CIIS Public Programs Podcast

transcript

[Cheerful theme music begins] 

This is the CIIS Public Programs Podcast, featuring talks and conversations recorded live by the Public Programs department of California Institute of Integral Studies, a non-profit university located in San Francisco on unceded Ramaytush Ohlone Land. 

In her latest book, Losing Eden, acclaimed journalist Lucy Jones interweaves her deeply personal story of recovery from addiction and depression aided by the support of the natural world with an exploration of the intersection of science, wellness, and the environment. In this episode, scholar and CIIS staff member Laura Pustarfi joins Lucy for a conversation about the importance of maintaining our bond with nature and why we need communion with the wild to feel well. 

This episode was recorded during a live online event on August 14th, 2021. A transcript is available at ciispod.com. To find out more about CIIS and public programs like this one, visit our website ciis.edu and connect with us on social media @ciispubprograms. 

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Laura: Thank you, everyone, for joining us today, and thank you, especially to you, Lucy. We're here to speak about your book, Losing Eden Our Fundamental Need for the Natural World and its Ability to Heal Body and Soul. The UK subtitle is Why Our Minds Need the Wild, which I quite like, actually, and the book is such a well-researched and evocative look at how our health, especially mental health, is intertwined with the natural world. And I'm so looking forward to our conversation today. 

Lucy: Thank you so much Laura me too.  

Laura: So, in the book you so beautifully weave science and your personal story together. Could you tell us a little bit about your earliest experiences of nature? Were you around nature much as a child yourself? 

Lucy: Yeah, sure. Um, I grew up in in England in an area- in kind of the suburbs of London in a boarding school, actually. So, my kind of closest nearby environment was playing fields. So, in no way kind of the wilderness. But I did- there was a little brook and there was a- the River Thames running through as well. And we had a little garden with a couple of apple trees. And I was encouraged to learn about the rest of nature by my parents. My father was very interested in birds and would take us for long walks and my mother is a painter of the natural world. So, I was kind of fortunate that I had these two influences as a as a child, kind of introducing me to the idea of kind of kinship with others, other beings. And I used to love collecting insects in my garden and climbing trees. I spent quite a lot of time in Scotland, which was a lot more remote and rural, and the sea was wilder and there were kind of lots of birds of prey and woods and so on. And those spaces in Scotland became really important to me, I think, to my kind of imagination growing up. And I was really fortunate I had those opportunities to spend time kind of with trees and in woodlands and so on.  

Saying that, I think my I guess my kind of philosophical kind of experience of the outdoors or spending time in nature was quite influenced by the Judeo-Christian tradition. I grew up in a very conservative evangelical family, and while I was encouraged to learn about and know about wildlife, so I'd have kind of wildlife fact books, there was a sense, I think, that, you know, humans were kind of exceptional or that it was quite a kind of anthropocentric view of the natural world maybe. You know and an idea that…that's- kind of an idea of dominion was definitely present in my kind of early influences and so on. So, kind of going through life it has been- it has evolved in my life, my sense nature. But I was yeah, I was pretty lucky to have some time. And of course, we know that one of the most important factors in a person in adult life, having a relationship or connection with the natural world is whether they've had opportunities as a child. So, I am so glad I was taken out for walks even you know when I would complain as an older child and grouse about it. I think that at those times my senses were kind of awakened. And, you know, being able to smell pine trees and listen out for bird calls was really important, though, of course, I had then a very long dormancy periods, which often people do in the teenage years and young adulthood, the end of which began the losing Eden journey. 

Laura: Yeah, I think it sounds like such a rich, rich childhood experience and memories, and I do want to just ask about that time that you talk about in the book. You've been very open and vulnerable about your own challenges and mental health struggles in that time of disconnection from nature. And that can be a very private thing and even taboo in some places. So, I'm curious how it's been for you to share your experience so openly and what's been the response? 

Lucy: Sure. I think. I am quite -I find that kind of taboo and, well, we definitely have a lot over here and in the UK, this kind of stiff upper lip and, you know, idea that you don't talk about your emotions and your emotional health, your mental health, the kind of a taboo or even shameful or embarrassing if you have mental health struggles. And I just don't like that. I think it's really harmful. And so, I feel quite -I feel quite comfortable talking about I mean, obviously after the fact, not during, but I've had experience of depression and anxiety and addiction issues. And I suppose because I'm very interested in the mind and psychology and the brain and psychoanalysis, I am I'm really happy to talk about those experiences because I think it's just really important to do that if you can and I guess I couldn't really write about losing Eden without bringing that personal story in because it was so- it was really the catalyst and the genesis of the journey of the book was this experience of going into recovery and being- feeling very fragile and shaky and trying to get sober and recover from periods of depression and anxiety and being so bowled over by how profoundly therapeutic connecting then with the natural world was that I just wanted really wanted to find out what was going on.  

And so, I kind of needed to write about that in the beginning of the book to explain, I think kind of my impetus. I have been- I haven't had any negative responses to writing openly about mental health. I think it was probably quite difficult for certain older members of my family for me to write about addiction and sobriety, because, of course, there's still a lot of stigma around addiction. But in my personal experiences that I have been and am helped every day by other people sharing their stories of recovery, so. So, it didn't feel difficult to do that myself, and I think sharing is really important. Yeah. 

Laura: Yeah, thank you and thank you for so courageously sharing that story in the book and here. And so you mentioned that nature was critical for you as you regained your health, that this was part of your process. And in the book, you talked about your walks in the marshes as rehab in a way. How did you come to those daily walks? And can you tell us what it was like for you? 

Lucy: Sure. So, this was almost 10 years ago or so. And I guess I say that because I feel like and this is great that in the last few years, certainly over here in the UK, the nature and mental health as a kind of as a subject has become a lot more normal to talk about. And now people are making that connection. And it's you know, it's quite present in the discourse. But 10 years ago, or so for me anyway, in my in my kind of peer group and understanding it wasn't obvious to me that at this time of kind of a health crisis, that spending time in the natural world might be helpful or therapeutic. Which and that was interesting to me after the fact that it never even really. It really occurred to me that connecting again with the living world might be important.  

So, what happened was I was newly sober. All the psychological issues that I'd been drinking away for a long time were coming up. I was feeling very kind of angry and raw. And kind of casting around for things to do to keep my mind busy and brain busy, kind of between psychotherapy appointments, psychiatric appointments and support groups, and I knew that running was good for your mind. I knew that the endorphins could help because, you know, I often used running in the past to stabilize myself. And so, I started to go running and Walthamstow marshes. And it is a really incredible place. It's this open, this open space in a very built-up area. You kind of come off a busy road of loads of busses and trains and traffic and big roundabouts, very industrial. And suddenly you're in this vast kind of calm marshland, which is actually a site of scientific interest, it has different plants and wildflowers, and in fact, one of the reasons why it's quite richly biodiverse is because it was bombed in the war. And the way that affected the soil means that it was kind of very low nutrient. So, it had a lot of wildflowers and it was filled with kind of kestrels and herons. And I started running there. But I found that what would happen is I would slow down and start walking instead because I just wanted to look at the trees and look at the canal and spend time with the coots. And, you know, it sounds so naive kind of saying this now, but. It was so surprising to me that that doing that would then have this profound effect where I would go back to my flat and just feel restored and my brain seemed to be cleared of these really, really cruel thoughts, the rumination and brooding that I'd kind of been drinking or using on. And of course, I knew as we all kind of inuit that, you know, there's this cultural idea that spending time in the park or by the river or by the sea is maybe in some way good for us. But I had no idea at that point that it could be so profoundly helpful and healing and kind of nourishing and deeply stabilizing.  

And so, it became one of the one of the things, alongside the more conventional therapies, that I don't like the word used, but I suppose I yeah, I grew to rely on over my life in my early recovery and it has been present and growing ever since in later periods as well as postnatal depression. So that was the kind of personal experience that got me thinking quite quickly, what is going on here. You know, I know how well we don't really know, but you know a little bit about how an antidepressant works or how psychotherapy works, or how my support group is working. But what is happening when I'm with these trees, what happens to our brains? What happens to our nervous systems, our microbiome, what's happening to our memories, what what's happening to our hormones? I was thinking I really wanted to kind of drill down into the nuts and bolts of that experience and find out if there was a mechanism or if there were multiple mechanisms. So that that was the beginning. Of course, the question then did flip quite soon afterwards to thinking how this well- for me long estrangement, long disconnection from nature had affected my mental health, but really the book is about everyone and more broadly well, those of us in the kind of industrialized global north, how our estrangement, disconnection from the rest of the living world is affecting our minds. 

Laura: It sounds like you really built a relationship there with the marshes while you were out on those runs and walks. And there was another very compelling piece in the book where you mentioned a particular pear tree that was outside of a window where you lived and that you would watch it every day and it was covered by scaffolding at one point and it kind of made you realize how important that tree was to your day to day life and I'm curious to hear more about that tree and what happened for you. 

