• Korean Journal of Environment and Ecology
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• v.32 no.6
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• pp.658-666
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• 2018

The purpose of this study is to verify the effects of yoga and meditation-focused forest healing programs on profiles of mood states and stress reactions of adults. We tested 17 adults who agreed to participate in the experiments that were conducted for 2 nights and 3 days between September 8 to 10, 2017 in the healing forest located at Hongcheon-gun, Gangwon-do. The test used the simplified version of the inventory for the profile of mood states (K-POMS-B: Korean version of Profile of Mood States-Brief) and the stress response inventory as the measuring tools. For data analysis, we examined the differences in the profile of mood states and stress response of subjects before and after participation in the program through the paired T-tests with the SPSS 24.0 program. The analysis of the impact of the yoga and meditation-focused forest healing program on the profile of mood states of the test subjects showed the statistically significant reduction of the total score of the profile of mood states. Although the vigor among sub-level inventories increased, it was not statistically significant. But the tension, depression, anger, fatigue, and confusion showed a statistically significant reduction. The analysis of the impact of the yoga and meditation-focused forest healing program on the stress response of the test subjects showed a statistically significant reduction. Among sub-level inventories, the tension, somatization, anger, depression, fatigue, and frustration showed a statistically significant reduction, but the aggressiveness did not. It is expected that the results of this study can be utilized in the future as reference data for clarifying the effects of yoga and meditation-focused forest healing programs.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Landscape Architecture
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• v.51 no.3
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• pp.95-106
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• 2023

Korean healing research has developed over the past 20 years along with the growing social interest in healing. The field of healing research is diverse and includes legislated natural-based healing. In this study, abstracts of 2,202 academic journals, master's, and doctoral dissertations published in KCI and RISS were collected and analyzed. As for the research method, LDA topic modeling used to classify research topics, and time-series publication trends were examined. As a result of the study, it identified that the topic of Korean healing research was connected with 5 types and 4 mediators. The five were "Healing Tourism," "Mind and Art Healing," "Forest Therapy," "Healing Space," and "Youth Restoration and Healing," and the four mediators were "Forest," "Nature," "Culture", and "Education". In addition, only legalized healing studies extracted from Korean healing research and the topics were analyzed. As a result, legalized healing research classified into four. The four types were "Healing Spatial Environment Plan", "Healing Therapy Experiment", "Agricultural Education Experiential Healing", and "Healing Tourism Factor". Forest Therapy, which has the largest amount of research in legalized healing, Agro Healing and Garden Healing which operate similar programs through plants, and Marine Healing using marine resources also analyzed. As a result, topics that show the unique characteristics of individual healing studies and topics that are considered universal in all healing studies derived. This study is significant in that it identified the overall trend of research on Korean healing facilities and programs by utilizing LDA topic modeling.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.22 no.6
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• pp.386-399
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• 2022

The purpose of this study is to identify how education and activities of urban forest healing programs affect emotional rest (healing recovery environment awareness, restoration of attention, and leisure life satisfaction). To this end, 38 people were divided into experimental groups (forest healing program education and practice), and control groups (non-program participation). As a result of the study, in the case of the experimental group, emotional rest factors such as healing recovery environment perception, attention recovery, and satisfaction with leisure activities after the program were statistically significantly improved, and in the case of the control group, there was no change in emotional rest after the program. In addition, there were differences between groups in both pre and post regarding the difference in emotional rest between the participant groups, and the difference in emotional rest afterwards was much larger than the pre-difference. In conclusion, people who receive regular education on forest healing and have done actual forest healing activities experience higher emotional rest than those who do not. This suggests that continuous motivation and regular practice can raise awareness of the healing recovery environment, promote attention recovery, and have a positive effect on leisure life through appropriate programs rather than simply taking a walk.

• Child Health Nursing Research
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.300-311
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• 2017

Purpose: There are many forest and outdoor programs being offered but systematic reviews of effects are lacking. This study was done to identify content, format, and strategies of forest therapy programs for elementary school students. Methods: Literature search using keywords in English and Korean was performed using 6 electronic databases in December 2016. Search participants were elementary school students and interventions conducted in the forest. Seventeen forest therapy studies were selected for evaluation. Risk of Bias Assessment tool for non-randomized study was used for quality assessment. Results: All studies were quasi-experimental designs. Forest therapy programs included various activities in forests such as experience of five senses, meditation in the forest, walking in the forest, ecological play, observation of animals and insects. All studies used psychosocial health variables and forest healing programs had positive effects on sociality, depression, anxiety, self-esteem, stress, aggression, anger, and school adjustment. Limitations of these studies were vague reporting of the study, lack of ethical review and rigorous research designs. Conclusion: Forest therapy for elementary school child can be an effective way to improve psychosocial health. Future studies with rigorous study designs are needed to assess long-term effects of forest therapy on physical and psychosocial health.

