In a fast urban city like London, it can feel like your mind has to keep up with the pace too. But with activities like Park Bathe, we can train our brains to relearn tranquillity. Remembering that after the mind-spinning stresses of everyday urban life, there’s always time for a moment of stillness. 

This led to me finding myself in my local park standing in the rain on a Sunday morning with five strangers to indulge in some park bathing. I had no idea what to expect, at most I expected a silent walk for an hour and then I would be able to go home to my warm, dry bed. Almost immediately Vanessa Potter, the 2021 founder of the Park Bathe concept, reminds the group of something that stuck with me: yes, we are cold, wet and want to shrivel up back into bed now. But afterwards, we will be dry and have the mind and health benefits from the stroll.   

This brief encounter lifted my mindset from the get-go and made me think metaphorically about the expansion into everyday urban life… 

Vanessa has encapsulated her project as a guided stroll to “bring you into your senses and out of your thoughts”. During the walk, I meet Millie Knights, a leader of Park Bathe Walks. When asking Millie to describe her goal of bringing Park Bathe’s to the South-East London community, she explains that “the idea is we’re immersing ourselves in our senses… and appreciating what nature has to offer us”.  She wants us to focus on “slowing down” and “switching off”, and the activities we did in the park led me to feel a decrease of stress and anxiety. 

We start by doing some relaxation exercises such as stretching our pressure points, before we walk in silence to an array of towering trees. We are guided to pick a tree to study, from root to tip. As I began to study the gnarly trunk and spiny branches, it occurred to me that although I am often surrounded by nature, I am often distracted by places I need to go to or things I spend too much time thinking about. Having a time dedicated to examining the trees gave a sense of appreciation for the simpler things in life.  

The second activity focused on sound. It was my first time being introduced to something that Millie described as “the cupping technique” – by cupping your hands around your ears you regain control over the noises your brain can interpret. Millie talks to the group about how hard it is to “get away from the noise of humans, planes and trains… if we can tune into nature, then we will find it relaxes us”. Living in a city we are surrounded by an abundance of man-made noise pollution in busy city atmospheres, and it is understandable that our ears adapt and align with these hectic sounds. When doing the cupping exercise, the noises of river water trickling, birds flying, and rain pattering was sublime. Millie expressed that noise is heavily connected with anxiety and explains that when you do exercises which filter your noise intake, you are more open to feelings that can provoke mindfulness.  

We then move to focusing on smell. Vanessa and Millie reiterated the importance of our smell, pointing out it is necessary to protect us; the smell of burning, toxic gases, and so on. According to an aromatherapy article by Johns Hopkins Medicine, many scents are scientifically linked to stress relief, such as frankincense, lavender, and jasmine. However, this activity was more focused on letting our brains zone in on appreciation. In urban spaces, we are exposed to plenty of air pollution, so it is refreshing to discover the range of scents you can find in your local park. We even noticed that many leaves smelt sweet after picking them and bringing them to our noses.  

This fed directly into our next touch-focused activity. Millie instructed us to trace our fingers over as many different textures as we could find. Feeling the different surfaces from leaves, branches, and tree trunks made me appreciate how many different textures nature includes. Taking the time to let my brain focus on the sensations of the rigid trunks, smooth branches, and crisp leaves relaxed me. I was shocked at the difference a small act of reconnection with nature could make.  

The hour-long session exceeded my expectations. I expected the silent hour-long stroll to feel like a long break, instead it flew by. By detaching from the distractions of my phone and fast-paced urban life, I lost track of time, which is out of the ordinary in comparison with living by timetables. I felt grounded and calm when leaving the park to bathe; enhancing my senses naturally left an impact of serenity on my mind. I would love to incorporate it into my weeks after this experience, and in the following weeks, I’ve found myself gravitating to my local park during times of stress. Even if I am not following the activities performed during the park bathing, I have found myself using parks to detach from the chaos of everyday life in London.