Lucy: Sure. Yeah. So, I was living in a flat in northeast London. The marshes were about a kind of 20-minute walk/run. I was maybe 10, 15 minutes from a park. So, it was quite a kind of urban environment. We didn't have a garden or yard or anything like that. There were a few street trees, but outside our bedroom window there was a pear tree, and I don't reckon I would have even noticed it before I had this kind of this recovery journey. And I just started to become feel really attached to it. I would watch it through the seasons, it would kind of erupt with this amazing blossom in the spring. And then through the summer, I'd watch as these pears kind of were blown, blown up by the tree. And it was just so beautiful and different birds would come in blue tits and even a woodpecker. And then I'd watch as the pears would drop and then it would kind of go all brittle and quiet. And then I mean, the best the best bit was in April and seeing those beautiful green buds start like creaking and I just. At that point in my life, feeling like I can recover, I can get better, I can become I can be sober and, you know, things change, it became a kind of symbol of change in terms of. You know, the flux of life and the fact everything in our world is always in flux, but also constancy. But, you know, this tree was always there every day, and I could always see it. And I always kind of know what might be happening in it.  

And so, the neighbors were doing the building work and they put up the scaffolding and they it blocked the tree from my view. And it was really thick, ugly scaffolding. And the effect on me was it was kind of surprising, even though I knew that I was loving this tree. It meant I became really irritable in the flat and I sent like, passive aggressive texts to my neighbors asking when it was going to come down and be snappy. And I felt really kind of caged, even to the point where some evenings, I would feel kind of my throat constricting with tears and at that time still really estranged from nature, really apart from m- the marsh, my marshes. I was thinking, what is going on? Could this tree, really have such an effect on my emotional world. How is this working? What what's happening here? And, you know, if one tree can have this effect on my life, and obviously at that time, I was pretty fragile and I'm highly sensitive anyway, but I was very sensitive at that point. What is the fact that we are stripping the world of trees and we are expecting people to live on streets without trees? What is that doing kind of to us collectively? And I wanted to, I wanted to discover what was going on there.  

Laura: I'm curious what happened with the tree, did the scaffolding come off or…? 

Lucy: It did, yeah, it came down. I saw the tree again and we were reunited [laughs briefly] and I don't live there anymore. We left about five years ago and I actually had a text from the guy who lives there because I got some books accidentally delivered there and I couldn't help myself but say, please send my regards to the pear tree and I'm hoping it's still there. But I guess I probably had relationships with trees as a child. That was probably my first relationship with a tree as an adult that was really meaningful and that has continued. I have a new favorite tree, which is a beech tree. And it's almost as if, yeah. That kind of kicked things off for me. I now, I feel like I have a evolving relationship with the beech tree, which is really important to me. 

Laura: Yeah, they can be almost as important as relationships with human people as well. I appreciated how you talk about your children and the experiences you've had introducing them to the natural world too, maybe introducing them to your favorite trees. You talk about the research, and you mentioned it earlier about how important it is as a child to have contact with nature. And I'm curious if you'd be willing to tell us a little bit more about how it's been watching little ones interact with nature. 

Lucy: Sure, yeah. So, one of the. It's been really incredible, actually, and a massive gift to see the world come through their eyes. So, I have an almost five-year-old, a two-year-old and a five-month-old. And I think that what- what I first noticed is that whenever I couldn't settle them. And they were just crying and crying, crying if I went outside and showed them some trees moving in the wind or the walk to a local cemetery, which is my local green space and walked around trees, it just it seemed to usually soothe them. Something about the movement, I think nature's mobile and definitely soothed me as well because, you know, so symbiotic. And one of the studies that I mentioned in the book is one about newborn babies being shown different videos and one is of a moving chicken, which the researchers call biological motion display and the study concludes that even very early on, newborn babies prefer to watch movement, which doesn't sound particularly surprising, really. You’d imagine babies have evolved to look for where the mother is as the source of food. I've definitely seen that in my young children. There's something about the motion in the natural world which seems to keep their attention much, much- for longer than in a home with toys or something static.  

Also, one of the most kind of strange and interesting things I started to notice with my daughter was that she would like to eat soil in the garden, so. You know, it's kind of interesting to me that she would always put the soil in her mouth, and I would obviously try and get it out, but and at the same time, I -we moved to a house with a garden. And I started gardening for the first time in adult life and realized that afterwards I would feel really good, really kind of a real buzz off to gardening and I was interested in what was happening there as well, and I ended up talking to a few of the leading microbiologists who study micro bacteria in the soil, and I was talking to them about this particular micro-bacteria called vaccae, which is tiny critter, found in the soil, which has been found in studies to have antidepressant-like effects on the brain. And that was kind of mind blowing to me. They also told me that babies all over the world tend to eat soil, they are drawn to soil. I thought it was so interesting that she was eating soil at the same time I was perhaps being exposed to these old friends, these bacteria that we've evolved with over millennia that might have been at the time, boosting my serotonin. And how many other bacteria might that be in the soil that we just don't know about or how it how it affects us?  

