Human and planetary wellbeing are deeply interconnected. This is immediately apparent in the most basic conditions of human life: we breathe the air, drink the water, eat food grown in soil, and depend on healthy ecosystems for our survival. The health of the natural systems around us therefore matters directly to our physical and mental wellbeing.

But this understanding goes much deeper than the recognition that humans depend on nature for clean air, water and food. For many cultures and traditions, the relationship between human wellbeing and the natural world has long been embodied in practices of health and wellbeing.

Yoga, for example, offers an understanding of the body as part of a larger living system, while practices such as Danza Azteca, shinrin-yoku (forest bathing), and other Indigenous and culturally rooted traditions recognize connection—to land, nature, community, body and spirit—as integral to wellbeing.

These traditions offer important insights for contemporary planetary health. They remind us that wellbeing is not simply an individual state to be achieved through personal choices or consumption. It can be understood as a relational and collective experience, shaped by our connections with one another and with the living world.

Green Collective Wellbeing brings these longstanding ways of understanding wellbeing into conversation with contemporary science, medicine, public health, planetary health and the arts. It asks what we can learn when different knowledge systems meet—and how these insights can be translated into meaningful experiences and actions in our communities.

The project is particularly interested in how nature connection, culturally rooted practices, creativity and community can support mental wellbeing while also nurturing a deeper relationship with the planet.

At a time of climate change, biodiversity loss, social fragmentation and growing concerns about mental health, this relationship has never been more important.

What if caring for ourselves and caring for the Earth could become part of the same practice?

This project is described fully in a paper by Health Together‘s Founder and Lead, Dr Farah Shroff, and collaborator at Harvard University, Dr Lumas Helaire:

Green Healthcare – Collective Wellbeing for People and Planet

Here is a video of Dr Shroff and Dr Helaire, presenting the project:

https://familypractice.ubc.ca/september-2024-green-healthcare-collective-wellbeing-for-people-and-planet/

About a year ago, our team, led by Dr. Shroff, formed a Council of Healer and Wellbeing Facilitators, bringing together knowledgeable practitioners to meet together and guide this work. Since then, Dr. Shroff has conducted Shinrin-yoku interviews in Japan which are being analyzed for data collection. With the help of members who are amazing videographers and poets, we have edited and produced five videos as well as crafted thought-provoking poems.

Behind the scenes, the team has been building a scholarly manuscript. We have an outline in place, and this September, we’ll conduct focus groups with leaders of Japan’s environmental movement to gain more insight. Next, we will be working on yoga-based data collection, while continuing our search for Danza Azteca practitioners.

To learn more about the project, follow along on our social media channels, where we will be sharing evidence-based insights regarding GreenCoWell in accessible, bite-sized form!

You can find our social media channels here: https://linktr.ee/MIHCan

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From Research to Community: GreenCoWell in Action

Green Collective Wellbeing is not only an idea or a research framework—it is already being lived.

On the West Coast, the lands of the Coast Salish Nations aka Vancouver, we have begun translating the GreenCoWell approach into joyful, accessible experiences that bring people together outdoors. We have taught yoga in nature and introduced participants to Shinrin-yoku (forest bathing), creating opportunities to move, breathe, slow down, notice, connect and simply be together in the living world. These activities put into practice GreenCoWell’s central idea of re-embodiment: moving beyond intellectually knowing that humans and nature are interconnected to actually experiencing that connection through the body.

And people have responded.

Participants told us they particularly valued the social connections, the chance to meet and spend time with others in a beautiful outdoor setting, and the opportunity to step away from the pressures of everyday life. One participant described enjoying “the opportunity to slow down, take a break from my daily life, and relax.” Others spoke about the pleasure of being outdoors, sharing an experience with others, and having the space to pause and reconnect.

These responses point to something larger than relaxation. At a time when climate change can generate anxiety, grief and uncertainty, creating spaces for connection, beauty, movement and community can support mental wellbeing while also helping people experience themselves as part of the natural world. GreenCoWell asks whether these experiences can help us move from knowing that we depend on nature toward feeling, embodying and ultimately caring for that relationship.

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Nature, movement, creativity and connection

Our community work brings together practices that are often separated in health programming: movement, nature immersion, creativity, reflection and social connection.

Yoga outdoors offers an opportunity to experience breath and movement within a larger landscape. Shinrin-yoku invites participants to slow their pace, engage their senses and develop a more attentive relationship with the forest. Together, these practices create a different kind of health experience—one that is embodied, social and ecological at the same time.

The response from participants has reinforced the importance of this approach. People appreciated having permission to pause, relax and step outside their usual routines, while also finding connection with others. In this sense, the program is both gentle and ambitious: a forest walk, a yoga practice or a shared moment of quiet can become an entry point into much larger questions about wellbeing, belonging and our relationship with the Earth.

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Telling the story through the arts

GreenCoWell is also unfolding through film, visual art, graphics and poetry.

We are developing creative works that capture the sensory and emotional dimensions of the project—what it feels like to move among trees, to practice yoga outdoors, to experience stillness, to connect with others, and to consider our place within the living world.

These creative works are not simply promotional materials or illustrations of the research. They are another way of doing the research. The GreenCoWell project recognizes that knowledge about wellbeing has often been transmitted through movement, story, song, image, ritual and embodied experience rather than only through academic writing. Our films, poems and visual work allow people to encounter the ideas of interconnectedness rather than simply read about them.

The emerging arts-based work will bring together poetry, storytelling, film, dance and other creative forms, making the project accessible to audiences far beyond academia.

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Building a community of practice

We are also beginning to build a network of forest guides and nature-based wellbeing practitioners across North America, with the longer-term goal of creating a North American hub for forest-based collective wellbeing.

This growing community creates an exciting bridge between research and practice. Forest guides bring deep experiential knowledge of place and nature connection; health professionals bring perspectives on wellbeing and health promotion; researchers contribute evidence and critical inquiry; and artists help us communicate and experience ideas in new ways.

The vision is not to create a single standardized program. GreenCoWell respects the distinct cultural histories and knowledge systems from which practices such as yoga, Shinrin-yoku, Danza Azteca and other forms of embodied wellbeing emerge. Instead, we are creating a space for exchange, learning and collaboration across cultures and disciplines, while keeping questions of cultural specificity, power, appropriation and knowledge sovereignty firmly in view.

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A living experiment in wellbeing

What has emerged so far is a vibrant community experiment: people moving together, spending time in forests, slowing down, laughing, reflecting, creating, making connections and discovering new ways of relating to the natural world.

The work is both playful and purposeful.

It begins with something as immediate as putting our feet on the ground, breathing fresh air, moving our bodies or sitting quietly among trees. From there, it opens into larger possibilities: better mental wellbeing, stronger communities, renewed cultural connection, and a deeper sense of responsibility for the living world.

This is Green Collective Wellbeing in action—research that can be felt, creativity that can be experienced, and wellbeing that reaches beyond the individual to connect people and planet.