• Korean Journal of Environment and Ecology
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• v.30 no.2
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• pp.271-276
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• 2016

Though various studies have analyzed the impact of physically being in the forest, consideration of the time factors is omitted in many of them. Since space and time mutually affect each other, the effects that resulted by the space factor can change when the time factor is introduced. In this paper, the focus was made on how the time spent in the forest influences the four resulting factors: live experiences, flow experiences, health perception and inner psychological perception. This research is based on the surveys taken from April to October, 2014. The focus of the questionnaire was to measure 'Live Experience (LE)', 'Flow (FL)', 'Health Perception (HP)' and 'Inner Psychological Perception (IPP)' levels among the participants. The respondents of the survey aged between 40 and 70, participating in Forest or ecological courses, living in the Northern area of Chungchungnam-do province of Korea. Additionally their past experiences ranged from as little as one year to as long as twenty years in forest related fields. It will be shown that the time spent in the forest affects the levels of LE, FL, HP, IPP, increasing them in proportion to the time with statistical significance. This result would be useful not only for those who are in charge of creating forest healing programs but also for people who study forest healing. Because the time spent in the forest influences the levels of LE, FL, HP, IPP, the forest healing programs will benefit by taking this result into consideration.

• Journal of People, Plants, and Environment
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• v.24 no.3
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• pp.301-309
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• 2021

Background and objective: The purpose of this study is to analyze the case of healing experience for lifestyle and environmental diseases through life and activities in the forest from the perspecitive of critical realism, and how the causal power and mechanism of the healing experience relate to forest healing factors and programs. Methods: 93 video data of people who started living in the forest for disease treatment were analyzed using a qualitative content analysis method from the perspective of critical realism. Categories for analysis include general categories (age, duration, occupation, disease name), forest therapy categories (climate therapy, plant therapy, water therapy, diet therapy, kinesiotherapy, psychotherapy), and other categories (ecology, learning and management, life tools), etc., and the unit of analysis is the context unit. Results: 1) The diseases that motivated life in the forest were digestive system diseases, lung diseases, cardiovascular diseases, endocrine system diseases, and various lifestyle-related diseases and environmental diseases in similar proportions. This indicates that forest life does not have specificity to respond to specific diseases, but provides treatment and recovery for all lifestyle and environmental diseases. 2) Among the forest therapies, climate therapy and plant therapy are related to the climatic and residential environment in the forest where 'natural persons' live. And others such as water therapy, diet therapy, kinesiotherapy, psychotherapy indicate the change from the lifestyle that caused the disease to the lifestyle for treatment and recovery. Conclusion: Life and activities in the forest provide an environment for treatment and recovery in which the healing principles such as aromatherapy, nutritional and dietary therapy, kinesiotherapy, and emotional psychotherapy are integrated in the 'real world'.

• Korean Journal of Organic Agriculture
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• v.29 no.3
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• pp.385-396
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• 2021

This paper investigated the satisfaction of agro-healing and analyzed its willingness to participate in agro-healing in the future. First, a survey of intentions to participate in agro-healing found that the ratio of participation was 55.6% (125 people). It is analyzed that more than half of teenagers who have experienced agro-healing programs are willing to participate again. Second, a survey of satisfaction with agro-healing showed the highest improvement in agricultural awareness, including increased public interest value of agriculture. This can be seen as a way to raise public awareness of agriculture, as well as the effects of mental and physical health recovery, social integration contributions, and social safety contributions. Third, an analysis of the effect of awareness on the willingness to participate in agro-healing showed that the less significant it was, the higher the awareness, the higher the willingness to participate. In other words, various information delivery means, such as public relations measures, should be prepared to raise awareness of agro-healing. Fourth, it can be seen that those with low satisfaction with expected effects such as health recovery, social safety, social integration, and improved agricultural awareness have a clear difference in their willingness to participate in the future. In other words, the higher the satisfaction level of the agro-healing program, the higher the willingness to participate in the agro-healing industry in the future.