And I think that. I mean, we spend as much time outside as we possibly can, but there's just so many things I've noticed from sometimes if it's a day of meltdowns and tempers running high and we go into the woods, everyone just seems to relax. It’s not always like that, it’s not always perfect. Sometimes it's only 10 minutes, but it does seem to have a calming effect on all my children. And also, the senses, again, you know. I think one of the things that I've gathered from them is a more tactile relationship with the natural world. I think I was much more visual before having children, maybe aural. But, you know, a baby will, even a four-month-old baby will grab a branch and shake it and want to look at a leaf or will want to touch bark, you know, and really feel it might. My daughter likes to put her hand out and see if a bumblebee will walk on her hand and they are tactile children and that's really, I've really kind of benefited from that. And I suppose.  

You know, kids are so estranged from the rest of nature today, they spend I think it's twelve thousand hours in a classroom throughout their education. And we- you can just see how- well I have noticed in my children that they just naturally love all the other beings. They love the spiders and the wood lice and we're lucky well, I don't know if luck is the word, but we don't have really dangerous spiders or anything. So, they can kind of play around outside and make friends. And, you know, they refer to the bumblebees as hes or shes or theys and there is a just automatic natural kinship that I see in them, and then of course, the influences come in and they kind of influence that out of children, the way we keep them up in classrooms and one of the most mind blowing statistics I write about in Losing Eden is that children today spend less leisure time outdoors than inmates and incarcerated people. You know, you have to, by UN law, have a certain amount of time outside. We've just made it so difficult for children to play outside, you know, traffic and roads and so on. But, yeah, it's been a real it's been an amazing gift seeing the world through their eyes. And of course, because they're so close to the ground, they spot things that I don't spot, always finding beetles and things like that. 

Laura: Yeah. It must be just so wonderful seeing through their eyes. That statistic about children spending less time outside than inmates. There's just so much there and so many things for children, for incarcerated people. And that was a very shocking statistic for me as well. And, um, and just to go back to the book itself, I actually found for myself that while I was reading in your book, the more that I read it, the more I wanted to be outdoors while I was reading. So, I found myself going outside and actually reading the book quite, quite often as I was finishing up. I'm wondering if you have practices like reading outdoors or other things that keep you connected to the natural world. Is there anything you do regularly now to keep yourself connected? 

Lucy: Oh, it's a lovely question and I'm so glad that it had that effect on you. And that's something that I've heard people say. And I never expected it, really, when I mean, the book is essentially a kind of a synthesis of the most compelling and interesting scientific evidence I could find, but also more esoteric and more, I don't know, I guess, philosophical thought I could find out about why our minds need the world. So, I'm really glad to hear that. Um, I, I'm a really big I really love the little things, the miniature and the, the kind of small details, so I like to go out with my hand lens, and I'm always drawn to moss and lichen and I have a particular moss wall in the local cemetery, which is my local natural environment. And I really love I really love looking at the moss and lichen and seeing what I can find. So, I'm very keen on insects as well and invertebrates. I'm always looking, looking to see it's I'm often with the young children, so, you know, I can't always linger too long, kind of dependent. Sometimes I like to just go and kind of sit, sit under my favorite tree and just be there. I'm also I really love swimming outside. So, when we moved out of London to this area in the countryside in England, I'm in a very urban town, I live in an urban area. But about 10 minutes away, we have some nice rivers, and we call it wild swimming.  

Swimming in very cold rivers is something that I try and just do as much as I can, and I write about that a bit in the book because it's- I tried to work out what was happening in those rivers. And I was recovering from a period of postnatal depression and postpartum depression, and it was those rivers, which was almost like the marshland experience, where I would be feeling so overwhelmed and so anxious and- just, you know, really unstable, but I'd go to the river and swim in the cold water and just feel, just feel a bit of relief, and it was quite a spiritual place for me. I guess in some ways I felt quite transcendent. But also, I was looking because there's not that much scientific evidence about kind of cold-water swimming, even though, you know, anyone who does it will say, anecdotally, I feel much better afterwards, et cetera. But there is there is evidence that negative ions, which are ions which are created when water kind of waters hit together. So, waves, waterfalls, anywhere where this kind of motion in water, those negative ions may have anti-depressant like effects, too. I noticed that in this this cold-water area, I was always drawn to sit by the waterfall and just kind of be around. Perhaps there were there was something going on. And I think that's one of the things that I learned through my journey, which was that previously, before having this kind of reconnection and research interest, I thought or was taught that my body and my mind were kind of impervious to our environment and the rest of nature that I was kind of like my skin was kind of adamantine or, you know, so separate from the rest of nature, almost like it was a force field. Whereas through reading the literature and finding out about light and science, the chemicals emitted by trees, the micro-bacteria, these negative ions, I realized how porous we are, you know, and how the interactions between us and all our environments, whether they're urban or natural, are myriad and I think more deeper, more important than our society can realize this, and I just I love being outside as much as possible, reading outside, writing outside. But yeah, those are the- looking for mushrooms. I love looking for fungi, which is coming up quite soon. Just seeing what I can find. 

