Photographer Rita Aida explores healing dynamic of nature in "Tree Therapy" show
Gallery show on Nov. 21 in Asbury Park
By D. Menzies
Rita Aida wants people to see trees. Not just the photography featuring them in her gallery show, “Tree Therapy,” at Over the Moon Studios in Asbury Park on Nov. 14, but up close — maybe even hugging them — as part of tree therapy.
For the past year Aida has been building on something she heard about years ago: the Japanese idea of “shinrin-yoku,” or “forest bathing,” in which someone someone goes out into nature and slows down enough to connect with in a way believed to be healing.
“It’s not just about hugging trees, it’s about being in nature and really feeling everything about it. It’s really healing, and I wish that people could appreciate nature more,” Aida said.
Trees seem to help each other through fungi networks that connect their root systems even when they’re not right next to each other, and while not all scientists agree on the extent or how intentional that help is, it’s well-documented that proximity to trees has a positive effect on people.
What does that look like? Lower blood pressure, what Aida describes as helping to regulate people’s nervous systems, via an environment where the concentration of trees coincides with peace and its net health benefits.
“Tree therapy is free therapy. I keep saying that. You literally have free therapy right around us, and we’re not using it.” - Rita Aida
“Japanese culture is ahead of us in appreciating things like that. Walking is part of their culture and nature is a huge (part of it too),” Aida said. “I’m taking classes (in shinrin-yoku). It’s really beautiful. Now I’m studying to be a practitioner, but I really just wanted to do it for myself. Everything is helping yourself first and then other people.”
In 2018, two years before the onset of the Covid pandemic, Aida’s photography was featured in “Inside the World of Rita Aida’s Asbury Park: Capturing the Effects of Gentrification,” a project documenting a tale of two Asbury Parks — an eastern side defined by an influx of wealth, and a western one defined by displacement for longtime residents and other kinds of loss, whether that be family or a way to make a living, and more crime than it counterpart.
(If you are in Chilltown or a place like it, this may sound familiar — the unchecked influx of money to more desirable sections partially resulting in other sections becoming more concentrated with the trappings of poverty and second-class living.)
Some of subjects of that project aren’t alive anymore, Aida said, recalling that it became difficult to connect with people who were homeless possibly in part because of the changing dynamic of those approaching them.
“I think after Covid, more people started doing street photography, but they were invasive without even trying to help,” Aida said. “It was a very weird time.
“Social media … that actually hindered a lot of progress with people-chasing and resources and help.”
Resources is a key element. Jersey City is one a few urban N.J. cities with poor green space relative to other cities, and with what little green there is generally being a trapping of what a writer for Geography Realm called the “gray-green divide,” meaning its greener where there’s more green, the particular grayness of Chilltown’s disenfranchised sections can be seen as a form of ill health.
Trees literally soak up pollution through pores in leaves, and for Aida, the process by which they soak up a negative and turn it into more positive air has implications about toxicity in general.
“There’s not a lot of trees (in Jersey City) to absorb what’s going on … not a lot of leaves to absorb all the toxins and the chemicals,” Aida said.
Aida doesn’t think it’s an idea that lingers in pop culture — wherever you may be, lots of trees are important.
To Chilltown Blues, this reflects most conclusions from studies which speak to that being ignored because quality of life measures are distorted as “cultural preferences” rather than universal facets.
“It’s sad that the information is so available to us is limited …” Aida said. “What taking a walk from 15 minutes to an hour (can do). Even taking your shoes off and sitting beneath a tree. People are like, ‘That’s weird!’ But it’s not weird. That’s helpful.”
With the “Tree Therapy” show in Asbury Park on Nov. 14, Aida wants people to know that even if canopies and the like are a distance from them, they are worth seeking out.
“Mostly it’s just to show people that the aspect of nature is healing,” Aida said. “Especially trees. Trees are so beneficial to us, and we’re so closely connected to trees in ways that people are not aware of. Me doing tree therapy was therapy for me, but it can be therapy for them as well. Me just showing the different types of trees I’ve found, and people can see whatever want they see.
“I see people in trees,” Aida said. “I feel like each tree is multiple souls, and they have such powerful properties that we can just feel them all around us. Because trees are all about community — they’re all about helping each other. Just like people should be. people should be helping each other.”
Tree therapy is free therapy, Aida said; it’s an idea she thinks is worth repeating.
“Tree therapy is free therapy. I keep saying that. You literally have free therapy right around us, and we’re not using it. I’m trying just to spread the news that you can literally change your mood in about 15 or 20 minutes by just going outside and hugging a tree. I did a whole month series of hugging a tree for minute (every day) and I literally felt more aligned and in abetter mood every day, and it was amazing.”
While the weather is getting colder now and that makes connecting with trees more challenging, Aida wants people to keep trees on their everyday compasses.
“Each tree is its own entity, but also we’re all connected. And it’s free therapy,” she said.
Aida is on Instagram @lovelyritaaida.
