FAQ

$165/50 minute session

Currently, I do not take any insurance and thus considered an out-of-network provider.

I can provide a statement to file with your provider.

To schedule an appointment, I invite you to email me at care@alisakoyamalicsw.com to schedule a complimentary fifteen minute phone consultation.

Forest Bathing is a practice and a term that was coined in Japan in the 1980s as an effort to improve people and our overarching ecological network’s well-being. It comes from the word, Shinrinyoku, which literally means forest bathing. We have other words such as sun bathing as a way to describe ourselves having a full-body immersion with the element. In essence, through human and nature attunement, forest bathing enhances physical and mental health and creates space for healing. Being attuned with nature bringing us closer to our most natural state as human beings. 

Over the years, the science field has grown interest in this innate human practice and found evidence around the positive effects of being in nature. What followed is the development of Forest Therapy, an evidence-based healing practice that combines forest immersion with a recreational activity such as walking. Indeed, forest therapy has shown to bring balance to the automatic nervous system, decrease depressive symptoms, increase liveliness, decrease stress hormones, improve immune system, and increase your cancer-killing natural killer (NK) cells.

Outside of these guided or self-guided forest therapy or bathing experiences, the benefits of forests beyond human health is countless — improve air quality, decrease erosion, etc. to name a few — and interconnected. Thus, by putting more efforts into maintaining our forests to support the continued practice of forest bathing, we are not only helping improve the health of individual humans, but also the local economy, the forest health, and hopefully act as a piece to addressing the climate crisis we are in. To learn more about Forest Therapy, please visit the Forest Therapy Society website. 

Simply put, walk-and-talk therapy is doing therapy while walking outside, often in spaces that are in nature. Where as with forest bathing, the focus is more on the immersion in nature and its elements. I implement elements of forest bathing in my individual therapy sessions per the person’s request, but a purely forest bathing session with me would not be considered therapy.

This will be discussed privately with people who decide to work with me to maintain confidentiality, but they are usually at parks in Seattle and Shoreline area.