Laura: Beautiful and there's so many, so many different practices. Thank you for sharing those and I'm wondering if you can shift just a little bit. You've talked a bit about some of the studies in science and your book really shows the large and growing body of scientific evidence showing the benefits to these things and especially how much humans benefit from having trees and green growing things around everywhere in the workplace or hospitals at home. You even mentioned in the book that it could be an issue of public health, which I thought was really interesting. And I don't think very many people think about the natural world this way. So, can you tell us a little bit more about how nature impacts health and well-being and some of the studies behind it? 

Lucy: Yeah, sure. So, I kind of I thought that perhaps there might be one mechanism to explain, which was kind of absurd looking back on it, but in fact what I found was that connection with the rest of the living world can really affect us from our heads to our toes, so we all probably know that there could be something restorative about natural environments. But did you know that when you when you're in a natural environment compared to a built environment, you recover from stress more completely and more quickly, and that may be because when we're in nature our nervous systems are more likely to be balanced. So, our parasympathetic nervous system, which is the one associated with kind of rest and digest and feelings of calm and contentment, as opposed to the sympathetic nervous system, which is fight or flight and so on. 

And that also means that spending time in nature can even enhance our immune function, our immune systems, and reduce inflammation, which we're starting to now learn that there's a link between inflammation and mental health, psychological health. There are so many areas and interactions. I'll tell you a few of my favorites.  

One is to do with petrichor, which is that wonderful word for the smell of the earth after it's rained. So that there's been a dry spell and then it rains, the compound geosmin is released from the earth, which is what petrichor is for. And in and studies, studies suggest that when we smell geosmin the compound, it activates areas of the brain associated with calmness and relaxation. And we can detect geosmin at kind of really low levels, presumably because as we evolved for 99 percent have lived 99 percent of our evolutionary history in the natural world, we evolved to need to smell irrigated landscapes. So, I love that when it's been dry and then you smell the rain, just kind of thinking about how that might be affecting our brains.  

Another favorite of mine is the impact of fractal shapes. So, fractal shapes are found all over the place in the natural world. Trees, leaves, flowers, salt flats, lightning, fractal broccoli, even kind of weeds coming up from the cracks of the pavements will be fractal in shape, which means that it's the same shape repeating in various degrees of size. And a great guy called Richard Taylor found that the particular dimension found in nature of fractal shapes, which is I think is between one point three and one point five, have specific effects on brain activity associated with calmness and well-being, with the conclusion being that we would feel a lot less stressed if we spent more time looking at fractal shapes and being in the natural world. But some can reduce blood pressure. We know that phytoncides, the chemicals emitted by trees, can also have measurable effects on health. There's so many there's so many areas now measured and studied by scientists in so many different disciplines across continents to show that we really need the natural world for our sanity. We really need restorative, natural environments.  

And I say that it's an issue of public health because while the study of environmental, health and environmental injustice has often or kind of to date focused on matters like air pollution, water pollution, hazardous waste, etc. There's also now, I mean, it's kind of funny, isn't it, that we need the science to prove to us what so many people know and obviously, you know, Indigenous and traditional communities just know this, that we need we need the natural world. But now the science of nature and health is proving unequivocally that we need more nature for happy, healthy lives. Now, you know, it looks as though if there are communities living in areas with a paucity of the rest of nature or on streets without any street trees or entire blocks with no access or projects with no access to restorative living environments. The lack of that and the kind of injustice and inequitability in that is deeply unfair. And the science shows now that these are it's almost like being able to sleep well or having good food, you know, it's not something that's a luxury or a frill or something just for the wealthy or, you know, something that is a kind of add-on or an optional extra for a good life. It's actually something that I believe through the research is telling us that we fundamentally need you know in order to be OK with living on this Earth.  

Laura: Especially those issues of accessibility and where trees are located in the cities are such important pieces so that everyone has access to the natural world and to these amazing benefits, physical and mental health. 

Lucy: Yeah, and I think that, like, inequitable tree cover is so important for so many reasons. And one of them obviously being that in our global heating world, shade and tree cover for shade. But also, there's some really interesting work coming out about how background nature and unintentional nature trees are really significantly important. So while I was writing the book and looking at all the research, I was really conscious that so many people I know don't love nature in the way I do or don't want to climb trees on the weekend, or want to look for insects and, you know, there's this idea that it's just kind of for people who love the natural world in that way, conscious way. But in fact, what studies are showing us is that living on a living on a street with trees and having unintentional contact with the natural world is super important and has these measurable effects on population health as well. 

Laura: That's an important point. I want to talk a little bit about that word that you use so often: nature. It can be loaded, a bit confusing. What's really included, what's not…are buildings included, are human-made things included. So, what does nature mean to you? How do you define that term? 

