Pianist Plays Beethoven, Bach, Chopin, Ravel & Debussy for Blind Elephants in Thailand

in Biology, Music, Nature, Travel | July 27th, 2018

Rom­sai the ele­phant wore a red rope around his neck to warn approach­ing humans that he was a dan­ger to both them and ele­phants. A dark patch on his head from a tem­po­rin secre­tion indi­cat­ed that he was in the musth cycle, which only height­ened his aggres­sion. His mahouts at the Ele­phantsWorld sanc­tu­ary in Kan­chanaburi, Thai­land observed that the old, blind ele­phant was grow­ing more dan­ger­ous with age.

And yet, he is the per­son­i­fi­ca­tion of sweet­ness, as pianist Paul Bar­ton ser­e­nades him with a per­for­mance of Beethoven’s Sonata Pathé­tique, repeat­ing the melody sec­tion sev­er­al times “as he seems to like it.”

In lieu of applause, Rom­sai places his trunk over the top of Barton’s upright piano again and again, in no way aggres­sive, more the ges­ture of a grate­ful audi­ence mem­ber.

As Bar­ton, a York­shire­man who went to Thai­land over twen­ty years ago for what he thought would be a short piano teach­ing stint only to wind up mar­ry­ing a local artist and ani­mal rights activist, said in an inter­view with YourSto­ry:

All ani­mals like music. Dogs, cats, etc. But ele­phants are the clos­est to human beings in the sense that they have the same neu­rons in the brains as us. Also they have a very good mem­o­ry. If you are treat­ed bad­ly as a child, you are going to remem­ber that all your life. It’s the same with ele­phants. The ele­phant shares that part of the brain with us which has flash­backs. They can nev­er for­get the ter­ri­ble things they have seen and suf­fered… If you play clas­si­cal music to an ele­phant, some­thing soft and beau­ti­ful, some­thing that human beings have been lis­ten­ing to for hun­dreds for hun­dreds of years, some­thing that is timeless—and you play that to an ele­phant that is blind and they’ve nev­er heard music before—the reac­tion is price­less. There is a spe­cial bond between you and the ele­phant. You are com­mu­ni­cat­ing with them in a dif­fer­ent lan­guage. That lan­guage is nei­ther ours nor theirs. There is some­thing infin­i­tes­i­mal­ly won­der­ful in a piece of Beethoven that con­nects me to that ele­phant and that feel­ing is oth­er­world­ly.

The impulse to play live con­certs for Rom­sai and oth­er blind sanc­tu­ary dwellers was part­ly born from see­ing the pos­i­tive effect music had on some blind chil­dren with whom Bar­ton worked.

He also want­ed to make amends for the defor­esta­tion of the elephant’s home­land, and the way the teak indus­try exploit­ed their labor. It was while thus employed that many of them suf­fered scratched corneas and oth­er eye injuries that blind­ed them, ren­der­ing them dou­bly vul­ner­a­ble when the Thai gov­ern­ment enact­ed a ban on com­mer­cial tim­ber log­ging in 1989:

The ele­phant has worked for humans for too long. It was used in wars, it was used to defor­est its own home. What is the lit­tle thing I can do as a human to say sor­ry, for my species for what we have done to them? I’ll car­ry this heavy thing myself and play some music for the ele­phant while it is hav­ing some break­fast.

Removed from the plush seats of a con­cert hall, Rav­el feels right at home. A roost­er crows, a near­by child pipes up, and Rom­sai wan­ders in and out of the frame, at times appear­ing to keep time with his trunk.

Cicadas under­score Schubert’s Ser­e­nade.

