Description: Ayana Young is deeply concerned about environmental issues, including social justice, ecology, and land-based restoration. She has been the force behind a native species nursery and research center, including the establishment of the 1 Million Redwoods Project, and the film when When Old Growth Ends. Ayana is a podcast host on “For the Wild,” a weekly show featuring thought-leaders at the forefront of an environmental, artistic, scientific, political, and cultural shift. Join us for discussions about her projects and how nature is teaching her and her team to have patience, slow down, and immerse within the community of plants.
About My Guest: Ayana Young is a podcast and radio personality specializing in intersectional environmental and social justice, deep ecology, and land-based restoration. With an academic background at the intersections of ecology, culture, and spirituality, Young was studying at Columbia when the Occupy Wall Street movement began and amid the burgeoning resistance in Zuccotti Park, she co-created the Environmental Working Group. Since then Ayana has been the force behind a native species nursery and research center, including the establishment of the 1 Million Redwoods Project, which was acclaimed as the most-backed farm project in Kickstarter history, the film When Old Growth Ends, an ode to the complex interweaving of the irreplaceable Tongass National Forest during its last stand as a distinctly wild place in Southeast Alaska and the For The Wild podcast a weekly show featuring thought-leaders at the forefront of an environmental, artistic, scientific, political and cultural shift.
Description: It’s a privilege to introduce you to Dr. Jean Shinoda Bolen world-renown author, and speaker. Dr. Bolen, a psychiatrist, a Jungian analyst is known for her contributions to our understanding of archetypes, symbolism, and goddesses/gods as well as her activism working for women’s rights globally. Her book, Like a Tree, How Trees, Women, and Tree People Can Save the Planet began with personal experience, one that led her to discover ‘tree people and tree huggers’. She weaves their stories within the life of trees: how trees contribute to our environment and more importantly to our culture as one of many species living on this planet. Dr. Bolen relates deforestation to the many waves of abuse women still suffer today. Join us for a deep and timely look at culture, the COVID-19 virus, trees and us.
About My Guest: Jean Shinoda Bolen, M.D., is a psychiatrist, Jungian analyst and an internationally known author and speaker. She is a Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and a Diplomate of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology, a former clinical professor of psychiatry at Langley Porter Psychiatric Institute, University of California Medical Center and a past board member of the Ms. Foundation for Women, the International Transpersonal Association, and the C.G. Jung Institute of San Francisco. She is the author of thirteen books in over one hundred foreign editions. She is a NGO Permanent Representative to the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women from the Women’s World Summit Foundation (Geneva), also represents Pathways To Peace, The Millionth Circle, Earthchild Institute, Women’s Perspective, and the International Public Policy Institute. She is in three acclaimed documentaries: the Academy-Award winning anti-nuclear proliferation film “Women – For America, For the World,” the Canadian Film Board’s “Goddess Remembered,” and “Femme: Women Healing the World.
Description: Planting trees is one of the main focuses for the Arbor Day Foundation. Today’s guest, Woodrow Nelson, tree lover, and planter, talks about the Arbor Day Foundation’s initiative to plant 100,000,000 trees by 2022. What is truly remarkable is that they are one-third of the way there.
Join us as we talk about trees, their benefits, and how we can help replant especially in disaster sites such as those hit by wildfires, hurricanes, and tornadoes.
About My Guest: Woodrow Nelson is a lifelong tree planter while growing up in several Midwest states through a business career in California and Ohio before moving to Lincoln, Nebraska, to join the Executive Management Team of the nonprofit Arbor Day Foundation in 2006. He is inspired by hundreds of thousands of Arbor Day Foundation members, engaging them in the conservation work of the Foundation with impact in neighborhoods, communities, and forests across the globe. Woody and his wife, Joyce, enjoy time together with their children and grandchildren.
Description: This week we follow a different path into nature. Katherine is a writer and her book, A Book of Noticing: Collections and Connections on the Trail, takes us into the woods, down trails sharing with us her keen observations. Then she traverses into the research end to support what she has found with more accuracy. Katherine suggests we take more time on our hikes, meander more. Nature is full of surprises. Walking slowly, with more mindfulness and focus on one aspect in the stillness can bring many surprises. Join us for an enlightening discussion about observing nature and the art of nature writing.
About my Guest: Katherine Hauswirth writes about nature and contemplation. Her blog, First Person Naturalist, reflects on experiencing nature and she has been published in The Christian Science Monitor, Orion online, Whole Life Times, Connecticut Woodlands, and Spirituality & Health. She was an Artist-in-Residence at Trail Wood in Connecticut in 2015 and at Acadia National Park in 2017. Katherine won first prize in the Soul-Making Keats Literary Competition last year. Her book with Homebound Publications, The Book of Noticing: Collections and Connections on the Trail, received Honorable Mention for General Nonfiction from the American Society of Journalists and Authors in 2018.