Lucy: That’s a really good question. I have a real conflicted relationship with that word. I'm kind of trying not to use it so much at the moment because I think it has a lot to answer for. You know, it cements the idea that we have that it's nature's out there and we're separate from it and we're not nature. But saying that, you know, it is it is a kind of heuristic in a way. It's a way that people understand thinking about the natural- I think it's impossible to define the word nature. And I'm really interested in how people use it and how our vocabulary and our language affect the way we feel about the natural world and how our kind of paucity of lexicon for the living world maybe really affects how we kind of respond to it psychologically.  

For example, the marshland that I love, I fell in love with was called officially an SSI a site of something scientific interest, which, you know, it's something like that should be called like the Land of Wonder or like a Place of Awe. We strap these kind of scientific names on places and I think that they divest, divest them of the wonder and awe and solace and joy that people can find there. Even the word environment, the environment, you know, as if it's not our environment, as if it's not our home or, you know, national parks. And in the states, you don't have national parks across all states. It's not it's not equitable at all. But the word I'm trying to address when I can instead of the word nature, just use the word life at the moment. That's what I'm kind of trying out because I think certainly, I've seen this in England, there's this idea that saving nature or conserving nature or protecting nature is. It's kind of so, so detached from the human world and, you know, it's just like those insects or the birds and the butterflies and so on and we just we seem to have this kind of lacuna of -of acknowledging the interconnectedness of all things and that if the insect apocalypse continues, it's not just their lives, they're going to be in trouble, it's all of our lives. So, yeah, I try and use the rest of nature or the rest of the living world where I can to kind of make that point. But I don't know. Can I, can I put the question back to you? I'm really interested in whether you use that word or what you think about it. 

Laura: Yeah. Thank you. I try to avoid that word also. I think it has a long history of kind of being romanticized and used in various ways. Different people mean different things. So, I've used the non-human world, which also has its own problems, thinking about the natural world in relationship to humans, that it's not human. But others have used the more than human world and other terms. And I really think we need some new terms also. And I love life. I think that's one of the best terms. I love the one that you've come to. Well, and I'm going to go a little a little bit more. You mentioned the awe and wonder why do you think awe and wonder are so important to reconnecting with the natural world? 

Lucy: Yeah, I absolutely loved. Sorry I interrupted you…  

Laura: I just said with life, rather than the natural world. 

Lucy: Yeah, with life. So, yeah, this is one of my favorite areas of research, was the science of awe, which is led by Dacher Keltner in California, actually, which you might you know. And I'm so- he's done some really interesting work into how awe effects our minds and our bodies and so on. And I guess like everyone I would have beforehand thought awe is a nice experience or it feels good to listen to an amazing piece of music or an incredible painting or see a mountain and so on, but reading deeper into it, I had no idea how that feeling awe could change our biochemistry. It can actually- is the one emotion, positive emotion, which seems to have a direct effect on a particular biomarker for inflammation. Cytokines can have a real effect on our bodies and on our minds and our brains and our feelings of wellbeing. It can even make us kinder and more generous. So, the researchers found that when people feel awe, they're more likely to be kind of prosocial and more giving. And I think that's really important because well, personally, for me, I love finding awe and wonder in the natural world and for me it's often in the small things, like I mentioned, what kind of mushrooms or thinking about the mycelial networks. Or using my hand lens looking into moss. It's a kind of quietening of that my sense of self and in studies they show that when we experience awe activities in the default mode network, which is the area of the brain associated with sense of self, are lessened. And it's that connecting into something vaster and bigger than ourselves, which, as someone who's prone to rumination and brooding, is a deep relief. But I think, you know, if awe can make us kinder, more generous, that that is something that we should be seeking. And I. I think that we. You know, there are. There's so much wonder available in in life and kind of going back to the children aspect you know, we when we when we coop kids up, or we don't give children direct experience with life, we cut off and restrict their opportunities for wonder and awe. And those are important for the reasons I've outlined, the research that we know about. But also, I truly believe that it's through experiencing awe and wonder and feeling that kind of you know, that wow factor and that sense of kind of love and you know that just that emotional experience is what will lead to making people care about working against the forces of destruction and extinction. And we know that if people have that experience as a child, they're more likely to be more pro-environmental as adults. And I think that yeah, it's really, I feel like that's a real keystone area of research in how to kind of switch or switch our anthropocentric imaginings outwards. 

Laura: Yeah, yeah. It's really this relationship with other beings, that sense of love. 

Lucy: I mean, saying that I'm talking about this from my perspective of privilege and having these opportunities. Um, and I write more about this in the book, but of course, there are many systemic and structural barriers and obstacles for all people experiencing that. So, you know, those are barriers that need to be overcome so everybody can have that experience with the rest of nature. 

