the oil gave off a nice, pitchy, sharp scent. We put the cap back on
and read my blood pressure again. It dropped twelve points.
I’d looked at Li, who nodded delightedly. “This is a very big
effect, bigger than people get with pharmaceuticals!”
Meanwhile, here at the government-funded Korea Forest Research
Institute, scientists distill essential oils and study them for effects on
allergies and their ability to kill staph bacteria. Among the things
they’ve found are that coniferous essential oils fight atopic skin
diseases (when applied to the skin in low concentrations), mitigate
stress by lowering levels of cortisol (when inhaled), and reduce
symptoms of asthma (ditto). The major components of hinoki oil are
camphor, turpenes, pinenes and humulenes, limonenes and sabinenes,
depending on the season and the part of the tree sampled. The
sabinenes seem particularly helpful for treating asthma, the terrines
for fighting bacterial infections and stress.
I may not have been actively nursing any infections, but after a
few minutes of walking I felt more awake than I had all day. We
stopped where a wooden boardwalk crosses a small wetland lined
with dogwoods and connects two drier parts of the trail. Park pointed
out a citronella plant and a Japanese cedar, also prized for anti-
infective properties. He asked us to close our eyes and take deep
breaths. Then he led us in some gentle stretches. Sepial stashed her
notebook into the recesses of her trench coat. We raised our arms over
our heads, then down, then back up, all while breathing slowly. The
birds chirped. The wind blew gently through the high branches, and
the sun mixed with the cool autumn air. He told us to look at the still
pond of water just beyond the trail. “Look through the lake, watch the
reflections of the trees. This is good for the brain to see. Pretend this
is your mind. Take deep breaths. The trees you see there could be real,
or they could be fake, just reflections. This is like your mind. When a
depressed person sees depression, it could be an illusion. It’s not
really there. You can separate the emotion from the mind.”