Forest Therapy with Lara Land

Transcribed by Jerome Kazlauskas via otter.ai

Lara Land  0:03  
You know, the idea of sit spot is that you basically go to the same spot every day if you can or as regularly as possible. Walking the same trail is also kind of a form of that and I walk this trail a lot sometimes every day.

Brett Barry  0:19  
The Catskills naturalist (John Burroughs) once wrote, "The place to observe nature is where you are; the walk to take today is the walk you took yesterday. You will not find just the same things; both the observed and the observer has changed; the ship is on another tack in both cases." That 1886 essay, "A Sharp Lookout," predates terms like sit spot (Shinrin Yoku) or forest bathing by about a century. But the sentiment is the same and Lara Land is a master practitioner.

Lara Land  0:56  
Well, I'm Lara Land and this is almost my backyard. This is my favorite place to be. The Andes Rail Trail says the land that pretty much saved my mental health in the days of the pandemic. I was definitely a city girl. I still am in a lot of ways, but I met my German husband in India ... studying yoga. We read about Bovina and this kind of area (Andes, Delhi) in a Conde Nast article and decided to come check it out for a weekend; and during that weekend, we looked at some houses and decided to put ... put an offer down kind of wild.

Brett Barry  1:47  
How do people find you?

Lara Land  1:49  
Well, I had a very successful yoga studio in New York City for a decade ... and so I built up a (kind of) following from that and people from the city come up here to do retreats with me. I've held quite a number of retreats here and I've also been building my local community, especially around my daughter's school. My daughter goes to Montessori school in Bovina and I've offered a forest therapy walk there. I've offered some here on this trail. I teach some yoga classes at Streamside Yoga here in Andes, so I've built a nice community up here.

Brett Barry  2:27  
And tell me about your work and your practice and what you do.

Lara Land  2:31  
Wow! I combine a couple different healing modalities to help people to reduce their stress, get more clarity in their life, and have more easeful relationships with themselves and with others. Open themselves up to beauty and to the full possibility of our life and I do that through yoga and other gentle movement techniques, somatic experiencing, breathwork, and through nature immersion.

Brett Barry  3:13  
Okay, so we're walking on the rail trail right now. What would turn this walk into a therapy walk or a walk that heals?

Lara Land  3:22  
Yeah.

Brett Barry  3:23  
Are we already doing that?