Please note: Katherine refers to the concepts I outlined in the introduction, where I explain the qualities of the four directions based on my spin of the wheel To listen to the Introduction go to: https://wp.me/pahVd2-17k
I am fascinated with trees. There’s new and maybe not so new research showing us their complexity and their extensive ecosystems that exist beyond our ordinary senses. We know they communicate through their root systems to each other. They send nutrients to a family member in need. They will also share water. Roots are connected by a mycorrhizal hypha network of fungi creating a kind of highway and inner net within the soil beneath the forest floor. Debris and leaves, insects and critters, microscopic nutrients and various species exist within the canopy of a forest and its layers. Mother trees help and support their young ones. And did you know they can cry when in need?
My guest this week, Lois Grasso, author, and transformational breath practitioner spoke about using the power of our breath as a healing modality. We can get stuck emotionally and hold our breath, maybe not dramatically but enough to block our connection to the best part of self. Since this blog and podcast series: Holistic Nature of Us is concerned with all the parts functioning optimally here within us as a human being and within all aspects of this planet, I wondered about trees. Air is an element that governs this planet. There would be no breathable air without our plant kingdoms.
She got me thinking about trees, our relationship with them and how they are suffering today. I read a report through my Master Gardener office last week that trees here in CT are suffering. In certain areas, they got hit two years in a row with gypsy moth infestations. The first year of the moths we were in our second year of a drought. Both factors weaken a tree, both factors open the door to their demise. When growing by roadways, they pose a hazard if and when they should topple over. The cost to remove them is also a factor that towns and the state have to consider for budget concerns.
But let’s get back to breath and breathing. Our first breath gives us life. Without our breath, we cease to exist. Our first responders know only too well that evaluating our breathing is critical to triage work. Life and death are only one breath away. How does a tree breathe? The leaves on trees and needles on our conifers have narrow slits on their undersides, openings that allow them to exhale and inhale. Roots can do the same thing too.
” A tree breathes through its leaves using chlorophyll, the substance that makes leaves green. Chlorophyll absorbs CO2 from the air and uses it alongside water to break down minerals absorbed through the tree’s roots. While trees do not technically breathe, respiration is comparable to inhaling air into the lungs and photosynthesis is comparable to exhaling.” (From youtube video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXTYZpZNqrA)
We inhale O2 and exhale CO2 due to complex cellular processes. Trees use CO2 to make food and release O2 in this process which is photosynthesis.
What happens at night when the sun goes down? Since photosynthesis relies on sunlight to
ignite the metabolic processes within plants, photosynthesis ceases and trees breathe in O2. too.
So they exhale O2 during the day but need O2 at night.
We take breathing for granted. Breathing can be soft or filled with emotion. There’s nothing like the soft gentle breath of a newborn babe. You could say breath is connected to touch. Trees breathe and we can feel the breath of a forest that maybe quite literally takes our breath away.
I hope you will breathe with more mindfulness today and awareness that trees breathe too. During the day we have a breathing relationship with them: we breathe in O2 and exhale CO2 while trees breathe in our CO2 and give us O2. We are connected in very profound ways.
Remember all comments are appreciated. Please like and share. Thanks.
Judith
I am so inspired by the work of this Institute and their vision. Posing challenges with the intent of looking for nature-inspired solutions creates innovation from the most unlikely of species and functions in nature. Jeanine Benyus asks these questions: How would nature solve this? How does nature optimize energy usage? How does nature create multiple functions?
She leaves us with these thoughts:
“The best ideas may not be ours.”
Life runs on sunlight and wastes nothing.
Everything is upcycled.
We are a very young species. What would happen if we saw ourselves as apprentices?
My podcast guest this week, Erika Harrison, principal of Eco-Tone Advisors and president of the Board of Directors for the Biomimicry Institute, ignited my sense of curiosity with her passion for the innovation and possibilities this Institute generates. She reminds me how intelligent nature is. As Jeanine says, “If we could quiet our clevermind”, what wonders would we witness and what solutions could we create? I highly recommend their website. Many challenges are explained and how nature provided solutions. Inspiring. Provocative. Engaging. Timely.
Enjoy and please share. Your comments are appreciated.
movement began and amid the burgeoning resistance in Zuccotti Park, she co-created the Environmental Working Group. Since then Ayana has been the force behind a native species nursery and research center, including the establishment of the 1 Million Redwoods Project, which was acclaimed as the most-backed farm project in Kickstarter history, the film When Old Growth Ends, an ode to the complex interweaving of the irreplaceable Tongass National Forest during its last stand as a distinctly wild place in Southeast Alaska and the For The Wild podcast a weekly show featuring thought-leaders at the forefront of an environmental, artistic, scientific, political and cultural shift.
Judith Dreyer, MS, BSN, Writer, Speaker, and Workshop Presenter, Master Gardener.
Peace, The Millionth Circle, Earthchild Institute, Women’s Perspective, and the International Public Policy Institute. She is in three acclaimed documentaries: the Academy-Award winning anti-nuclear proliferation film “Women – For America, For the World,” the Canadian Film Board’s “Goddess Remembered,” and “Femme: Women Healing the World.
open the door to their demise. When growing by roadways, they pose a hazard if and when they should topple over. The cost to remove them is also a factor that towns and the state have to consider for budget concerns.
