Forest bathing for everyone, the Mongolian’s animal carcass crockery, and a relaxing-ly dreamy track from HYBS.

Forest Bathing for Everyone

The practice of forest bathing, or shinrin-yoku, was developed in Japan. Though shinrin-yoku has deep roots in the Shinto religion, which invites practitioners to commune with nature at sacred shrines and special trees, the modern expression of shinrin-yoku emerged in response to a crisis of widespread burnout and rising suicides in the 1970s.

Japanese culture has preserved a more traditional or ancient recognition of nature’s intrinsic value or aliveness, argues Dr. Yasuhiro Kotera, a psychotherapist and mental health researcher who teaches at the University of Nottingham. So it’s not surprising that health experts there were quicker to prescribe a nature cure.

As the approach became established, researchers tested its effectiveness in numerous studies and experiments. The results have been impressive. The psychological and physiological benefits of spending time resting in nature and calmly perceiving your environment are so profound, they would be hard to overstate… Beside

HYBS - Would You Mind

Boodog

Mongolian warriors carried what little they owned on horseback. They couldn’t be weighed down by porcelain or clay cookware. These armies fit food preparation into their nomadic lifestyle by using an animal’s carcass as crockery. The unlucky marmot or goat that got stuffed with its own meat and cooked over an open flame came to be known as boodog.

To prepare boodog (pronounced “baw-dug”), a butcher slices the animal, neck to groin, and carefully removes the meat and bones while keeping the rest of the skin intact. He then seasons the meat (including the liver and kidneys), stuffs it back inside with hot stones and vegetables, and reseals the neck… Atlas Obscura

We welcome any questions and suggestions. Just reply to this email or send a note to [email protected] 

If you’ve been forwarded this post and find it interesting, consider subscribing to the newsletter: