same forest with huge oaks and beeches. Soon, I will move and my surroundings will have a different emphasis. Maybe it will be time for the river, or who knows, the sky will feel closer there.”
She concludes with a smile: “To me, it’s really all inter-connected. Perhaps we should not talk about ‘nature connection’, but really about connecting with life, life on earth.”
You can find more about NatureMinded and the Forest Mind walks Katriina organizes here. To join the monthly International Forest Therapy Days circle, you can register via foresttherapydays@gmail.com
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