Health Benefits of Nature & Forest Bathing
Olli Sovijärvi — Licensed Physician & Author / Co-Founder @ HOLOLIFE Center
Olli Sovijärvi is a Licensed General Practitioner at Helsinki Antioxidant Clinic and co-author of the Biohacker’s Handbook. He is one of the pioneers in holistic medicine in Finland and the only Finnish medical doctor with a psychologic-philosophical Integral Theory degree from John F. Kennedy University. Sovijärvi graduated 2006 as a licensed physician from University of Helsinki. He has pioneered health podcasts in Finland with Helsinki Paleo Podcast and Biohacker’s Podcast. Sovijärvi has also consulted many natural health brands and organizations.
Olli Sovijärvi explores the profound health benefits of nature and forest
We are nature. You are nature, I am nature. That is why it is so important to be in nature, to be part of nature. If you want to live longer, go to the forest, go to nature. If you want to feel better, go to the forest, go to nature.
Summary
- Spending time in the forest, even for short intervals, significantly lowers blood pressure, improves mood, enhances cognitive function, and strengthens the immune system. - Exposure to healthy soil and microbes, such as Mycobacterium vaccae, through barefoot walking or inhalation, can reduce anxiety and stress-related feelings. - Direct physical contact with the earth or using grounding mats helps neutralize free radicals, lowers inflammation, improves sleep quality, and normalizes cortisol levels. - Viewing nature images or listening to natural sounds like birds or waves can lower cortisol, reduce stress, and accelerate recovery from mental fatigue. - Incorporating nature indoors through air-purifying plants, green walls, and natural light exposure improves air quality and helps maintain healthy circadian rhythms.
Article
Health Benefits Of Nature & Forest Bathing: The Science Of Grounding & Stress Recovery
At Biohacker Summit 2017 Helsinki, Olli Sovijärvi Made A Case For Returning To The Living World
In a conference hall filled with bright screens, long sitting hours and the low-grade fatigue of modern indoor life, Olli Sovijärvi offered a remedy that was at once ancient and strikingly current: go outside.
Speaking at **Biohacker Summit 2017 Helsinki** on **Friday, 13 October 2017**, the Finnish physician and holistic medicine pioneer framed nature not as lifestyle decoration, but as biological necessity. His presentation, **Health Benefits of Nature & Forest Bathing**, argued that the human organism still belonged, in the deepest evolutionary sense, to forests, soil, sunlight and open air.
“**We are nature,**” Sovijärvi told the audience. It was a simple line, but it anchored the entire talk. Modern urban life, he suggested, had become an experiment in separation, with stress, inflammation and exhaustion as the price.
The Urban World As A Stressor
Sovijärvi’s argument began with a stark evolutionary contrast. Humans, he said, had spent **99.99% of their history in nature**, and only a sliver of time in urban environments. The body, in other words, was built for one world and increasingly forced to function in another.
That mismatch mattered. City living, artificial interiors and noise-heavy environments were presented not merely as annoyances, but as chronic stressors that shaped mood, sleep, blood pressure and inflammation. Sovijärvi drew on his own experience of living in central Helsinki before moving closer to the countryside, describing a shift that made him realise how persistently his environment had been keeping him on edge.
The thesis was clear: the nervous system noticed what the modern mind often ignored.
Forest Bathing As Measurable Medicine
The centrepiece of the presentation was **Shinrin-yoku**, the Japanese practice commonly known as forest bathing. Sovijärvi defined it with precision and warmth: “**Shinrin yoku means visiting the forest for relaxation and to improve health, or taking the forest in with all of your senses.**”
He cited a large Japanese review covering dozens of studies into the health effects of forest exposure. The results, as he presented them, were both immediate and cumulative.
“**Just ten minutes in the forest, your blood pressure begins to drop,**” he said. “**Spend two hours and you see dramatic changes for the positive in your immune system.**”
The appeal of the idea lay partly in its modesty. Nature did not demand heroics. A short walk among trees could begin lowering blood pressure and pulse rate. A longer stay could improve mood and sharpen attention. Extended time outdoors, he suggested, had the power to restore systems that modern life steadily wore down.
In Sovijärvi’s telling, the forest was not an escape from reality. It was a return to it.
