Nature and Forest Therapy Guide
Discover the Healing
Power of Nature and Forest Therapy
We are still wired to be wild.
Let go of the tamed world, open your senses, and repair your relationship with the more than human world.
WELCOME
At Pathways Homeward, my mission is to create a guided sensory experience, in peaceful local natural settings, which allow participants to embrace and remember their innate relationship with the natural world. Through this reconnection, my aim is that each person create their own embodied experience and process of self discovery, while tapping into the healing power of nature. With the forest as the therapist, mental and physical healing can occur while it fosters a deeper relationship among ourselves, others and all the other beings that share this natural world with us.
What is Nature and Forest Therapy?
Forest therapy, inspired by the Japanese practice of Shinrin-Yoku or forest bathing, offers an opportunity for repairing our relationship with the natural world by guiding participants on a slow, sensory-based journey in nature to find their own process of reconnection with the more than human world. Through this reunion, mental and physical wellness and healing can truly occur.
What Happens on a Forest Therapy Walk?
Forest therapy is a guided walk in nature using the Association of Nature and Forest Therapy’s Standard Sequence. This journey involves a series of invitations bringing you to a place of liminality. These prompts invite you to slow down, free your mind, engage nature and initiate the process of embodiment and connecting with your senses. Between invitations, there is an opportunity to share experiences with other participants. The walk ends with honoring the earth and ourselves by sharing tea.
What Are The Benefits of Nature and Forest Therapy ?
Where Science Meets Nature
Data Support the Mental and Physical Health Benefits of Forest Therapy in :
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Reducing Anxiety and Lifting Depression
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Reducing Stress
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Improving Attention
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Sharpening Cognitive Performance
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Improving Pain Control
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Enhancing Quality of Sleep
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Improving Pulmonary Health
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Lowering Blood Pressure and Baseline Heart Rate
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Lowering Cortisol and Blood Sugar Levels
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Enhancing Immunity
ABOUT ME
I am Michael Mortelliti, MD and I am a physician, poet, forest therapy guide and nature practitioner. In addition to devoting my adult life to the practice of medicine, I have had a deep life-long affinity to the natural world. In my younger years, I was very active outdoors experiencing thrill and visceral connection. Later, I slowed down and the natural world transformed into a gentler and more powerful place of sensory engagement and active reciprocity with the more than human world. It became a home of transcendence, peace, and personal healing. It was the recognition of nature as healer that attracted me to the practice of forest therapy.
I received my undergraduate degree in Biology at Vassar College and received my MD degree and training in Internal Medicine, Pulmonary and Critical Medicine and Sleep Medicine at at the University of Vermont School of Medicine, Georgetown University Medical Center, and Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center. I am a certified Nature and Forest Therapy Guide through the Association of Nature and Forest Therapy (ANFT) and certified as a Nature as Medicine practitioner through the Nature and Systems Institute.
Through this work , I combine my love of nature with my continued desire to help others heal. The forest, rather than the clinic or ICU, offers a new nurturing ground for both mental and physical wellness.
"We are creatures of constant awe,
curious at beauty, at leaf and blossom,
at grief and pleasure, sun and shadow.
And it is not darkness that unites us,
not the cold distance of space,
but the offering of water,
each drop of rain, each rivulet,
each pulse, each vein."
Ada Limon , From In Praise of Mystery: A Poem For Europa
