Haenam Heukseoksan Healing Forest, Forest Healing Program Popular

Customized Experience Services for Youth, Families, and Workers to Relieve COVID-19 Stress

The forest healing program operated in Heukseoksan Healing Forest is being successfully run as an experiential service to overcome COVID-19. (Photo by Haenam-gun)

[Haenam＝Asia Economy Honam Reporting Headquarters Reporter Kim Hyun] The forest healing program operated in the Heukseoksan Healing Forest in Haenam is being successfully run as an experiential service to overcome COVID-19.

According to the county on the 9th, since the opening of the Healing Forest in April, the forest healing program has been actively operated through the Healing Center, with 681 participants over 94 sessions to date, achieving great success.

The Heukseoksan Healing Forest forest healing program offers customized experiential services tailored to life cycles, consisting of ‘Cham Sup’ Edu-Healing for relieving academic stress in adolescents, ‘Cham Sup’ Happy-Family for family health and relationship building, ‘Cham Sup’ Happy-Refresh for alleviating job stress in office workers, and ‘Cham Sup’ Happy-Senior for a happy twilight life.

Forest healing is known to utilize various natural elements such as the scent and scenery of the forest to boost the human immune system, relieve stress and depression, and alleviate diseases such as hypertension, atopy, and dermatitis.

In particular, as a healing space that relieves COVID-19 and chronic stress of modern people, interest in forest experiences is increasing, and the number of visitors to the Healing Forest is growing day by day.

Healing program activities include forest healing recreation, healing meditation feeling sunlight and wind in the oak forest, meditation experience using singing bowls, woodworking experience using a wood burning tool, aromatherapy using scents, as well as basic health check programs such as body fat measurement, stress measurement, and blood pressure measurement.

In May, the Haenam Fire Station conducted an experience under the theme ‘Same Mind, Same Will’ to relieve heavy workload stress, and the participation of students from Gyegok Elementary School and Sani Middle School in the forest healing program to relieve academic stress also received a positive response.

The program is conducted through consignment operation by a professional institution, and is operated in compliance with daily quarantine rules such as minimum number of participants, 2-meter distancing, temperature checks, disinfection and hand sanitizing, and mask wearing to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

The operating hours are from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., and the participation fee is 5,000 KRW per person. Especially, from the 7th of this month until the end of the year, those who have completed vaccination can participate by paying only 1,000 KRW, an 80% discount on the participation fee. Applications for the forest healing program are accepted by advance reservation on the Heukseoksan Healing Forest website.

Meanwhile, the Heukseoksan Healing Forest located in Gyegok-myeon, Haenam County, is centered on a 50-hectare oak forest area around Heukseoksan, with a 740-meter barrier-free deck trail and a 350-meter black stone path, allowing visitors to walk through a forest path full of phytoncides and heal themselves.

The Healing Center (180㎡), program room (104㎡), each in one building, and a 2-hectare healing garden have also been created to operate the forest healing program.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.