The Forest Bathing Institute (TFBI) was set up by husband and wife team Gary Evans and Olga Terebenina, Founders of and Directors of Holistic Healing Therapy. The TFBI have a team of Forest Bathing guides who run events across the UK with regular events held across the Surrey Hills. Our course, Module Two – Forest Bathing+, has been accredited with the CMA.
TFBI is dedicated to ensuring that the Japanese scientific studies into Forest Bathing can be replicated and expanded upon across the UK and Europe.
Forest Bathing is the English translation of the Japanese term ‘Shinrin-yoku’. To better understand this entire concept more accurately, it means ‘spending quality time, under the canopy of trees, in a forest, for health and wellbeing purposes’. We’ve built upon different areas of emerging science, including the Forest Bathing research of Dr Qing Li of the Japanese Nippon Medical School and the Wood Wide Web research of Professor Suzanne Simard from The University of British Columbia. The combination of these two areas, as well as collaboration with various academics has led to the development of a deeply therapeutic style of Forest Bathing launched by The Forest Bathing Institute called Forest Bathing+.
It has been a priority to our founders, Gary and Olga, to make sure that our course is based on scientific research in the field of forest bathing, thus the course is continually updated in alignment with new findings. They are both peer-reviewed scientific authors who research with the University of Derby and have published the first research paper into the health benefits of Forest Bathing+, which can be found on the News section of our website. We are in discussion with 100 universities, circa 50 in the UK, with Kings College London and UCL, asking students to be involved in our research. Other universities we collaborate with include the US and Australia and we have been asked to present at the Japanese Forest Bathing Conference after welcoming one of the founding figures behind the science of Shinrin Yoku, Dr Qing Li, as the scientific advisor at The Forest Bathing Institute.