Lara Land  3:25  
Well, in some ways (just from being here in the green), green is a very special color that has a lot of healing properties. So a simple thing you can do is just expose yourself to more green or if, you know, in the winter, especially having plants in the house, I think it's instinctual we know that. But especially the evergreen trees, they release chemical that they use to fight off predators and that same chemical helps to fight off cancer cells in our bodies. So being especially breathing in the air from those trees. Studies were done in Japan that this would help ward off cancer. So there are those benefits. They're also being in nature is known to reduce the stress response (the cortisol in the body). So I don't know about you, but just being here ... hearing the bird sounds and seeing the beautiful green and also these purple flowers we're looking at getting in the morning sunlight and I'm noticing the animals. The trees moving their little leaves and the sun (kind of) hitting the water. So what we would do, you know, aside from just walking is I would tell you a little bit of the history. Forest therapy like I just did the benefits. Talk to you a little bit about safety and introduce you to the land a little bit. This is Haudenosaunee land where the first peoples of this area. They were five (some people say) six tribes that came together built the first confederacy. A lot of people say our constitution is based on that. I think everyone should do a history of the land. Just look up and find out who are the people that were on the land before you. This puts your presence in context, you know, like this blip in time and it's not a naturalist walk where we're going to be doing plant identification, but just giving you a little bit of, you know, where are we right now (kind of) and where are we in the time of year. If you don't go outside in the winter, then you're not going outside for a long time, you know, so I've made it a point like I've really forced myself to get comfortable with being outside in the winter. There's no choice here. You have to get outside for your health. One thing is just getting the right clothes. That helps a lot ... and there's that quote, "There's no bad weather only bad: bad clothes or bad gear." I mean, we were out on this trail. I did a private walk and it was, you know, around zero, it was very, very cold. Those will be a little shorter. I'll have a little bit more movement. We won't stand still for as long, but I come out in everything and (actually) it's very helpful because people need that vitamin D more than ever in the winter and there's a lot that is happening that we don't always realize because we're inside mostly in the ... in the winter and we miss a lot. We're in the spring, but it feels like summer. It's been in the eighties here. We just had a gorgeous Memorial Day weekend. I'm in the summer mode, you know, I'm just ... I'm looking forward to a lot of camping. You can do sit spot with camping. You can do all this nature immersion with your kids. They see things that we don't see, you know, just from their size. They're lower on the ground. One of the things I try to encourage people to do is, you know, touch the crown, but where you can lay on the ground, sometimes we do an invitation to lay on the ground and look up at the sky, you have to watch in the tall grass for the ticks. But, you know, if you check yourself, you shouldn't be afraid to be in nature with the natural world, that's our home like ... like we've been saying. So now's a great time to (gosh), you feel like a child, you feel like (oh my gosh), let the land hold you. Let the sun shine on you, you soak up all that D that we don't get all year. Look around at all the colors. Now it's a sensory. I don't want to say overload, but it's kind of, you know, we have so much we can take in now. It's bountiful. Get up with the sun if you can. Get early morning sun. It's very, very good for us because for the circadian rhythm. So if you can get that first morning light (even if you go outside for one minute), it's colder still in the mornings, but it's very powerful for healing and it actually has that effect throughout the whole day. You sleep better at night (if you get that early morning first sun), so if you can get out early that makes the days longer and makes the summer lasts longer and that's what we want, right ... and that's more we slow down and the more emotional memories that we make, which is what we're doing makes our life feel longer. We have so disconnected ourselves from the natural world where, you know, until 100 years ago, we mainly outside and we grew up in partnership and relationship with all these beings. So the way that we developed as a human species has a lot to do with this land that we're on and not touching it, smelling it, seeing it, but being so much indoors. It has a great impact on us. So the main thing that we do when we come back out in nature and when we do a forest therapy walk is to work very specifically on opening up our senses again. So I'll walk you through a practice of smelling the air, feeling the ground if you like to, feeling the temperature on you, experiencing the land with all your senses (what can you hear), connecting an opening to all that and it's quite profound how ... within a few minutes, we can shift and start to see that it's not just one shade of green here, you know, there's a lot of different textures. I know for me, I used to just see all trees is just they call it the green wall is one thing, but now I see, you know, sometimes it's nice to close the eyes because if you're sighted sight tends to be the dominant sense.

Brett Barry  9:44  
I did close my eyes and Lara guided me on a six-minute sensory meditation, so to speak ...

Lara Land  9:50  
... sense of being here ...

Brett Barry  9:52  
... awakening our senses to the Earth around us.

Lara Land  9:58  
You might imagine that you've shown up to a concert ... paid a lot of money for that ticket and you're waiting with anticipation for each next sound ... like a big orchestra.

Brett Barry  10:18  
Lara explained how forest therapy is different from (say) hiking and other outdoor sports.

Lara Land  10:24  
I know I'm a hiker. I love to hike. But when I'm hiking, I'm not doing forest therapy. You know, I might be getting some of the benefits. You know, it's great to be outside and getting my vitamin D. But I'm missing a lot of things and I'm really moving with a destination in mind and I'm definitely moving much more quickly than I wanted the forest therapy. Some people call it forest therapy. Some people call it forest bathing. It comes from Shinrin Yoku (comes from a Japanese tradition).

Brett Barry  10:57  
What kind of training got you to where you are?

