The Mersey Forest
Forest Bathing and the Natural Health Service
Inside the Forest Bathing sessions held in the Bluebell Woodland attached to NHS Aintree University Hospital.
- Client
- GroundsWell
- Place
- Bluebell Woodland, Aintree
- Audience
- Health, policy + public
- Deliverables
- Short film, social cuts
01 / The problem
Forest Bathing — shinrin-yoku — is a practice built on sensation rather than statistics, which makes it easy to dismiss and hard to fund.
The sessions run in a woodland attached to a working hospital, but few people beyond the participants understood what actually happens there or why it matters.
02 / Our approach
We joined a session rather than staging one, letting the pace of the walk set the pace of the film.
Sound carried the story as much as picture, so the woodland itself explains the practice before anyone has to describe it.
03 / The outcome
A short film that shows the Natural Health Service in practice, usable with clinicians, funders, and the wider public.
The programme now has an honest record of what a session feels like from the inside.
“
It shows what we have always struggled to describe — what the woodland does for people once they slow down in it.
Session facilitator / The Mersey Forest