Your Outside Mindset

This is Verla Fortier of your Outside Mindset show. This podcast is about taking back  your outside mindset by exploring and practicing new ways of noticing  when you are outside close to nature  whether you live in the city or country. For peer reviewed research on how your time spent in green space can change your mindset, prevent disease, balance your nervous system and your heart rate please go to my Substack website https://verlafortier.substack.com. Find my best selling books on Amazon  Take Back Your Outside Mindset: Live Longer, Stress Less, and Control Your Chronic Illness and Optimize Your Heart Rate: Balance Your Mind and Body With Green Space. Thank you for providing a  review of my books. Today it is my pleasure to speak with Pearlette Ramos. Let me read you her bio and then we will chat. To learn more please visit https://threeextraordinarywomen.comPearlette Ramos was born in poverty and raised in the projects,  Pearlette's home environment was riddled with alcoholism, mental illness and domestic violence. Due to the trauma, Pearlette fled her parents' home when she was 15 years old and moved in with an older brother. Within twelve months she was pregnant, married and a high school dropout. Tragically, after living four short months Pearlette's baby girl, ChaviElle, died of acute bronchial pneumonia. Devastated by her daughter's death, she channeled her heartbreak into studying. First obtaining her GED, she applied and was accepted into college, then law school – becoming the first in her family to graduate from both.After practicing law for 11 years, Pearlette went back to school and obtained a doctorate degree in psychology. She has raised two daughters, ages 27 and 36, while globetrotting around the world—having visited the seven continents and more than 80 countries. 4:02 Film is called Three Extraordinary Women who experienced extreme trauma in their childhood and how they went on to make meaning of that experience in their lives and each one became a social justice and human rights advocate in the world. 4:43 They tell their story as they climb Mount Kilimanjaro with the idea that we each have a personal Kilimanjaro. And they each have a collective Kilimanjaro  - giving voice to children and women globally. 5:23 My personal story and connection with nature. I grew up in poverty and had a TV. I was about 10 years old I saw the legendary film maker Jacques Cousteau. Full transcript of this episode is at  https://verlafortier.substack.comFor peer reviewed research on how your time spent in green space can change your mindset, balance your nervous system and your heart rate please go to verlafortier.substack.com and check out my books Take Back Your Outside Mindset: Live Longer, Stress Less, and Control Your Chronic Illness and Optimize Your Heart Rate: Balance Your Mind and Body With Green Space

For over 40 years, Dr. Martin Moore-Ede has been a leading world expert on circadian clocks and the health problems caused by electric light at night. As a professor at Harvard Medical School (1975 – 1998), he led the team that located the suprachiasmatic nucleus, the biological clock in the human brain that controls the timing of sleep and wake, and showed how it is synchronized by light. Since 2010, he has been the Director of the Circadian Lighting Research Center, which identified the key blue signal that synchronizes circadian clocks and developed patented LED lights, which provide health-optimized light across day and night based on comprehensive medical research. He has published over 180 scientific articles and authored ten books. His latest book, THE LIGHT DOCTOR: Using Light to Boost Health, Improve Sleep and Live Longer,has just been released. 3:15 Story. My whole life has been focused on the trajectory of light and the human body - particularly as a medical intern working 36 hours on and 12 hours off – when couldn't make sense of things that I had written the next day and that got me interested in the  circadian rhythm. So did a detour out of surgery and went to  Harvard Medical School to study the effect of light on the human body. At the time it was a new field – about 3 papers published a year on this. The papers  on circadian clocks are now in the thousands. I was invited to Harvard faculty and to open a lab. Here we discovered   the human brain SCN that regulates the body's cycles and rhythms. 4:17  rhythms of our body eg some things peak just before dawn ,  in the middle of the night like melatonin, late afternoon like  body temp,  and that light was a key signal that kept our biological clocks in sync with the outside world was not known at the time. 5:07 There began to be a recognition of the huge medical problem of those exposed to light at night like shift workers or sleeping with the lights on or just having artificial lights at night . And it is very much related to the colors of the light spectrum. 5:37 It is very much connected to white light is made of all the colors of the rainbow plus invisible ultraviolet and  infrared.   transcript verlafortier.substack.com For peer reviewed research on how your time spent in green space can change your mindset, balance your nervous system and your heart rate please go to verlafortier.substack.com and check out my books Take Back Your Outside Mindset: Live Longer, Stress Less, and Control Your Chronic Illness and Optimize Your Heart Rate: Balance Your Mind and Body With Green Space

Andrea Jaramillo  is a bilingual hospice nurse, urban farmer, ceremonialist, and beekeeper in training. She is the founder of Forest Nurse, a forest therapy practice that connects people with nature through guided, intentional sessions. As a certified forest therapy guide, she supports individuals through life's transitions, drawing from her experience in both birth and end-of-life care. Originally from Ecuador, Andrea honors ancestral wisdom and integrates Mesoamerican and South American traditions into her work. She believes in cultivating a deep relationship with the land as a way to protect and care for it. She also sees nurses as guardians—stewards of both human and ecological well-being. Andrea Jaramillo (Haramillo) and I know one another as members of  a new group called Global Nature Nurses Network – which so far,  is a comprised of nurses from US, Canada, and UK in the fields of  academia, public and private sectors practicing and promoting awareness of the vital reconnection with nature. One of the many goals of the Global Nature Nurses Network is to get the green space science and the nature connection piece into the nursing curriculum in Schools of Nursing. Last podcast episode I interviewed Susan-Allison Dean the Co Chair of the Global Nurses Network. I will put a link to that in the shownotes for your interest. Now over to you Andrea Jaramillo…1.    Please tell us more about your personal story and connection to nature.2.    You are an urban farmer. Please tell us more. 3.    You are a hospice nurse. How does that relate to nature? 4.    You are a forest therapist. Please talk about the evidence. 5.    How do your nature work in urban areas?6.    Can you walk us through one of your sessions?7.    You are from Equador. Please talk more about being an apprentice of traditional medicines in Central and South America. 8.    We are both in a new group called the Nature Nurses Network. Last week you opened with a beautiful grounding practice. Could you end our session today with that one? I loved it.  website: https://forestnurse.com/      LinkedIN: www.linkedin.com/in/andreajnurseInstagram: @forest.nurse  So listeners as Andrea Jaramillo, forest nurse  says immerse yourself in nature to improve physical and mental well-being. And because our bodies are sensing our environments all of the time…..  Use Andrea's mindful approach to helps you to slow down, engage your senses, take in the light, notice how that makes you feel, notice how that makes you think, as you connect with your natural environment. And finally remember to thank yourself for taking back your outside mindset. For peer reviewed research on how your time spent in green space can change your mindset, balance your nervous system and your heart rate please go to verlafortier@substack.com and check out my books Take Back Your Outside Mindset: Live Longer, Stress Less, and Control Your Chronic Illness and Optimize Your Heart Rate: Balance Your Mind and Body With Green Space

Susan Allison-Dean is a Board Certified Advanced Holistic Nurse and Certified Clinical Aromatherapy professional with over thirty years of experience in nursing.  During the first half of her career, she practiced mainly as a Certified Wound, Ostomy, & Continence Clinical Nurse Specialist, holding a joint position with Yale-New Haven Hospital & Yale University.In 1999, she experienced the profound loss of two significant family members just two days apart.  This loss and the profound healing experiences that she experienced in nature led her to leave the disease-care model and shift her practice to health promotion, specifically nature and health.Sue is the Founder and CEO of TheNatureNurse.com, which focuses on connecting women with nature so they may live more joyous, vibrant, awe-inspiring lives in harmony with Mother Nature.  She is the co-chair of the Global Nature Nurse Network, connecting nurses who specifically partner with the natural world to enhance holistic health and prevent disease.Sue also enjoys writing, traveling with her husband, and dabbling in other creative arts.  She lives in New York and North Carolina in the US.How you became a Nature Nurse 4:12 deep level grief, profound loneliness, pain 6:02  mother nature 24/7 availability - transformative - helped me to live a joyous and productive life. Bring light into people's lives. 9:03 Florence Nightingale "nature itself is healing"14: Nurse Pioneers in Global Nature Nurse Network Verla cites podcast episode with Professor Andy Jones systematic review and meta analysis of green space exposure and health outcomes (103 observational and 40 interventional studies investigating 100 outcomes: green space exposure decreased heart rate and blood pressure, HDL cholesterol, increased HRV, decreased preterm birth, diabetes, and all cause mortality in particular cardiovascular mortality.  For transcript see verlafortier@substack.com  Nature Nurse on Instagram https://www.linkedin.com/in/susan-allison-dean-rn-ms-ahn-bc-ccap/  For peer reviewed research on how your time spent in green space can change your mindset, balance your nervous system and your heart rate please go to verlafortier@substack.com and check out my books Take Back Your Outside Mindset: Live Longer, Stress Less, and Control Your Chronic Illness and Optimize Your Heart Rate: Balance Your Mind and Body With Green Space

Dr James Doty says Balance Your Nervous System To Manifest Your Desired Goals The word manifest may put you off, but I like James Doty (MD)'s  definition of manifesting. He says “once the body and the mind are in a state of balance, we have the power of manifestation, we can start thinking clearly about what we want to manifest.” Renown Stanford neurosurgeon and neuroscientist  Dr James Doty says we all  have goals and intentions. When your nervous system is balanced you can begin to manifest.Studies  show that as little as 5 minutes outside in nature or even looking at an image of nature balances your nervous system. When you are outside in nature your autonomic nervous system shifts to the parasympathetic (PNS) and you become less self focused, calm, and more connected to others and your world around you. You experience joy and awe. The relaxed PNS state (that can also be achieved by breathing and just thinking about the joy and awe in the world) is what Dr James Doty's recent book “Mind Magic: The Neuroscience of Manifestation and How It Changes Everything” (link: https://www.amazon.ca/Mind-Magic-Neuroscience-Manifestation-Everything/dp/1399710966/ref=monarch_sidesheet_title) teaches. The book is well worth the read and fits beautifully with your practice of spending time in nature or green spaces. The ability to manifest is based in NeuroscienceDoty's idea of manifestation is not the self-serving get rich quick scheme,  tarot cards, crystals, or pseudoscience.  Doty's view is based in “significant developments in brain imaging that allows us to watch the brain transform on a cellular, genetic, and even molecular level. We can now speak about manifestation in terms of cognitive neuroscience……and the brain's extraordinary ability to change, heal, and remake itself, known as neuroplasticity.” Manifesting according to Dr. Doty is the process of intentionally embedding thoughts and desires into your subconscious. For this he suggests visualization and picturing powerful positive emotions of your desired goal. Why? Because your brain will not know the difference between the real and the imagined.  Dr Doty says this is manifestation is not magic – it is neuroscience.For peer reviewed research on how your time spent in green space can change your mindset, balance your nervous system and your heart rate please go to my website https://treesmendus.com and check out my books Take Back Your Outside Mindset: Live Longer, Stress Less, and Control Your Chronic Illness and Optimize Your Heart Rate: Balance Your Mind and Body With Green Space

This is Verla Fortier of your Outside Mindset show. This podcast is about taking back  your outside mindset by exploring and practicing new ways of noticing when you are outside  close to nature  whether you live in the city or country. Two podcast episodes ago I did a solo podcast on a great book “Better In Every Sense: How the New Science of Sensation Can Help You Reclaim Your Life.” This is the link to that podcast episode is titled Get Intentional About Using Your Senses.  Today I have the author of this book with me. This is his bio.  Norman Farb, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Toronto Mississauga, where he directs the Regulatory and Affective Dynamics laboratory. He studies the cognitive neuroscience of well-being, focusing on mental habits, such as how we think about ourselves and interpret our emotions. Together with Prof. Zindel Segal, he wrote Better in Every Sense, a book that describes the surprising role of sensation in mental health. His current research explores online interventions to support  wellbeing, and neuroimaging of interoception, our sense of the body's internal state.Tanscript of interview is on my website Treesmendus.com For peer reviewed research on how your time spent in green space can change your mindset, balance your nervous system and your heart rate please go to my website https://treesmendus.com and check out my books Take Back Your Outside Mindset: Live Longer, Stress Less, and Control Your Chronic Illness and Optimize Your Heart Rate: Balance Your Mind and Body With Green Space

Tristan Gooley is a New York Times best selling author of How to Read Water, How To Read Nature, The Natural Navigator, The Lost Art of |Reading Nature's signs, and The Secret World of Weather. Today we are going to talk to Tristan about his latest book How to Read a Tree.Tristan Gooley is a leading expert on natural navigation, and his passion for the subject stems from his hands on experience. He has led expeditions in 5 continents, climbed mountains in Europe, Africa, and Asia: sailed boats across oceans; piloted small aircrafts across Africa and the Artic. He is the only living person to both fly and sail single-handedly across the Atlantic, and he is a Fellow of the Royal Institute of Navigation and The Royal Geographical Society. 2:47:   In my 20s I went on big adventures finding my own way with bits of kit. After that I decided that instead of doing thousand mile expeditions , I would do very small journeys just using nature to find my way. Transcript Treesmendus.com  natural navigator.com.  IG thenaturalnavigator. Fb the naturalnavigator. For peer reviewed research on how your time spent in green space can change your mindset, balance your nervous system and your heart rate please go to my website https://treesmendus.com and check out my books Take Back Your Outside Mindset: Live Longer, Stress Less, and Control Your Chronic Illness and Optimize Your Heart Rate: Balance Your Mind and Body With Green Space

