🌿 Into the In-Between: Forest Therapy, Intuition, and the Power of Liminal Space

I’ve spent the past week immersed in conversations about disruption—a word that keeps echoing across very different worlds.

First, I attended the Nature and Health Alliance Conference, where we explored disruption as an ecological and emotional catalyst—an invitation to realign our systems and ourselves with the natural world. Days later, I found myself at the Save the Redwoods League Gala, surrounded by hope and reverence for these ancient beings and the powerful role they play in our well-being. Both events left me uplifted and energized, full of the possibility that we can be part of the solution to the urgent challenges facing our planet and our communities.

Ironically—or perhaps perfectly timed—tomorrow I’ll attend the Wisdom 2.0 Tech Conference, where the theme is, once again, disruption. I'm curious what I’ll learn through the lens of the digital world. It feels vital to study disruption from many perspectives: ecological, spiritual, emotional, and technological. This broad inquiry is shaping the work I’m doing to develop certified Forest Therapy Trails as public health infrastructure—spaces of healing that foster well-being, resilience, and ultimately, conservation.

🔥 Disruption Includes Truth-Telling

Part of this work also means reckoning with truths about how access to nature has not been equitable. At the Nature and Health Alliance conference, I deepened my understanding of redlining—the discriminatory practice that, beginning in the 1930s, systemically denied housing and financial services to people of color, particularly Black communities. These redlined zones were often deprived of green space and intentionally cut off from public parks, which were, in many cities, designed with segregation in mind.

The legacy of these policies persists. Many communities still face environmental injustice, limited access to healing natural spaces, and a sense that parks “weren’t made for us.”

Forest therapy, in its truest form, must be part of the solution. With regard to forest therapy trail certificaiton, I am looking for strategic partnership with local leaders, healthcare providers, and community-based organizations to create spaces that are inclusive, welcoming, and co-designed with the people they are meant to serve. Healing our relationship with the land also means healing our relationship with one another.

🌍 Nature as the Bedrock of Shared Wisdom

Across all cultures, the natural world has always been a sacred guide. Whether through Indigenous land practices, Japanese forest bathing, Celtic reverence for trees, or African water rituals, there are universal truths embedded in nature—truths about interdependence, impermanence, reciprocity, and renewal.

These truths transcend language and geography. They form our bedrock for tolerance.

When we return to nature together, we remember that we are not separate—not from the Earth, and not from each other. Forest therapy draws on this universality. It is not culturally neutral—it is culturally reverent. When practiced with respect and deep listening, it becomes a vessel for collective remembering. A way of weaving ancestral knowledge and modern healing into one living practice.

🌫️ What Is Liminality?

The word liminal comes from the Latin limen, meaning threshold. It describes the in-between state in rites of passage—the disorienting middle space after the old self dissolves but before the new one emerges. In times of cultural, personal, or ecological transition, liminal states appear not only as disorientation, but as possibility.

Liminality is the dark soil where new roots take hold. But first, we must sit with the darkness.

🌀 Disruption as a Portal to Higher Order

In nature, chaos often precedes regeneration. A forest fire clears the underbrush so that sunlight can nourish hidden seedlings. Likewise, disruption in our lives—grief, burnout, change—can dissolve entrenched patterns and open us to more interconnected ways of being.

Carl Jung tells the story of the rainmaker who, rather than performing rituals to end a drought, simply retreats into silence. After three days, the rains come—not from effort, but from alignment. He had returned himself to balance, and so the world followed. In the same way, forest therapy doesn’t "fix" us—it invites us into stillness, where something deeper can reorganize.

🌲 Forest Therapy as a Container for Trust

Letting go of what no longer serves us can be terrifying. Shattering, even. But we don’t need to do it alone.

ANFT-guided Forest Therapy walks offer a structured-yet-fluid experience—one grounded in relational trust, intuitive presence, and sensory engagement. ANFT certified forest therapy trails are intentionally designed to support liminality: they are places where people can feel safe to access liminal states.

We’ve seen again and again how participants, held by the forest and each other, find the courage to loosen their grip on old identities. This is a kind of community-supported pilgrimage—not unlike a spirit quest or sacred storytelling journey—where people find signs they are on the path, even in the dark.

🌬️ Cultivating a Liminal Attitude

Navigating liminality is both an inner and outer practice. It begins intellectually—understanding that we are not broken, but between. It deepens somatically—training ourselves to recognize the subtle body states that accompany liminal moments: increased intuition, sensitivity, awe, confusion, or deep calm.

In forest therapy, we tune into the cycles of nature—dawn and dusk, inhale and exhale, the falling of leaves and the waiting of seeds. These rhythms remind us that liminal space is not a mistake. It is sacred.

To develop what might be called a "liminal attitude" is to:

• Notice the thresholds in your life (even small ones).

• Pause instead of rushing to fix or label.

• Trust that your body and intuition carry wisdom.

• Engage in spiritual or contemplative practices that root you in the real.

• Let go of what no longer serves, with the support of nature and community.

🌎 Prayer, Intuition, and Earth Regeneration

The future will not be born through speed or cleverness. It will emerge from deep presence and reconnection with the sacred. Our silence, our prayers, our listening—these are not passive acts. They are how we return ourselves, and our world, to balance.

Prayer, especially in liminal space, is not always about asking. Sometimes it is about surrender. It is in this surrender—without certainty, without expectation—that intuition finds space to rise. And it is through intuition, cultivated slowly and quietly, that we begin to respond rather than react to the world’s needs.

When we gather for forest therapy, we don’t impose solutions. We don’t chase outcomes. We practice being with what is, and in that presence, something begins to heal.

🌱 Final Thoughts

We are living in liminal times. Disruption surrounds us—but so does possibility. Through certified Forest Therapy Trails, contemplative practice, and nature-based community, we are learning how to hold space for this transition—within ourselves, and in our culture.

Let us root in the universal truths shared across all traditions: the land is wise. Nature is cyclical. Healing is relational. These truths, accessible to all and owned by none, offer us a path forward. They are our bridge to tolerance, resilience, and regeneration.

If we do nothing else in these times, let it be this: return to the forest. Listen deeply. Allow the land and its cycles to hold you while everything else dissolves. Trust that you are not alone in the dark. You are in the fertile center of something new.

To learn more about healing-focused forest therapy trail development, visit www.somaticecotherapy.com. Let’s walk forward—together—into the in-between.