Speaker 1: As physicians now in Scotland and South Korea and other
Speaker 1: places that are prescribing nature and literally not written in
Speaker 1: or in antidepressants, but actually go out in nature one
Speaker 1: hour week or five hours a month, because that's actually
Speaker 1: going to do more for your nervous system than medication
Speaker 1: sometimes can. Welcome to the one you feed throughout time.
Speaker 1: Great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have,
Speaker 1: quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what
Speaker 1: you think, ring true, and yet for many of us,
Speaker 1: our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 1: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 1: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 1: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 1: just about thinking our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent
Speaker 1: and create of effort to make a life worth living.
Speaker 1: This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving
Speaker 1: in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf.
Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is
Speaker 1: Mark Coleman. He's an author and senior meditation teacher at
Speaker 1: Spirit Rock Meditation Center. Mark holds an m A and
Speaker 1: clinical psychology and draws on his extensive experience in working
Speaker 1: with people as a therapist and coach. He's also an
Speaker 1: unabashed nature lover, and through his organization Awake in the Wild,
Speaker 1: he shares his passion for integrating meditation and nature. Mark
Speaker 1: leads wilderness and meditation retreats from Alaska to Peru, taking
Speaker 1: people on inner and outer adventures. Hi, Mark, welcome to
Speaker 1: the show. Thank you. Great to be here with you both. Yes,
Speaker 1: as you just alluded to, I am not here alone.
Speaker 1: I have Jenny with me for another one of our
Speaker 1: interviews that we're doing together. Yes, I am really honored
Speaker 1: that you joined us. Marks, of course, you know, but
Speaker 1: I'll share with the listeners. You are my teacher. I'm
Speaker 1: in a mindfulness teacher training program that you and Martin
Speaker 1: Aylward are leading. So I just feel very honored to
Speaker 1: have you here. You have really touched my life and
Speaker 1: my heart, and so your work is so beautiful and
Speaker 1: I'm excited to share it with our listeners today. Wonderful, wonderful,
Speaker 1: Thank you. We're going to spend a lot of time
Speaker 1: talking about your book, which is called Awake in the
Speaker 1: Wild Mindfulness in Nature as a path of self discovery.
Speaker 1: But before we do that, we always start with this parable.
Speaker 1: And I'll let you take it away, all right, here
Speaker 1: we go. Okay, So Mark, there is a grandparent talking
Speaker 1: with their grandchild, and the grandparents says, in life, there
Speaker 1: are two wolves at battle inside of us. One is
Speaker 1: the good wolf that represents things like kindness and bray
Speaker 1: vary and love, and one is a bad wolf that
Speaker 1: represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the
Speaker 1: grandchild stops and thinks about it for a second and
Speaker 1: looks up at their grandparents and says, well, which one wins?
Speaker 1: And the grandparents said, the one you feed. And so
Speaker 1: I'd like to ask you how that parable applies to
Speaker 1: you in your life and in the work that you do. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: thank you for showing that so very beautiful parable, because
Speaker 1: it's very evocative, and I think about a lot of
Speaker 1: different things. One of my long trainings is I'm as
Speaker 1: I'm studied in the Buddhish tradition, and one of my
Speaker 1: favorite lines from the Buddha is this line, whatever the
Speaker 1: mind frequently dwells and ponders upon, that becomes the inclination
Speaker 1: of the mind and the heart. Right, And so this
Speaker 1: parable is exactly speaking to that, you know, from to
Speaker 1: enough thousand years later or whenever this parable was was developed,
Speaker 1: and it really points to something I learned that very
Speaker 1: early in my practice, when it is started meditating the eighties,
Speaker 1: and it basically, I think about well being and happiness
Speaker 1: really partly is determined by what we focus on, what
Speaker 1: we pay attention to, what prioritize, what we preference, what
Speaker 1: we see versus what we don't see, and so how
Speaker 1: that pertains to me, particularly in my life and my work.
Speaker 1: So I started meditating in the East End of London
Speaker 1: in the eighties, was very run down, depressed, gritty, urban,
Speaker 1: you know, rough, and I'm a nature lover and I
Speaker 1: was sort of feeling nature starved. I heard that phrase.
Speaker 1: It's like, oh okay, well let me tell my mind
Speaker 1: and attention to what is uplifting. And for me, mostly
Speaker 1: what's uplifting is nature. So I look at the trees,
Speaker 1: I go to the park, I see the odd bird
Speaker 1: flying around. I'd look at the sunset and realized that,
Speaker 1: you know, I could focus on all the negativity, the
Speaker 1: crumbling buildings, the you know, the trash, the urban sort
Speaker 1: of you know ugliness, or I could look at beauty.