Anoth­er Ele­phantsWorld res­i­dent, Lam Duan’s (aka “Tree with Yel­low Flow­ers”) still­ness as she lis­tens to Bach is rem­i­nis­cent of Barton’s first musi­cal out­ing with the ele­phants:

Ele­phants eat a lot of food. A lot. It is exhaust­ing try­ing to pro­cure that much food for so many ele­phants. When an ele­phant gets to eat, it’s a bit like a dog. A dog will eat its food so quick­ly because it’s not sure if it will ever eat again. And ele­phants are the same. Once they get their hands on some juicy leaves, they will eat and eat and noth­ing can tear them away from their food. That morn­ing I brought the piano in ear­ly to the sanc­tu­ary. Pla-Ra was tak­en to a field full of juicy bam­boo shoots and she began eat­ing with a sin­gle mind­ed ded­i­ca­tion. I start­ed to play Beethoven and she stopped eat­ing. There was this half eat­en bam­boo shoot stick­ing out of her trunk while she stared at me. That was a reac­tion nev­er seen before. An ele­phant stopped eat­ing because of music.

Barton’s lat­est record­ing fea­tures 80-year-old Ampan, blind in one eye and near blind in the oth­er, enjoy­ing Debussy’s Clair de Lune.

Sup­port Paul Barton’s Patre­on here. Learn about vol­un­teer oppor­tu­ni­ties or make a dona­tion to Ele­phantsWorld here

via Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stream 58 Hours of Free Clas­si­cal Music Select­ed to Help You Study, Work, or Sim­ply Relax

Watch Clas­si­cal Music Get Per­fect­ly Visu­al­ized as an Emo­tion­al Roller Coast­er Ride

Down­load 400,000 Free Clas­si­cal Musi­cal Scores & 46,000 Free Clas­si­cal Record­ings from the Inter­na­tion­al Music Score Library Project

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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How to Make the Oldest Recipe in the World: A Recipe for Nettle Pudding Dating Back 6,000 BC

in Food & Drink, History, Nature | June 28th, 2018

Atten­tion culi­nary his­to­ri­ans, sur­vival­ists, wild­crafters, and gonzo eaters!

Net­tle pud­ding, Britain’s—and quite pos­si­bly the world’s—old­est recipe, looks like a good bet in the event of a zom­bie inva­sion, or some oth­er cat­a­stro­phe.

The ingredients—sorrel, water­cress, dan­de­lions, nettles—are the sort of thing you can find in a ditch or pub­lic park.

If you’re wor­ried about pulling an Into the Wild, book a pro­phy­lac­tic tour with nat­u­ral­ist Wild­man Steve Brill.

Should bar­ley flour prove in short sup­ply, don’t wor­ry about it! Grind some acorns, like that kid in My Side of the Moun­tain. 

You think ear­ly man sweat­ed sub­sti­tu­tions?

No way! Impro­vi­sa­tion was the name of the game.

Rigid adher­ence to pub­lished ingre­di­ents will have no place in the zom­bie inva­sion! As Cardiff Met­ro­pol­i­tan University’s home econ­o­mist Dr. Ruth Fairchild told The Dai­ly Mail:

You have to think how much more is wast­ed now than then.

Food waste today is huge. A third of the food in our fridges is thrown away every week with­out being eat­en.

But they would­n’t have wast­ed any­thing, even hooves would have been used for some­thing.

They had to eat what was grown with­in a few miles, because it would have tak­en so long to col­lect every­thing, and even col­lect­ing water would have been a bit of a tri­al.

Yet today, so many peo­ple don’t want to cook because they think of it as a chore.

Stop think­ing of net­tle pud­ding as a chore! Start prac­tic­ing for the zom­bie inva­sion with Antiq­ui­ty Now’s step-by-step recipe and let us know how it tastes.

NETTLE PUDDING (an 8000 year old recipe!)

Ingre­di­ents

1 bunch of sor­rel

1 bunch of water­cress

1 bunch of dan­de­lion leaves

2 bunch­es of young net­tle leaves

Some chives

1 cup of bar­ley flour

1 tea­spoon of salt

 

Instruc­tions

Chop the herbs fine­ly and mix in the bar­ley flour and salt.