 Let's Get  Sensual: Get Intentional About Using Your Senses  I read a good book recently titled “Better In Every Sense: How the New Science of Sensation Can Help You Reclaim Your Life.” The main message of the book is that by taking time to pause and engage  with your senses (seeing, hearing, touching, tasting) you can  feel better right away. You can do this indoors or outdoors.  University of Toronto psychology professors – Dr Farb (neuroscientist) and Dr Zindel (clinical psychologist)  urge you to – “ break out of negative thought patterns by engaging your senses.” Grounded in decades of research, the authors explain, “we often think that when we are struggling with a problem or a bad habit or life in general,  we think we need  to try harder, or tough it out. However this rarely works…..when we do this, our brains double down on thinking patterns that got us stuck in the first place.” This book explores the power of sensory experiences to liberate us from our ruts and dead ends. Your Brain Has Two Networks  According to Farb and Segal your brain has two networks: the habit and the sensory networks.   The habit network is devoted to rapid problem solving. You do need what the authors call your  “house of habit” to glide through the essentials of your daily life. The is the hardware of your brain that you cannot adjust. It is  also called the default mode network or DMN.  The DMN system prioritizes self-judgement which can lock you into resistance mode. Here is where you can get stuck.  Your Sensory Network Needs Your  New Mindset  Your sensory network is devoted to fresh insight. This is the software of your brain . This part you can adjust. You do this by 1) pausing and 2) noticing by using your senses.  So for example, if you are in your house and the lamp is on – you can notice where the light is cast on the wall, where it is strongest, and how far out the light reaches, and the quality of the light in different places. This simple type of activity can change your brain. This change is called neuroplasticity.  And you need the right mindset to get there.  In my book “Take Back Your Outside Mindset: Live Longer, Stress Less, and Control Your Chronic Illness” I give you 101 ways to engage your senses and notice when you are outside in green space. By for example when you notice a tree,  this taps into your DMN and tells it to let go – to relax.    As I say in my books, your  time is green space is non-pharmaceutical therapy that provides immediate relief, increases your ability to pay attention, to think clearly, to solve problems, increases your working memory and recall, helps you to regulate your behavior, increases your positive mood, lowers your resting heart rate…and  let's your brain restore itself.  Make a Game With Your Senses What I like about “Better In Every Sense” is the simple exercises to practice noticing by engaging your senses. For peer reviewed research on how your time spent in green space can change your mindset, balance your nervous system and your heart rate please go to my website https://treesmendus.com and check out my books Take Back Your Outside Mindset: Live Longer, Stress Less, and Control Your Chronic Illness and Optimize Your Heart Rate: Balance Your Mind and Body With Green Space

This solo podcast episode is about managing difficult emotions when loved ones move away. I am working on managing my emotions as both my kids who are Canadian settle in London England.The first things kind people might say to me is : oh that must be hard having them both so far away or you must miss them.. and both are true in moments. And because I have the tools that I use to manage my chronic illness which is systemic lupus or SLE, I find this is a time in my life when again I can view the situation with fear as a loss or with curiousity as an opportunity to learn something new. And I know from my hero Ellen Langer Stanford social psychologist that “every thought affects every part of the body” so what I say to others matters if I want to feel good about my siutaion with my kids living away.For my recent trip to England I packed my 5 point plan.Noticing difficult emotions as they arise. So here they are: anger, fear, stress. So before I left I had negative and fearful thoughts like “why do I have to get on this plane, contribute to climate change to see my kids?” I am still naming these various emotions watch them come and go. I do my best not to judge them and try to watch them come and go like the weather.I pack my outside mindset with me everywhere. it is my guiding star. The kids, who also have outside mindsets – thank goodness already know that all I wanted to do was walk outside with family in green space while I was there. We all know this is where we are our best selves – smiling more, more relaxed, and noticing new things to keep us in the present. As Ellen Langer says simply noticing is mindfulness. So I ended up having so much fun outdoors with mu kids in England. We took a train to Lulworth Cove, near Bournemouth  and hiked together for 4 hours, we spent an entire rainy day strolling around Hampstead Heath Park in London, and we spent two days roaming the grounds of Leeds Castle in Kent County. And I have the social media pictures to prove it on IG, facebook and linkedin.Dr Ellen Langer says that when we are having fun, we are being mindful. And when we are mindful we are attracted to others and they are attracted to us. The poet Keats must have known this too. When we  toured his house in Hampstead, we learned that when he became very sick before his death in his early twenties, he became more and more jealous of his lover and asked her “who have you smiled with today?” When I moved back to my hometown of Pine Falls I noticed that everyone liked to find humor – to laugh. You meet someone on the street, chat, and have a laugh about something. I believe this has something to do with the native community close by Sagkeeng and more so in Pine Falls where laughter is used so often and so beautifully to articulate and recognize loss.Hand on my heart and say good for you, you are doing the best you can, and everything is ok. Langer goes even further and tells us to “assume everthing is going to be ok.” What can I thank right now? The fresh air, a tree, a bird….and notice how that feels.Climate action.  Find transcript For peer reviewed research on how your time spent in green space can change your mindset, balance your nervous system and your heart rate please go to my website https://treesmendus.com and check out my books Take Back Your Outside Mindset: Live Longer, Stress Less, and Control Your Chronic Illness and Optimize Your Heart Rate: Balance Your Mind and Body With Green Space

Stephen Leahy is an award-winning international environmental journalist with over 25 years of experience in the field. His work has been published in a wide range of prestigious publications around the world, including National Geographic, The Guardian, Vice, New Scientist, Maclean's, Al Jazeera, and many others. Leahy's journalism focuses on critical environmental issues such as climate change, water scarcity, and biodiversity loss, aiming to bring global attention to these urgent matters.1.    Would you please start by telling us why you became an environmental journalist and maybe a bit about that mid life crisis? 5:07 For about 10 years I had a career in marketing. At one time I was the kind of the junk mail king of Canada sending out paper flyers  by mail.  I was at a direct mail conference and David Suzki was the guest speaker. It was kind of a downer because he was talking about climate change and environmental impact . And when he was asked "what can we  do as an industry?" he replied "stop what you are doing and do something useful."6:01 I took that to heart because I was feeling tired of the long commute to work, the direct mail industry, wanted to do something more meaningful, spend more time with my family and more time outside of highly air conditioned offices. I wanted to integrate my work with my family life. Were you able to achieve what you set out to do?7:14 Absolutely. I was there for my kids before and after school. Could go for walks and schedule my won time . It took a few years because I had a family, a mortgage, and there were financial pressures.  2.    You wrote a book Your Water Footprint – please tell us a little about that and is there any good news here? What are the 3 things people can do day to day that will make a difference.  person can do on a very small scale to help protect water. 8:11 The book came about when someone in Uxbridge where I lived at the time  asked me to do a info graphic approach  to show in a visual the impact of our use of water.   An Ottawa school is using the book for a project called Blue Schools.  I ask the school kids if there is anything that we can make that does not require water. There really isn't anything. Is there anything we can do to protect water? 10:18  Any time you consume anything be aware of the water consumption. The idea is to respect water. For thousands of years  water has been considered sacred because we cannot survive without it or do anything without it. I think having that mindset of awareness helps us and water. For peer reviewed research on how your time spent in green space can change your mindset, balance your nervous system and your heart rate please go to my website https://treesmendus.com and check out my books Take Back Your Outside Mindset: Live Longer, Stress Less, and Control Your Chronic Illness and Optimize Your Heart Rate: Balance Your Mind and Body With Green Space

Today my guest is Linda  Åkeson McGurk is a Swedish American writer and author of The Open-Air Life and the bestselling parenting memoir There's No Such Thing as Bad Weather. She is a passionate advocate for the Nordic outdoor tradition friluftsliv and runs the blog Rain or Shine Mamma, where she shares tips and inspiration for outdoor play every day, regardless of the weather. McGurk and her work have been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Time Magazine, The New York Times, The New York Post, Huffington Post, Psychology Today and many more. When she is not working, she is usually found sauntering around the pine forests near her home in southwestern Sweden.5:52 What prompted Linda to write my first book and blogs. Reaching out to community.6:37 Latest book "The Open Air Life: Discover the Art of Friluftsliv and Embrace Nature EverY Day " wanted to share outdoor cultural traditions of Sweden. 7:23 How to help people take the step11:45 Why getting into nature feels like going home. But nature is not a bottomless pit. View nature in terms of personal health, important to attach to environmental policy. 18:00 What is Friluftsliv? (below are 4 of the 10 principles) 1) Appreciate and are one with nature2) when you go to local nature spaces. If close by, much more likely to go. Get to know your local birds and trees.3) Non competitive. Feel the joy and keep it simple.4) Starts when the motor is turned off, when you compel yourself in space as in swimming, walking, running, cycling, cross country skiing, paddle boarding, kayaking..24:00 water skiing vs swimming - activity and personal thrill vs being and communing with what is under the water, communing with nature. Also the difference in the environmental impact. And which is most sustainable. For a full transcript of this conversation go to https://treesmendus.comFor peer reviewed research on how your time spent in green space can change your mindset, balance your nervous system and your heart rate please go to my website https://treesmendus.com and check out my books Take Back Your Outside Mindset: Live Longer, Stress Less, and Control Your Chronic Illness and Optimize Your Heart Rate: Balance Your Mind and Body With Green Space

What you might not know is that you will also be more beautiful or handsome  to others when you are outside. When I saw an Instagram reel of my 20 something kids out in the countryside last weekend with their friends, I saw this. They were even more beautiful, happy and carefree out there together in the Cotswold area in England.  I want to explain to you in graphic terms why you too look even more beautiful out there in the countryside. It's about blood flow throughout your body when you are out there. To do this I have to draw on my nursing biology knowledge about your autonomic or automatic nervous system and blood flow. In the last episode I talked about how getting outside loosens and relaxes your thinking – your thoughts relax, you get perspective. At the very same time there are changes in your physical body – your nervous system comes into balance. On pages 57-59 my book Optimize Your Heart Rate I discuss the see saw nervous system which goes up and down between the sympathetic (fight/flight – where the heart speeds up) and the rest and digest where the heart relaxes and slows down. We need both. To get things done we need out heart rate to speed up and that is ok. When you are in sympathetic f/f the blood goes to your arms and legs so you can run away. But you don't want to stay in that hyped up productive state, you need to give your mind and body a break. This is what happens in green space. The other extreme of your see saw nervous system, called you R&D takes over to bring your body and mind back into balance. Your In the r/d the blood stays in your head  and core – so the blood vessels open up in your head, through your chest and heart (relaxed heart rate) and your abs – sphincters and organs are relaxing so that your food, waste, blood, and secretions  can pass through your body with ease, and down below that the blood flows to your kidneys, bowels and genitals. This is where my kids say “mom……” This is all good I am a nurse this is how we talk... So 7 specific things happen when your blood flows  Transcript https://treesmendus.com For peer reviewed research on how your time spent in green space can change your mindset, balance your nervous system and your heart rate please go to my website https://treesmendus.com and check out my books Take Back Your Outside Mindset: Live Longer, Stress Less, and Control Your Chronic Illness and Optimize Your Heart Rate: Balance Your Mind and Body With Green Space

This podcast, Your Outside Mindset  is now in the top 5% most popular shows out of 3.2 million podcasts globally. Thank you to each one of you in 56 countries for listening and sharing Your Outside Mindset podcast episodes.  For science- based information with easy to use tools, tips and practical advice on how to get the most of your time in green space see my website https://treesmendus.com and check out my books Take Back Your Outside Mindset: Live Longer, Stress Less, and Control Your Chronic Illness and Optimize Your Heart Rate: Balance Your Mind and Body With Green Space.In this solo episode today, I want to share something that happened to me at my son Max's wedding to Sarah - which took me by surprise and made me step back and revaluate who else needs to hear the message I am sharing in this podcast. So let me take you to the big day. I was there mother of the groom and asked to do a big speech.I was nervous, practicing, second guessing whether this was the right thing to say-all the things that parents feel before making a momental speech.. I won't read you the whole speech.  So listeners here is part of my speech on that precious loved filled day:               When the kids were small we lived on Loughborough Lake near Kingston. One day I  was rushing around tidying our house and saying, “I just want to get things back to normal.” Max who was in Grade 1 at the time said, “Mommy Where's normal?” I replied “ I don't know, where do you think it is? Max said “Out in  the middle of the lake somewhere.”  And when Max was little he loved to lie on  the ground and look  up into the  tree branches – for a  very long time. So long that I finally decided to start lying down next to him. When I did,   he said “look mommy angels” – he  was referring to the light glancing through the tree branches.  I don't know, but if I asked Max today “where  is normal?” I am pretty sure he would say anywhere in  the world – and mostly outside and always with Sarah.|”At the end of the speech his friends shared with me  the impact that my speech had on them - what it also showed that with their  careers, technology and screens  they have lost touch with the importance of making time for nature and green spaces in their busy lives.So this is for you the 20-30 year olds at Max and Sarah's wedding:I get it. If I rewind my time back in my career and busy life in my 20s and 30s, I made time for the gym and workouts but that was it. Now you probably know that I have lupus today. I look back and think that if I had made time for more nature and green space daily in my busy career life – if I had spent more time outsiFor peer reviewed research on how your time spent in green space can change your mindset, balance your nervous system and your heart rate please go to my website https://treesmendus.com and check out my books Take Back Your Outside Mindset: Live Longer, Stress Less, and Control Your Chronic Illness and Optimize Your Heart Rate: Balance Your Mind and Body With Green Space