Speaker 1: I could choose to focus on that which was also here,
Speaker 1: not just the grim but also the uplifting and the
Speaker 1: seas and the leaves and the colors. And so that's
Speaker 1: been a kind of a lifelong practice for me, and
Speaker 1: I teach that particularly during the pandemic. You know, the
Speaker 1: pandemic hit almost two years ago, and it hid in spring,
Speaker 1: in March, which is springtime here. I live in northern California,
Speaker 1: and you know, the pandemic was very hard and has
Speaker 1: been very difficult and painful on so many different levels.
Speaker 1: And I would say to people, and I started this
Speaker 1: daily meditation teaching offering us still doing it this morning,
Speaker 1: called the Sunrise Meditation, and one of my teachings was
Speaker 1: to acknowledge that, yes, the pandemic is here, with all
Speaker 1: of its challenges and stresses, and look, it's springtime. It's beautiful.
Speaker 1: Blossoms are still blossoming, and even with the climate crisis,
Speaker 1: flowers are still flowering in the full moon still rises,
Speaker 1: and birds are still migrating. And so I think, for me,
Speaker 1: and I think for our well being in general, it's
Speaker 1: essential that we notice what gladdens and uplifts us rather
Speaker 1: than just focus on all that's wrong and painful, even
Speaker 1: though we need to pay attention to what's wrong and
Speaker 1: what's painful, difficult, but to also include the beauty and
Speaker 1: the joy that's available in this earth. And I love that.
Speaker 1: And you write about nature so beautifully. It just really
Speaker 1: evokes in one's own heart and mind, really a touch
Speaker 1: back to any memory that one has had in nature
Speaker 1: that felt particularly poignant and almost poetic. The way you
Speaker 1: write about nature, it's really your love of it is
Speaker 1: very apparent. And so we'll dive into that here in
Speaker 1: just a moment, but I want to just start with
Speaker 1: a bit about your story. You write about how angry
Speaker 1: you were as a young man, and how in the
Speaker 1: gray concrete of London you were unaware of how significant
Speaker 1: spending time outdoors really was to your sense of well being.
Speaker 1: You write that during college you were at war with
Speaker 1: yourself and the world. So tell us about that young
Speaker 1: man and what has brought about the profound sense of
Speaker 1: ease and calm and peace that you seem to have developed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So going back that memory lane, which is a few
Speaker 1: years ago now, Yeah, I was like many young people,
Speaker 1: trying to just survive, trying to figure out who I
Speaker 1: was and what life's about. And I had a particularly
Speaker 1: i'd say political sensitivity to the injustice that I saw
Speaker 1: around me, to the exploitation, to the poverty, to the negativity,
Speaker 1: to the corruption. So a lot of my focus going
Speaker 1: back to the two wolves, and my focus was on
Speaker 1: what was wrong, who was to blame? And I was angry,
Speaker 1: and I think I also was hurting inside. I didn't
Speaker 1: know what I was hurting from. It took me many
Speaker 1: years to kind of understand that I also had a
Speaker 1: tremendously intense inner critics. So I had a lot of
Speaker 1: self hatred, a lot of self judgment, and so there
Speaker 1: was a sort of cacophony of turmoil and confusion and
Speaker 1: anger and struggle, and there wasn't all like that. I
Speaker 1: also had, you know, my moments of joy and fun
Speaker 1: and being crazy wild college student, punk rocker and all
Speaker 1: of that, but inside I felt unhappy. I look at
Speaker 1: my journals, it was full of you know, me feeling
Speaker 1: depressed and anxious as a negative. And then you know,
Speaker 1: I was lucky enough to stumble on a meditation center
Speaker 1: and I happened to learn the practice of mindfulness and meditation.
Speaker 1: You know, when I was nineteen, and it was kind
Speaker 1: of radical, and I was busy blaming the world and
Speaker 1: the government and corporations and you know, all kinds of
Speaker 1: things out there, like they're the problem. If we fix that,
Speaker 1: then I'll be happy. And then I realized, oh, wait
Speaker 1: a minute, like there's so much suffering going on and here,
Speaker 1: so much judgment and pain and anguish and negativity. And
Speaker 1: so meditation kind of pulled the carpet out, you know,
Speaker 1: pulled the rug out and made me look at the
Speaker 1: beginning to understand where does happiness arise from, and where
Speaker 1: does suffering begin? And so much happens within our own mind.
Speaker 1: And that became a radical shift in my life to
Speaker 1: understanding myself through meditation, through Buddhist practice, through cultivating the heart.
Speaker 1: There was a great relief for for a confused and
Speaker 1: often angry young man to find some somebody's figured this
Speaker 1: out out, somebody has a pass, somebody has practices and
Speaker 1: tools that can really help you in a practical way
Speaker 1: how to live with some ease and with some peace.
