Who are we?

Everything for me started when a friend brought me to a municipal kindergarten in Campogaliano "Il Flauto Magico", near Modena, where I live.

In this asylum families and teachers have built, only with natural materials, a suitable environment for the child to enter Biophilia, connection door and Love with nature.

Since adulthood I have always thought that my mission of life is to help the new generations to go in the direction of freedom, health and joy but I believe it is from that experience that I started my path for the creation of the Sector Forest Bathing CSEN, National body of which I preside over his Provincial Committee of Modena since 1994.

I have always been looking for a life as much as possible in nature, both in the games and in the many sports that I have practiced, but I never understood the importance and quality of the benefits that nature has on our health and, above all, of the quality of the relationship until from that day I began to seek better information.

Then, as a seed coming out of the earth after a long germination, the idea came out and in its support I met the texts of Amos Clifford, Mancuso, Mencagli and then others more properly on the Forest Bathing – Shinrin Yoku of Quin Li, Yoshifumi Miyazaki, Annette Lawrijsen, Selene Calloni Williams, G.Arvay and P. Wohlleben. Important teachings that have joined those of ecopsychology of Italian Marcella Danon and Rita Berti on trees, forests and gifts, not only materials, for our species.

In short, a Universe that was around me and I still didn't see!

Later my family told me that when I was very small in the Dolomites, during a picnic in nature I moved away from the group entering the forest, probably chasing an animal. They found me a few hours later and I didn't show any signs of fear or discomfort, except the one related to the fact that it had arrived time for dinner!

In recent years I have seen many initiatives that speak of Forest Bathing, including the free text on the CAI/CNR network, and I have read many other scientific evidence of its health benefits.

So I felt strongly about "putting myself to service" in creating an organized coordination system.

This is to create what could allow proper dissemination of practice according to its nature.

In organizing a system of diffusion of practice, I also saw how I can help new generations with a training path recognized by institutions in the hope that Forest Bathing will soon become a discipline of subsidiary teaching in schools.

Some doctors are working to recognize in our national medicine the benefits of the practice of Forest Bathing on health, as already happens in some nations, after the example of Japan, and I hope it can also be seen as a good "prevention".

It is known that universities, with their researchers, are studying the principles, effects and relations of plants among themselves and with our species.

In the organized Forest Bathing I can predict that with a collection of a good number of surveys before and after a session of Forest Bathing, validated by protocols of scientific rigour and applicability, will produce a good contribution to research for an evolutionary end towards the well-being of the whole ecosystem.

Many of us have begun to meditate thanks to Mindfullness that from American universities has spread as a practice in the West beyond Eastern culture making meditation important for psychophysical well-being.

Today, Biophilia, the great diffusion of Yoga, bioenergetics, natural care and oriental culture, lead me to the clear understanding of how a proper practice of Forest Bathing (dive into the forest in all senses and with all senses), can surely bring a sensitive improvement of individual and social well-being.

Putting all this together to bring a large number of people to improve the relationship with nature and the forest, in being open in a collegial work with my Team to new experiences and knowledge is, today, my goal.

Then I am pleased to be able to do it as CSEN and with those who want to participate in free and dynamic team, as well as a forest has the natural goal of survival, evolution, health, beauty and creativity.

We came out of an existence totally immersed in nature only about 8000 years ago and I have no doubt it is really time to "go home" and remember "who we are".
Returning in nature not to do ... simply to be a lover and integral part of it.

Andrea Mariotti