Add enough water to bind it togeth­er and place in the cen­ter of a linen or muslin cloth.

Tie the cloth secure­ly and add to a pot of sim­mer­ing veni­son or wild boar (a pork joint will do just as well). Make sure the string is long enough to pull the pud­ding from the pot.

Cook the pud­ding until the meat is done (at least two hours).

Leave the pud­ding to cool slight­ly, remove the muslin, then cut the pud­ding into thick slices with a knife.

Serve the pud­ding with chunks of bar­ley bread.

(Be mind­ful that fire may attract zom­bies. Keep a shov­el beside you at all times. Good luck!)

You can read more about the dis­cov­ery of Net­tle Pud­ding at the BBC and The Tele­graph.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dis­cov­er the Old­est Beer Recipe in His­to­ry From Ancient Sume­ria, 1800 B.C.

Watch a 4000-Year Old Baby­lon­ian Recipe for Stew, Found on a Cuneiform Tablet, Get Cooked by Researchers from Yale & Har­vard

How to Bake Ancient Roman Bread Dat­ing Back to 79 AD: A Video Primer

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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The Illustrated Medicinal Plant Map of the United States of America (1932): Download It in High Resolution

in Chemistry, Health, Maps, Nature | April 3rd, 2018

Two years ago, we high­light­ed col­lec­tor David Rumsey’s huge map archive, which he donat­ed to Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty in April of 2016 and which now resides at Stanford’s David Rum­sey Map Cen­ter. The open­ing of this phys­i­cal col­lec­tion was a pret­ty big deal, but the dig­i­tal col­lec­tion has been on the web, in some part, and avail­able to the online pub­lic since 1996. Twen­ty years ago, how­ev­er, though the inter­net was decid­ed­ly becom­ing an every­day fea­ture of mod­ern life, it was dif­fi­cult for the aver­age per­son to imag­ine the degree to which dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy would com­plete­ly over­take our lives, not to men­tion the almost unbe­liev­able wealth and pow­er tech com­pa­nies would amass in such short time.

Sim­i­lar­ly, when the above 1932 Med­i­c­i­nal Plant Map of the Unit­ed States (see in a larg­er for­mat here) first appeared—one of the tens of thou­sands of maps avail­able in the dig­i­tal Rum­sey col­lec­tion—few peo­ple oth­er than Aldous Hux­ley could have fore­seen the expo­nen­tial advances, and the rise of wealth and pow­er, to come in the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal indus­try.

But the phar­ma­cists had a clue. The map, pro­duced by the Nation­al Whole­sale Drug­gists’ Asso­ci­a­tion, “was intend­ed to boost the image of the pro­fes­sion,” writes Rebec­ca Onion at Slate, “at a time when com­pa­nies were increas­ing­ly com­pound­ing new phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals in labs,” there­by ren­der­ing much of the drug-mak­ing knowl­edge and skill of old-time drug­gists obso­lete.

Although the com­mer­cial phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal indus­try began tak­ing shape in the late 19th cen­tu­ry, it didn’t ful­ly come into its own until the so-called “gold­en era” of 1930–1960, when, says Onion, researchers devel­oped “a flood of new antibi­otics, psy­chotrop­ics, anti­his­t­a­mines, and vac­cines, increas­ing­ly rely­ing on syn­thet­ic chem­istry to do so.” Over-the-counter med­ica­tions pro­lif­er­at­ed, and phar­ma­cists became alarmed. They sought to per­suade the pub­lic of their con­tin­ued rel­e­vance by point­ing out, as a short blurb at the bot­tom left cor­ner of the map notes, that “few peo­ple real­ize the extent to which plants and min­er­als enter into the prac­tice of phar­ma­cy.”