Lara Land  10:59  
Well, I have 25 years of yoga teaching. I also have trauma sensitivity trainings and trauma sensitive yoga and mindfulness and I have two different outdoor mindfulness in nature certifications (mindful outdoor and a forest therapy). So I consider myself. I don't like the word "healer," but a kind of, you know, in the helping professions. Always combining the experience of being in our ... in our bodies with maybe sharing, I mean, it's good to share. But when the words are cut off from the body, I think we're missing a crucial piece. Because our body has to experience a feeling of calm, connectedness, safety, ease, and we can't just talk ourselves into that. We need other practices to get us into that state. You know, a lot of people come to me when they're going through transitions or they feel stuck. They want to make a change. They don't know what to do. They feel lost or they feel overwhelmed. Sometimes we turn off. We (kind of) zone out. We get numb because it's too much or we (kind of) keep making the same choices and we get stuck in these patterns. So at some point, it becomes uncomfortable enough that we started to seek out some (kind of) help, maybe something we haven't tried before. So a lot of people come to me like that. They may come for a coaching session or they ... they might come for a yoga class, and then through the practice of moving their body and breathing. They realize some thoughts come up or some old memories and they want to work on them. So lots of ... lots of different reasons and (forest therapy, yoga) these are ultimately practices that heal if we do them on a regular basis. We don't have such a buildup of anxiety and stress. So once we, you know, have that (kind of) initial release, then rebalance, then it's something you can do a little bit. Small doses doesn't have to be, you know, some people think that yoga (as far as therapy), it has to be an hour or two hours even. The most people do not have that kind of time on a regular, so then they don't do it at all. It's not all or nothing even coming out for ten minutes and even going to your own backyard. I know people in the city who have gone to their terrace and formed a relationship with birds that have landed there. So you can do it with a plant in your house. You know, something is better than nothing.

Brett Barry  14:02  
More from Lara after the break and stay tuned for some sounds from Iceland at the end of the episode. I'll explain why in a moment. Kaatscast is sponsored by the 52-mile Catskill Mountains Scenic Byway; following New York State Route 28 through the heart of the Central Catskills. For maps, itineraries, and links to area restaurants, shops, and accommodations, visit sceniccatskills.com, and by Ulster Savings Bank with locations throughout the Mid-Hudson Valley including right here in Phoenicia and Woodstock. Call 866-440-0391 or visit them at ulstersavings.com. Member FDIC Equal Housing Lender. Thanks also to Hanford Mills Museum where you can explore the power of the past as he watched the waterwheel bring a working sawmill to life. Bring a picnic to enjoy by the millpond. For more information about scheduling a tour or about their new exploration days, visit hanfordmills.org or call 607-278-5744. And now, back to Lara Land on the Andes Rail Trail.

Lara Land  15:18  
So there's one practice that's very common in forest therapy or mindful outdoor guiding that we suggest for everyone and anyone can do it. It's called sit spot, you know, the idea of sit spot is that you basically go to the same spot every day if you can or as regularly as possible. So it's often suggested that, you know, your backyard would be, you know, somewhere that because if you have to travel away and you're not going to do it and what's beautiful about that is you can really start to build that relationship. It's like with a person. If you want to know more about them, it takes time. You're very much, you know, all at once. Alright, now take a pill (kind of) time in the evolution of human history. I have that too. I want everything all at once. But, you know, being out in nature and the natural world helps you to slow down. You can start to even see the same bird, you know, and that's a great thing about sit spot, if you ... if you really commit, the animals will come closer to you and you'll start to recognize them and that's ... for me, that's extremely powerful. I mean, I couldn't even tell you not long ago just, you know, they're just all birds were just bird, and then it's like, "Okay, there's a bluebird, there's a blackbird like, okay, there's a robin, and then, you know, you can almost get to and maybe you can, too. All that there's that robin, that's the one I saw yesterday." All this is happening, while we're in our cars, in our office, in our house. It's also very profound for understanding that. I'm a little part of that, I am part of it! I am the natural world, you know, we are ... we are a part of it (important part and a little part), and so all of that perspective is what I feel. When I'm out here, you know, we talked about the introduction a little introducing you to the land, then we did this embodiment sensory practice and we started walking and looking for things in motion, and then I might offer up another invitation could be something that's calling to be from that day like if it's raining, it might be to play in the rain and notice what you feel or it could be to find a tree that's calling out to you and try to hear what it has to say what might you share with it in return, and then on the last one (when folks come back), I've set up a little tea ceremony and I love that part of the forest therapy experience and if I've done some harvesting, I might be brewing natural tea (maybe some dandelion root), you know, when ... when I was growing up, it was like leave no trace and the motto of ... of these practices of mindful outdoor guide or forest therapy is more of like mindful relationship. So as we have the tea, we can really be a part of that. We take something that the land gave us, but also we're giving back with our care and our energy and I believe that the land can feel that and we close our experience in a circle, maybe just sharing anything that we want to feel complete and (kind of), you know, leave people feeling some closure for what they experienced. Sometimes people really go into a bit of a space of liminality during their first therapy walk. A lot of people have not spent this much slow time outside in years. So there's a lot of shifts that can happen. Some people feel some grief, maybe for missing a part of themselves or missing the actual real world because we're living in a virtual world pretty much. Sometimes there's grief for what's happening to the land. Sometimes there's feelings of getting back to playfulness being a child and so a lot of stuff can come up.