Soil, Microbes And The Forgotten Intelligence Of Dirt
There was a moment in the talk when Sovijärvi turned to an unlikely subject: dirt. The room laughed, but the point was serious. Soil, he said, was alive, and humans remained intimately connected to it, whether through food, air or direct contact.
He referenced research on exposure to beneficial microbes, including **Mycobacterium vaccae**, which has been associated with reductions in anxiety-related feelings and stress. His advice was practical rather than theatrical. No one needed to eat soil by the spoonful. But walking barefoot on natural ground, breathing forest air and staying in contact with living environments could expose the body to microbial signals modern sterile life often excluded.
The implication was that wellness might not lie only in supplements and optimisation protocols, but in restoring contact with the ecological systems that once shaped immunity and mood by default.
Happiness, Cognition And The Quiet Repair Of Attention
Sovijärvi also explored a subtler effect of nature: the repair of attention itself. Looking at lakes, trees or open green landscapes, he said, calmed the mind and improved cognitive performance. He pointed to research showing that even viewing images of natural settings could accelerate recovery after acute mental stress, while chaotic urban scenes delayed it.
He distilled the emotional effect into one line that resonated beyond the data: “**The more connected people are to nature, the happier they are.**”
This was not romanticism in his account, but pattern recognition. In Finland, where lakes and forests remain close to everyday life, the summer cottage has long functioned as an unofficial recovery clinic. People work, exhaust themselves, then head towards water, trees and silence. The body understands the assignment before the intellect catches up.
Grounding And The Search For Electrical Calm
Perhaps the most contested and intriguing section of the presentation concerned **grounding**, sometimes called earthing. Sovijärvi described it as direct physical contact with the earth, whether by standing barefoot on grass, sand or soil, or by using grounding devices indoors.
“**Grounding lowers stress, lowers inflammation, improves your sleep, improves your energy, and helps manage pain,**” he said.
He discussed findings suggesting that grounding could help normalise cortisol rhythms and support recovery by allowing electron transfer from the earth, theoretically helping neutralise free radicals. Whether through five barefoot minutes in the morning rain or sleeping on grounding mats, Sovijärvi treated the practice as a tool for recalibrating a body pushed off balance.
Yet he was not absolutist. During the question-and-answer session, he acknowledged that too much of anything, even grounding, could become counterproductive. The body, as ever, required rhythm rather than obsession.
Sound, Light And Bringing Nature Indoors
One of the presentation’s most pragmatic turns came when Sovijärvi addressed those who could not simply move to the forest. If nature was medicine, how much of it could be imported indoors?
His answer was: more than one might think.
Natural soundscapes, he said, including birdsong, waves and forest ambience, could lower stress and reduce saliva cortisol. Nature imagery on screens, green walls in offices and air-purifying plants could all support recovery in small but meaningful ways. These were not substitutes for the real thing, but they were interventions against the total sterility of corporate interiors.
Then there was sunlight, which Sovijärvi spoke about with unusual fervour. “**Sunlight is very healing and epigenetic. It changes the makeup of our genes, turning on healing sequences and turning off those that make us sick.**”
In Finland, where dark months press heavily on circadian rhythms and mood, he stressed the importance of seeking bright light in the morning and shifting towards redder tones in the evening. Light, like landscape, was information for the body.
A Philosophy Of Health Rooted In Belonging
What made Sovijärvi’s presentation at **Biohacker Summit 2017 Helsinki** memorable was not merely the catalogue of benefits attached to forests, sunlight and soil. It was the underlying philosophy. Health, in his framework, was not achieved solely by mastering the body as a machine. It also depended on remembering that the body was part of a living world.
Exercise outside may recover faster than exercise in a gym. Sleep may deepen after nights in nature. Blood pressure may fall after a short forest walk. Stress may loosen its grip in the presence of birdsong, water, open sky and natural ground. Piece by piece, Sovijärvi assembled a case for nature not as indulgence, but as infrastructure for human wellbeing.
His closing message was characteristically direct: go into nature. Love yourself. Your nature.
For an audience immersed in the language of performance and optimisation, it landed as both a prescription and a warning. The future of health, Sovijärvi seemed to suggest, might depend less on escaping biology than on finally listening to it.
Part of Biohacker Summit 2017 Helsinki