Most of us spend a lot of energy avoiding uncomfortable feelings. Why on earth should we welcome them?Well, for one thing, suppressing anger, guilt, envy, fear, shame, grief and other painful feelings doesn’t really work; the more we try to numb them, the more demanding they become, draining our energy and creating tension, stress and dis-ease!Another reason for welcoming feelings is that they convey information that’s helpful to hear and digest.Finally, the strategies we devise for suppressing them—our various addictions to food, drink, exercise, overwork, shopping, TV-watching, internet surfing, or just getting into our heads and losing touch with our body and senses—create additional problems.So how can we welcome our various feeling “guests,” even the unpleasant ones?Psychologist Abby Seixas, who recommends “befriending feelings,” says: “Befriending a feeling means neither indulging nor repressing, nor trying to manipulate it in any way.” Rather she recommends the following step…

Years ago we heard an intriguing story. A frail, elderly gentleman in India, bent over with age, left his village to wander into the woods to die. Several years later he returned, vigorous, upright and tanned from the sun, claiming he had been rejuvenated by communing with the rocks, the trees, and the mountain streams.This story came out of Asia’s ancient tradition of nature therapy recently revived in Japan under the name of shinrin-yoku, or “forest bathing.” Forest bathing is immersing yourself in a forest environment. This means leaving your cell phone and daily concerns behind and spending several hours deep in the woods, walking on trails or sitting with no other purpose than to experience your surroundings through all five senses: smelling the woodsy air; feeling the ground beneath your feet or the bark of a tree or the texture of a leaf; tasting a blackberry or wild mint; listening to bird calls and the sound of the wind rustling through the trees; and taking in the varied si…