Christiane Wolf, MD, PhD is a former physician and an internationally known mindfulness and Insight (Vipassana) meditation teacher. She is passionate about translating ancient wisdom teachings into accessible and applicable modern-day language. She aims to live from the heart informed by the brain and inspires her students to explore the same. She is the author of “Outsmart Your Pain – Mindfulness and Self-Compassion to Help You Leave Chronic Pain Behind”and the co-author of the classic training manual for mindfulness teachers “A Clinician's Guide To Teaching Mindfulness”. Christiane is the lead-consultant and teacher trainer for the VA's (US Department of Veteran Affairs) National Mindfulness Facilitator Training and a senior teacher at InsightLA.3:38 Originally I just wanted to provide a print out for patients and providers of what mindfulness and self compassion are and where to find resources. We ended up with a user friendly book.4:45 When our body goes into pain, this is the body's priority: paying attention to pain.  This gets complicated with chronic pain.6:48 Our body  learns pain. In chronic pain our body becomes over protective.When we say the pain is killing me today, be careful because your body is  listening.8:00 When we are in pain, the mind goes into rumination, replays stories of what happened to us. 10:00 We have a story with a history.  What did you do? what are you regretting? We have a story of the past  and a story  of the future. With each thought comes a particular emotion.10:57 We might have a future story - we might know that the condition we have is progressive. We might worry that the pain will not go away....so you will not be able to go on hikes, lift your grandchildren.....11:47 When the pain comes rushing in, this is a reminder of our past and future story:  fear, frustration, and worry set in.12:08 The past is over and the future isn't here. You might recognize your thoughts and say "the past story is really running right now."12:16  You can  learn practices to put that story down for a while. May say "I don't need to go down that path right now...at this moment."For further episode transcript please visit my  website Treesmendus.comFollow Christiane Wolf on her website hereand on Instagram: christianewolfmindfulnessFor peer reviewed research on how your time spent in green space can change your mindset, balance your nervous system and your heart rate please go to my website https://treesmendus.com and check out my books Take Back Your Outside Mindset: Live Longer, Stress Less, and Control Your Chronic Illness and Optimize Your Heart Rate: Balance Your Mind and Body With Green Space

Full Podcast Transcript at treesmendus.com Books written by podcast host Verla Fortier:Optimize Your Heart Rate: Balance Your Mind and Body With Green Space Take Back Your Outside Mindset: Live Longer, Stress  Less, and Control Your Chronic Illness Dr. Patrycja Matusik is a physician-radiologist at University Hospital, Kraków, Poland. She completed her medicine degree and PhD at Jagiellonian University in Kraków. In her work she focuses primarily on cardiovascular imaging, lung diseases and neuroimaging.In her scientific work, one of the main directions is heart rate variability (HRV). She went to the Cardiovascular Division at the Department of Medicine at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Missouri, USA on two occasions. There she completed internships in the field of advanced methods of ECG analysis under the mentorship of Prof. Phyllis K. Stein in the Heart Rate Variability Laboratory. She is the co-author of several scientific papers published in peer-reviewed international journals, including the European Heart Journal. 1.    Please tell us a little more about your personal - why you are interested in lupus erythematosus.  First, I want to say thank you for inviting me to your podcast.As you said I'm a physician radiologist from Poland. Privately, I'm a mother of 3-year-old Julia. My husband, Paweł Matusik, is also a doctor – a cardiologist, and together we combine our passion for scientific research.  I was inspired by lupus for the first time on my internship at the Heart Rate Variability Laboratory led by Prof. Phyllis K. Stein at Washington University in St. Louis. During the course of lupus, involvement of multiple organ systems, including the cardiovascular and autonomic nervous system, occurs. Therefore, we decided to bring together and summarize current knowledge about the scientific findings and potential clinical utility of heart rate variability measures in patients with systemic lupus erythematosus. 2.     Please tell us what lupus erythematosus is and what can happen during the disease process as it relates to your publication “ Heart Rate Variability in patients with systemic lupus erythematosus: a systematic review and methodological considerations.”  Systemic lupus erythematosus is a chronicFor peer reviewed research on how your time spent in green space can change your mindset, balance your nervous system and your heart rate please go to my website https://treesmendus.com and check out my books Take Back Your Outside Mindset: Live Longer, Stress Less, and Control Your Chronic Illness and Optimize Your Heart Rate: Balance Your Mind and Body With Green Space

 For the full show notes of this episode visit website https://treesmendus.comVerla's new book Optimize Your Heart Rate: BalanceYour Mind and Body With Green Space. Verla's previous book Take Back Your Outside Mindset: Live Longer, Stress Less, and Control Your Chronic IllnessDr. Tselios is an Assistant Professor of Medicine with the Division of Rheumatology at McMaster University since 2021. He completed his basic training and PhD in Greece and came to Canada in 2014 where he worked as a post-doc fellow with the University of Toronto Lupus Clinic. His main clinical and research interest is the field of autoimmunity and systemic lupus erythematosus, particularly the cardiovascular complications of the disease. He has published more than 70 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters. He is currently developing the McMaster Lupus Clinic and Lupus Ontario/Anne Matheson Lupus Biobank in Hamilton.Time Stamps in minutes of our conversation:2:00 I started looking after lupus patients in 2008 in Greece, and was offered an opportunity to do a PhD in lupus to become the medical director the lupus clinic ...and there, I fell in love with lupus patients and the process of the lupus disease. 4:21 My published research caught the attention of the Toronto Lupus Clinic run by  doctors Touma   and  Gladman who were collecting data on lupus patients since 1971. This clinic at the Toronto Western Hospital at the University Health Network is one of the largest lupus clinic in the world, was a great environment for me to gain expertise in lupus. I worked there since  2014 and it was a great experience. I stayed there for 6  years. 5:00 I stayed there for 6  years as a post doc. Then I was hired at McMaster University in the Division of Rheumatology at Hamilton Health Sciences. My main goal is to develop a new Lupus Clinic for south western Ontario and this Biobank, if we want to talk about it further is about collecting samples for further lupus research. 6:00 Heart involvement and lupus: In the past lupus has been so agressive that it leads to often leads to death. But most people do significantly better now. So our patients will survive but the arteries can stiffen as the years go by (atherosclerosis) and as we get older.8:00  Lupus patients are 50% more likely to have a heart attack than people without lupus. 8:22 I started investigating this in my research with the Toronto Lupus Clinic cohort. As you dig deeper into research sometimes you find things that you would never expect. 8:60 The heart conduction system is about the heart pumping blood to every part ofFor peer reviewed research on how your time spent in green space can change your mindset, balance your nervous system and your heart rate please go to my website https://treesmendus.com and check out my books Take Back Your Outside Mindset: Live Longer, Stress Less, and Control Your Chronic Illness and Optimize Your Heart Rate: Balance Your Mind and Body With Green Space

Host Verla FortierVerla's website https://treesmendus.comVerla's new book Optimize Your Heart Rate: BalanceYour Mind and Body With Green Space. Verla's previous book Take Back Your Outside Mindset: Live Longer, Stress Less, and Control Your Chronic IllnessTime stamp: 03:00 My lupus diagnosis04:00 Green space research changed everything04:48 Sudden cardiac death of my best friend05:40 Take 3 minutes outside in green space06:27 HRV not captured on bedside heart monitors06:50 What is HRV07:24 Episode #30 Optimize Your Heart Rate is about  resting heart rate 08:11 High HRV08:18 How HRV08:39 Why researchers love HRV09:30 HRV measures fitness of your heart and your entire autonomic nervous system in one metric. 10:16 One HRV metric captures how much stress you are under - physiologically and psychologically11:29 HRV study in 2013 of 22K people without heart disease showed low HRV is indicative of first heart attack or sudden cardiac arrest  (by 40 percent) 13:19 Low HRV early  warning system for heart malfunction and accompanies a range of diseases 14:15 Marsuik research showed lupus patients  may have low HRV as a result of cytokines, not disease process15:07 Covid and HRV research/Cancer and HRV16:10 I use a chest strap for one minute every morning with my free HRV app18:20 Greenspace balances nervous system19:10 HRV let's me know what is going on - have my own surveillance system  and treatment plan19:59 What happened to my HRV this summer. Didn't bounce back20:52 My GP ordered a 48  hour halter monitor test21:42 Revolution in personalized medicine22:15 Toronto Lupus Clinic, University Health Network looked at prolonged antimalarial treatment effects. Link: 23: 49 Can pick up heart conduction damage in EKG24:11 Your own personal data is power24:38 Reducing my medication with my GP and Specialist26:37 Know your own HRV baseline26:52 Time spent in green space balances HRV and resting heart rate28:48  Be co-custodian of your own health by using HRV and greenspace. For peer reviewed research on how your time spent in green space can change your mindset, balance your nervous system and your heart rate please go to my website https://treesmendus.com and check out my books Take Back Your Outside Mindset: Live Longer, Stress Less, and Control Your Chronic Illness and Optimize Your Heart Rate: Balance Your Mind and Body With Green Space

Host Verla FortierVerla's website https://treesmendus.comVerla's new book Optimize Your Heart Rate: BalanceYour Mind and Body With Green Space. Verla's previous book Take Back Your Outside Mindset: Live Longer, Stress Less, and Control Your Chronic IllnessMichelle Schuman's book: The Understory: A Female Environmentalist in the Land of the Midnight SunMichelle Schuman's website: https://meschumancom.wordpress.comYour Outside  Mindset Podcast episode #36Time Stamp (minutes: seconds)1:31 Michelle Schuman is an environmental scientist with over four decades of experience in Alaska working for the federal government, state government, and the private sector. She holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Wildlife Biology and Range Science, a minor in Soil Science and a Master's in Environmental Policy and Wetland Restoration. Schuman is a certified Senior Ecologist and Professional Certified Wetland ScientistSchuman is credited with writing hundreds of technical documents, including the Wetland Functional Assessment Guide for Alaska. But her greatest and hardest, accomplishment was a first responder on the Exxon Oil Spill analyzing one of the most devastating and long-term human caused disaster in North America.She resigned from federal service in 1987, expanding her professional career into private consulting and state government in wetland science and oil spill response.In October 2020, she began writing her memoir, The Understory: A Female Environmentalist in the Land of the Midnight Sun. A year later, she signed an option agreement with HTWIP Productions for a screenplay.4:26 I am 66 now.  I was born in a small, rural town in eastern Washington, where I was free to explore the basalt cliffs and sagebrush fields. After receiving my undergraduate degree in wildlife biology, range management, and soil science, I married my soulmate, whom I met working in the Blue Mountains of Oregon.4:44 Our adventure took us to California, where my husband was a mechanical engineer; and Nevada, where I tracked wild horses. And then, I was offered a position in Alaska, working with reindeer and muskox. We thought it destiny, as his company also had a position in the same state and the same city, Anchorage. Early on in our Alaskan dream, my husband Rick was killed in a traffic accident.5:01I was working in the bush at the time and found out through a one way radio  what happened. I  sat on the ground for about 6 hours. That is all in my book ...5:19 This led me down this path of realizing how short life can be -- and to try to never regret and look back. See the complete transcript at Treesmendus.com 

Host Verla FortierVerla's website https://treesmendus.comVerla's new book Optimize Your Heart Rate: BalanceYour Mind and Body With Green Space. Verla's previous book Take Back Your Outside Mindset: Live Longer, Stress Less, and Control Your Chronic IllnessGuest Ernesto Rodriguez, Executive Director Nature In  The Classroom (tree mural ceilings) and in hospitals Sereneview (nature  mural hospital curtains).Shownote  Timeline3:45 Ernesto grew up in Cuba, grandfather a renown muralist6:30  Visited  his friend in hospital (got the creeps). Then went to assignment in the Redwood Forest. As  he  was waiting for the light to come through the trees (about  an hour) was thinking of his friend  in the hospital.  Ernesto felt so good  there and  wondered why hospitals can't feel  like this? Research  on scientist Roger Ulrich in the 80s.10:11 Brain reacts so quickly to nature. 11:36 Story  of Asia: emotional soothing with nature  curtain.14:27 Professor Richard Taylor's definition of fractals17:17 Hôspital curtains for veterans, National Parks18:26 10 days in National Parks22:11 Attention Restoration Theory (ART): nature helps to calm, focus, and learn. Nature gives brain a break. 24:00 Pilot Project to put tree mural ceilings in school.25:18 One of the drawbacks of introducing something new: only 2% off the population is going  to get it. It takes 18% before it goes mainstream. 31:07 Images of nature has to be life-like. Canopy has blue sky, see branches, see leaves, camera on a  tripod combined with software. 12 by 12 foot  squares  or 16 foot squares. 37:07 Tip: go outside -there is no substitute for that.38:11 Tip: We don't recognize your own anxiety until we see nature or get outside40:03 Follow Ernesto's work Nature in the Classroom on Facebook and Instagramand Sereneview.com

