Try Shinrin Yoku or “Forest Bathing” to Break Your Phone Addiction

The average person spends 11 hours a day staring at a screen and it’s killing our health and happiness.

Photo by Milk-Tea on Unsplash

I park at the trailhead to the main corridor of the Rattlesnake Wildnerness just outside my hometown of Missoula, Montana. It’s 10 AM. In front of me is 33,000 acres of some of the beautiful country in the world. And I’m going to off into them for the day.

I’m working on a book and I am utterly stuck. That’s why I’m here today. I’m not stuck in the sense that I can’t bring myself to write. I’ve already written about a third of the rough draft and I know exactly what it’s about. But something feels different. What’s coming out on the page is all theory, no practice. It’s regurgitated past experiences packaged up to look new. It’s meticulously researched but there’s no character, no personality, no color to the thing.

It’s an uphill march every day just to hit my word count. So, most days I find myself clocking out by 10 or 11 and walking down to the river trail, laying out my blanket on the grassy front lawn of the Teddy Roosevelt Museum to read a book and people watch.

Yesterday, I didn’t have a book with me. So, I turned to Audible and I punched in the title for a book I’ve heard a lot…