Forest coaching in the Colli Piacentini as a cure for stress: Francesca's eco-sustainable lifestyle choice

Contact with nature has important benefits for our mental and physical well-being: open air, light, scents, colours, all contribute to restoring our inner balance, which is also reflected in our relationships with others.

Walks, outdoor activities become the means to regenerate and banish anxiety and stress.

It is into these practices that forest coaching, a new specialisation of environmental culture that trains people to care for nature and take care of it, fits.

"Nature towers over us and protects us, she is our teacher of life, a conductor who reshapes us: if we tune in to her we come into harmony with ourselves and others.

These are the words of Francesca Bonello, a 48-year-old Paduan who chose to move with her family from the city to the mountains, specifically to Pecorara, in Alta Val Tidone, precisely with the aim of re-establishing that beneficial contact with nature that the city does not allow.

A graduate in Environmental Sciences, wife and mother of two daughters, Francesca practices forest coaching by accompanying people on immersive mountain trails.

"They arrive stressed, they leave regenerated. There are always more of them on our excursions, even twenty at a time".

The return to the land brings with it a radical change in lifestyle that reintegrates nature into healthy daily routines.

Not an easy choice, but one of great awareness to regain control over one's life in terms of time and health, but not only.

Francesca leads an eco-sustainable, waste- and stress-free life, furthering her studies in ecopsychology and environmental economics, cultivating her dream of starting a community cooperative.

"Nature is the real coach because in the complexity of its evolution it continually finds solutions from which we pupils can take cues. In silence, abandoning yourself to wonder, to amazement, you become a little child again, rediscover yourself, gain strength".

Group coaching connects people, guiding them to listen to themselves and their bodies, re-establishing contact with nature.

A practice, therefore, that re-educates people to reconnect with the natural environment, as an important element to be included also in everyday life in the city, through simple actions such as frequenting green spaces and taking care of their plants.