Michelle Olson, PhD, LCAT, ATR-BC, ACC/MCFounder, Executive Director www.evergreenminds.org  Verla's website https://treesmendus.comVerla's new book Optimize Your Heart Rate: BalanceYour Mind and Body With Green Space. Verla's previous book Take Back Your Outside Mindset: Live Longer, Stress Less, and Control Your Chronic Illness1:19 Michelle Olson is a social gerontologist, who started as a creative arts therapist with WWII vets who had serious mental health and dementia. Expressive arts include visual arts, music,  dance and drama.05:15 What makes the difference is the ability of people who are experiencing mental difficulties to communicate in different ways. 6:21 Michelle Olson: "When people lose the ability to talk... they can still move their bodies and use their senses -- as ways to connect and feel better."7:19 Michelle Olson: "to do this as a family member -- we sometimes make it harder than we need to make it. It is the simple things sometimes the activity might be -- being together outdoors. Here we might spend time noticing the leaves or the light, the shadows, the textures....7:38 Maybe its the smell in the air 7:49 Sometimes I do forest therapy with clients and we turn around and notice things in different directions. Eg what does this acorn feel like? Maybe you can make a nature sculpture - something that will recreate this time together. 8:47 Maybe a person does want to make a painting - then I focus on the process - maybe that product is interesting. Or maybe they want to make a poem - it might rhyme or it might not. It is the whole process of connecting that matters. 09:58 As a social gerontologist I am interested in where we live and what we do across out whole lives....how we eat, how we move, how we socialize, how we interact with the world, do we feel safe..10:17 When I was an arts therapist that is when the light really went on...I wanted to know more about aging. In social gerontology we look at the person holistically over the course of their lives. The field of gerontology is growing, there are financial gerontologists, environmental gerontologists... we need to know all these perspectives.14:00 We often  don't think about environment when we think of aging.  United Nations just declared access to a healthy environment a human  right.  We  don't question why  we keep  patients and older people inside.     Dr Allen Power says balance the risk of safety and keeping people away from natural spaces. We can ask  staff  - to honour these  older people with dementia the option to go out everyday.   Paul Falkowski  PhD says  It  is  matter of changing behaviour and involving volunteers. 24:11 Evergreen Minds  Foundation - brings people together through expressive arts and green space -  helps educate staff and society.  Interview  show notes continued on Verla's  website

Dr. Bing Zhao  is a geriatric doctor in the first university of science and technology of China. This hospital is in  Hefei, a city located in the east China with a population of more than 9 million. She completed her medicine degree in China and PhD in University of Tasmania in Australia. Then she went to Duke University in the US as a research scholar. Her PhD research interest is air pollution and cardiovascular diseases. She is recognized for her presentations at the youth section of annual congress of the European Society of Cardiology, the largest cardiology congress in the world. She has published several papers and one of them was published in the Lancet planetary health.Please go to my website for the link to her paper. In my new book Optimize Your Heart Rate I tell the story of my close friend Leslie, aged 64 and apparently healthy with no diagnosis of heart disease,  who died of sudden cardiac arrest after  2 days on a road trip. Time line of my interview with Dr. Bing Zhao3:29 Breathing polluted air threatens our hearts4:19 The consequences of PM2.5 particulate  matter is dramatic5:03 PM 2.5 is a mix of solid and liquid - very thin- less than the size of a strand hair -goes right to lungs and heart7:22  Study in Japan nation wide - Out of hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) - compared # of OHCA with air pollution over 3 days.7:58 1/4 million cases over 2 years -  65 years of age increased incidence8:30 Japan has air quality stations all over the world9:01 Cardiac arrest occurs when the heart suddenly stops pumping = major medical emergency9:42 Study finding: Short term exposure to PM2.5  up to 3 days associated  with increased risk      of OHCA -- men and women over 65 more susceptible 10:24 Gases in traffic emissions -  nitrogen dioxide, sulphur dioxide, carbon monoxide11:02 What surprised Dr Zhao the most?  People assume that air quality is safe at levels at levels below WHO levels. There are no safe levels of PM 2.5 air pollution for our hearts. 11:35 Current air pollution policy has to be changed12:28 We  need new health care responses to air pollutionChose public transportation over cars, use air purifiers indoors, and access green space in day to day activity.14:49 Acute exposure to air pollution increases risk of sudden cardiac arrest in less  than 3 days. 18:43 Time line and more info on my website https://treesmendus.comFor the story of my life long friend Leslie who died of a sudden cardiac arrest at the age of 63 on day 3 of her road trip see my new book Optimize Your Heart Rate: BalanceYour Mind and Body With Green Space.   

Time stamp interview notes continued on my website: https://treesmendus.com My new book Optimize Your Heart Rate: Balance Your Mind and Body  With Green Space1:19 Professor Andy Jones is a public health academic who holds the position of professorial fellow in Norwich Medical School at the University of East Anglia in the UK. He has wide ranging interests including the pragmatic evaluation of public health interventions, the role of the environment as a determinant of health and related behaviours, and the impact of access to services on health outcomes. He has a strong focus on policy and delivery in his work and collaborates with several key organisations working in this field, including the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR), the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) and Cancer Research UK.2;20  childhood, mother took him outside along the Suffolk coastline. Studied environmental science and always interested in health. Nature and health relationship - advocate for both.4:36  definition and history  of green space, UK companies like Cadbury recognized that if  you wanted productive workers, you needed healthy workers  --  so developed new settlements that integrated green space - 6:47 everyone had a garden7:31 green space in UK has been an urban centric movement eg massive Hyde Park09:37  “The health benefits of the great outdoors: a systematic review and meta-analysis of green space exposure and health outcomes.” Published in the Journal Environmental Research, 2018. What did you want to know? The  process?   Individual studies may not offer a strong case for causality but when you combine individual  studies in a way that allows for more broad conclusions. According  to 290 million people  in 140 studies (96% of studies from last 10 years – illustrating the rapid growth in green space and health). Living close to green space and spending time outside has significant and wide ranging benefits. Time in green space reduces risk of diabetes, cardiovascular disease, premature death, stress, high blood pressure. 10:02 Review of the literature, systematic, so that somebody else can some along and do the same thing - and would get the same thing. 10:53 Why  did do review? Take stock, let's try and cut through all the noise and get the signal. Find out what is common. 11:57  looked at everything except mental health 12:34 Health outcomes that we can measure - heart rate, heart rate variability HRV, mortality, cortisol levels13: 26 143 studies - signal, explosion of interest 14:41 Populations in green space had better health outcome, particularly stress outcomes 1)  heart rate and 2) heart rate variability HRV 3) cardiac mortality15:56 Results: 20% reduction in bad things, if we had a pill that would do that we would take it. 17:07  The most surprising thing was the consistency of the findings and size of differences in populations with more green space and those with the least access to green space. 18:08 Threw out some studies and only kept the highest quality  studies and got the same result. Still consistent. 19:36 Interesting unanswered questions on quality  of green space. Do we have to use it or is it enough to just look at it? 

Ben Rawlence The Treeline Ben Rawlence City of Thorns Ben Rawlence Radio Congo Ben Rawlence on TwitterBlack Mountains College  websiteBlack Mountains College on TwitterVerla Fortier Optimize Your Heart Rate: Balance Your Mind and Body With Green Space Verla Fortier Take Back Your Outside MindsetVerla Fortier Take Back Your Outside Mindset Workbook Interview with Ben  Rawlence: Recording  Time Stamps5:00  Radical hope and clear eyed awareness.2 degrees means awful things  but also opportunity  to reconsider  our  ways, and embrace our roles as guardians of nature - re- entangle with nature.8:12 New  ways of looking and seeing. Ancient and some modern with  huge datasets  re  future impacts. Biochemical research on trees, we have characterized so few.9:15  See forest as a garden and laboratory, change in perspective, "timber is the least valuable thing in the forest." Travel writing, Adventures with Characters.Seven Chapters, Seven Species, Seven Stops Around the World in the Boreal 10:15  Wales The Yew Tree in Ben's back yard. Simple questions: Why is that tree in that place?How long has it been here?Ice Age, reminders of the patterns vegetation on earth and time scale of 2000 or 8000 years. Long time scales. 13:43  Scotland story here is deforestation. Treeless landscape.  Aventure to find small patch of old pines. 15:34 Norway - Finmark, top of Europe. Different story  of "afforestation." Birch used to be in the valleys, now it is zooming up into the tundra. Lapland nomads way of life hunting reindeer disappearing as trees move in -- taking over grassland, lichen, and trapping snow to produce soil. 18:21 Russia - immense forest, half of the boreal forest is in Siberia. Most northernly forest in the world. Larch is frozen 260 days a year. Prevents injury to itself in the freezing process by freezing solid like glass. Here trees are not moving at all. 21:00 Alaska -  Spruce trees are galloping north. Species that live off the trees, the beaver....Continued on Treesmendus.com

My new book is here on Amazon: Optimize Your Heart Rate: Balance  Your  Mind and Body With Green  Space Amazon.com  Amazon.ca Amazon.co.ukComplete show notes: https://treesmendus.comYou might think that diet and exercise are the best ways to avoid a heart attack. And yes that research is well understood. But this another way.  This is to be aware of the environments that can either help or harm your heart.  Do you know that your heart is under attack every day by hidden threats that you cannot see  in your environment?  This is what my new  book Optimize Your Heart Rate is all about. In it I tell the story of my life-long friend Leslie's sudden cardiac arrest at the age of 63. I want you to know what Leslie didn't know. By the end of the book you will know how to use green space and your own heart rate numbers to:  avoid these hidden threats, protect your heart, know when your heart is in danger and what to do about it. I wrote this book so that what happened to Leslie does not happen to you—so that you can live your best life possible. 9:09     Why nurses use resting  heart rates 10:59   What low and high  resting heart rates  mean for you13:00   Is heart  rate data from wearables reliable?14:00   U of C smart phone heart rate apps compared  to gold standard ECG.15:15  A  patient care revolution 17:00 Stanford study, Dr. Snyder,  resting  heart rate, your  early warning system18:31  Your resting  heart rate in  green space

https://treesmendus.com for  transcript of this episode.  For more evidence- based research and tips please check out my book and workbook Take Back Your  Outside Mindset: Live Longer, Stress Less, and Control Your Chronic Illness.  University of Louisville Christina Lee Brown Envirome Institute https://enviromeinstitute.com/Follow @UofLEnvirome on Twitter https://twitter.com/UofLEnviromePick up “Environmental Cardiology: Pollution and Heart Disease (Issues in Toxicology)” by Dr. Aruni Bhatnagar on Amazon https://amazon.com Ambitious Louisville study seeks to understand impact of trees on our health. (2019, December 12). PBS NewsHour; PBS NewsHour. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/ambitious-louisville-study-seeks-to-understand-impact-of-trees-on-our-health ‌Wood, J. (2019, November 21). Re-greening: can Louisville plant its way out of a heat emergency? The Guardian; The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/nov/21/re-greening-can-louisville-plant-its-way-out-of-a-heat-emergency Aruni Bhatnagar on Google Scholar https://scholar.google.ca/citations?user=riRJqrYAAAAJ&hl=enUniversity of Louisville faculty bio https://louisville.edu/medicine/departments/medicine/divisions/environmental-medicine/faculty/bhatnagar-aruniDr. Bhatnagar is Professor of Medicine and Distinguished University Scholar at the University of Louisville, Kentucky, USA. He is the Director of the Christina Lee Brown Envirome Institute and Co-Director at the American Heart Association.  He was the Deputy Editor of Circulation Research for 10 years.  Dr. Bhatnagar a leading expert on the mechanisms by which environmental exposures such as air pollution affect cardiovascular disease risk. His studies at University of Louisville have led to the development of the new field of Environmental Cardiology. Dr. Bhatnagar has published 389 peer-reviewed manuscripts, 25 book chapters and reviews and over 200 abstracts. Will you please tell us a little more about you and how you became the  pioneer of  environmental cardiology? 2:47  The true causes of heart  disease: Environmental  CardiologyAs a junior investigator studying the electrical activity of the heart in cardiovascular function anddiseaseI came to understand that  we really have not found that the  true causes of the  effects of heart disease. Most people believe that heart disease is caused by malfunction the heart, changes in electrical activity, blocked blood  vessels, or high blood pressure.These are the net effects of  a larger set of wider causes that  are mostly external  to us.  

Anna Cooper Reid tells us that PaRx is breaking ground as Canada's first national, evidence-based nature prescription program. Two hours a week is all it takes. The following notes the minute mark for points in our conversation:6  minute mark:  PaRx program what it is.  Evidence based and national (Canada) 9  minute mark:  How evidence will help further research: unique provider code & prescription pad compatible with electronic patient record in that province. 12 minute mark: Will be able to evaluate  how well it works14 minute mark:  What prescription looks like is up to the patient (a meaningful connection with nature is individual). Time required in green space: 2 hours/week at 20 minute intervals 20 minute mark: climate/covid. People who are connected to nature are more likely to protect it. We can thank the planet when we get out in nature. 23 minute mark: the future is exciting, providers are excited, patients are involved, PaRx will launch in other provinces, and will be available for use in licensed health care providers (nurses, social work, pharmacy, physicians, occupational therapy, and physiotherapy) undergraduate course content. 28 minute mark: one thing listeners can take away, have a conversation with your health care provider. If you want to iand  my  website nform your provider go to the website: www.parkprescriptions.caHere you will find a tab for patients and a tab for prescribers. Also  organized according to older and younger   age groups,  heart health,  respiratory heath. Graphics and easy to  understand. 31 minute mark: Everything  on  the website is linked to research. All the  evidence in there. You can explore the studies. If you want to reach out to Anna or ask questions you  can do on the website (ask for Anna). 33 minute mark:Wrap up with Verla. Please check out my  book and workbook Take Back Your Outside Mindset: Live Longer, Stress Less, and Control Your Chronic Illness and  my website treesmendus.com for more practical tips, information and resources. As we know getting  outside does not require a trip to the pharmacy, but to your local green  space where you can  soak in the positive and overlapping benefits of green space.

