Shinrin-yoku – Forest Therapy @ Lodha Park

At Lodha Park, healthy living is a way of life. Our residents will enjoy proximity to nature and reap enormous benefits from the wide variety of gardens and greens that Lodha Park has to offer. With separate organic gardens for herbs, spices and vegetables, a fruit orchard and a tea pavilion, you can enjoy nature’s bounty to its fullest. Lodha Park’s tea pavilion will offer residents a unique experience in the city, where they can enjoy an afternoon brew with a charming view of the gardens. In this edition, our guest author Snigdha Manchanda, founder of the popular brand Tea Trunk, shares her delightful experiences of a tea garden. We hope you enjoy it!

Author’s account

Nature is highly therapeutic and being surrounded by nature can make us feel great. However, nature is not just a feel-good factor. There are scientific truths and ancient wisdom supporting how living in the midst of nature improves our well- being. A visit to a tea garden is akin to shinrin-yoku, the Japanese practice of forest bathing. This ritual promotes consciously spending time in a natural environment, surrounded by nature’s glory, in its full form. By doing so, it has a therapeutic effect on our overall well-being. It is something that one must experience to fully understand it’s magic. This practice was developed in Japan during the 1980s and has become a cornerstone of preventive health care and healing in Japanese medicine ever since.

I remember the first time when I had visited an organic tea estate in Assam. I could see rolling tea plantations everywhere. The large expanse of green and the sense of space was overwhelming. There was an instant feeling of calmness. I realised that when we are in the mountains we speak softly, our entire being and tone of voice is more relaxed and grounded. If you have never been in a tea garden or experienced forest bathing, I urge you to experience it for yourself. Living in the city, finding an oasis of green can be a blessing! So, when I first heard of the tea pavilion at Lodha Park, I pictured what a beautiful setting it would make for a forest bathing ritual. The pavilion is full of nature’s bounty and my favourite part is the tea garden, where you can find tea bushes of the Camellia Sinensis plant.

After soaking in nature on my Assam trip, I turned my attention to their organic produce. It was on this visit to Deha Tea garden in Upper Assam, that for the first time I saw all the hard work put in by the farmers to ensure that the produce is organic. If you are always feeling well, there would be no need to take medicines, and that is the founding principle of Vrikshaayurveda (Ayurveda for plants). The tea bush can be made healthy right from its birth and thus precludes the no need to use any medicines/pesticides or insecticides that end up polluting the tea.

They nurture the tea saplings and tea bushes to maintain a healthy crop, and even if there is an attack of insects or pests, the kind of pesticides that they use are not poisonous chemicals. I was surprised to see that the pesticide chamber was a big well of cow urine, cow dung, neem leaves, and different kinds of herbs such as stevia and holy basil. A mixture of the most unusual things I could ever imagine work as pesticides. These are processed through a bio-gas plant and then sprayed through the crops. Gaining first hand insight into the efforts of making an organic product made me feel proud of the teas that I support and consume. When the organic farm at Lodha Park comes alive, I hope you get to experience this too. At Tea Trunk, I work directly with farmers to source our teas and craft them into unique blends. All our teas are 100% natural, making it both healthy and flavourful. Supporting organic, being in tune with nature and living with mindfulness is the kind of lifestyle that I have chosen for myself and encourage you to try for yourself in your beautiful new home at Lodha Park.

Author’s account

About the author

Snigdha Manchanda