, a prominent Filipino environmentalist and former Secretary of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), known for her spiritual and "holy" reverence for nature and forests.
The overwhelming sensory input of the forest—the scent of damp earth, the fractured sunlight hitting the moss—forces a person into the present moment. Holy-nature-gina-forest
"I was skeptical. 'Gina' sounded like a fairy tale. But after seven days of morning visits to the same patch of birch trees, I had a dream where a woman with moss-green hair told me to quit my banking job. I thought it was nonsense. Six months later, I'm teaching outdoor preschool. My anxiety is gone." — , a prominent Filipino environmentalist and former Secretary
The second term, “gina,” anchors this holiness in the specific, the bodily, and the female. Derived from the common diminutive of “Regina” (queen) and echoing the anatomical “vagina,” the name “Gina” becomes a cipher for the feminine principle: not as a gender exclusive to women, but as a mode of being that is receptive, generative, cyclical, and immanent. The forest is a “gina-forest” because it bleeds sap, births saplings, and holds the damp, dark, fertile mystery of creation. Just as patriarchal religion has often feared the female body—its orifices, its fluids, its power to bring life from apparent nothingness—so has it feared the wild forest. Both must be cleared, mapped, and controlled. To reunite “gina” with “holy-nature” is to reclaim the body as a site of revelation. Menstruation, birth, and desire are not profane interruptions; they are the forest’s own rhythms—tidal, lunar, and necessary. 'Gina' sounded like a fairy tale
Modern society takes from nature: timber, minerals, real estate. In contrast, the holy-nature-gina-forest operates on reciprocity. Before taking a fallen branch for firewood or picking a wild berry, a practitioner offers something back: a song, a strand of hair, a whispered thank-you, or even a small act of cleaning litter left by others. This exchange rebalances the energy between human and habitat.