There are some scientific studies that make you pause—not because the findings are entirely surprising, but because they put numbers and measurements around something you have felt in your bones for years.
A recently published study from Taiwan did exactly that for me. The study, A Comprehensive Evaluation of the Health Benefits of Forest Therapy for Cancer Survivors, looked at whether a guided forest therapy experience could help cancer survivors with some of the emotional and physiological burdens that can remain long after, and sometimes during, cancer treatment.
The research was conducted in Taiwan's Fushan Botanical Garden, in a submontane forest setting, and involved a two-hour guided forest therapy program. And as I read it, I kept thinking: Of course. Not because the science isn't important—it absolutely is—but because I have visited Taiwan's forests. I know something of what it feels like to wander beneath the cooling shade of that canopy.
Taiwan is an extraordinary place to experience a forest. The island is remarkably forested, with forests covering more than 60 percent of its land area. The researchers point out that Taiwan has approximately 2.197 million hectares of forest, making it a particularly compelling setting for studying the relationship between humans and the natural world.
I've had the privilege of spending time in those forests, and when I read about the participants in this study walking through Fushan, my imagination immediately went there. I remember the heat and humidity in the air. The layers of green. The sounds coming from somewhere beyond the trail. The feeling that the forest isn't simply scenery surrounding you—it is an enormous, complicated, living presence. And then there are the gregarious Formosan rock macaques I watched in Kaohsiung.
Just observing those frisky creatures roam and play can change your entire mood. There is something wonderfully disarming about seeing a monkey completely absorbed in being a monkey. They climb, forage, chase one another, investigate, squabble, and carry on with the business of living. You stop thinking about whatever was occupying your mind five minutes earlier. You watch. You smile. You become curious. For a moment, you are simply there.
Perhaps that is one of the quiet gifts of a forest: it gives us something else to pay attention to.
The Taiwan study involved 40 cancer survivors, with 38 completing the program. The participants took part in a structured two-hour forest therapy experience that included activities such as guided meditation, listening exercises, stretching, walking meditation, sensory exploration, connecting with a particular tree, creating an earth mandala, and sharing their experiences.
The researchers measured both psychological and physiological responses. And the results were striking. After the forest therapy experience, participants showed significant improvements in overall mood disturbance, anxiety, and depression. Their salivary cortisol levels—a physiological marker associated with stress—also decreased substantially.
The researchers reported large effect sizes across these measures. The study found that overall mood disturbance scores improved from 4.0 before the intervention to −8.0 afterward. Anxiety scores decreased from 5.0 to 3.5, depression scores from 5.5 to 4.0, and salivary cortisol from 1.07 to 0.42 µg/dL. Those numbers matter.
But for me, the most meaningful part is what those numbers represent. A person entered the forest carrying something. For two hours, they were invited to slow down, notice, listen, move, breathe, touch, observe, and reconnect. And when they came out, something had shifted.
Like many people, I've had friends who have survived cancer. I've watched people I care about navigate diagnoses, treatments, uncertainty, recovery, follow-up appointments, and the strange emotional landscape that exists after the immediate crisis has passed.
Survival is a wonderful word. But it doesn't necessarily mean that everything suddenly becomes easy. Cancer can leave emotional echoes. Fear can linger. Anxiety can become a companion. Fatigue, uncertainty, grief, and the awareness of mortality can remain long after treatment ends.
That is one reason I find this research so compelling. The researchers weren't suggesting that walking through a forest cures cancer. They weren't proposing forest therapy as a replacement for medical treatment. Rather, they were investigating it as a complementary approach—something that might support emotional well-being and reduce physiological stress alongside conventional care.
The authors themselves describe the findings as preliminary evidence, and they acknowledge that the study's single-arm, pre–post design means more research is needed. That distinction is important. Forest therapy isn't magic or make believe. But perhaps we have sometimes underestimated what supportive medicine can mean.
One of the things I love about forest therapy is that it isn't about getting to the destination in record speed. Forest therapy asks something different of us. It asks us to slow down. To listen. To notice texture of the wild world beneath our fingertips. To pay attention to birdsong rather than trying to identify every bird. To watch light move through leaves. To notice the smell of damp earth. To feel the ground beneath our feet. To sit on a big rock without needing to accomplish anything.
The Taiwan study's program included exercises specifically designed to create this kind of sensory and emotional engagement with the forest. There is no summit to reach. No mileage goal. No personal record. No need to prove anything. The forest doesn't care how fast you walk. It doesn't care whether you are strong today. It doesn't care whether your hair (or no hair) looks good. It doesn't care whether you've had a productive week. It simply gives you permission to be there.
And perhaps that is particularly meaningful for someone whose body has spent months being measured, scanned, tested, treated, poked, prodded, and monitored. For a little while, the body gets to simply be.
