JJ IN DA HOUSE: Forest Bathing Experience @ The Habitat Penang Hill

Wednesday, August 19, 2020

Forest Bathing Experience @ The Habitat Penang Hill

We all know that we have been busy with life, be it work hard to earn a living, taking care of children, tired of the same daily routine or taking in all the stress from work as we live in this stressful city.

Somehow we all need a way to destress, to relax and rejuvenate, to set free our mind and soul and give them a break sometimes. In short term destress moment, people choose to go for travel, go for drinking or some just choose to ignore it.
However, some people go for relaxation classes like yoga, meditation or many other methods that can help us destress.

The Habitat understand how stressful city life can be and with the idea of going back to nature, they have recently launched a new program called Forest Bathing Experience. Forest Bathing Experience was introduced as a therapeutic session that helps you to calm your mind and senses by surrounding yourself in the forest and will be guided through the session to experience the nature through 5 senses.

What is Forest Bathing?

Forest Bathing meditation was first introduced in Japan as Shinrin-yoku. Shirrin refers to "forest" and yoku refers to "bath" which Shirrin-yoku means bathing in the forest atmosphere and taking in the nature through our senses.

Forest bathing is one of the nature therapy that can help us improve our mental and physical health by exposing and blend into the forest throughout the treatment.

There are plenty of benefits of doing forest bathing that can help improve our health, you can read more at

https://time.com/5259602/japanese-forest-bathing/

So in The Habitat, we were first introduced to this programme similar to Forest Bathing in Japan only except the bathing session.
Throughout the session we will be guided to experience and blend into the nature through our body's 5 senses: sight, hearing, taste, smell and touch.

The session includes a Penang Hill fast lane train ticket so you save your time from queuing at the train station.
(Or it will cost you RM40 for Malaysian and RM80 for non-Malaysian)

Even now the entrance to The Habitat is offering at half price for Malaysians so you basically saved a lot by participating in this Forest Bathing Experience by The Habitat when you pay only RM88(promo price until 31 August)

As you will be guided throughout the session, first we all started with a brief by Low, the Naturalist at The Habitat.

Low was really passionate in his job and ready to share his experience with all the visitors.

So he shared with us the benefits of Forest Bathing Experience and how it can help to improve our lifestyle and health within a short period of time through part of meditation, breathing exercise and many more.

We were given a magnifying glass to begin our exploration. "Sight"

There were so many details that we are unable to see with our bare eyes. With the help of magnifying glass, we are able to see these tiny details and realise how beautiful ants can be, or the beauty of leaves from certain plants.

Beautiful hoya blooming, lucky for us to see that!

Through magnifying glass, I was lucky to saw a bee harvesting honey from the flower(probably?)

Tiny details from moss

Stood at one of top hills in Penang and looking at the beauty of nature. We were taught with breathing method to relax of mind and senses as we do our "Sight" experience.

Move on to "Touch" as we feel the texture on the leaves, the trees through our fingers, or through hugs. We are able to experience how special the forest could be as there are so many different kind of texture could be in a single plant or how some plants react to human touch such as one of the plant which the seedpod actually explode after you press it.

Hug a tree, it was a belief that trees can help us absorb the bad energy and channel in some positive energy back to our body.

There was a meditation session which we all were given a yoga mat and we were suppose to lay down on the floor, listen to the guide as we breathe through the method guided.

The experience we get from this breathing exercise was simply amazing, we can actually find our peace through this exercise and some participants even fell asleep during the session as it was too relaxing.

Through "Smell" session, The Habitat lit some essential oils and we meditate for a while in a rest area surrounded by the forest. As we relax we can hear the sound of nature where we can hear birds chirping and also sounds that came from bugs especially Cicada.

During this session we were also given a few types of herbs and we were guessing what it was through smelling it and our eyes shut throughout the session.
Interesting and fun.

The actual view on The Habitat

Beauty of nature, you can spotted numerous flowers blooming in this sanctuary.

Look up!
You might just be able to capture a new picture for your desktop screen wallpaper.

Beautiful spider spotted!

Canopy Walk in The Habitat

There was this giant ant that I spotted.
Was told it could be painful if bitten.

How many bugs do you see in this picture?
Can you count?

Barefoot walking was also one of the session that brings us closer to the nature.
We walked around the park and feel the temperature with our foot and also how comfortable it was stepping on moss at certain areas.

The last session was "Taste"

We were served with water harvested from the forest as well as some fruits, nuts and teas.
We also shared our experience before we finish our Forest Bathing Experience. Through this session everybody felt far more relaxed and happier after attending the Forest Bathing session.