 I was thrown for a loop this summer by a diagnosis of breast cancer. Here is my story: I felt a lump in my breast, it was surgically removed. When  we got the pathology report back it showed that I  had a form  of cancer called  Ductal Carcioma In Situ (DCIS) which means the cancer is contained in ducts in the breast. Just the  word cancer scares everyone. And in a split second, I  had to make the decision about starting radiation therapy immediately. When  my mind started to spin, I knew from my past lupus diagnosis experience with green space – that I  needed the help of nature to ease the ruminations of “what if” and “if only.” My boys said “read your book mom.” Since I know that time in green space goes right to our physiology, mentally and physically, I knew I was not only helping myself to think clearly, but I was putting my entire body into a less stressed state. Green space not only  calmed  the landscape in my mind, but allowed me to reach out to others immediately  who helped me feel comfortable with my treatment decision. I opted not to have radiation at this  time and instead use “active surveillance”  option to see if the cancer was spreading. In November 2021, my mammogram was all clear of cancer. Relief for me and my loved  ones, but I became doubly aware of the  profound  impact of a cancer diagnosis on the person, their loved ones,  and  their community. As I planned I did spend the summer with my loved ones outside swimming, walking, cycling, golfing, and gardening – and we enjoyed the black bears that passed through and sometimes stayed for days in my back yard in Pine Falls, Manitoba. It was a wonderful summer in  spite of the cancer uncertainty. I am so excited to share with you a synopsis of my up coming book. It has been part of my life for a long time – 3 years now. It is about my friend who I love, who died suddenly. Their were a lot of challenges in writing this book: I struggled with the fact that the love of Leslie's life Bill would be reading it, that her family and friends who also loved her, all live in our small town of Pine Falls, Manitoba.I worried that Leslie was hiding something from us – maybe she knew something we didn't about her heart and her health? I had no access to Leslie's medical records, but I did know all I had to know: Leslie was on no heart medication, (so no heart dx) and was not referred out to a heart specialist (so nothing wrong with her heart that would warrant a specialist referral). So in writing this I had to get the balance right between the love of my friend and the peer reviewed science of heart and environment. I am so proud of getting it  done, especially in light of these challenges. The book is close to finished and will  be out in the New  Year. For transcript please visit https://treesmendus.comBook: Take Back Your Outside Mindset

This time instead of a podcast guest,  I  am going to  talk  about my own situation. I have not even tried to book any more podcast guests. My body and my mind have been telling me that I need to take a break and it is time for me  to  listen.When I started this podcast a year ago, I was in the middle of writing a book about my best friend Leslie who died suddenly. I wanted to know if there was something I could have done to help save Leslie. This is what started me on the journey of writing the book. The book is with my editor now. At this point I am not even sure that I have the energy to take it across the finish line. Where my  first book, Take Back Your Outside Mindset, just poured out of me, this book  about the death of my best friend was harder to write. I kept wanting to check in with Leslie to see what she thought. And Leslie would tell us.  She had no trouble expressing her opinions  - and her clear assessment of the situation. I can’t wait to talk to you about Leslie, what she was like, why her death was such a shock, and what I knew as a  nurse at the time she died.  If you knew Leslie, you would know that she would have a great and entertaining story to tell you of what happened to her. And one thing I  know for sure is that while she was telling her side of things, she’d expect me to be there giving the medical/nursing/health administration inside scoop of how the health care system really  works. So that is what I try to do this in the book. I do what Leslie would have expected me to  do -- become a nursing detective on  why she died like she did. The detective tools that I end up using are heart rate and heart rate variability to help me to figure out why Leslie died so suddenly – when she was fine two days before she died. I combine  these two tools with rock solid green space research to discover the culprits and silent assailants on  Leslie’s two day road trip. Ultimately this book is about your heart, and the world the surrounds your heart – and how to protect your heart to make sure what happened to Leslie does not happen to you. I know if  Leslie were here right now,  she would tell me to take my own  advice.  If she were still here she would tell me to take a break - step away for a while – “be good to yourself.” she’d say something like “if you want my story to help others, you better  put the oxygen mask on yourself  first.” Verla Fortier's transcript of this episode visit   treesmendus.com.Verla Fortier's  book and workbook: Take Back Your Outside Mindset: Live Longer, Prevent Dementia, and Control Your Chronic Illness

Professor Rachel Buxton is  a conservation scientist at Carleton University.  Website: https://rachelbuxton.wordpress.comTwitter: @buxton_rachelVerla Fortier's transcript of this episode visit   treesmendus.com.Verla Fortier's  book and workbook: Take Back Your Outside Mindset: Live Longer, Prevent Dementia, and Control Your Chronic IllnessRachel Buxton:  For me what was the most striking was the level of benefit that we get. So we found overall an over 180% improvement in groups that listened to natural sounds – we also found large decreases in stress and annoyance in groups that were listening to natural sounds.And then just the breath of different health outcomes, so everything from improving our mood, improving our cognitive abilities – so our ability to do complex tasks, decrease in our pain, and decrease in our levels of stress. So really a remarkable set of benefits just from listening to the  sounds  of nature.You’ve talked about the benefits, what can you say about what sound does to our body?Sound is such an important sense. It is one of the first senses that form in humans. Babies can hear from 20 weeks in the womb. It’s a very primal sense.It is very under appreciated. There is no such thing as ear lids. We can’t close out ears, so we are constantly taking in information through our ears. Even when you are sleeping you are still hearing and you have reflective capacity for sound. It is such an important sense, and one that often gets ignored because are these visual creatures.So when you go out into nature you think about these beautiful vistas that you see – looking over from a mountain top – yes that is very important, but the sounds that you are experiencing in nature are also really fundamental.You can think of the impact  of sound from  an evolutionary perspective. So humans  are really good at  paying attention to signals of danger and signals of safety. A sound environment that is full  of sounds of nature, birds, water is a pretty good indicator of a safe environment. So what that allows us to do is let down our guard,  it allows for mental recuperation, and relaxation. Whereas an acoustic environment that is empty --  so either it has no natural sounds – the birds have stopped singing – or it has very few  natural sounds, that’s a  pretty good indicator that something has gone wrong. It might be an indicator of danger. And so what happens is we become vigilant. We are on the look out for what might be wrong. That does  not allow for mental recuperation and can actually lead to stress.

Paula Frizzell   IG and Facebook:  paulacfrizzell We met on IG  when you tagged me on your beautiful IG post of a bird saying you’d read my book. I was delighted. Please tell us your story. Well  my story is a long one but a positive one about what  trees,  nature, and mindfulness can do in  our lives.   Your book, Take Back Your Outside Mindset  spoke to me and I devoured it, then ordered more to share with those who I love that are suffering.  And I am getting lots of great feedback from them. They tease me about going forest bathing with their husbands.So this gets my mind away from things and you never know what you might see if you are noticing. So taking the photo relaxes me. This morning I was doing that. My husband brought me some daffodils, narcissus and I shot deep into the flower. That was my meditation time to look deep into the flower to see what I could see. I use a macro setting to get deeper and deeper into the flower. That  is where the gratitude comes in. To see if through the lens of a camera, upload those photos to a computer or ipad, to see the infinite detail and creation inside that bulb is amazing.It is like a dove sitting outside here in my courtyard, it has purple and pink – it has so many colors. If you are just driving by, you will see a mourning dove as just a grey bird. But they are not grey at all. Their eye is black but it is ringed with turquoise. So that is where I am grateful for that extra eye  -- that extra vision of all that is out here.For the spring and winter I focus on birds. For the summer and fall I focus on  plants, bugs, and butterflies.  I do waterfowl in the winter time because that is when the ducks and the other water birds are out and about in our area.For a complete transcript of our conversation please visit: treesmendus.comThank you to our podcast listeners in now 26 countries and 309 cities around the world. I would love hear your comments on this episode and others – just go to my website treesmendus.com. (all one word) Please check out my book and workbook Take Back Your Outside Mindset: Live Longer, Prevent Dementia, and Control Your Chronic Illness.  Listeners if you like, think about Paula Frizzell practice of using  your photo taking process while out in nature as your own kind of gratitude process– that you can use to share to help others. Maybe notice and practice your breathing as you take your shot like Paula does. And when you do, we know that  you will feel  better about yourself and your world around you – and this is a  good thing, because we all need a little more of Your Outside Mindset.  

Episode #23 Patricia Pearsell

Episode # 22Dr. Ellen Langer is a professor in the Psychology Department at Harvard University. Her numerous academic honors include four Distinguished Scientist Awards and The Liberty Science Genius Award. Her books written for academic and popular readers include: MindfulnessCounterclockwise: Mindful Health and The Power of Possibility On Becoming An Artist: Reinventing Yourself Through Mindful CreativityThe Power of Mindful Learning Dr. Langer your work changed my life at at time in my sixties, when I needed it most. I based my book and workbook, Take Back Your Outside Mindset on your mindfulness and mindset studies. What is your definition of Mindfulness? Mindfulness as we study it, is the simple process of actively noticing new things. That’s all it is. It is amazingly simple, but the consequences of this are enormous. So when you are noticing new things, that puts you in the present, makes you aware of context, and that active noticing is the essence of engagement. So we find that when people are actively noticing, they become more energized, and this active noticing is literally and figuratively enlivening.Many people think when they hear the word mindfulness, that it is meditation. Meditation, while fine, is not mindfulness. Meditation is a process that you go through to achieve post meditative mindfulness. Mindfulness as we study it is much more direct – not better or worse – just more direct.We have done research on this active noticing for over forty years and we find that it is, as I said literally and figuratively enlivening, that when you are actively noticing and being mindful, people find you more attractive, see you as charismatic, see you as trust worthy, the products that you produce bear this imprint of mindfulness ….so it’s good for your health and your relationships. Forty years is a long time, so there are very few outcomes that we haven’t assessed. It is amazing because it is so simple. Transcript: Treesmendus.com

Episode #21 Ceremonies to our people has always been important because ceremony is an act of gratitude to the Spirit .. and an act of gratitude to the Land. Because everything we do and receive, we recognize we have to reciprocate by offering a simple word and prayer of gratitude … and say"thank you Creator, that you have given me this breath of life here on earth again today”“thank you mother earth that you have provided the sustenance ---the food that I have been able to eat, and the water, and the medicines that I need in order to stay healthy.”When I reflect on the questions that you had like “what is the single most important thing to do help us to connect more deeply with nature whether we live near the bush or in the city ?” and I have been asked that question many many times. And the answer is very very simple – and that is to make that journey to the Land -- to go to be near a lake, a river, falls, rapids – and be within the environment of the beauty of nature itself. Go and find a tree that you are attracted to. Go and sit by that tree. Talk to that tree. And allow yourself to be open to the messages that nature brings. There may be a bird that will visit you and want to sing you a song. What is the message that that bird is bringing you – because you are reaching out – wanting to feel that life through nature itself. Nature is the ultimate healer because within nature comes the medicines and the teachings that we need on how to heal.So Listeners to hear more Elder Dave’s voice and messages of Elders visit Turtle Lodge website: Turtlelodge.orglinks in show notes. On the Turtlelodge website Elder Dr. David Courchene introduces a new book by the Knowledge Keepers from the Turtle Lodge - "Wahbanung - The Resurgence of a People: Clearing the Path for Our Survival". You Tube Beautiful and uplifting videos. Indigenous Teachings for Uncertain Times.http://www.turtlelodge.org/wahbanung/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1oBPNlu0LxIhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7oW9HgIRsIhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bgMcBNOoHY&t=277s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qktLJ4EUn7wFor full transcription of this episode please go to my website Treesmendus.com. If you have not yet left a review of this podcast please consider. Please check out my book and workbook: Take Back Your Outside Mindset: Live Longer, Prevent Dementia, and Control Your Chronic Illness.

An Officer of the Order of Canada, Lorna Crozier has been acknowledged for her contributions to Canadian literature, her teaching and her mentoring with five honorary doctorates, most recently from McGill and Simon Fraser Universities. Her books have received numerous national awards, including the Governor-General’s Award for Poetry. The Globe and Mail declared The Book of Marvels: A Compendium of Everyday Things one of its Top 100 Books of the Year, and Amazon chose her memoir as one of the 100 books you should read in your lifetime. A Professor Emerita at the University of Victoria, she has performed for Queen Elizabeth II and has read her poetry, which has been translated into several languages, on every continent except Antarctica. Her book, What the Soul Doesn't Want, was nominated for the 2017 Governor General's Award for Poetry. In 2018, Lorna Crozier received the George Woodcock Lifetime Achievement Award. Steven Price called Through the Garden: A Love Story (with Cats), her latest nonfiction book, “one of the great love stories of our time.” Lorna Crozier lives on Vancouver Island. 1) Please tell us your story and reasons why nature runs through all your work. I think one of the mistakes we make is as a human species, is that we talk about going for a walk “in” nature or we are going outside “to” nature. We separate ourselves from it. We are part of nature like every other species like robins, earthworms, fish, and hawks. It is interesting that we have put this glass bell around ourselves and pretend that we are separate, and I think at our own peril. So ever since I was a kid, I have been outdoors. And it may be because I was part of that lucky generation whose mothers said, “get out and play and don’t come back until suppertime.” And we’d run outside. I lived in small city, not in a forest or in a meadow, but we lived in the alleys. We’d build trenches for the water to come down the alley. And we collected sticks to come down in them. We caught frogs and bumble bees in mason jars and let them go. We examined ants as they made their way across our sidewalks. We were 100% involved and I think that instilled in me that idea my skin should not separate me from other creatures.When I feel happiest and when I feel most spiritual, is when I can shuck off the boundaries of what it means to be human and enter into the world of wind and sunlight and an animal with its eyes on me, as I want to put my eyes on it.In your first memoirSmall Beneath the Sky this comes through. You were born in Swft Current, Saskatchewan. The names of the chapters in this book are: light, dust, wind, rain, and snow as you weave in the story of your tough but fun childhood. .... I said, “I am not going to write about me.... I am going to write about what effect landscape has on the development of character. I have always been fascinated by that.Transcript: Treesmendus.com See: lornacrozier.ca

