---
title: Forest Bathing- How to Lower Blood Pressure 
description: Forest bathing lowers blood pressure, and not from the walk. We invite you to explore the Japanese practice of shinrin-yoku, what forty years of measurement ...
author: Dr Marina Nani (Editor-in-Chief)
date: 2026-06-06T15:00:00.000Z
updated: 2026-07-26T21:19:49.549Z
canonical: https://richhealthmagazine.com/article/forest-bathing-how-to-lower-blood-pressure
image: https://cdn.nanimediahouse.com/trent-haaland-yIsjn-IGWqc-unsplash.jpg
categories: Everyday Wellness
content_type: Guide
region: Global
publication: Rich Health Magazine
access: members
schema_type: Article
---

Give a busy person a forest and watch what they do with it. They walk it like a corridor. They count the steps, take the call, photograph the view to prove they were there, and come out at the same heart rate they went in. The forest was scenery. They were still at work.

The Japanese worked out something the rest of us are slow to believe. A forest will lower your blood pressure, but only if you stop treating it as a route.

The practice has a name, shinrin-yoku, which translates as forest bathing. Tomohide Akiyama, then head of Japan's Forestry Agency, coined it in 1982 as cities and screens began to pull people indoors. It is not hiking, and it is not exercise. A session covers almost no ground. You move slowly, you use your senses one at a time, and you do close to nothing on purpose.

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