Co-Guiding Experience

I had my first co-guiding experience during my training as a forest therapy guide training with ANFT. Though it was just the 3 of us due to some special reason, it turned out to be a great experience co-guiding with 2 of my course mates. I volunteered to do the Hospitality and Introduction section and also to do one of the partnership invitations. To be honest, I felt rather nervous doing this and I really cannot imagine if we were to do all the standard procedures all by ourselves.

For my part, I think my fellow course mates thought that I did pretty well with the Hospitality. I explained briefly the history of Forest Bathing which started in Japan in the 1980s as a national health movement to encourage people to move out of their homes into the parks. I also explained some technical terms that we would be using during the walk so that participants would understand the instructions later. However, I forgot to give credit to ANFT for the methodology and also to allow participants to have a chance to share a little.

I also did the partnership invitation focusing on the sense of smell. I wanted participants to take some times to use their sense of smell to explore their surrounding and to see what they would notice. The simple invitation turned out to be well received by the participants.

On a whole, it’s a pretty refreshing experience being a guide here and opening doors for the participants to go into the various containers in the liminal space. My course mate ended with a very well thought of tea ceremony for all of us and the two pictures I put here are from her. She concluded our sharing by bundling the posey and placed them in the forest.

Lovely!

Ronneth

27 July 2024