System Talks: Forest Bathing & Why It Helps Our System

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What Is Forest Bathing?

Forest Bathing also known as Shinrin-yoku is the practice of immersing yourself in nature with intention.

It isn’t hiking, exercising, or rushing from point A to point B. It’s slowing down, opening your senses, and letting the forest hold you.

It’s about:

• Breathing with the trees

• Feeling the ground beneath your feet

• Listening to birds, wind, and water

• Letting your nervous system soften

• Allowing your mind and body to reconnect

It’s simple, gentle, and deeply regulating.

🌿 Why Forest Bathing Helps Our System

For a system like ours, creative, sensitive, multi-layered, and often carrying a lot internally, Forest Bathing works on multiple levels at once.

1. It Regulates The Nervous System

Nature naturally shifts the body out of fight-or-flight and into rest-and-digest.

For a system, this means:

• Less internal noise

• Less overwhelm

• More space between parts

• A calmer baseline for communication

When the body settles, the system settles.

2. It Strengthens Internal Connection

Being in nature gives each part room to breathe.

Some parts feel safe enough to come forward.

Others feel soothed enough to rest.

Some simply enjoy the sensory grounding.

Forest Bathing becomes a neutral meeting place, a shared inner living room, where everyone can exist without pressure.

3. It Reduces Dissociation

The sensory richness of a forest, the smell of pine, the texture of bark, the sound of leaves, gently anchors the system into the present moment.

Grounding through nature is:

• Non-invasive

• Non-demanding

• Naturally regulating

It helps us stay here, in the body, without force.

4. It Boosts Creativity And Clarity

For a system full of artists, performers, storytellers and visionaries, nature acts like a reset button.

After Forest Bathing, we often experience:

• Clearer thinking

• More coherent internal communication

• Stronger creative flow

• Renewed emotional energy

It’s like giving the mind a long drink of water.

5. It Supports Emotional Processing

Trees don’t rush you.

The forest doesn’t judge you.

Nature holds space without asking anything in return.

This makes it easier for parts to:

• Release tension

• Express feelings

• Let go of what they’ve been carrying

• Feel safe enough to soften

It’s a gentle, natural form of co-regulation.

🌱 Benefits of Forest Bathing

Here are some of the well-known benefits many of which we feel directly in our system:

• Lower stress and cortisol

• Reduced anxiety

• Improved mood

• Better sleep

• Enhanced focus

• Stronger immune function

• Increased sense of connection (to self, others, and the world)

• More emotional resilience

• Greater creativity and inspiration

For a system, these benefits multiply because when one part feels better, the whole system shifts.

🌳How Forest Bathing Helps Us Specifically

For our system, Forest Bathing has become:

• A grounding ritual

• A way to reconnect with the body

• A safe place for internal communication

• A reset for emotional overwhelm

• A creative recharge

• A moment where Step, Hanie, and others can breathe together

It’s one of the few practices that supports every layer of who we are, physical, emotional, creative and internal.

The Giving Back Loop: Plastic Magazine’s Tree Planting Initiative

As we practice forest bathing and learn to co-regulate with the rhythm of the trees, we recognize that our healing is part of a larger network. Plastic Magazine has stepped beyond being just a tastemaker in music to become a steward of the earth. They have partnered with Trees for the Future, a non-profit dedicated to land restoration and ending hunger through the "Forest Garden Approach."

This initiative isn’t just about putting seeds in the ground; it’s about rebuilding ecosystems and supporting communities in sub-Saharan Africa. By planting thousands of trees, they are helping farmers restore soil nutrients, diversify crops, and build resilience against climate change. In our system, we call this Integrated Grounding where the health of one part of the network (the planet) directly shifts the health of the others (the community).

We are proud to support this initiative as part of our journey. When we heal the forest, we heal the very air we breathe.

"In Loving Memory Of My Best Friend Lucille"

SYSTEM TALKS

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