Arezzo 29 August 2021 – A test asks how stressed, anxious, worried, happy, relaxed, depressed you are. If you have disturbing thoughts, how often we walk in the woods or if we lead a sedentary life, if we are satisfied with ourselves or have low self-esteem. A doctor measures your heart rate, blood pressure, and oxygenation. The psychotherapist invites you to walk slowly and above all in silence, listen to the steps and observe the environment that surrounds us. It is a forest therapy session, a journey that develops the use of the five senses. But one at a time, immersed in the beauty of the Casentino forests, more precisely in the low Frassati path that leads from Chiusi della Verna to the Sanctuary. Easy but extraordinarily suggestive with the Penna cliff, boulders covered with moss, very tall trees such as silver fir, black pine, beech.
The first fifteen minutes are devoted to touch. A quarter of an hour still, in silence, touching a trunk, a root, a boulder, a mossy surface. In the beginning it is not easy. “We must not think about yesterday, tomorrow, problems, free your mind and focus on what you hear” guides the voice of the psychotherapist. For some it is easy, for many it is very difficult to concentrate and stop thoughts. Next exercise for fifteen minutes develop your sense of smell trying to capture the smells of the forest. Here they are: resin, lots of resin, something very similar to turpentine and beeswax, but also citrus suggestions while the wind brings hints of grass. The view is dedicated to a landscape of moving beauty but the test requires you to carefully observe even the smallest details, leaves, stones, lichens, natural growths. Hearing is a triumph of insect buzzing, wind-blown leaves, footsteps on leaves, creaks, birdsong.
Three hours spent in the forest are a gift, the benefits can last up to a week. Two hours in the forest improve the oxidative state for a week, a weekend in the forest strengthens the immune system for a month. Effects widely documented in the scientific literature. The experience just described was tested on thirty-two volunteers monitored before and after. A project signed by the Italian National Alpine Club and Cai Arezzo, represented by Francesco Meneguzzo and Sandro Vasarri, by the Cnr institute of bioeconomy of Sesto Fiorentino, with the participation of the psychotherapist Patrizia Garberi, by doctor Michele Mecca, of the director of the National Park of Casentino forests Alessandro Bottacci and with the coordination of Fulvio Ducci. An opportunity also for collect further biochemical data with a photoionizer, a real “electronic nose”.
A project that has a very specific objective, to use the Cai shelters and paths for therapy and to welcome new “health tourists”, including patients sent by the structures of the National Health Service to forest therapy “stations” and for the province of Arezzo. A station could be born in Chiusi della Verna in the forests of the National Park, with the “blessing” of the mayor Giampaolo Tellini: “We are working to build an offer ready to welcome all those who want to experience the countless psycho- physical and the stimuli that immersion in our forests produces “.
It is said that before entering a forest you need to activate your senses, breathe deeply and knock discreetly. And the effects are felt with psychological, neurological, cardiovascular and immune benefits, even and above all in the Covid pandemic. From the processing of the data collected, the states of anxiety, depression, fatigue, confusion, stress fall in percentage. On the physiological side, explains the doctor, cardiovascular functions, hemodynamic, neuroendocrine, metabolic, immune, inflammatory and oxidative indices improve.
What can we say, in exchange for massive deforestation, invasive urbanization, pollution and intensive exploitation by man, nature continues to give us oxygen, beauty and health. In short, life.
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