Our History and Lineage
Rooted in the wisdom of shinrin-yoku, ANFT has helped shape a global movement restoring meaningful relationships between people and the living world.
Amos Clifford on the history and lineage of ANFT · International Leadership
- 1882
Shinrin-yoku — forest bathing — originates in Japan.
- 1991
Dr. Qing Li begins scientific research on forest medicine.
- 2006
In a Winter Solstice ceremony, Amos Clifford commits ten years to founding ANFT, drawing on wilderness guiding, Zen practice, and restorative justice.
- 2012
The first Forest Therapy Guide training is held at Sugar Loaf Ridge Park, California, laying the foundation for the Standard Sequence and the Way of the Guide.
- 2015
The first forest therapy trail certification is awarded.
- 2016
ANFT’s work reaches national audiences through National Geographic Explorer, Oprah Magazine, NPR, USA Today, and the Washington Post; the first European training is held in Ireland.
- 2016
The first ANFT delegation travels to Japan, visiting Dr. Yoshifumi Miyazaki in his lab at Chiba University and meeting guides at trails across the country.
- 2016
By invitation of Dr. Gorana Isailović of the Medical Spa Association of Serbia, Amos Clifford introduces forest therapy to Eastern Europe at the International Symposium of Forest Medicine in Belgrade, leading its first guided forest therapy walk at Obedska Bara Special Nature Reserve.
- 2018
Your Guide to Forest Bathing brings Amos Clifford’s framework to readers everywhere, later translated into languages including Lithuanian and Estonian. The first non-English cohort trains in Catalonia, Spain, beginning a yearly training serving Spain and South America.
- 2020
ANFT guide and trainer Geeta facilitates the world’s first remotely guided forest therapy walk, and ANFT creates a remote pathway into certification — without compromising rigor or relationship.
- 2020
In partnership with California State University, Chico, ANFT mobilizes a trauma-informed response to the devastating Camp Fire, training a cohort of local forest therapy guides to serve wildfire survivors.
- 2023
One hundred cohorts, one global community: the 100th Forest Therapy Guide cohort begins — a scale built one small group and one relationship at a time.
- 2023
Dr. Susan Abookire introduces Nature as Medicine, a course for licensed health care professionals accredited by Mass General Brigham, the teaching affiliate of Harvard Medical School, bringing forest therapy into clinical training through an ANFT dual-certification partnership.
- 2023
ANFT trains its first cohort of Deaf and hard-of-hearing forest therapy guides.
- 2024
Phyllis Look, Hawai’i’s First Certified Forest Therapy Guide, records her 300th guided walk, through Forest Bathing Hawai’i.
- 2025
New ground, same root: the first Relational Forest Therapy training in mainland China is held in Mandarin.
- 2025
Amos Clifford’s book Metabolizing The Strange is produced in a limited edition and distributed at the ANFT Annual Trainer’s Gathering, this year in the Azores Islands.
- 2025
Launch of the Opus Academy, incorporating pilgrimage and psychological alchemy, introduced as a new practice, “Alchimage.”
- 2026
Your Guide to Forest Bathing: A Journal is published as a field companion to the 2018 book.
- 2026
In response to growing global demand and an expanding curriculum, ANFT organizes into the Academies: Relational Forest Therapy; Trails, Spaces, and Places; Applied Forest Therapy; and the Opus Academy.