Experiencing Nature Beyond Metrics

This guided forest walk invites participants to experience nature through their own senses, beyond frameworks and figures.

Over a gentle 2–3 km walk in Brussels' Sonian Forest, participants are guided to slow down, observe, and connect with the restorative forest environment through immersive forest bathing exercises. The Sonian Forest, a protected ancient beech forest and UNESCO World Heritage Site, serves as a living reminder of what is at stake when investment in nature is neglected — and of what is gained when it is sustained.

By complementing intellectual understanding and scientific knowledge with lived experience, the walk highlights how closely our well-being is tied to the health of ecosystems. It offers a different entry point for policymakers, business professionals, and citizens into conversations on nature protection and preservation - one rooted not only in political agendas or economic considerations, but in personal connection. This experiential dimension is itself a powerful driver of investment in nature: people protect what they value, and they value most deeply what they have felt.

Experiencing the forest as a space that impacts and nurtures us helps cultivate this connection. In doing so, it can deepen how we value and respect nature and strengthen our motivation to protect and safeguard it — translating personal experience into the kind of lasting commitment that underpins meaningful, long-term investment in nature, for ourselves and for future generations.
The number of participants is limited to 16 to ensure maximum personal benefit and to leave ample room for reflection and discussion.

Objectives:

Foster personal connection to nature through direct sensory experience in addition to intellectual and scientific understanding.
Highlight the link between ecosystem health and human well-being, making nature's value tangible and personal — and demonstrating that investing in healthy ecosystems is inseparable from investing in human health and quality of life.

Inspire deeper appreciation, respect and responsibility for nature, complementing policy and corporate sustainability efforts to encourage investing in nature.