Forest Bathing in Sonoma
A Beginner's Guide
Forest bathing includes slow walks and paying attention. It does not require a bath…equipment, a bathing suit, or even a destination. The practice is simple and calming.
It comes from a Japanese public health programme called shinrin-yoku and it's also become a wellness buzzword, which means it now gets described in ways that make it sound far more complicated than it is.
We decided to simplify forest bathing for you: what it is, what it isn’t, what research has been conducted, and what a typical session looks like.
What forest bathing actually is
Step 1, go into a forest or wooded area. Step 2, walk like you’re in slow motion, this might feel funny but embrace that part. Step 3, stop often, pay careful attention to what you’re sensing.
That's it. A session might cover half a mile in two hours. The slowness is the whole point.
What forest bathing is not
Three things get conflated with it constantly.
It's not a hike. There's no distance goal, no elevation, no summit. If you finish out of breath, you did something else.
It's not exercise. The pace is too slow to raise your heart rate meaningfully. Do it in addition to your training, not instead of it.
It's not guided meditation outdoors. Meditation typically asks you to turn attention inward or to a single anchor. Forest bathing sends attention outward, to the environment.
It's also not a treatment, a therapy in the clinical sense, or a substitute for medical care — whatever the marketing around it suggests.
Where it came from
The term shinrin-yoku mean "forest bath"! It was coined in 1982 by Tomohide Akiyama, then director of Japan's Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries.
It was a public policy initiative, not a spiritual movement. Japan was urbanising fast, working hours were long, stress-related illness was climbing, and roughly two-thirds of the country was forested and underused. The campaign encouraged people into the forests as preventive public health. It had a conservation motive too: people who spend time in forests tend to want them protected.
Japanese government-backed research followed through the 1980s and after, and the practice spread. Searches for shinrin yoku California and forest therapy near San Francisco have climbed steadily over the past decade, which is roughly how it reached Sonoma and RebuildU.
The research
Studies in this field typically measure physiological markers before and after time spent in a forest environment, compared against time in an urban one. The common measures are:
Blood pressure and heart rate
Heart rate variability
Salivary cortisol
Natural killer cell activity, a measure of immune function
Self-reported mood and anxiety scales
Concentrations of phytoncides: airborne compounds released by trees
Researchers have also looked at brain wave activity and skin conductance.
So what does this research look like? Honestly… it’s a little tough! It’s hard to conduct blinded studies to gage how forest bathing scientifically supports or tracks the above because participants know they are in a forest and the whole point of forest bathing.
In conclusion: this is an actively researched area with measurable physiological signals attached to it, and a body of evidence that researchers themselves describe as preliminary. Anyone telling you forest bathing will fix a specific health problem is a little over their skis. But! Anyone telling you it's nonsense hasn't read the research and hasn’t spoken to people who have experienced it first hand.
What a 90-minute session looks like
Guided sessions vary, but most follow roughly this shape.
Arrival and settling (10 minutes)
A short introduction, usually standing still. Often some slow breathing to mark the transition from driving and parking to being here.
The first invitation (15 minutes)
Guides work through "invitations" aka open prompts rather than instructions. “Notice what's moving.” “Find something that's been here longer than you have.”
The slow walk (40 minutes)
Very slow, frequent stops, usually less than half a mile total. More invitations along the way, each focused on a different sense.
Sitting (15 minutes)
Everyone finds a spot and stays put. Sitting still can be challenging but always rewarding.
Closing (10 minutes)
The group comes back together. People share what they noticed, if they want to and it's normal not to. Guides may close with tea.
Sessions typically run two to three hours end to end. Bring water, wear layers and shoes with grip, and expect uneven ground and possibly mud.
Where to go forest bathing in Sonoma
RebuildU’s best suggestions:
Jack London State Historic Park (Glen Ellen)
2400 London Ranch Road. Open 9am–5pm daily, $10 per vehicle.
The best all-round option in the valley: redwood canyon, oak woodland and open meadow within a short distance of each other. Take the Ancient Redwood Trail, 3.5 miles round trip, only 200 feet of elevation, mostly shaded, with a bench beside a 2,000-year-old redwood at the end. Dogs aren't permitted on back-country trails, which keeps it quiet. Full details in our Jack London State Park hiking guide.
Armstrong Redwoods State Natural Reserve (Guerneville)
17000 Armstrong Woods Road. Open 8am to one hour after sunset. $10 per vehicle, or free if you walk or cycle in.
805 acres of old-growth coast redwood, including the Colonel Armstrong tree at over 1,400 years old and Parson Jones at more than 310 feet. This is the most atmospheric place on the list by a distance: dim, cool, quiet, with the acoustic deadening that only old-growth produces. The Pioneer and Discovery trails are short and flat. It's about an hour from Glen Ellen, so treat it as its own outing.
Sugarloaf Ridge State Park (Kenwood)
2605 Adobe Canyon Road. Day use 6am–10pm, the widest window on this list, which makes it the one for early mornings.
The headwaters of Sonoma Creek run through gorge and canyon here, with redwoods and ferns along the water. There's a self-guided nature trail along the creek starting near the picnic area, and a 25-foot seasonal waterfall that runs after winter rain. Best in wet months. Dogs aren't allowed on trails.
How to try it yourself this weekend
You don't need a guide, a booking or a purchase. Here's the whole method.
Pick somewhere easily accessible, think 20 minutes or less in driving.
Leave the phone in the car!
Give it an hour.
Walk at about a third of your normal pace.
Stop every few minutes and stand still.
Take one sense at a time. Five minutes on sound only. Then five on smell. Then texture. Isolating them is what makes you notice anything.
Sit for the last fifteen minutes. Pick a spot, sit, stay. Let the place carry on around you.
Don't track it.
Guided or on your own
Guided is worth doing once (at least)
Not because the technique is hard, but because a guide removes two things that trip people up on their first attempt: deciding what to do next, and feeling self-conscious about standing motionless in the woods. A group makes the slowness normal. Most people come away with a much clearer sense of what they're aiming at.
After that, tackle a solo session. It's free, it fits your schedule, and it's the version you'll actually repeat. Anyone who tells you the practice requires certified facilitation indefinitely is selling something.
The exception is unfamiliar terrain. In a large park you don't know, the mental load of navigation quietly eats the attention you're trying to free up. Somewhere new, a guide earns their fee.
The guided version - October 17
Our next one-day Sonoma retreat is October 17, and it opens with a guided forest bathing walk in Jack London State Historic Park.
The morning is the renewal hike - slow, sensory, no summit. The rest of the day is a farm-to-table lunch, The Renewal Workshop, and a closing floating sound bath. Small group, park entry and guide included.
If you'd rather have the whole thing planned, that's also the shape of a full one-day reset in Sonoma.