Today it is my pleasure to introduce to you Alice Dalton. Alice is a Senior Research Associate working in the Norwich Medical School at the University of East Anglia in the UK. Alice is a geographer and she is interested in understanding the health implications of how we interact with the environment around us. Recently, she has been exploring the role that neighbourhood green space may play in protecting people from certain health outcomes, such as cardiovascular disease.I can see how a medical school would really value your knowledge and the tools that you use as a geographer. Could you tell us a little bit about those? We have a range of tools at our fingertips here. The main thing that I use is called “geographic information systems (GIS)”. We use these systems to understand how we interact with our environment. Now that sounds like a bit of a mouth full, but the first example of GIS was a British physician called John Snow back in the 19th century. He lived in Soho in London and he was very interested in the causes of the cholera outbreak in Soho. There were lots of deaths and he was trying to work out what was going on here on a population level. What he did was map the location of all the streets and houses in this area. Then he mapped the locations of water sources – where people went to collect their fresh water. He noticed that there was a cluster around one particular water pump. He could attribute the cholera cases to this one pump. The map that he created is known as the “map that changed the world.” He created this link between water borne disease and public health for the first time. Dr John Snow was considered one of founders of epidemiology as a result. Epidemiology is the study of patterns of health and disease at the population level…rather than at the individual level. So that is an early example of how you can use a map to overlay different aspects to explore a problem and potentially come up with a solution. Of course, these days we have very sophisticated software and big data sets where you can overlay layers of mapping. You can analyze and use statistics to look different aspects of the problem. Listeners if you would like to follow Alice Dalton’s research you can find her at https://people.uea.ac.uk/a_daltonHer email is A.Dalton@uea.ac.ukYou can find her paper ‘Residential neighbourhood greenspace is associated with reduced risk of cardiovascular disease: A prospective cohort study’, here: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0226524 My book Take Back Your Outside Mindset: Live Longer, Prevent Dementia, and Control Your Chronic IllnessAnd workbook with same nameFor a free transcription of this episode please visit my website: treesmendus.com

Today it is my pleasure to introduce to you Richard Taylor, Professor, Physics Department Head at University of Oregon. His interests are: Nanoelectronics, retinal implants, solar cells, and the visual science of fractals. Richard Taylor specializes in experimental condensed matter and biophysics. He is the Director of Fractals Research and head of the Fractals Research Laboratory at the University of Oregon. For a complete transcript of this episode please visit treesmendus.com Richard Taylor regularly gives lectures around the world, invited by organizations as diverse as the Nobel Foundation, the White House, the Royal Society and national art galleries such as the Pompidou Centre and the Guggenheim Museum.Welcome Richard Taylor. 1) Richard Taylor would you please start by telling us your story in the arts and sciences?It is a long and winding story. For me all my passions started when I was a little 9 year old I started to get enthralled with the patterns in nature. They look very messy, whether you are looking at a cloud, tree or a mountain. But there is something very appealing about them as well. We all know that we love nature, but for me as a little kid is was: “why is it exactly that we love nature so much?” That took in a long winding process for me that took in physics, psychology, and arts. All my career has been based on this, and trying to understand that when we say nature has got a pattern, what exactly do we mean by that? 2) What are fractals? It’s a weird name for something that is very simple. So a fractal pattern, is simply a pattern that repeats at different sized scales. Although it is simple, nature uses it a lot. Examples of fractals are clouds in the sky, trees, and mountains. So it you take for example a tree and stand a long way from it, you will see a sort of rough pattern created by the trunk and the branches coming off. And if you walk closer, and zoom in on one of those branches, you’ll see that smaller branches come off those larger branches. And then look closely at those smaller branches, and you’ll see that twigs come off those smaller branches. So patterns are repeating at different magnifications as you look closer and closer to the tree. And that is all that a fractal is: a pattern that repeats at different magnifications. 3) How do fractals fit with stress? So although it is a simple idea, like a say nature uses it a lot – so clouds, mountains, rivers, coastlines, even lightening, are all fractal. I have been working with psychologists and we have been investigating what is the impact on you when you look at these fractal patterns. For millions of years, we have been absolutely surrounded by fractals so it is not surprising that our human eye has evolved to accommodate them. We have got this model that we call “fractal fluency” and what it purposes is that your eye has become fluent in the visual language of fractals. In other words, our eyes have actually evolved to look at these patterns. So when we do so, when we walk outside in nature and we stare at these fractals, it is like the visual system kind of wakes up and says “hey this is what I am meant to look at.”This opens up a floodgate of emotions and stress reduction. So when you look at one of nature’s fractal patterns, it actually reduces your stress levels by up to 60%. And this floods all the way through your body, so your whole body relaxes by that amount.

Episode 17 Today it is my pleasure to introduce to you my sister Gail Fortier, a visual artist and my partner Phil Hallford, a retired college professor in social sciences. Today they are going to talk to us about using nordic walking poles – they look kind of like ski poles. Hi Gail what compelled you to start using the poles? Well you spoke about them a lot and I was resistant until I had an upcoming trip to France – our retirement trip. There was going to be a lot of walking and I was afraid that I would not be able to keep up. You had just gone to a meeting and come back with a whole bunch of nordic walking poles. I tried them and I thought “yes” I can walk with these. And I did! We got to France and we walked 20,000 steps a day. We went to Marseille and we walked up and down the Old Port and I took them on the train to Avignon and Cassis. Avignon is an old medieval city, where the Pope lived. And we went to Cassis which is a sailing port with a beach. I had no problem on the little trains and tour buses with my poles. It was just easy, easy and in fact one shop keeper said how fast I was going to my husband. And yes, when you practice and you have the straight arms boy you move!So that was it, my trip to France and I have not stopped using them since then. And you said they gave you special attention there because you had your poles.. They did in Marseilles which is very connected to the sea. It is very open and bright. And the people are open, bright, and cheerful. They would see me with my poles, tried after walking and they would offer me a chair, and ask me if I was ok, and help me out. But in Avignon, a very tall dark city, windy paths, like in a maze…I went into a place there and they wanted to know if I was going to hit the paintings with my poles…haha ..so you get both reactions. Gai What difference do the walking poles make for you?The main difference is that I have arthritis and I am heavy ..at least I was.. heavier than I am now…and (without the poles) pushing off with my feet would hurt and my hips would hurt after a short time. And this did not happened with the poles. But I did have sturdy walking shoes, but once you have those, it was a breeze to walk. It was like taking 15 years off your age…it just made you walk like a younger person. When you get walking, you just swing your arms naturally, and it is just a natural walking movement. Yes, I don’t think I would walk without them now…for a long walk. Because the arthritis is in my back too and I have trouble standing still and straight for a long time. With the pandemic, when I have to get my blood tested, I have to wait in line for a long time. So I would take just one pole with me and support myself while standing in line. Nobody noticed that anything was unusual and I was able to stand a long time and not get the tremors that I usually get when standing still for a long time. Gail what are your simple tips for listeners Thank you Gail, Any final tips to our listeners? Yes, I would say that when I learned I was very rigid about keeping my arms straight and that really does help you to move quickly. But sometimes you just want to move around more slowly, and I found that a soft curve in your arm, was better. In the winter, take the boots off the bottom of the poles, and then there is this tiny little pick at the bottom that is not sharp, but it digs into the ice.. as long as you have got the curve in your arm. For complete transcription of this episode please go to my website: https://treesmendus.com

Episode 16 Today it is my pleasure to introduce to you Ken Wu. Ken is the executive director of the Endangered Ecosystems Alliance, a new national Canadian conservation organization advocating the science-based protection of native ecosystems, seeking to engage non-traditional allies of the environmental movement, and working to support Indigenous Protected Areas. He was previously the co-founder and executive director of the Ancient Forest Alliance and the executive director of the Wilderness Committee’s Victoria bureau. So before we get into good news stories, what are some sad stories that you have seen? Here ancient forests with trees that are 2000 years old .. These are some of the oldest and biggest trees that have existed in earth’s history. These trees on Vancouver Island can be as much as 20 feet wide.. as wide as a living room and as tall as a downtown sky scraper. But for all those that we have saved, we have lost 3x as many. This is because there is so much value in these trees. Western red cedar in these days is particularly valuable for cladding houses on the outside and for decks.That is the green gold right now – propping up the old logging industry. The have already logged 99% of the Douglas Fir. There is only 1% of the old growth Douglas Fir left. The Sitka Spruce is less than 10% now. Cedar is probably around 15-20% of the old growth. So we are getting to end of the old growth forest. But there is some progress too.So as much as we have lost a lot, I think it is important for people to stay engaged and keep pushing. There has been big progress last week…Please tell us about that.Finally the British Columbia government announced deferrals or moratorium on 9 major areas of old growth forest in BC. They started up a process to develop new policies to manage BC’s old growth forests. This was decades of pushing by citizens. But we are not there yet, we have to keep expanding awareness of these ecosystems.The 9 deferral areas include Clayoquot Sound. I think a lot of your listeners at one time have been to Tofino, Ucluelet area of Vancouver Island…so just around Tofino is that spectacular set of islands and valleys …that is now on a moratorium for logging. It is the biggest track of coastal old growth temperate rain forest on Vancouver Island. So some good things are happening.Those huge trees draw in so much carbon.Yes even more than the tropical rain forest trees. Because all of the nutrients get sucked up so quickly in the tropics, but in the temperate rain forests of British Columbia, Oregon, and California, there is a lot of carbon locked in the wood that is on the forest floor, in the soil, and in the trees. The trees in these temperate forests live longer and get bigger. So that combination means that there is substantially more carbon in Canada’s old growth temperate rain forests than even in the Amazon or in central Africa.That is one of the best things we can do to avert the climate crisis is to protect not just tropical forests but temperate rain forests and all types of forests.See transcription at Treesmendus.com

Episode 15 In this episode psychotherapist and Zestful Aging Podcast Host talks about her reasons for getting outside and how she helps her clients to take an "aesthetic walk" outside. Nicole says by taking outside breaks you are respecting and resting your brain -- so you can feel better mentally and physically. Nicole Christina is the host of Zestful Aging Podcast, an interview show heard in 92 countries. She’s also a psychotherapist of 30 years, specializing in eating disorders. Find out more at ZestfulAging.com.Nicole Christina practices in Syracuse, NY, in the Syracuse University area. She specializes in food and body issues, mindfulness, and positive aging. I love her Podcast Zesful Aging, so much so that I asked Nicole if I could be on her podcast before I started mine. There we learned how much we both loved and needed nature. ​I will link to that podcast on my website Treesmendus.comNicole Christina in addition to being a podcaster, you are a psychotherapist. How does nature and your outside mindset figure into the way you treat clients? I have an example of a client I had yesterday. He was struggling like many people are these days, feeling very isolated. They were not able to do the things he normally does well – getting together with people, doing the hobbies that they normally do. Our lives are all up ended now. I asked him what has he been doing in terms of getting outside. I am not talking about a fitbit, 10,000 step walk, I talking about what I call “an aesthetic walk” which is just walking around for the value of being outside. And a lot of the value I learned from your book, but a lot of the value I don’t think we truly understand. But we know that we are outdoor creatures, that we evolved to be outside, and that not getting sunlight, not getting near trees, grasses… and just being in your apartment is going to cause trouble. It is going to make feeling bad even worse. So one of the prescriptions I gave him, and this is just a first session - and this is a guy who is pretty athletic - “I just want you to go on an aesthetic walk, you are not trying to increase your cardiovascular level, the whole point is to go outside to feel good: your body, your spirit, and of course we know it helps mood, anxiety, and emotional regulation. So that is sort of a basic prescription that I use for people who come to me and say “ I feel terrible; I am anxious.” It is not to say a walk around the block is going to cure everything. It is not going to cure Covid, worry about starting college, being scared, or solve the economic crisis, but it sure helps. And it is free, and we know it works. So that is something that is a go-to for me when I am evaluating someone, one of the questions I ask them is "how often do you get outside?" That is a long winded answer, but some of these things are basic. And I have been in practice for a long time, so I know to start with the fundamentals. I also ask how much coffee are you drinking? If the answer is I drink 12 cups and I am anxious, well maybe we should start there. Or I stay in my apartment, or I stay up until 2 in the morning watching Netflix…I mean there are certain things that we know our body needs – fresh air, fresh water, a decent diet, and limiting a lot of the toxins that come in (and that is literal and metaphorical). We need to be outside. Nobody comes back from a walk and says I wish I had not taken a walk. For a complete transcript of this episode please visit my website Treesmendus.com

