Shinrin-Yoku (SY), also known as Forest Bathing (FB), is a Japanese practice of immersing oneself in nature by using all five human senses in a mindful and slow manner. SY is reported in the literature as having many positive health benefits and is becoming popular worldwide. This heightened awareness, combined with the scientifically proven health benefits associated with SY, researchers recently conducted a Scoping Review (ScR) to identify programmatic components, monitored health information, nature prescriptions, trends, geographical locations, themes and time on nature. Following the PRISMA-ScR recommendations the researchers followed seven electronic databases for SY empirical studies published from 2017 through 2022. Due to the interdisciplinary aspect of SY research, PubMed, CINAHL, PsychInfo, ScienceDirect, SCOPUS, EMBASE, JSTOR were included in the ScR. The results were screened and extracted by the researchers by using Covidence. The databases provided 241 results, with 110 references deleted during the deduplication process, 131 papers were initially in the title and abstract review phase. The results provided 82 unique results identified as relevant during a full text review by each researcher. The final stage of the ScR provided 63 papers meeting the inclusion criteria and were extracted for reportable data. The results of the ScR indicate SY has positive Physiological (PHYS) and Psychological (PSYCH) results across a variety of settings and age groups. Nature blends the mind, body and even the spirit together to promote wellbeing and, therefore, continued research is necessary to unearth even more short and long-term health benefits for all individuals living in a primarily urban world.
Published Date: 2026-02-23; Received Date: 2024-11-04
