This week’s Enlightened Omnivore Podcast may be the most quietly powerful conversation I’ve had all year.
I didn’t want to stop chatting with forest therapy guide, Sarah Abu-Absi about the healing power of nature. And I don’t think you’ll want to stop listening.
Sarah wasn’t always a self-proclaimed “tree hugger.” She spent more than a decade working in a high-stress job for the City of Chicago—fast-paced, big stakes, constant urgency. Then her entire department was shut down. Overnight, Sarah was unemployed with two young kids. Worse yet, her body was breaking down from what would eventually be diagnosed as chronic Lyme Disease.
Doctors, specialists, medications—some helped, most didn’t.
What did help?
Being outside.
On the beach with no phone, strolling the woods with no agenda; in nature Sarah’s nervous system could relax, release, recharge.
Over the next several years, Sarah learned that she wasn’t the only one who experienced this relief. There was a school for Guided Forest Therapy that trained people to help others feel better outside. Now Sarah makes a living at what she jokingly calls:
“Convincing strangers to meet me in the woods so we can sit around and do nothing.”
But it’s not nothing.
Forest therapy isn’t hiking or a mindfulness exercise. It’s a gateway to remembering something most of us have forgotten. We are nature, too.
In our conversation, we discuss:
Why slowing down outdoors rewires our nervous systems
How nature reduces stress, boosts immunity, and even turns down the “pain dial”
The loneliness epidemic—and why the forest never asks who you are
How reciprocity, not fear, might be the real path to protecting the planet
Sarah quotes writer J. Drew Lanham, who said:
“In all my time wandering, I’ve yet to have a wild creature question my identity.”
Tell me a more comforting sentence—I’ll wait.
If modern life has you fried, numb, or disconnected, this week’s Enlightened Omnivore Podcast is a gentle invitation back to yourself.
People Places and Things mentioned in this week’s podcast:
- (Sarah Abu-Absi) – Forest therapy guide & pain recovery coach, founder of That Forest Feeling; Instagram, Facebook, 7-minute sample forest therapy
- (Robin Wall Kimmerer) – Indigenous botanist and author (esp. Braiding Sweetgrass)
- (J. Drew Lanham) – Writer, ornithologist, author of The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man’s Love Affair with Nature
The Japanese call it Shinrin-yoku
Association of Nature and Forest Therapy Guides and Programs (ANFT) – Sarah’s training organization
Forest Bathing Finder – Directory to find forest bathing / forest therapy guides
Cleveland Clinic Health Essentials on forest bathing benefits
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