A lot of what I do now is training others so I trained yoga teachers in trauma sensitivity and how to incorporate more care for the current stressors when they're teaching and I also train other space holders, so someone might want trauma sensitivity or therapeutic practices for their office, schools are getting more into it, you know, sports teams, so I teach the weekly yoga, extreme side yoga here and ... and through that, you know, I meet people that want to do more one on one and that the forest therapy walks every once a while I put them up as a group walk or if someone's coming up to the Catskills, it's ... it's another great offering. They come up for the weekend. Last weekend was crazy. It's another way that they can experience the land while they're here with more sensitivity. Because I think the people that come up here, they're craving something, you know, they want to take this little piece of it, bring it home with them. They're missing something and they want to feel it.

Brett Barry  21:09  
So you also are a bit of a media mogul. You have a podcast, you have a book. Tell me a little bit about that ...

Lara Land  21:16  
Media mogul

Brett Barry  21:17  
... those kind of publications.

Lara Land  21:19  
I do a lot. I formed a nonprofit in 2014 to address bringing yoga to traumatized populations, how do you teach yoga in a shelter and so forth, and then I ... I trained teachers how to do that; and the last few years, I wrote a book about it. It's really for anyone that's interested in basics of yoga (also) will give you an understanding of the trauma response, you know, especially these last years, we've all had some level of traumatic stress, you know, with our little phones in our hands all the time, the news popping up on our screens ... and so I wrote this book, "The Essential Guide to Trauma Sensitive Yoga," which is a great way to find out more about these practices and I decided to launch the podcast called "Beyond Trauma." It's a really cool way ... really ... for me to reach out to people that normally I would never imagine would talk to me, you know, they're experts in their fields and I get to ask them all my burning questions, people on from all different modalities, different therapeutic models, who talk about how those different models can help us to ease stress, to heal and to feel more connected. I'm Lara Land, somatic coach and yoga teacher trainer and this is the "Beyond Trauma" podcast. What a couple of years we have had, the challenges continue to grow and more and more of us are experiencing some level of traumatic stress. There's a lot of focus now on extending life to yours. Exactly. But if we're just rushing, it doesn't matter if we have more if we're not there for them. So when we're present, that's living. So I encourage everyone to be present this summer. It's easier in the summer and we always say that yoga also is that ... do these practices when life is good. Do them when things are easy. That way, when those stresses come, when the challenges come, the practice is already in your system. It's already a part of your habit. You don't then have to learn it or fight for, you know, just getting yourself to almost neutral. So you do it now and when something tough hits, you already have the resources, and then you already have the resilience. So I think that's really important.

Brett Barry  23:54  
You can join Lara on her next forest therapy walk more at laraland.us. In just a moment, some sounds from Iceland, where I traveled with my dad just weeks ago. A direct flight from Newburgh will transport you in just about five hours to an other worldly landscape with moss covered volcanic rock, geothermal springs at massive waterfalls. Iceland tourism isn't paying us to say any of this by the way, it's just an amazing place and I'd go back in a second. Kaatscast is sponsored by the Mountain Eagle, covering Delaware, Greene, and Schoharie counties, including brands for local regions like the Windham Weekly, Schoharie News, and Catskills Chronicle. For more information, call 518-763-6854 or email: mountaineaglenews@gmail.com, and by Briars & Brambles Books, The go to independent book and gift store in the Catskills, located in Windham, New York, right next to the pharmacy; just steps away from the Windham Path. Open daily. For more information, visit briarsandbramblesbooks.com or call 518-750-8599. Kaatscast is a production of Silver Hollow Audio. Please subscribe on the podcast app of your choice and sign up for our newsletter at kaatscast.com. Until next time, I'm Brett Barry. And now, sounds from Iceland, including our very own flight attendant, the Icelandic Symphony Orchestra tuning up at Harpa Concert Hall, wind and bells in the spire of Iceland's largest church (Reykjavik's Hallgrímskirkja) with a massive pipe organ in the nave, and then wind and pelting sand on Vik's volcanic black sand beach.