Podcast Episode #14For complete transcript of this episode please visit my website Treesmendus.com Visit Joanne Maloof at oldgrowthforest.netJoan's book and my book.Let’s talk about what an old growth forest is, and how this fits with the raging forest fires in Oregon and Washington as we speak. Yes if you think of the planet earth, at least a third of it is covered in forest. With this forest certain places do well naturally with enough rainfall and enough soil – those forests don’t need to be managed in any way. In fact if you look at the forest with the biggest trees – I was just in Sequoia National Park – those are the forests that are not touched by humans. That would be what I am calling an old growth forest. Some people used to call them virgin forests, or primary forests, but they are just a wild forest. These forests have had no disturbance from humans. Now that does not mean that they have not had any disturbance. They could have tornadoes, ice storms, and fires coming through. But some of those forests that have escaped those things have existed for many hundreds of years or thousands of years, and that is an old growth forest. Or if one of these forests was disturbed even by humans, many hundreds of years ago, and has grown back naturally, we also call those old growth forests. How that relates to the fires…is that the old growth forests tend to be very damp places, now this is a generalization but they tend to be much damper than a forest which has been cut. This is because you have many layers in the tree canopy, mosses, thick soils, and that moisture in the forest prevents those intense fires. Also the older trees have much thicker bark. So even if a fire does come through, the tree is more likely to survive it. But what happens where we have cut those old growth forests, and have been planted or we let those trees grow back, those trees are a lot closer together. And naturally as a forest lives, those forests will thin themselves out, and some will die… then you have what we call “dog hair.” Those trees are so small and so close together, and those fires can burn very quickly and intensely. So when we think of the tree plantations, those commercially logged lands, that is where the forests get much hotter. Hotter fires can spread faster through the homes…So when we hear forest fires, some people imagine this fire and the whole forest burns down. That is not usually what happens. A fire moves through often starting on the ground, and hot enough to burn through some small things on the ground but not hot enough to burn through the bark. Then it might hit one of these plantations, where the trees are very young or thinned out, and it is drier. Then the flames will get much larger. Especially if there are dry conditions and a wind, the fire can get so hot that it can burn even the wild old growth forest. So it is very complex. If you look at a landscape where a fire has come through, it is not all even. There will be pockets where the fire was intense, and pockets where the fire has hardly burned at all… and the forest is going to recover very quickly. See complete transcription at Treesmendus.com

Episode #13 Today it is my pleasure to introduce to you Joe Casey and Denis Wuestman of The Retirement Wisdom Podcast. Joe, Denis, and their guests focus on the “changing nature of retirement today and the non-financial aspects of a successful retirement transition.” On their Retirement Wisdom podcast they talk to leading experts in the field, and the stories of people who have created interesting second acts as they share practical tips and ideas to create your own. Before I started this podcast I was a guest on their show, and here is the link for you to listen to. Today Joe will share his coaching process and ways of creating Outside Mindset Habits. Denis Wuestman will tell us about his Retirement Transition Design Workbook and give you examples of how to use an Outside Mindset for your retirement plan.For this episode transcription please visit my website Treesmendus.com

Episode 12Sarah Spencer lives in the National Forest in Derbyshire in the centre of the UK with her family, and loves growing vegetables, fruit and flowers. She manages a woodland that she designed and planted using permaculture design.Sarah holds qualifications in permaculture and forest school. Sarah is the author of Think Like A Tree: The Natural Principles Guide to Life. Would you please tell us why you wrote this book?It came out of my work with permaculture, which looks at the principles that nature has for designing gardens and landscapes. When I got my chronic illness diagnosis I used those same principles for my own life. I was able to bring my way back to be able to function at a reasonable level. So when I did that people started asking me “What did you do? What is your secret?” That is when I wrote the book and started the courses. Basically my message is that nature’s principles are not only good for us as individuals but good for the living world. That is kind of the root of the living world today – that we have become so disconnected from nature. May I ask you about your chronic illness? Yes I was probably undiagnosed for about 30 years. It is called Mast Cell Activation Syndrome. It is when part of your immune system is faulty. So instead of reacting to normal threats, my immune system reacts to almost everything. So I am basically allergic to everything: foods, smells, chemicals, things on my skin..all sorts of things. It is quite challenging to live with. I had a year 2015-2016 when I was basically in bed for a year with it. It has other systems associated with it: heart, skin, migraines … and everybody who has it is different. But what I realized was that when I was outside, I was an awful lot healthier.I think you mention it in your book, Take Back Your Outside Mindset, when you are inside, you can feel particularly bad. And when you go outside you always feel better – so that is what I have tried to do. I also have thyroid condition and was tested for Lupus because there were so many overlapping symptoms with Lupus.Fatigue is such a prominent feature of all these autoimmune diseases. I think that is one barrier that you have to get over.In your book Think like a Tree you look at the underlying principles of nature’s secrets of success one by one, and show us how we can apply them to our own lives, in this practical personal development guide. Would you please tell us more about that Sarah? Yes, it takes as its starting point that Nature has been getting it right for 3.8 billion years. Nature has done a lot of research on what works and what doesn’t. Things that don’t work are extinct and those that do work are still alive.For the complete interview transcript please see my website Treesmendus.com Sarah Spencer's website To Think Like A Tree

Episode 11 Mark Hume is a former national correspondent for The Globe and Mail and is the author of five natural history books. His latest, Trout School - Lessons from a Fly-fishing Master, came out last year and he is currently working on a book to be published in the fall of 2021. Mark has fly fished in BC for 50 years and lives in Vancouver with his life-long partner, famed science writer, Margaret Munro. Full disclosure here, Marg is my life-long friend and I hope to have her on this show to talk about her national geographic work on Grizzly Bears.Q: Would you please tell us why you wrote Trout School? The book is about my relationship with Mo Bradley, a former fly-fishing guide, and innovative fly fisher in Kamloops British Columbia.I was up fishing in that area and came across a little pamphlet that he had written. who wrote a pamphlet for all the kids he was teaching to fly-fish. This was simple paper stapled between cardboard covers.He wrote this to help his fly-tying students. He helped kids and anyone in Kamloops interested in how to tie flies.When I read that little pamphlet, I thought it was such a great distillation of fly-fishing knowledge, I wanted to bring it to a larger audience because he had only printed a few hundred copies.I wanted to share that with people so I sat down with Mo and said we should republish this. But when I talked to book publishers they said, we need a bigger story.Over the years for more than a decade, whenever I fished with Mo I interviewed him about his techniques and methods. I learned a lot from Mo. I tried in the book to pass on that knowledge. What I really wanted to do is to encourage people to go fishing because it is such a restorative experience. And for those who fish already, I wanted them to slow down because that is one of Mo’s key’s to success. He moves so purposefully on the water and observes everything.As you know from forest bathing and walking in the woods, if you slow down you see more in nature. And in fishing you just become a better fisher. You see the insects, you become aware of the different life stages they are at. You start watching the birds – which a lot of people are not aware of – share a common food with the fish. So if you can figure out what the birds are eating, you can figure out what the fish are eating.When I advise people to slow down in fishing, I am doing the same thing that you doing in your book, for physical and mental health.So it has been very satisfying for both Mo and I, and we have heard from a lot of people that they are going fishing more, or a lot have taken up fishing because of the book.Q: A few of our listeners might be fly fishers, some that might try in the future, and some that would just like to know more about it. For those of us who know nothing about fly fishing can you give us little primer please? How and why does one fly fish? Is it always for trout? Catch and release? Fish barbless? Yes absolutely. It is kind of a daunting sport if you don’t have somebody to show you – hands on. It is a bit intimidating because you watch people fly fish and it is so graceful – and it’s like am I going to take up ballet at this late stage of my life?The technical aspects of fly casting are actually very easy to learn. When people ask me to show them, I have it down to 5 minutes. So if you are interested in fly fishing don’t let learning to cast put you off. In medium sized or large cities, they have fly casting lessons available right in the shops.The other side is the fishing side of it: learning all about fish and nature. I like to tell people:“ I can teach you to fly cast in five minutes, but you will spend the next 20 years learning to fly fish.” Find the complete episode transcription at Treesmendus.com

Episode 10 Hi this is Verla Fortier from Your Outside Mindset Show where I shine a light on aging adults who may have a chronic illness, and who are taking back their outside mindset by looking or going outside to spend time close to trees, shrubs, and plants. I started this podcast for 2 reasons: I help people to recognize that going outside is not just a nice thing to do, but it can save your life. And that by going outside you will live longer, prevent dementia and control your chronic illness.Today it my pleasure to introduce to you Dr. Cyndi Gilbert, a naturopathic doctor, author and speaker. Dr Cyndi Gilbert is a faculty member at the Canadian College of Naturopathic Medicine, and sees patients at her clinical practice in downtown Toronto, Canada.Cyndi is the author of Forest Bathing: A Start Here Guide For Beginners. I found Dr. Cyndi Gilbert on Amazon – those people that bought her book Forest Bathing bought my book Take Back Your Outside Mindset. So I ordered her book. It is terrific. I reached out to Dr Gilbert on Linked In and here she is - with us today. Thank you again for joining us Dr Cyndi Gilbert. Cindy would please start by tell us your story why you wrote your book called Forest Bathing? Many of my first memories as a small child were of just lying in the grass and looking up and smelling the cedar heges that lined my property. These had a big impression on me. I always found comfort, safety, and care in nature. I didn’t really think about those things. And many of us don’t .. we go through our lives. It was not until I started to spend a lot of time outside starting community gardens, studying community herbalism for fun – this was all before I knew what naturopathic medicine was. And then I moved to China for a year. The city I was living in was really different than anything that I had lived in before. I realized that I had taken for granted so much green space that we have in Canada. In this medium sized city in China (very large in Canadian standards) there was just so much concrete and so many buildings, and little access to green space. For the first time I noticed what I was missing. So I had to change my habits and go out of my way to find gardens to visit. This was new. My visits to green space had to become intentional. I needed to make time in my schedule to make sure I had that visit. And so I became conscious of this need for contact with nature for the first time in my life. When I came back to North America it was to study naturopathic medicine. When I got to the school it was early 2000’s and there was a lot of research coming out at that time looking at the health benefits of nature. And I became particularly interested in the benefits of nature on non-communicable disease. I threw myself into the research starting with Lost Child in the Woods, the research coming out of Japan, Scandinavia, the UK and North America – and started to put the pieces together. And as someone studying naturopathic medicine I was looking for ways to bring the research into my clinical practice. So working one on one with patients and doing things like we are doing today to share the research with others. And also share the evidence of what many people know deep inside their hearts that is true – that we have this connection. And showing that there are benefits of being in nature or benefits of even just looking at landscape pictures. What is forest bathing? And How Should We do it?Show notes: Treesmendus.com

Podcast Episode #009 I first heard Micheal Bond on a CBC radio program here in Canada called Spark. He was talking about his new book From Here to There: The Art and Science of Finding and Losing Our Way.I immediately ordered his book and introduced me to new ways of thinking about how we find our way around, and how we get lost, and how this affects us. He looks at brain function, memory, dementia, and our sense of space and place in forests and cities. And he was suggesting exercises had had not thought of – ever before – to improve all these things.Michael Bond is a science writer and former Senior Editor at New Scientist. His work has appeared in Nature, Discover, the New York Times, Foreign Policy, the Financial Times. His book The Power of Others: Peer Pressure, Groupthink, and How the People Around Us Shape Everything We Do won the British Psychology Society Science Book of the Year award.Welcome Micheal Bond to Your Outside Mindset.Will you please start with your story and why you wrote From Here to There? I am a behavorial science writer, particularly interested in how people interact with their surroundings and how our physical surroundings affect our mental well-being or our state of mind. I specifically honed in on this subject of navigation because in his family there is a great variety of abilities. I have a sister who gets lost all the time so GPS is a life saver, and a couple of cousins who are brilliant at finding their way and remembering places that they have only been to once. Would you please talk to us about kids getting lost? And what perspectives we need to find them? Children are interesting because they move through the world differently than adults. If you ask an adult to go from A to B, they tend to take the most direct route or the most efficient way possible. And it is all about getting there. If you ask a child to go somewhere, will very quickly get distracted, take short cuts, follow an animal, children are natural explorers. This is how we all start off in the world and instinctively wanting to explore it and find out about new places. We lose that as we get older. As a result of this explorer instinct in children they can get lost without even knowing that they are lost. Psychologists, Academics, Search and Rescue volunteers - combined provide an idea of that state of mind of a lost child. It is also about the children's home range: where you grew up, how you grew up, free ranging childhood. Children are unblemished explorers and move in a different way. Adult go the most direct way. A child will start off – distracted, and destination least important.Would you please talk to us about the early history of human way finding the drive to travel over large spaces of land for social connection? My two boys live and work in London, and since I we can't travel in Covid, I feel like if I could I would travel on foot over land and sea to have a two hour conversation with them. I get it.Two to three thousand years ago, prehistoric people lived in small family units but they were connected to each other. They would have had to travel great distances, over large landscape – family groups would range – to trade information, knowledge and goods. To find each other. For the complete tanscript of this episode please visit my website Treesmendus.com

Episode #008 The year after her retirement from a management position, Janet was diagnosed with a terminal condition: brain cancer. Janet wants to share her story, "not because I want sympathy, because I feel well supported, but because sharing my journey I might help someone else." As Janet says, "there is not a family that is not touched by cancer so she hopes that by sharing her story of feeling better by spending time outside will help others." Right now Janet's time spent outdoors walking is much more limited. She "is weaker as a result of her chemotherapy treatments, and can't walk nearly as far."So she now spends her time in her "large yard, smelling the flowers and watching the second round of robin's eggs hatching on a tree right beside my deck. I love to watch the robins come and go. " When she looks out at the world, Janet has this kind of clarity and space – this open feeling of honesty that trees, shrubs, birds, little animals and plants provide. Janet is curious and engaged in her outdoor world – now her back yard. She has mature trees: spruce, crabapple, weeping caragana, and lilacs - and birds who love her trees.This year alone Janet's backyard bird list includes: rose breasted grosbeak, gold finches, orioles, cedar waxwings, nut hatches, pileated woodpeckers, robins, downy woodpeckers, wrens, blue jays, chickadees, mourning doves, wrens, and a wild turkey or two. When Janet is outside on her deck she is not ruminating on wanting to be somewhere else or someone else. She knows that there are some things that are out of her control and there are many more that she can control. Here Janet follows the lives of new robins in a nest and shares on our Ditch Inside For Outside facebook group. Janet knows that everything she does matters. Looking or going outside helps her to relate to herself, to her mind, and she knows she can influence and create goodness everywhere. Janet is smart, and she knows she has agency over moving her circumstances in a better direction. Janet’s sharing is a kind of grace that only comes with being in harmony with the way things are – something very powerful to be around. Through her story Janet is showing us the way to live and enjoy our minds in the deepest kind of way – to trust and have confidence in ourselves and our worlds around us. For me, she has given so much. She was the first person to buy my book Take Back Your Outside Mindset. Janet says that all along she knew she better outside, but once she read my book, the science and tips helped to confirm this for her.Janet's advice to us : "Make the choice to be happy, to be grateful for that you can still do" "Get out even if it is just in your yard or a small community park - even if you can't get out into the bush or along the shoreline.Breathe deep, just try to concentrate on what you are seeing and hearing at that moment - for me it is the different bird songs.And breathe in those tree aerosols they really do make a difference."For a complete transcript of this interview please go to my website Treesmendus.com

