Faith in Nature: Forest Bathing and Mythic Yoga Journey to Mt. Atago, Kyoto

At Tsukinowa-dera we met the Temple Sub Chief Monk Yokota 横田 副住職 

Read my new article in Taiken Magazine! Japan is so amazing and I can pinch myself when I look back on my experiences in the three years I’ve been coming to and living here, they are so dream like and powerful. But it also hasn’t bene easy.

My father died the day I moved to Japan at age 50 on June 24, 2017. That stress as well as moving in the Osaka hot summer to the 35th floor of a high rise, trading in the sea-level garden of our Orlando, Florida home. I had a lot of overstimulation and stress, to say the least, and some health problems, including depression.

Sydney Solis in the Arashiyama Bamboo Forest early in the morning before on a Mythic Yoga Journey to Mt. Atago in Kyoto, Japan.

It was when I met my Sensei Masashi Nakamura that I found the profound healing of Japanese culture when he took me forest bathing, shinrin-yoku 森林浴. I had asked him to help me find my ikigai, life purpose, which I felt I lost after my father died, as all his spiritual teachings were not realized after he passed. I called it my Mythic Yoga Journey to Mt. Atago to help me reconnect to myself, a task the profound silence, magic and mystery of nature assists with. Something that the Japanese masters found also in history past.

Mythic Yoga Journey to Japan, connecting with yoga to nature, using Japan’s mythology and philosophy of reverence for nature. We are a part of nature! Spending time in it reassures you of it and heals you! Kūya no taki waterfall 空也の滝

I wrote about my experience in Taiken Magazine. Have a read about how the beauty of Japanese culture and its reverence for nature once again came to rescue me. It profoundly influence my life to live as simply as possible, spend as much time in nature as possible, and meditate as much as possible! It certainly is a great elixir for what ails you in a crazy world!

You, too, can follow in the footsteps of the esoteric Buddhist Master and Shingon sect Founder Kūkai 空海 when you spend time in nature or on Mt. Atago in Kyoto.

Buddha in main hall of Tsukinowa-dera temple, Kyoto. Get a print of this photograph by Sydney Solis or more products at her gallery on Society6.

More Articles I wrote for Taiken Japan

• Discover Authentic Japan at Kuromon Ichiba Market in Osaka

• Experience the Meditative Effects of Traditional Japanese Arts with Makie Lacquer Painting in Kyoto

• Experience the Meditative Effects of Shodō–Japanese Calligraphy–in Kansai

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