The map appeared dur­ing “Phar­ma­cy Week” in Octo­ber, when “phar­ma­cists in Anglo-Sax­on coun­tries” pro­mote their ser­vices. Los­ing sight of those impor­tant ser­vices, the Drug­gists’ Asso­ci­a­tion writes, will lead to suf­fer­ing, should the tra­di­tion­al phar­ma­cist’s func­tion “be impaired or destroyed by com­mer­cial trends.” Thus we have this visu­al demon­stra­tion of com­pe­tence. The map iden­ti­fies impor­tant species—native or cultivated—in each region of the coun­try. In Ken­tucky, we see Nicoti­na tabacum, whose cured leaves, you guessed it, “con­sti­tute tobac­co.” Across the coun­try in Neva­da, we are intro­duced to Apoc­ynum cannabinum, “native of U.S. and South­ern Canada—the dried rhi­zome and roots con­sti­tute the drug apoc­ynum or Cana­di­an hemp.”

The bet­ter-known Can­nibus sati­va also appears, in one of the box­es around the map’s bor­der that intro­duce plants from out­side North Amer­i­ca, includ­ing Ery­throx­y­lon coca, from Bolivia and Peru, and Papaver som­nifer­um, from which opi­um derives. Many of the oth­er med­ica­tions will be less famil­iar to us—and belong to what we now call natur­opa­thy, herbal­ism, or, more gen­er­al­ly, “tra­di­tion­al med­i­cine.” Though these med­i­c­i­nal prac­tices are many thou­sands of years old, the drug­gists try to project a cut­ting-edge image, assur­ing the map’s read­ers that “intense sci­en­tif­ic study, expert knowl­edge, extreme care and accu­ra­cy are applied by the phar­ma­cist to med­i­c­i­nal plants.”

While phar­ma­cists today are high­ly-trained pro­fes­sion­als, the part of their jobs that involved the mak­ing of drugs from scratch has been ced­ed to mas­sive cor­po­ra­tions and their research lab­o­ra­to­ries. The drug­gists of 1932 saw this com­ing, and no amount of col­or­ful pub­lic rela­tions could stem the tide. But it may be the case, giv­en chang­ing laws, chang­ing atti­tudes, the back­lash against over­med­ica­tion, and the dev­as­tat­ing opi­oid epi­dem­ic, that their craft is more rel­e­vant than it has been in decades, though today’s “drug­gists” work in mar­i­jua­na dis­pen­saries and health food stores instead of nation­al phar­ma­cy chains.

View and down­load the map in a high res­o­lu­tion scan at the David Rum­sey Map Col­lec­tion, where you can zoom in to every plant on the map and read its descrip­tion.

via Slate

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load 67,000 His­toric Maps (in High Res­o­lu­tion) from the Won­der­ful David Rum­sey Map Col­lec­tion

The His­to­ry of Car­tog­ra­phy, the “Most Ambi­tious Overview of Map Mak­ing Ever,” Is Now Free Online

1,000-Year-Old Illus­trat­ed Guide to the Med­i­c­i­nal Use of Plants Now Dig­i­tized & Put Online

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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The Strange, Sci-Fi Sounds of Skating on Thin Black Ice

in Nature, Sci Fi | February 16th, 2018

This gives new mean­ing to “skat­ing on thin ice.” In Swe­den, a film­mak­er named Hen­rik Trygg likes to take his chances skat­ing on pris­tine sheets of black ice, mea­sur­ing only five centimeters/two inch­es thick. It’s a risk. A nat­ur­al thrill. It’s also quite a sen­so­ry expe­ri­ence. Just lis­ten to the “high-pitched, laser-like sounds,” of which sci-fi films could be made.