Episode # 007 DIANA BERESFORD-KROEGER is a world-recognized botanist, medical biochemist and author, whose work uniquely combines western scientific knowledge and the traditional concepts of the ancient world. Her books include The Sweetness of a Simple Life, The Global Forest, Arboretum Borealis, Arboretum America--which won the National Arbor Day Foundation Award for exemplary educational work on trees and forests--Time Will Tell, and A Garden for Life. Her new book is To Speak for the Trees: My Life’s Journey From Ancient Celtic Wisdom To A Healing Vision of the Forest.Diana Beresford-Kroeger has a feature documentary Call of the Forest: The Forgotten Wisdom Of Trees with a free App that shows you the native trees in your region and its medicinal uses. The International Handbook of Forest Therapy published by Cambridge University Press, sponsored by the World Health Organization, is where Diana recently contributed her peer reviewed research on trees. Diana Beresford Kroeger's science on trees is now world recognized.The following is part of the podcast interview with Diana Beresford-Kroeger. Please visit my website Treesmendus.com for a more complete summary of our wonderful one hour conversation. My first question: Would you please tell us your story and why you wrote To Speak For The Trees? "I was orphaned as a child in Ireland. When orphaned, nobody going to speak for you. Normally orphans are sent to orphanages". Diana Beresford-Kroeger was the last in the ancient lineage of Irish and British aristocracy on both sides. The judge in charge of her case, when she was just 8 years old, said "I have no idea what to do with you, and I am afraid I will lose my job if I put a Beresford in an orphanage."Diana was put into the care of her Uncle Pat, a famous athlete in his time, a bibliophile (the house was teaming with books) and eccentric bachelor. As Diana says "he did not harm me, but just did not know how to care for a child. Looking back wonder how did survive such a thing?"Beresford-Kroeger said she got lucky. The ancient plan of the Celtic system was respected. In the summers she was sent into the Valley of Lisheens as the last child of that family to learn the ancient medicines and laws of the trees.

Episode #006 Sixty something, Stephanie Raffelock, in her book “The Delightful Little Book On Aging” starts by saying that "we don’t have a container for grief and that aging takes place against a backdrop of grief - loss of parents, siblings, friends, athletic prowess and youthful beauty." Rafflelock says that grief is also about the little losses that pile up over time as friendships end, children move away, the role of work or career that once defined us gone.The good thing about this says Raffelock, is that says grief cannot exist without love. And that, if we let it, grief allows us to reinvent ourselves.She says resist grief and you will get stuck. Give her too much attention, and she’ll eat you up.Failure After FiftyUp until our sixties, we are fixed on success and failure. We are headed upward and outward says Raffelock. As we age, things slow down. The feeling of failure when time is running out, is an invitation to a larger vision, she says. Raffelock says this is the time to think like a tree. Think about going deeper – rooting downward like a tree. She says we can either quit or go deeper. Betrayal of The Body We sometimes think that our bodies are a lot younger than they are. Raffelock reminds us that our bodies are not ageless. Our bodies will slowly break down. And we need to be more peaceful with that idea. Meanwhile we can keep moving she talks about her daily five mile walks outside, pilates, chair yoga, and swimming. Stephanie encourages us to appreciate that today is the day to get outside, that we are still upright, and we can move. When she asked her mother about aging, her mother said, “Getting old isn’t so bad but I wish I had left my dancing shoes on a little longer.” ReclamationThere are things that you give up along the way, says Raffelock. We can reclaim a little of our core of wildness. She says before this stage, we are focused on career, mortgage. As we age, this is the time to reclaim a little bit of our wild outdoor self, our poetic sled poetic self, and our sense of adventure.Say Thank you To Yourself Stephanie says life takes away with one hand and gives back with the other. We can find a ways to make a little alters in the woods, place leaves in a certain pattern for ourselves – to honor the sacred and to honor ourselves. Gratitude she says is linked to reclamation. We can use saying thank you to ourselves and to nature to dodge the old slings and arrows of betrayal. We can say thank you to ourselves for getting outside, we can thank our bodies for working for us. Gratitude calms the heart and calms the mind, she says.Things To Get Rid Of and Things To Embrace After retirement, Stephanie went through her drawers and got rid of things: pantyhose, thongs, underwire bras. She now wears athletic clothing and sensible flats. She is getting more comfortable. She also says “wear more color – you don’t have to blend in.” Please go to Treesmendus.com for the entire show notes.

Episode #005 Today I am thrilled to have the author of a terrific book I read recently called “The Pollinator Victory Garden: Win the War on Pollinator Decline with Ecological Gardening” by Kim Eierman. In her practical and intelligent book, Kim will give you new ways of thinking and noticing and around your garden. Kim Eierman is an Environmental Horticulturist specializing in ecological landscapes and native plants. Based in New York, Kim teaches at the New York Botanical Garden, Brooklyn Botanic Garden, The Native Plant Center in NY, Rutgers Home Gardeners School. Kim is an active speaker at Master Gardener groups, garden clubs, nature centers, Audubon Society chapters, AND beekeeping groups. Kim also provides horticultural consulting to homeowners and commercial industry. Thank you Kim Eierman please tell us your story and why you wrote this book about nature and plants?Several years ago, I made a major career change. I worked on Wall Street and had always been a nature lover. I switched careers to become a horiculturalist and “traded one kind of green for another. ” I am a naturalist and part of that is looking around at creatures that inhabit the earth with us and try to take better care of them. So pollinators are incredibly important to us and we tend not to we to pay attention to them. Pollinators, animal pollinators not just bees, give us 80% of the reproduction of flowering plants on earth and a significant part of our food supply So we really should care so I wrote the Pollinator Victory Garden to empower, encourage, and inspire folks to help make change.Please tell us about some of the research in your book.There are many different kinds of Pollinators. So we think about pollinators as bees and maybe hummingbirds. But pollinators are also bees, beetles, butterflies, flies, moths, and even some mosquitos are pollinators . This is important because we need to provide them with not just flowers but a place to live. That is the one thing I found missing from other books on the nature and gardens. So we need to start thinking about habitat The vast majority of our bees are native bees - not honey bees that were imported from Europe. The majority of native bees are ground nesters. They need bare patches of soil in a sunny location where the ground is workable – not too much clay, not too much sand. So keep that in mind. Our cavity nesting bees need cavities to rest in. They might go to pithy plant stems or hollow plant stems like Joe Pye Weed or Elderberries. They might go to old holes where beetles were burying. There are many places our native bees can go if we just start thinking about the habitat that we need to provide them with. So just providing flowers is a flower buffet -- you need to provide habitat. Pollinators need a place to live, to rest, to hide and to be protected from the wind. Can we leave little piles of brush around for them?Yes a natural landscape is a good thing. Some of us can do that, some of us it is a bit more challenging – depending where we live. Brush piles can provide a very good habitat. Leaving a dead log on the ground is also good because beetles leave holes for bees. Or we might leave a dead tree standing but we do have to be safety minded and might have to cut it back to a safe height so it does not hurt our kids, cars, house, etc. Thinking in a more naturalist way is not just good for pollinators but it is good for wildlife in general. There are honey bees (that live in huge numbers in hives) and our native( solitary ) bees.Kim what about native plants? Our native plants are an important part of this and so is evolution. There are now close to 4000 bee species in North America – con'd in show

Episode #004 In this episode I interview my sister a retired Canadian Ambassador who lives in Ottawa, Canada. Patricia Fortier now works on for profit and non-profit Boards. One of the for profit boards is Greenlane Renewables based in Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada. As she explains this innovative start up is converting the gas methane (one of the most powerful air pollutants) to natural gas for use in public sector transportation (buses). This good news for the atmosphere. Please tell me about one childhood memoryShe says that the most vivid memories for her are all around our family cottage on Lake Winnipeg in Manitoba. Particularly in the summer mornings when we go down to the beach to look at the sparkles in the water. After several teas together, we brave the cold water and swim right into the sparkles. Was there a time in your adult life that the value of spending time outside helped you? We always knew that going outside was good for us. Our grandfather in his nineties still kept his daily walk outside habit. Our father who had MS had an electric wheelchair and he used it to get outside. Both our grandfather and our father were even more cheerful as a result of these activities. And as kids we were always told to get outside. What helps you to get outside? I live alone and so I make plans with friends who often live alone too, to go for daily walks. If I find that my mind is going in circles I propel myself out the door. What prevents you from going outside?The weather, when it rains or is icy I usually stay inside. What tips would you give others for little outside microbreaks?In the morning when I open my front door to gather up my daily newspapers, I stop look into the tree branches. I breathe in and out through my nose while I am doing that because you told me it stimulates my parasympathetic nervous system. I then feel very calm. And we need that when we are looking at the news these days. Is there anything you wish I would have asked you but didn't? When I am out walking I try to catch people's eye and say hello. I think it makes a difference. I feel better and I hope it makes others feel better too. When I say hello they look up, maybe because they are older they are watching their step so they don't fall. I do notice more seniors with nordic walking poles/Urban Poles. My Take On My Sister's Outside Mindset My sister lost her husband recently. I am pleased that she makes plans to with others to get outside near trees every day. This is helping her to deal with her stress of her deep loss. She is combining the benefits of social engagement with being outside close to trees. When Patricia talked about the sparkles on the water she is also tapping into the stress relieving benefits (up to 60%) of fractals. As we know fractals are naturally occurring patterns in nature that reflect are reflected in our body composition too - "nature's trademarks" - as nanophysicist Taylor at University of Oregon tell us. When my sister steps out her front door to gather her papers and looks into tree branches she is looking at fractals. When she breathes in and out through her nose, she is further stimulating the parasympathetic nervous system. The key cranial nerve is the vagus nerve which is stimulated when we go outside and stimulated even more when we breathe in and out through our nose. The parasympathetic nervous system is also known as the rest and digest system. Th core of that system is the vagus nerve, the longest in the body, wanders from our mid brain, through our neck, to our diaphragm (slows breathing), to our hearts (slows heart rate), to our digestive system (improves digestive juice secretion and movement of food). All this happens the moment my sister steps outside.

Episode #003 Questions To Help Your Family Feel Good About TreesUse these questions, if you like, to ask your grown kids to think about. It will moves the focus to outside and may feel like a gift. In this episode, I ask my boys, finance professionals in twenties, now living in London questions about going outside. Please share one childhood memory of when you were outside close to trees? Max the oldest remembered when he was 3 years old looking up and seeing tree tops together in a wooded park. According to forest bathers today, he was "earthing." He was allowing himself to be cradled by the ground. So natural. Jesse the youngest, remembered a time when we went fishing together. We had not considered that we would have to take the fish off the hook. Of course we had no plans to keep the fish. At what point in your adult life did you recognize that going outside near trees helped you to get through a difficult patch? Jesse said he became aware of all the science as I was starting my website and blog. He told me that "not everybody knows this science mom - keep going on this." Then he started to pay more attention to going outside close to trees to feel better. This is a link to my website: https://treesmendus.comMax said it was when I was diagnosed with lupus and he saw how sick I was getting the longer I stayed inside. When I decided to go outside he said everything seemed to change for the better. That is when he believed the science and wanted to read my book. What Kinds of Unexpected Things Do You Get Outside Close To Trees? Max said when he is tired from working long hours (as an investment banker),he knows that even if he is tired, he should try to get outside for a little while. He says going outside to the local park always gives him new energy -- even when he does not expect it. Jesse said after a late night of socializing, he likes to lie under a canopy of trees and sleep. He says he always feels better even after a short nap outside. Forest bathers would say he is allowing his body to be cradled by the earth -- the ultimate in letting go -- and again, "earthing." What Works To Get You Outside? Max develops outside habits and plans for when these work the best when he is scheduling his days, weeks, months. Jesse is inspired by beautiful outdoor parks in London - places of Outstanding Beauty. It is the more spontaneous adventure of finding and enjoying these places that get him to outside close to trees and nature. What Are You Still Struggling With Regarding Getting Outside? They are both aware of the Finnish research that says you need 5 hours a month outside close to trees to get all the benefits. They are multiplying that to 5 hours a week. They have outdoor time targets that they share with each other now. What is Your Favourite Thing To Do Outside? Jesse loves to golf. Max loves to run.What Tips Would You Give Other To Help Them To Go Outside? Because they are my kids and good kids they say of course: "read our mom's book and workbook Take Back Your Outside Mindset." Here is the link for that: https://www.amazon.ca/Take-Back-Your-Outside-Mindset/dp/1690766751/ref=tmm_pap_swatTheir advice is to learn the green space science, put it into action in small achievable steps in every day. And then celebrate to wire in the habit (my addition) because it feels good.