There is another, more personal reason this study stayed with me. Like many people, I’ve had best friends who didn't survive cancer. And when I think about them, the research takes on a different emotional weight. I find myself thinking: How I wish I could take them on a forest therapy walk today.
Not to promise them a cure. Not to tell them that nature would somehow make everything okay. Just to give them two quiet hours. Two hours without an appointment.
Two hours without a scan. Two hours without a biopsy. Two hours without talking about what comes next. Two hours of just settling in beneath a cluster of trees.
I wish I could walk beside them slowly and say, Look at that. I wish I could sit with them beside a river and listen to the forest together. I wish I could watch a Formosan rock macaque suddenly scamper through the branches and see a little flash of delight cross their face. I wish I could share the absurdity of watching monkeys being monkeys. I wish we could breathe deeply together. And maybe, for a little while, simply be alive.
There is something heartbreaking about knowing that sometimes we discover the value of an experience just after someone we love can no longer have it. But perhaps there is another way to hold that feeling. We can carry them with us. We can walk the forest for them. We can remember them when the sunlight comes through the canopy. And we can invite someone else to walk the forest with us.
One of my favorite ideas in forest therapy is that we don't enter the forest looking for a particular outcome. We don't demand that it make us happier. We don't expect it to lower our blood pressure. We simply show up.
The Taiwan researchers found measurable changes after only a two-hour guided experience, including improvements in mood, anxiety, depression, and cortisol. But the forest itself doesn't know anything about those measurements. A tree isn't thinking about cortisol. A macaque isn't wondering whether its antics are improving someone's POMS score. The forest is simply being a forest.
And maybe that is precisely why it can be so powerful. We spend so much of our lives measuring ourselves—our productivity, our accomplishments, our health, our age, our weight, our success, our failures. The forest asks none of that. It invites us into a different rhythm. A slower rhythm. A more ancient rhythm. A rhythm in which noticing a flower petal unfurling can be enough.
The beautiful thing about this research is that we don't all need to travel to Taiwan to experience the underlying principle. Of course, I would happily go back. I'd happily wander those forests again, listening to the sounds around me and keeping an eye out for those mischievous Old world monkeys.
But forest therapy can begin much closer to home. A city park. An oak grove. A trail along a creek. A quiet patch of meadow. A garden. Even a single tree. The point isn't to recreate Fushan Botanical Garden. The point is to change the way we enter the natural world. Instead of passing through the landscape, we become present within it. Instead of asking, How far did I walk?, we might ask, What did I notice? Instead of trying to get somewhere, we allow ourselves to arrive.
I think this is where the science and the personal experience meet. We should be careful about making claims that the research doesn't support. This was a relatively small, single-arm study, and the authors appropriately describe their findings as preliminary. More research is needed to understand how forest therapy might work, for whom, and over what period of time.
But "not a cure" doesn't mean "not valuable.” A forest walk can be a gift. A chance to breathe. A chance to feel less alone. A chance to reconnect with the body after the body has become a source of worry. A chance to remember that the world is still full of ordinary, astonishing things. A squirrel calling from somewhere unseen. Sunlight moving across moss. The smell of cedar. Wind moving through dry chaparral. A Cooper's hawk suddenly racing through the branches. A tree that was growing long before we arrived and will continue growing after we leave.
These things don't erase cancer. They don't erase grief. They don't guarantee tomorrow. But they can bring us back to this moment. And sometimes, this moment is what we have.
The study from Taiwan gives us another piece of scientific evidence for something forest lovers have intuitively understood for a very long time: being in nature can change the way we feel. For cancer survivors, that possibility deserves serious attention. Not as an alternative to medicine, but alongside it. Not as some sort of miracle, but as a form of care. And not only for people with cancer. For anyone carrying stress, grief, uncertainty, exhaustion, or simply the accumulated noise of modern life, this invitation is remarkably simple.
Go outside. Slow down. Walk without rushing. Listen. Look closely. Let the forest be more than a backdrop. Let it be a place where, for a little while, you don't have to accomplish anything. Linger without judgment.
As I think back to Taiwan, I can almost feel those forests again. I can imagine wandering beneath the trees, hearing the forest come alive around me, and then suddenly noticing those monkeys moving through the landscape—playing, exploring, completely unconcerned with the problems we humans carry around in our heads.
And I can imagine how impossible it would be not to smile. Maybe that is where forest therapy begins. Not with a diagnosis. Not with a prescription. Not even with a scientific measurement. Maybe it begins with simply looking up. And noticing that we are still alive.
About the research: Wei, R.-S., Chu, Y.-S., Hong, M.-Y., Li, M.-Y., Fan, S.-W., Tung, G.-S., & Hsu, C.-H. (2026). A comprehensive evaluation of the health benefits of forest therapy for cancer survivors. Environmental Health and Preventive Medicine, 31. The study is open access. Read the full study on J-STAGE
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