Watch Tryg­g’s film, “The Sound of Ice,” above. And, below, a ver­sion anno­tat­ed in Eng­lish by Nation­al Geo­graph­ic.

via The Kids Should See This

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

240 Hours of Relax­ing, Sleep-Induc­ing Sounds from Sci-Fi Video Games: From Blade Run­ner to Star Wars

42 Hours of Ambi­ent Sounds from Blade Run­ner, Alien, Star Trek and Doc­tor Who Will Help You Relax & Sleep

The Sounds of Blade Run­ner: How Music & Sound Effects Became Part of the DNA of Rid­ley Scott’s Futur­is­tic World

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Discover the Japanese Museum Dedicated to Collecting Rocks That Look Like Human Faces

in Museums, Nature | February 1st, 2018

It says some­thing about the human brain that we so often see the shape of human faces in inan­i­mate things — and that we feel such amuse­ment and even delight about it when we do. If you don’t believe it, just ask the 618,000 fol­low­ers of the Twit­ter account Faces in Things, which posts images of noth­ing else. Or go to Chichibu, Japan, two hours north­west of Tokyo, where you’ll find the Chin­sekikan, a small muse­um that has col­lect­ed over 1,700 “curi­ous rocks,” all 100 per­cent organ­i­cal­ly formed, about a thou­sand of which resem­ble human faces, some­times even famous ones.

“The museum’s founder, who passed away in 2010, col­lect­ed rocks for over fifty years,” writes Kotaku’s Bri­an Ashcraft. “Ini­tial­ly, he was drawn to rare rocks, but that evolved into col­lect­ing, well, strange rocks — espe­cial­ly unal­tered rocks that nat­u­ral­ly resem­ble celebri­ties, reli­gious fig­ures, movie char­ac­ters, and more.

These days, the founder’s daugh­ter keeps the muse­um run­ning, and it has been fea­tured on pop­u­lar, nation­wide Japan­ese TV pro­grams.” It has also, more recent­ly, become a sub­ject of CNN’s inter­net video series Great Big Sto­ry, which high­lights inter­est­ing peo­ple and places all around the world.

The Chin­sekikan stands in walk­ing dis­tance of a local riv­er rich with rocks, where we see the muse­um’s pro­pri­etor Yoshiko Haya­ma per­form­ing one of her rou­tine search­es for wee faces star­ing back at her. “To find rocks, we walk step-by-step,” she says. “If we walk too fast, we won’t find them.” She explains that a prop­er jin­mense­ki, or face-shaped stone, needs at least eyes and a mouth, rea­son­ably well-aligned, with a nose being a rare bonus. Only decades of adher­ence to these stan­dards, and hunt­ing with such delib­er­ate­ness, can yield such prize spec­i­mens as a rock that looks like Elvis Pres­ley, a rock that looks (vague­ly) like John­ny Depp, and a rock that looks like Don­ald Trump — though that one does ben­e­fit from what looks like a pile of thread on top, of a col­or best described as not found in nature.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Philo­soph­i­cal Appre­ci­a­tion of Rocks in Chi­na & Japan: A Short Intro­duc­tion to an Ancient Tra­di­tion

Wabi-Sabi: A Short Film on the Beau­ty of Tra­di­tion­al Japan

How to Draw the Human Face & Head: A Free 3‑Hour Tuto­r­i­al

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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The 1883 Krakatoa Explosion Made the Loudest Sound in History–So Loud It Traveled Around the World Four Times

in History, Nature | December 20th, 2017

Think of our­selves though we may as liv­ing in a noisy era, none of us — not even mem­bers of sta­di­um-fill­ing rock bands known specif­i­cal­ly for their high-deci­bel inten­si­ty — have expe­ri­enced any­thing like the loud­est sound in his­to­ry. That sin­gu­lar son­ic event came as a con­se­quence of the explo­sion of Kraka­toa, one of the names (along with Vesu­vius) that has become a byword for vol­canic dis­as­ter. And with good cause: when it blew in mod­ern-day Indone­sia on Sun­day, 26 August 1883, it caused not only 36,000 deaths at the very least and untold destruc­tion of oth­er kinds, but let out a sound heard 3,000 miles away.