Laura: Thank you. Thank you. I sit in that privileged position also. I agree. And I'm curious to ask about the non-human or natural or living beings themselves. So, so much of the conversation is about how humans, we humans relate to nature, in Western culture, which is my lineage as well. And what about what about the trees, the animals, the insects themselves? What do you think about their relationship to us? 

Lucy: What an amazing question. I love that question. Um. I've been trying to think more about that, and I have a practice at the moment where I try and imagine that I'm one of the insects in my garden and to write from their perspective to try and sort of de-center me. Well, I think I think there's so much we don't know. And, you know, we're finding out a little bit scratching the surface of, you know, how to communicate and the networks and the mother trees and so on. I think it will be so interesting if we can discover what. How? How trees and insects, how we are kind of affecting them in in more indirect ways, I. I would say the. I'm quite careful with- because, picking up on a few of our threads and having young children who are very tactile, you know, want to touch insects or touch plants and flowers. It's often kind of on my mind a little bit about that direct impact, you know, previous to having kids, I might and realizing that tactile relationship with life is possible. I probably would have you know, as I said before, been looking at things a bit more, but these days I am kind of always thinking about does that bumblebee want to be on your hand, does that mean we want to be stroked or how can we not walk in a way that doesn't affect the wildflowers or you know, my kids with today hitting a tree about the bark of a tree with sticks. And my husband actually said, you know, maybe that she doesn't want to be hit by a stick, you know, so I don't know, I'm early in this journey and I love the question. I would love to know, I've been looking this week at an alder tree and the patterns that the caterpillar makes on the alder tree when it eats it and the kind of lattice work and it looked to me like a language, like it looks kind of like Morse code or like it's like another language. And of course, there's so much we don't know. I just love that so much. You know, we think that we know everything as human beings, but imagine what they think of us walking around. What about you? I really want to know what you think about that. 

Laura: I have lots of thoughts about that. But I think just asking the question is really important. And in your response, you talked about really that intentional moment, just thinking, how do I walk without interrupting the flowers or even with the- what your husband said, maybe the tree doesn't want to be hit. So, I mean, can we even think about what maybe what the tree wants? Is it could it want things? And ultimately, I kind of think that humans were so situated in our human embodied experience that we can't really know, just like I can't really know what's going on for you. We can't really know. But we can be curious. And I think that's really wonderful. So, uh, [Lucy: I agree.] and after that, I, I kind of hate to ask this question, but I want to ask as well, because you talk in the book about grief. There are these realities of climate change, deforestation, species extinction happening in our world, not to even mention the pandemic and everything that’s coming up with that. So how do we handle this reality, especially the mental health aspect, and what has helped you as you interact with the natural world? 

Lucy: Yeah, it's like so bittersweet kind of reconnecting with life at this time, you know, a year or so in on this journey, I fell into a state of ecological grief and realizing how much. You know, has been destroyed and is being destroyed and so on, and all the forces that have done that. I find that the one thing that helps me is kind of quite high political activism and organizing, so being in touch with other people who I can talk about grief with, and you know, who could empathize. And also, just doing what I can locally to make a bit of a difference, so I had a really, really intense experience this year. Me and my neighbor and friend are trying to re-wild a field at the back of our house. It's less than an acre. But we wanted to let it grow and just let whatever wanted to come up, come up and whoever wanted to move and move in. It was a previously was like an amenity lawn just mowing down. Kind of out of the way though. And by May it was so full of life, and it's like a stone's throw from a massive shopping mall and like a railway station, but just by stepping back. You know, and that being a response to the extinction and destruction and fetish for mowing that we have in this country everywhere, just like seeing everything mown down constantly because of the kind of cosmetic esthetic it came up to, like it came, came. It was so full of life. It was buzzing and humming. And we got in the evenings, it was full of grasshoppers and crickets and moths and butterflies and so many different species of grass is kind of like this little prairie meadow. And then we had the mowers, and they came, and they took it, they mowed the whole thing, even though we had this agreement for them not to hopefully the agreement is more solid for next year, but it was so heartbreaking and devastating to see. To be that evening in this place full of life and the next day just destroyed, just like. The dead grass. We were distraught, really distressed, but, you know, if I think if you feel it, if we feel it, we can be galvanized by it, you know? I mean, the IPCC report obviously last week and how horrendous the global heating is at the moment and habitat destruction, I find for me the antidote is to yeah is to do what I can kick up a fuss locally, try and change things as much as I can. And I guess ironically, it's always to go back to the source. It's always, you know, for me it is to go into the to seek life, you know, in these living environments and find a kinship and thinking about reciprocity and think about how to have a reciprocal relationship with the rest of nature. Saying that I you know, I I'm not living in a place which is at the forefront of global heating and that we have to have cultural issues, which is basically mowing. Like I was in my favorite cemetery the other day and looking at beautiful butterflies and then the mowers come in and they mow it all down. But it's different. So, and I and I appreciate that for a lot of people, it's becoming more dangerous to go outside and their natural environments are going. And I think that. Yeah, it's complex, but. Yeah, for me, seeking life still is the antidote. You know, trying to stand up against the forces of destruction. 

