Health & WellnesS BENEFITS OF TREES
Trees contribute to your health every day whether you are aware of their influence or not. By learning more about the multi-dimensional healing power of trees you can go far beyond the basic health benefits that trees have to offer and substantially upgrade your physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual well-being.
WELLNESS STARTS WITH OXYGEN
Trees add a sizeable amount of oxygen to Earth’s atmosphere and humans need oxygen to survive. If you live or work close to trees you reap a richer oxygen intake than most people on the planet, plus those very trees clean the air you breathe. Breathing in cleaner air helps keep your lungs healthy and your blood well-oxygenated, which supports the health of every organ in your body.
Fast Fact
Outdoor air pollution is a risk factor for several of the world’s leading causes of death, including stroke, heart disease, lung cancer, and respiratory diseases, such as asthma. According to the Global Burden of Disease Study 3.4 million people died prematurely in 2017 as a result of outdoor air pollution. Time to plant more trees!
THE WATER CYCLE AND YOUR HEALTH
After rainfall, the water that soaks into the ground is absorbed by tree roots and is eventually released by tree leaves into the atmosphere in a process called transpiration. Transpiration creates giant rivers of water in the air that then form clouds and create rainfall hundreds or even thousands of miles away. This is part of the global water cycle and plays a vital role in keeping agricultural areas productive. It is hard to grow crops without Nature regularly refreshing the water supply – and it is extremely hard for humans to stay alive and thrive without plenty of food and water.
TREES PROVIDE PROTECTION FROM SOLAR RADIATION AND MORE
The presence of trees around your home and in your neighborhood reduces UV-B radiation exposures from the sun by providing shady safety zones. Experts consider UV-B to be the most damaging of earth atmosphere-penetrating solar radiation, especially for children. In America alone, more than two people die of skin cancer every hour.
Trees absorb some of the aerial radiation from cellular towers, smart meters, and other wireless devices which reduces the health-depleting effects of our modern wireless technology. Hugging a tree or even touching a tree trunk with both of your hands for several minutes will help you naturally discharge excess electrical charge that has built up in your body and on your skin. Too much stockpiled electrical charge can make you irritable, cause body pains, headaches, and more.
Especially important for the years ahead, planting more trees around your home and in your neighborhood will help you reduce or avoid the adverse health effects that are predicted by global warming experts.
Just Looking At Trees Can Reduce Stress and Pain
Research shows that if you take a few minutes every day to spend time with trees or to even just look at trees through a window, you’ll boost your body’s immune system, decrease your body’s stress level, and improve your heart health.
Fast Fact
In 1984, pioneering investigator Dr Roger Ulrich, director of Texas A&M University’s Centre for Health Systems and Design, studied the records of patients recovering from gallbladder surgery in a hospital between 1972 and 1981. He found those whose rooms looked out on to trees recovered more quickly, suffered fewer complications, and needed less pain relief than those whose rooms faced brick walls. Numerous related studies have been completed over the past thirty years that confirm that when patients have a view of trees, even in a picture on the wall, they recover faster and need less pain medication.
FOREST BATHING WILL TAKE YOU TO THE NEXT LEVEL
Forest bathing, or shinrin-yoku (“shinrin” means forest and “yoku” means bath), began in Japan and involves slowly walking through a forest, taking in the atmosphere through all your senses, and with no goals or expectations, enjoying the benefits that come from this experience.
In 1982, Japan launched a national program to encourage forest bathing and from 2004-2012 conducted a formal study of the link between forests and human health. The study produced impressive statistics about the benefits of forest bathing on cognitive function, blood pressure, heart rate, reducing depression and anger, enhancing immunity, elevating happiness, and more. Today in Japan, forest bathing is considered to be an essential activity for maintaining physical, mental, and emotional health. Doctors there even write forest bathing prescriptions, allowing patients to take time off from work to spend time in the forest with trained forest therapy guides. About 2.5 million people walk Japanese forest trails daily to ease stress and enhance health, and forest bathing is becoming increasingly popular around the globe.
YOUR NEW BEST FRIEND MIGHT BE A TREE
Friendships contribute to emotional wellness and research shows that emotional wellness has a highly positive effect on physical health and longevity. Trees are highly intelligent emotional beings who make great friends. Learning how to talk with a tree to open the gateway to a new friendship is easy and fun. Trees can communicate easily with images and with heart-to-heart signals to provide you with all kinds of useful information. They have access to the history of their species and they can tell you a bit about the future, too. Developing personal friendships with trees will change your life forever.
HEALING POTIONS
Thousands of medicines are made from trees, including many prescription drugs. In the natural healing realm, healing potions include medicinal oils, smudging resins, tree essences, tinctures, teas from leaves and bark, and more. Willow bark might be the best known of tree-based medicines. A natural precursor to aspirin, willow bark was harvested by Native Americans to treat pain and fevers.
Learn how to make healing essences from tree flowers
What you should know about essential oils before buying your next bottle
Learn how to make medicinal teas
Learn about the benefits of smudging and how to do it
TREE WISDOM AND SPIRITUAL HEALING
Trees have individual personalities but are united in a collective consciousness at a soul level. Spending time in the presence of trees helps us remember our Oneness with all of creation because trees never lose sight of this. It is no surprise that trees are featured in so many stories of spiritual enlightenment.
Siddhartha Guatama, the Buddha, is said to have meditated for 49 days at the base of a Bodhi tree, trying to reconcile his mind to the fact that there was suffering in the world. On the 49th day, he stood and thanked the tree for providing shade for him, and in that instant he attained enlightenment. Today, in the same location where the Buddha is believed to have sat, there grows a descendant of that same Bodhi tree.