Sarah Ivens - Forest therapy: seasonal ways to embrace nature for a happier you

There is pleasure in the pathless woods, there is rapture in the lonely shore, there is society where none intrudes, by the deep sea, and music in its roar; I love not Man the less, but Nature more.

Lord Byron

Who hasnt felt happier after a walk in the woods, a picnic in a park or a swim in the sea? No one. There is something soul-soothingly simple and refreshing about being in nature, about making good use of the great outdoors, in being mindful of Mother Natures gifts and grabbing the spring and summerand those blue-sky, brisk days of autumn and winterwith both hands. But, sadly, these are skills we are losing. We are becoming creatures wrapped in walls and trapped by to-do lists, hibernating while the world sprouts, grows and changes. Oh, just think about what we are missing! We are missing out on the refreshing scent of pine and freshly mown grass. We are missing getting caught in a shower of pink blossoms in spring and being dazzled by the dusky beauty of roses in late summer. Being in nature allows us the childlike fun you feel marching through squelchy mud in autumn or sliding over a glittering world on a frosty winters morning. Being in nature is about being attuned to changing seasons and benefitting from the natural world around you. Its the feel of a velvety petal, the sound of a squeaky-smooth grass blade, the sight of dancing dandelion seeds. Its about being present and alive, and never missing out.

But at the moment, we are missing out. Were staying in and losing out, and that is making us sad, anxiousand worse. I know, because it happened to me.

As a child, being outdoors was second nature. I was born in Waltham Forest, the London Borough famous, and protected, for the woodlands in which Henry VIII and Elizabeth I used to escape the trials and tantrums of the royal court. I spent most of my time stuck in mud and mushing fallen petals into perfume, or pretending to get married to the neighbors son under the cherry blossom tree in our back garden. Children are natural, instinctively mindful of their world, and as I went through the turbulence of my parents divorce, I remember finding solace in the world I had created in the ponds and thickets surrounding my home. I watched tadpoles sprout legs and baby birds gratefully receive their lunch from their busy mothers beaks, anddespite the adult noiseI was happy.

At 11, my mum and her new husband moved my baby brother and me out to Essex, to a house that backed on to Epping Forest, and a roadquite magically and propheticallycalled Sylvan Way. The beauty of trees took on a different importance then. I spent many of my teenage hours among them, but back then the forest was a place to challenge myself away from adult rules and interference: my friends and I gathered there and experimented with making Ouija boards, kissing cute boys and choking on sneaked cigarettes. Now, as an adult, I can see how these green-teen afternoons, roaming the outdoors with my forever friends, shaped me. In the woods, I found my feet and experienced freedom for the first time.

But when I reached my twenties, I moved back to the angry, concrete maze that is London and started spending all my time commuting to grey cubicles through dirty, stuffy underground tunnels. When I was feeling my most toxic and dulled, in an unhappy marriage and dealing with a bullying boss, I visited an aura reader for a magazine article I was researching. She said, Your aura is green but struggling with the energy around it. You need to get out into the countryside, take your shoes off and wriggle grass beneath your toes. It will save your soul. I ignored her, obviously. I was too busy for pastoral pleasures.

In 2005, at the age of 29, I moved to an even angrier, concrete animal, New York City, to run a weekly magazineeating all three meals of the day in the office, and relying on fake stimulants like espresso and slices of pizza to survive. I was grey; my life was grey. I hired a yoga teacher (and took classes in my grey apartment) but I was not healthy. Green was not to be seen, apart from in the beer at the St Patricks Day parade that lurched its way through Manhattan every spring. My marriage fell apart, I got divorced and I collapsed emotionally. A friend gathered me up and shipped me to a retreat in Mexico, where our days were ruled by the rising and falling sun, silent beach walks and bike rides through luxuriant forests to the water-filled sinkholes, known as cenotes. While we picked fresh fruit from trees and put flowers in our hair, I picked myself up. Nature had replenished my broken heart with sea shells, coconut water and the scent of frangipani.

I witnessed the power of nature again in 2010, at the age of 34, when I took time off work to travel around Asia for three months with my second husband, Russell. Wed been struggling to get pregnant for about 18 months and this was a fertility tour of sorts, to de-stress and think about our options while looking after ourselves and being together. We wanted to re-engage with each other and the world. In Indonesia, I went to Elizabeth Gilberts Balinese guru from Eat, Pray, Love to ask for help. He told me that if I relaxed, meditated, got in touch with nature and opened a nail salon, I would have two children. Spoiler alert: I now have two children but I am not a manicurist.

My most meaningful experience, however, happened in Japan a few months later, in the lush grounds of a Kyoto temple, where a local guide told me to walk leisurely through the bamboo trees in silence, stopping to smell the moss or to feel the suppleness of the different-shaped leaves.

I felt like an Asian-inspired Wordsworth, meditating as I walked the undulating path, my senses hugged by a falling confetti of cherry blossoms. I could feel the anxiety, caused by months of worrying whether I would ever be able to conceive a child or not, drift away as I allowed myself to be washed in green. It was a powerful feeling, and one I decided to try to bring home with me. Thirteen months later, I gave birth to my son.