🌙 Tapping into the Imaginal: Forest Therapy as a Portal to Insight and Meaning

I did a year of Jungian dream work and learned how to lean into my dreams for guidance. That practice taught me that our unconscious has so much to share if we pause long enough to listen. Recently, I read Rubin Naiman’s book Healing Night and found myself pondering the benefits of letting the left brain rest — giving our thinking mind space to breathe.

So much of modern life rewards logic, productivity, and rational analysis. These are valuable, yes — but they can lead to what psychologists call directed attention fatigue. We burn out from constant decision-making, notifications, and mental “to-do lists.” The imaginal — that rich, liminal space between waking and dreaming — offers us a way back to wholeness.

🧠 Why the Imaginal Matters

We tend to honor only the aspects of life our culture and ego deem relevant: measurable outcomes, quantifiable productivity, practical goals. But there is a deeper, quieter current running beneath our daily routines. The imaginal helps us access that current — the realm where metaphor, symbolism, intuition, and synchronicity dwell.

Neuroscience shows that when we quiet our analytical left brain, the right hemisphere comes online — supporting creativity, insight, and integration. The imaginal invites us to listen to our subconscious, the land, and the whispers of our own spirit.

🌊 My Esalen Weekends: Trusting Intuition

I recently spent two powerful weekends at Esalen studying intuition with Bill Donius. We practiced “right-brain writing,” giving space for insight to flow unfiltered. Combining those weekends with my forest therapy practice has left me feeling more connected to my own unique way of knowing.

As a myofascial therapist, it has been fascinating to feel in my own body how intuition communicates. I’ve noticed how things play out when I honor that quiet nudge and allow myself to be guided — and, equally, how life feels off-kilter when I override or ignore those messages. It has deepened my respect for the wisdom of the body and the land.

🌲 Forest Therapy as a Gateway

Forest therapy (or Shinrin-Yoku) is one of the most direct ways I know to enter this imaginal space. A guided walk often includes invitations such as:

• “Wander out and find something in nature that reminds you of how you see yourself.”

• “Notice what calls your attention — a leaf, a stone, a bird — and spend time with it. What message might it have for you?”

In nature journaling, I often encourage participants to find a “treasure” in nature, sketch it, and reflect using prompts like:

• I notice…

• I wonder…

• It reminds me of…

These practices allow us to soften our grip on the rational mind and enter a flow state — where meaning emerges without forcing it.

🌀 The Art of Letting the Mind Meander

Getting out of the left brain takes time, space, and permission to wonder. Most of us are locked into our heads, spinning through the same 65,000 thoughts a day — the majority of them repetitive. When we step away from constant analysis, we open to serendipity, synchronicity, and insight.

One of my favorite quotes is:

“Success is knowing when to stop and play.”

Play — whether through wandering, drawing, or simply noticing the sway of the trees — is not frivolous. It is a flow state where we access our inner knowing and remember that life is more than a checklist.

🔑 Multiple Ways of Knowing

We often privilege thinking over other ways of knowing: sensing, feeling, intuiting. Forest therapy and nature journaling help rebalance this. By observing and noticing, we learn to trust these other faculties. Over time, participants report moments of clarity or symbolic resonance — what Carl Jung might call synchronicities.

🌌 Living a More Imaginal Life

How awake at the wheel are we most of the time? Are we simply repeating patterns, or are we open to wonder and meaning? Life becomes significantly richer when we engage the imaginal. Forest therapy can be a portal to finding meaning in everyday life — a chance to slow down, notice, and participate in a living dialogue with the natural world.

So, the next time you find yourself in a favorite forest or meadow, pause. Wander. Listen. Draw or write. Let your left brain rest and allow the imaginal to rise. You may just discover that the world — and your own heart — has been speaking to you all along.