• Journal of the Architectural Institute of Korea Planning & Design
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• v.35 no.3
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• pp.79-90
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• 2019

There are more and more citizens suffering from severe fatigue, and they wish to escape from it and spend their leisure time for healing. As a result, buildings and complexes are being constructed nationwide with healing as their theme. Particularly, they tend to build facilities with concepts like a spa, beauty, healing, meditation, nature, or forest healing. The purpose of this study is to examine the concept of healing environment and the nationwide tendencies of building facilities with healing as their theme and also investigate the planning characteristics of complexes and architecture with three representative complexes as examples. Complexes intended for healing have immersion into nature being freed from one's routine as their concept. When planning the flow of human traffic within the complexes, they try to obtain the autonomy of choice as well as the diversity of space and experiential factors in order to provide opportunities for experiencing nature. In the complexes selected for a case study here, they have planned the factors of physical environment that are associated with one another based on architectural education programs using red clay, programs specializing poetry, and healing programs using food. Typically, this is centered around outdoor experiential space, indoor meditation and education space, or fitness space. Also, it is characterized by the planning of physical environment and the complex operation of programs. Particularly, public space is divided into communal space, resting space, and health and treatment space, and health/resting space is mainly intended for health and exercise, for example, fitness, spas, or jjimjilbang (Korean dry saunas). Also, it is characterized by the planning of pitched roofs harmonized with nature and also facade planning that can positively adopt the factors of natural environment.

• Journal of the Korea Safety Management & Science
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.57-71
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• 2020

The purpose of this study is to explore the effects of fire officers' experience of traumatic events and subsequent forest healing on their occupational burnout. The results are as follows: First, the experience of traumatic events, social and psychological healing, and relieving stress by strolling had a significant effect on burnout. The more fire officers are exposed to traumatic events, the more they lose self-control in social and psychological aspects, and the lower the level of stress relieved through strolling, the higher the level of burnout. Thi sresult suggests that the more fire office rsare called out for fire fighting, the more they see their colleagues with severein juries, and the higher the level of mental and physical an xiety, the more they areex hausted. Moreover, for es thealing help store duce the irmental and physi calfatig uecaused by traumatic events, thu spreven ting them from suffering from burn out. Second, the experience of traumatic events, social and psychological healing, and relieving stress by strolling had a significant impact on occupational stress. The more fire officers are exposed to traumatic events, the more they lose self-control in social and psychological aspects, and the lower the level of stress relieved through strolling, the higher the level of occupational stress. This result indicates that to relieve job stress caused by fire fighting, increased forest healing activities, including various programs such as psychotherapy, developing interpersonal relationships and self-control, and creating a positive mind-set, can reducejobstress and help fire officers recover from it. Lastly, job stress had a mediation effect on the effects of the experience of traumatic events and forest healing on burnout. This implies that burnout can be prevented when fire officers gain high emotional stability through social and psychological healing and stress-relief strolling over a traumatic experience, and stronger support from the organization and family can keep them from being emotionally drained, thus contributing to the prevention of burnout.

• Korean Journal of Environment and Ecology
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• v.37 no.6
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• pp.473-483
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• 2023

This study was conducted to find out the psychological or physiological healing effects of real natural forests and virtual forest experiences using virtual reality (VR) in an artificially-controlled digital environment. To find out this, 81 healthy undergraduate students from C University were experimented on visual forest stimulation effects in the digital environment from September 5 to December 9 in 2022. The experiment evaluated the psychological and physiological healing effects of visual forest stimulation in the digital forest environment (2D, 3D). The SRI (stress response inventory) experiment for analyzing psychological effect showed statistically significant differences among groups. As for the SRI experiment for measuring psychological stress, except Control group, 2D group in the digital environment showed little difference before and after the experiment. But 3D group showed less stress than before. As a result, it was proved that visual forest stimulation in a forest-based digital environment (2D, 3D) reduces psychological stress significantly. And when analyzing how visual forest stimulation changes EEG (electroencephalogram) in the digital environment, alpha waves (RA), which are activated during relaxation or stabilization, were more active than beta waves (RB), which are activated during tension or awakening. This study is expected to be used to create a psychological and physiological healing environment for those who cannot go to a natural forest due to mobility difficulties by providing them visual forest stimulation experiences in a digital environment. It is also expected that the results will be the basis for forest healing in the digital environment and virtual reality programs will help forest healing activities.