Laura: And I appreciate the different scales in your answer. There's kind of a global piece and there's a very local piece. And also, there's the lot, it sounds like it came back so quickly and came back to life and then and I don't know, maybe a couple hours that was taken away. But it gives me some hope that we have the ability to help with this regeneration, if we can stop these destructive pieces. 

Lucy: Exactly. And just as you say, it is about it is amazing how rapidly that regenerate that restoration happened. And there are so many positive stories about is that humpback whales come bouncing back and how and how simple and easy it is really for us just to step back, actually, you know, it's not the kind of excessive management of a natural habitat system that we just need to take a step back and let life thrive. 

Laura: I also want to ask you a little bit about ecotherapy that you write about in the book, that it seems like such a wonderful integration of kind of mental health directly with the natural environment, maybe with the help of a professional. I'm curious if you could tell us a little bit more about ecotherapy. 

Lucy: Yeah. So, um, ecotherapy. Um. Can mean lots of kind of different things, it can mean, you know, going conducting psychotherapy in the natural environment or it can mean a more of an umbrella term, including things like horticultural therapy or woodland therapy, wilderness therapy. I don't like the word using so utilitarian, but I suppose combining the natural environment with kind of therapeutic help in some way. So, one of the places I visited in my research was a place called Thrive, which has been running horticultural therapy programs for a number of decades. And that will be people who have learning difficulties or mental health difficulties, dementia, who will come and basically garden and do gardening and be supported in that. And the results are very effective. And it was kind of interesting interviewing horticultural therapists because they have been doing this for a long time. It's been decades. And so, when I come in and say, oh, the science is telling us now, but, you know, spending time with nature is really good for you. They kind of you know, they know it even though it hasn't been empirically proved for them in that way. And it has now, they know it, of course they do.  

And I think one of the most affecting visits I did was to a medium secure unit in England where I sat down with a couple of service users. So that means that they have a severe mental illness and they're also in the criminal justice system. And my kind of initial thought was that maybe spending time in nature or nature connection was good for the worried people with more medium to mild mental health conditions, but that those on the more severe end, it wouldn't touch the sides or, you know, it wouldn't do anything. That was quickly, quickly quashed when I looked into the evidence and particularly when I visited this medium security unit where the service users would do ecotherapy in the garden. And the woman who ran it was really kind of adamant that growing things was such an intrinsic part of human life that if people have no access to the rest of nature, then they'll just get even more ill. And yeah, eco therapy is growing in England. There's a kind of growing social prescribing movement of nature-based interventions where doctors who kind of prescribe it, obviously it comes with its complexity and issues as well. I know that obviously in the States and I think particularly in the West Coast, you have a long history and tradition of ecopsychology. And yeah, I guess the two terms can be a bit interchangeable as well. But I think more people are practicing therapy outside in England, for sure.  

Laura: Yeah, it's a good option for people who need that support. So, I just have one more question for you. And I- I'm curious because you've already got another book out, or out soon in the UK, The Nature Seed, kind of about how to raise kids, about relationship to nature we talked about earlier. But wondering what else is coming up for you, what other future projects, maybe railing against your local mowers. What else is coming up for you in the future? 

Lucy: Um, I, um, I'm working on a book about maternal mental health and the kind of ecology of early motherhood. It's kind of a mixture of, um, I don't know, I'm really interested in matrescence, which is the kind of transition into motherhood. And, uh, and I'm very interested in space. Um, I'm really interested in kinship and what that could mean. And I guess I'm trying to draw a line in a way I'm not sure how it's going to look, but between, I think disconnection and connection and how our disconnection from the rest of nature is also you know, connected to our disconnection from each other in the way we live and how that affects women or people in early parenthood. So, yeah, that's something that's bubbling away in the background. The -I have been researching nature in childhood over the last year, yeah, for a book called The Nature Seed, about how and why kids need more nature. So, yeah, that's what I’m up to. 

Laura: Wonderful. Will be anxiously awaiting those, that research and those books of yours.  

Lucy: Thank you. 

Laura: And thank you so much for this wonderful conversation. It's been so lovely to speak with you today. 

Lucy: So lovely for me. Thank you so much for your great questions. 

Laura: Thank you.  

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Thank you for listening to the CIIS Public Programs Podcast. Our talks and conversations are presented live in San Francisco, California. We recognize that our university’s building in San Francisco occupies traditional, unceded Ramaytush Ohlone lands. If you are interested in learning more about native lands, languages, and territories, the website native-land.ca is a helpful resource for you to learn about and acknowledge the Indigenous land where you live. 
 
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