Winter Forest Bathing: Why the Forest Works in the Cold Too

Yes, forest bathing works in winter. A Hungarian research team walked the same participants through a deciduous forest for two hours in late spring and again in winter, and blood pressure fell after both walks; the paper is titled, plainly enough, Forest Bathing Always Makes Sense (Peterfalvi et al., 2021). A Polish study put sixty-two young adults in a winter city forest for fifteen minutes and found better mood, more vitality and more psychological restoration than in a matched urban setting (Bielinis et al., 2018). Cold does not switch the effect off.

I have been facilitating people in nature since 2019, and the winter sessions are the ones I look forward to. A Slovenian forest in January is quieter, barer and slower than the same forest in June. There is less to look at, and that turns out to help rather than hinder. What changes in winter is the logistics — how long people sit, how the circle is arranged, what you wear — not the practice itself.

What the winter research actually found

The broad evidence base for forest therapy points in one direction: slow, attentive time in a forest tends to move the body toward a calmer, parasympathetic state — lower cortisol, lower blood pressure, a steadier heart rate (Park et al., 2010; Qiu et al., 2022). The fair question is whether any of that depends on leaves, warmth and birdsong.

The Hungarian study is the most direct answer we have, and it deserves to be reported precisely. Blood pressure dropped in both seasons — that part held up year-round. The immune findings did not match across seasons: the researchers saw broad activation of natural killer cells and other immune subsets in the green season, and in winter a smaller, more balancing shift in a single inhibitory marker (Peterfalvi et al., 2021). So the cardiovascular benefit appears to be a year-round effect, while the immune picture looks seasonal. Anyone telling you winter walks boost your immune system exactly like summer ones is going further than this study does.

The psychological side is where winter holds up most cleanly. Fifteen minutes was enough in the Polish experiment — a short exposure, in a city forest, in the cold, and the forest group still came back measurably more restored than the urban group (Bielinis et al., 2018). These are small studies and the field still needs larger, longer trials, so I say what research suggests rather than what science proves. But what it suggests matches what participants tell me every winter. For the fuller picture across seasons, read what the research says about forest therapy.

What winter gives you that summer cannot

Silence, first. Snow absorbs sound, the birds are fewer, and the insects are gone. What is left becomes vivid: a branch shifting, meltwater under ice, the rustle of your own jacket, which on a January walk is often the loudest thing around. Participants often report that the quiet itself was the strongest part of a winter session, and several have said it was the first silence they had sat inside all year.

The senses also reorganise. Cold air on the face is information. So is the smell of wet bark, of conifer resin, of soil that has thawed for an afternoon. Winter strips a forest down to its structure — trunks, branches, the shape of the slope — and attention has fewer places to scatter to. Several people who found the sit spot invitation impossible in summer have managed it in February without noticing they were doing it.

And there is something honest about practising in the cold. It settles the idea that slowing down is a reward you get for good weather. It is available in November, in sleet, at four in the afternoon when the light is already going.

How a winter session actually runs

The arc is the same as any forest therapy walk: a gentle opening of the senses, a series of invitations with a short sharing circle after each, and a forest tea ceremony to close. If you have never been on one, what to expect at your first forest therapy session walks through it step by step. In winter I adapt the details rather than the essence. Invitations lean toward gentle movement instead of long stillness, sitting invitations get shorter, sharing circles are tighter, and we stand rather than sit for at least one of them. The hot tea at the end earns its place like at no other time of year.

We cover very little ground — usually under a kilometre in two to three hours — so clothing matters far more than fitness. Dress as if you were going to stand outside for two hours, not hike: thermal base layer, a warm mid layer, a windproof and waterproof shell, boots with grip and room for thick socks, a hat, and gloves you can still open a thermos with. Bring a sit pad or a folded piece of foam; cold ground takes the warmth out of you faster than cold air does. A thermos of your own is welcome even though I bring tea.

One boundary, stated plainly: forest therapy may support relaxation and wellbeing, but it is not a replacement for medical or psychological care, in winter or any other season. If you would like to walk a Slovenian forest under frost — in a country that is roughly sixty percent forest and unreasonably beautiful in the cold — you can see the current forest bathing experiences here.