Lessons from the rainforest
- nbferrara
- 4 days ago
- 4 min read
On Tuesday night I returned from five days and six nights in wild, beautiful Costa Rica. Four of those days were spent at the Chilamate Rainforest Eco Retreat on the banks of the Sarapiquí River in Puerto Viejo. Davis and Meghan, the owners of Chilamate, have been working to protect the rainforest and support the surrounding community since 2006. While staying with them, I was deeply touched by their love for the land, their community, and their fellow humans.
This trip was the final hurdle to becoming a fully certified Association of Nature and Forest Therapy guide. Meghan is a certified ANFT guide and now hosts ANFT training immersions at Chilamate, which features a carefully planned self-guided forest therapy journey for her guests.
ANFT’s four-day in-person immersion is an opportunity to be guided by ANFT trainers and to practice guiding with the most experienced forest therapy guides in the world. During my Costa Rican immersion, I learned from the shared experience of my trainers and fellow guides-in-training and spent hours in the forest, strengthening my relationship with other-than-human beings.
Every invitation offered by our trainers was followed by an opportunity to share what we were noticing. This sharing brought with it a flood of emotion—wonder, awe, grief, sorrow, hope, delight, joy, and most of all—love. Love for the rainforest and the many beings it encompasses. Love for my fellow humans. Even love for myself.
At the start of the immersion, we were 25 separate individuals. Four days later we were transformed into the leaves of a single tree—distinct, yet connected, all nourished by the same branch and roots, growing our confidence as guides and deepening our relationship with the land.
This experience will now inform every forest therapy walk I guide here at home.
The rainforest taught us many lessons:
There is great beauty in imperfection. We are all in process—being born, living, dying and being reborn in a thousand ways over a lifetime. Lean into that. Be messy. Be not quite finished. Be the child you once were and play in the mud and break your crayons. Hug trees. Skip down the path.
Grow with abandon and abundance. Let your leaves and vines unfurl and cover every surface with your moss. Reach for the sun with every branch and leaf of your being.
Be a monkey. Get up early for a good howl, show your kids how to deal with two-legged creatures who invade your territory, and don’t forget to take a nap every afternoon. (One day while we were gathered on a platform in the rainforest, a howler monkey with a baby on her back swung by and very clearly made her feelings about our presence known. Twice.)
Be a snake. Stay low or high and wear camouflage to avoid noisy, two-legged beings who invade your space. If provoked, bite and slither at top speed or simply hug them—hard.
Be a great-tailed grackle and strut your stuff at every opportunity.
Be a hummingbird and never stop moving.
Be a red-eyed tree frog and always wear color.
Be a sloth and slow down. You’ll get there when you get there. Enjoy the journey.
Be a Jesus Christ lizard and defy expectations by walking on water.
Be a golden-silk orb weaver spider and spend every night crafting a web to match the rainforest’s colors—and to catch your dinner in.
Be a river and flow over and around obstacles that seek to impede your progress.
Be the water and the rocks that work together to create the powerful voice of the Sarapiquí.
Be a tree and use your roots to love, nourish, and support your community.
While in Costa Rica, news from the outside world inevitably trickled in. I heard about family friends who had suffered at the hands of law enforcement and about the shooting of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis. I felt a deep tension between the beauty surrounding me and the pain so many were experiencing.
But then I remembered why I was there: to learn how to help humans find their way back to the forest where they first learned to live in deep relationship with all Earth’s beings.
Forest therapy is about helping people remember that they ARE nature and that we need to regularly connect with it to maintain our health and well-being. In learning this practice, I have come to understand that humans are suffering because we have drifted from our relationship with the natural world.
As I have completed my guide training over the past eight months, personal experience has shown me the benefits of forest therapy. I have seen my own mental and physical health improve as my time spent connecting with the land has increased. And after my Costa Rican training immersion, I firmly believe that it can also help us repair our relationships with each other.
I look forward to walking with you in nature.
May you find your way back to the trees—and discover how deeply they welcome you home.