“Think, for a moment, just how crazy this is,” writes Nau­tilus’ Aatish Bha­tia. “If you’re in Boston and some­one tells you that they heard a sound com­ing from New York City, you’re prob­a­bly going to give them a fun­ny look. But Boston is a mere 200 miles from New York. What we’re talk­ing about here is like being in Boston and clear­ly hear­ing a noise com­ing from Dublin, Ire­land. Trav­el­ing at the speed of sound (766 miles or 1,233 kilo­me­ters per hour), it takes a noise about four hours to cov­er that dis­tance. This is the most dis­tant sound that has ever been heard in record­ed his­to­ry.”

Any­one who writes about the sound of Kraka­toa, which split the island itself, strug­gles to prop­er­ly describe it, see­ing as even jet mechan­ics lack a com­pa­ra­ble son­ic expe­ri­ence. Bha­tia quotes the cap­tain of the British ship Norham Cas­tle, 40 miles from Kraka­toa when it erupt­ed, writ­ing in his log that “so vio­lent are the explo­sions that the ear-drums of over half my crew have been shat­tered. My last thoughts are with my dear wife. I am con­vinced that the Day of Judge­ment has come.” Kraka­toa’s rever­ber­a­tions – not heard, but felt and record­ed as changes in atmos­pher­ic pres­sure – passed across the whole of the Earth not once but four times.

The sound of the explo­sion aside, “the rest of the world heard such sto­ries almost instant­ly because a series of under­wa­ter tele­graph cables had been recent­ly laid tra­vers­ing the globe,” writes the Inde­pen­dent’s San­ji­da O’Con­nell. “This new tech­nol­o­gy meant that Kraka­toa also gen­er­at­ed the first mod­ern sci­en­tif­ic study of a vol­canic erup­tion.” A Dutch sci­en­tist named Rogi­er Ver­beek turned up first to gath­er details for a detailed and pio­neer­ing report, fol­lowed by geol­o­gists from Lon­don’s Roy­al Soci­ety, whose 627-page The Erup­tion of Kraka­toa and Sub­se­quent Phe­nom­e­na you can read at the Inter­net Archive.

Since nobody would have got the explo­sion on tape in 1883, such ver­bal descrip­tions will have to suf­fice. Not that even today’s high­est-grade record­ing tech­nol­o­gy could with­stand cap­tur­ing such a sound, nor could even speak­ers that go up to a Spinal Tap-lev­el 11 repro­duce it. And no oth­er sound is like­ly to break Kraka­toa’s record in our life­times – not if we’re lucky, any­way.

via Nau­tilus

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch the Destruc­tion of Pom­peii by Mount Vesu­vius, Re-Cre­at­ed with Com­put­er Ani­ma­tion (79 AD)

The Web Site “Cen­turies of Sound” is Mak­ing a Mix­tape for Every Year of Record­ed Sound from 1860 to Present

The British Library’s “Sounds” Archive Presents 80,000 Free Audio Record­ings: World & Clas­si­cal Music, Inter­views, Nature Sounds & More

Down­load 10,000 of the First Record­ings of Music Ever Made, Cour­tesy of the UCSB Cylin­der Audio Archive

Map­ping the Sounds of Greek Byzan­tine Church­es: How Researchers Are Cre­at­ing “Muse­ums of Lost Sound”

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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How the Japanese Practice of “Forest Bathing”—Or Just Hanging Out in the Woods—Can Lower Stress Levels and Fight Disease

in Health, Nature, Psychology | December 19th, 2017

When the U.S. media began report­ing on the phe­nom­e­non of “for­est bathing” as a ther­a­py for men­tal and phys­i­cal health, the online commentariat—as it will—mocked the con­cept relent­less­ly as yet anoth­er pre­ten­tious, bour­geois repack­ag­ing of some­thing thor­ough­ly mun­dane. Didn’t we just used to call it “going out­side”?

