Forest Bathing

The Angle

Almost every book in this category promises transformation. This one opens by telling you that you will stand in a wood, feel nothing at all, produce a mental shopping list, and feel faintly ridiculous.

Then it tells you to stay anyway.

“Almost everyone who tries forest bathing once and gives up left during the boring part.”

That honesty runs through the whole book. There is a chapter on when the forest is not the answer. There is a passage on the day the practice simply did not work and the author went home in a worse mood than he arrived. There is a full bibliography at the back, so a reader can check every claim.

Five Story Angles

1. The honest wellness book. A genre built on promises, and a book that begins with a confession. Quotable, contrarian, and true.
2. First book at seventy. Joubert practiced tai chi and qigong for decades, noticed something under trees near Lyon in 1990, and told nobody. He published his first book in 2023, in his seventies, having assumed his whole life that writing books was something other people did, elsewhere, with permission.
3. The name on the cover is a debt. Firmin was his godfather, who together with his wife looked after him as a small boy in Le Puy-en-Velay while his parents worked in the town’s lace industry. Writing under his name is a way of keeping him close.
4. Science, including the uncertainty. Lower cortisol, slower heart rate, immune-activity changes, reduced amygdala activity after a single hour among trees (Molecular Psychiatry, 2022). And a clear statement of what remains unproven.
5. A free app that collects nothing. Works entirely offline. No account, no sign-up, no tracking. Nothing the reader writes ever leaves their phone. In 2026, that is itself a story.

Book Facts

What Is New in the Second Edition

• A new opening chapter — the author’s childhood in Le Puy-en-Velay, and what he was actually given there.
• Five interludes — short first-person pieces between the chapters: a hundred-year-old oak in a Lyon public park; six lines from his tai chi teacher he has never improved upon; the day the practice failed; a cellar, a red light, and a barber; and why he began to write at seventy.
• “Thirty Days in the Forest” — a thirty-day path the reader can begin tomorrow with five minutes and a single tree.
• A full bibliography — twenty foundational references, so every claim can be checked.
• A chapter on the evidence, honestly — including what the research does not yet show.

Quotes for Publication

“The first twenty minutes are boring. Nobody tells you that.”

“I am not a doctor. I am a man who noticed something under some trees near Lyon, and spent the next thirty years finding out why.”

“Stay longer than you want to.”

“There is probably a tree within a mile of you, and it is probably older than you are.”

“Take your time. Nobody is in a hurry for you to become anything.”

What the Research Shows

The book reports the published literature and is explicit about its limits. It is a wellness book, not a medical text, and it says so on the copyright page.

• Cortisol. A 2019 systematic review and meta-analysis (Antonelli, Barbieri & Donelli, International Journal of Biometeorology) found measurable reductions in salivary cortisol after forest exposure.
• Cardiovascular. Park, Tsunetsugu, Kasetani, Kagawa & Miyazaki (2010) measured lower blood pressure and heart rate across field experiments in twenty-four Japanese forests.
• Immune activity. Qing Li, immunologist at the Nippon Medical School in Tokyo, documented increased natural killer cell activity following multi-day forest immersion.
• Brain. Sudimac, Sale & Kühn (2022), Molecular Psychiatry: amygdala activity decreased after a one-hour walk in nature; a comparable urban walk showed no such effect.

The book makes no therapeutic claim, promises no cure, and states plainly that forest therapy is a complementary wellness practice, not a medical treatment.

The Companion App

The book offers two journals, and the reader chooses.

One is digital. A free companion app, free forever, built for readers of the book.

• Works entirely offline
• No account, no sign-up, no tracking
• Nothing the reader writes ever leaves their phone
• Text and voice entries; the thirty-day path; seasonal prompts
• Free forever, for every reader

The other is paper. Fourteen pages bound into the book itself, for anyone who would rather use a pen. It is a book, and a book can be written in.

HomeToday’s invitation, and where you left off.

JournalWritten and voice entries. Nothing leaves the phone.

SeasonsPrompts that change with the year.

About the Author

Firmin Joubert

Author

Firmin Joubert writes about quiet things: breath, attention, and what a forest does to a person who stays in it long enough.

He came to shinrin-yoku sideways. For years he practiced tai chi chuan and qigong — patient disciplines, learned slowly, one small correction at a time. Then, at an early-morning qigong retreat held among trees near Lyon in 1990, something settled in him that decades of indoor practice had never produced. He went looking for an explanation, found the Japanese research, and told nobody for thirty years.

He published his first book in 2023, having assumed his whole life that writing books was something other people did, elsewhere, with permission.

Firmin Joubert is a pen name, and a debt. Firmin was his godfather, who together with his wife looked after him as a boy in Le Puy-en-Velay, among the old volcanoes of central France, while his parents worked in the town’s lace industry. He died many years ago. Writing under his name is a way of keeping him close.

The author lives in the Drôme, in southeastern France, among orchards and oaks.

Images for Press Use

Free to reproduce in connection with coverage of the book. Credit: Firmin Joubert.

Front cover — JPG, 1800 × 2700 px (300 dpi, print-ready) Back cover — JPG, 1800 × 2700 px (300 dpi) Author photograph — JPG