Nature’s Healing Power: Forest Therapy with Clemens Arvay (veg advocate), Part 3 of 4

His book entitled “The Biophilia Effect: A Scientific and Spiritual Exploration of the Healing Bond Between Humans and Nature” was published in 2015 and became a bestseller. We are honored to have Clemens Arvay with us to explain these remarkable discoveries. “It is true that just looking at a tree through a window or in a large photo can have a positive effect on our self-healing powers. This also explains why a study going back to the 1980s showed that patients recover faster after operations if they can look at a tree, or a green area with a tree, from the hospital window. That is a very significant study.”

Clemens Arvay’s book “Growing up With the Trees to the Sky,” published in 2019, is about forest therapy for children on the autistic spectrum. “And in 2014, my little son Jonny was born, and he, too, is autistic. And then I started to intensively study methods from forest therapy, from forest medicine, applying them to the topic of autism. The forest lowers the cortisol levels. This is a wonderful basis to get closer to them so that they can open up. And on this foundation, autistic children can be helped through the diversity of nature, especially sensory diversity. Autism is also a perceptual disorder, and if you train the nervous system through sensory experiences, then the cognitive development is also improved, and the whole range of problems associated with autism slowly fades into the background.”

The “International Handbook of Forest Therapy,” published in 2019 and edited by renowned scientists, contains two articles by Clemens Arvay, including one on his specialist field, eco-psychosomatics. “We are part of nature, we are connected to nature, and human existence without natural habitats would be completely unthinkable. I wish that there could be a clinic just like this, where the experience of nature plays a very central part, and where people could then retreat.”