Well, yes, if all “for­est bathing” means is “going out­side,” then it does sound like a grandiose and unnec­es­sary phrase. The term, how­ev­er, is not an Amer­i­can mar­ket­ing inven­tion but a trans­la­tion of the Japan­ese shin­rin-yoku. “Coined by the Japan­ese Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture, Forestry and Fish­eries in 1982,” writes Meeri Kim at The Wash­ing­ton Post, “the word lit­er­al­ly trans­lates to ‘tak­ing in the for­est atmos­phere’ or ‘for­est bathing’ and refers to the process of soak­ing up the sights, smells and sounds of a nat­ur­al set­ting to pro­mote phys­i­o­log­i­cal and psy­cho­log­i­cal health.”

So what? We already have the exam­ples of thou­sands years of Bud­dhist monks (and Thich Nat Hanh), of Hen­ry David Thore­au, and the saints of the Sier­ra Club. But the old­est and most use­ful ideas and prac­tices can get care­less­ly dis­card­ed in the fran­tic pur­suit of inno­va­tion at all costs. The push­ing of hi-tech out­door gear, wear­able activ­i­ty track­ers, and health apps that ask us to log every move­ment can make going out­side feel like a daunt­ing, expen­sive chore or a com­pet­i­tive event.

For­est bathing involves none of those things. “Just be with the trees,” as Ephrat Livni describes the prac­tice, “no hik­ing, no count­ing steps on a Fit­bit. You can sit or mean­der, but the point is to relax rather than accom­plish any­thing.” You don’t have to hug the trees if you don’t want to, but at least sit under one for a spell. Even if you don’t attain enlight­en­ment, you very well may reduce stress and boost immune func­tion, accord­ing to sev­er­al Japan­ese stud­ies con­duct­ed between 2004 and 2012.

The Japan­ese gov­ern­ment spent around four mil­lion dol­lars on stud­ies con­duct­ed with hun­dreds of peo­ple “bathing” on 48 des­ig­nat­ed ther­a­py trails. In his work, Qing Li, asso­ciate pro­fes­sor at Nip­pon Med­ical School in Tokyo, found “sig­nif­i­cant increas­es in NK [nat­ur­al killer] cell activ­i­ty in the week after a for­est vis­it… pos­i­tive effects last­ed a month fol­low­ing each week­end in the woods.” Nat­ur­al killer cells fight virus­es and can­cers, and are appar­ent­ly stim­u­lat­ed by the oils that trees them­selves secrete to ward off germs and pests. See the pro­fes­sor explain in the video above (he trans­lates shin­rin-yoku as tak­ing a “for­est show­er,” and also claims to have bot­tled some of the effects).

Addi­tion­al­ly, exper­i­ments con­duct­ed by Japan’s Chi­ba Uni­ver­si­ty found that for­est bathing low­ered heart rate and blood pres­sure and brought down lev­els of cor­ti­sol, the stress hor­mone that can wreak hav­oc on every sys­tem when large amounts cir­cu­late through the body. Then there are the less tan­gi­ble psy­cho­log­i­cal ben­e­fits of tak­ing in the trees. Sub­jects in one study “showed sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduced hos­til­i­ty and depres­sion scores” after a walk in the woods. These find­ings under­score that spend­ing time in the for­est is a med­ical inter­ven­tion as well as an aes­thet­ic and spir­i­tu­al one, some­thing sci­en­tists have long observed but haven’t been able to quan­ti­fy.

In their review of a book called Your Brain on Nature, Moth­er Earth News quotes Franklin Hough, first chief of the U.S. Divi­sion of Forestry, who remarked in a 19th cen­tu­ry med­ical jour­nal that forests have “a cheer­ful and tran­quil­iz­ing influ­ence which they exert upon the mind, more espe­cial­ly when worn down by men­tal labor.” Hough’s hypoth­e­sis has been con­firmed, and despite what might sound to Eng­lish speak­ers like a slight­ly ridicu­lous name, for­est bathing is seri­ous ther­a­py, espe­cial­ly for the ever-increas­ing num­ber of urban­ites and those who spend their days in strip malls, office com­plex­es, and oth­er over­built envi­ron­ments.

What is a guid­ed for­est bathing expe­ri­ence like? You can lis­ten to NPR’s Ali­son Aubrey describe one above. She quotes Amos Clif­ford, founder of the Asso­ci­a­tion of Nature & For­est Ther­a­py, the cer­ti­fy­ing orga­ni­za­tion, as say­ing that a guide “helps you be here, not there,” sort of like a med­i­ta­tion instruc­tor. Clif­ford has been push­ing health care providers to “incor­po­rate for­est ther­a­py as a stress-reduc­tion strat­e­gy” in the U.S., and there’s no ques­tion that more stress reduc­tion tools are sore­ly need­ed.

But, you may won­der, do you have to call it “for­est bathing,” or pay for a cer­ti­fied guide, join a group, and buy some fan­cy out­er­wear to get the ben­e­fits hang­ing out with trees? I say, con­sid­er the words of John Muir, the inde­fati­ga­ble 19th nat­u­ral­ist, “father of the Nation­al Park Sys­tem,” and found­ing saint of the Sier­ra Club: In the eter­nal youth of Nature you may renew your own. Go qui­et­ly, alone; no harm will befall you. The quote may under­es­ti­mate the amount of risk or over­state the ben­e­fits, but you get the idea. Muir was not one to get tan­gled up in seman­tics or over­ly detailed analy­sis. Nonethe­less, his work inspired Amer­i­cans to step in and pre­serve so much of the coun­try’s for­est in the 19th and 20th cen­turies. Maybe the pre­ven­ta­tive med­i­cine of “for­est bathing” can help do the same in the 21st.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Walk­ing Fos­ters Cre­ativ­i­ty: Stan­ford Researchers Con­firm What Philoso­phers and Writ­ers Have Always Known

How Mind­ful­ness Makes Us Hap­pi­er & Bet­ter Able to Meet Life’s Chal­lenges: Two Ani­mat­ed Primers Explain

This Is Your Brain on Exer­cise: Why Phys­i­cal Exer­cise (Not Men­tal Games) Might Be the Best Way to Keep Your Mind Sharp

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Watch “The “Art of Flying,” a Short Film Capturing the Wondrous Murmurations of the Common Starling

in Nature | December 11th, 2017

In the tra­di­tion of Andrew Sul­li­van’s Dish, we start the week–before it even gets a bit hectic–with a Men­tal Health break. Above, watch The Art of Fly­ing, Jan van Ijken’s short film that cap­tures the mys­te­ri­ous flights–or murmurations–of the Com­mon Star­ling. A blurb accom­pa­ny­ing the film adds a bit more con­text:

It is still unknown how the thou­sands of birds are able to fly in such dense swarms with­out col­lid­ing. Every night the star­lings gath­er at dusk to per­form their stun­ning air show. Because of the rel­a­tive­ly warm win­ter of 2014/2015, the star­lings stayed in the Nether­lands instead of migrat­ing south­wards. This gave film­mak­er Jan van IJken the oppor­tu­ni­ty to film one of the most spec­tac­u­lar and amaz­ing nat­ur­al phe­nom­e­na on earth.

Also, over at janvanijken.com, you’ll find a longer sev­en-minute ver­sion of this film, fea­tur­ing “won­der­ful close-ups and a spec­tac­u­lar final scene.” The €2,99 fee for watch­ing that full-length film goes toward sup­port­ing van Ijken’s work as an inde­pen­dent film­mak­er.

Enjoy.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Stun­ning, Chance Encounter With Nature

The Fal­con and the Mur­mu­ra­tion: Nature’s Aer­i­al Bat­tle Above Rome

A Bird Bal­let in South­ern France

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