Speaker 1: How were you able to make the switch? And it's
Speaker 1: not it's not even a switch, actually, I think it's
Speaker 1: a let's call it an evolution from You were very angry,
Speaker 1: and the things you were angry about are still things
Speaker 1: that I'm certain concern you today and that you don't
Speaker 1: like to see in the world. Right, So that hasn't
Speaker 1: changed your view on like, hey, corruption, no good, poverty,
Speaker 1: no good, right, those things are still there. How did
Speaker 1: the switch happen though, that allowed you to sort of
Speaker 1: move beyond being only in that place or consumed by that,
Speaker 1: to be able to work with it in perhaps a
Speaker 1: more skillful way. That's a great question, and I'm not
Speaker 1: sure exactly how to answer that. I think it was
Speaker 1: very clear. Like I go to a lot of protests.
Speaker 1: I was part of the anarchist movement and the squatting movement,
Speaker 1: and would demonstrate, would have these stock the cities kind
Speaker 1: of the movement. Back in the eighties, there was a
Speaker 1: lot of demonstrations against Thatcher and that kind of was
Speaker 1: a very austere and you know, felt like a war
Speaker 1: against the working class. And so I felt very passionate
Speaker 1: about that. And I also saw as I began to
Speaker 1: learn about meditation Buddhist principles, I began to see that
Speaker 1: the very demonstrations and actions and reactions to what was
Speaker 1: wrong or corrupt and injustice felt like the same mind
Speaker 1: state of negativity and blame and judgment and division and hatred,
Speaker 1: and there was as much anger and hatred towards that
Speaker 1: as we were saying was coming towards us. And it
Speaker 1: was very clear that that we were just perpetuating a
Speaker 1: kind of negativity reactive cycle when we look back at history,
Speaker 1: you know, when we've used violence and hatred and negativity
Speaker 1: and anger to use up and transform systems that then
Speaker 1: we're just still strengthening the hatred and the negativity and
Speaker 1: the divisiveness and reactivity. So it doesn't actually lead to
Speaker 1: a net gain, it's just a different version of the
Speaker 1: same problem. And so I think, you know, wisdom teaching
Speaker 1: Buddhism and otherwise asking us how do we engage with
Speaker 1: injustice and with the problems in the world, but not
Speaker 1: perpetuating the same reactive mind states, because then we're just
Speaker 1: perpetuating the same problem, I think. So that was a
Speaker 1: big shift for me and seeing that had to be
Speaker 1: other ways rather than using anger and hatred, which just
Speaker 1: also made me feel toxic. So I can't help but ask,
Speaker 1: because I'm a music fan, what are we talking here?
Speaker 1: Two in London I got there in yeah, eight two,
Speaker 1: and there was about ten years there was the height
Speaker 1: of the the sort the flowering of the punk and
Speaker 1: the post punk and the new romantic. Yeah, what were
Speaker 1: some of the bands you were really into then? Back
Speaker 1: then it was Stranglers, Stiff, Little Fingers, Jam Using the Banshees,
Speaker 1: Ramons Um, something Death called Joy Division. Um, yeah, many
Speaker 1: many great bands. There was such a live time. I
Speaker 1: had white, I had a white mohawk. I made my
Speaker 1: own clothes and big earrings and nice, nice, Well you
Speaker 1: just listed our editor Chris's uh, you just about listed
Speaker 1: some of his uh, his greatest hits list, although some
Speaker 1: of that for me to Joy Division and and uh,
Speaker 1: I was really into the sex Pistols, although later I
Speaker 1: came a few years later than you, sort of as
Speaker 1: punk and hardcore was kind of taking off the d
Speaker 1: I y thing in in the US, and so that
Speaker 1: was kind of my adolescence. But well, and you had
Speaker 1: a band, didn't you? I did. I formed a band
Speaker 1: called the Walking and feed a means our first drummer
Speaker 1: didn't None of us knew how to do any We
Speaker 1: had a good guitar player who love to play a
Speaker 1: C D C and I only wanted to do sex
Speaker 1: pistols and Dead Kennedy songs. And our first drummer we
Speaker 1: stole trash cans and put him in the garage and
Speaker 1: that was his drum kit. We we were terrible. We
Speaker 1: were terrible. That's it reminds me of my brother had
Speaker 1: a punk band because he was always into punk the
Speaker 1: same time. And then that that band lasted about three
Speaker 1: months because halfway through a set they just destroyed all
Speaker 1: our instruments. Yeah, yeah, I love it. So I'm fascinated
Speaker 1: by how people grow involve and how you went from
Speaker 1: like this punk, angry kid to this stage mifulness teacher
Speaker 1: you know, um, and specifically how you really fell in
Speaker 1: love with nature. So do you have some memories that
Speaker 1: feel like some of those first moments of really falling
Speaker 1: in love or being captivated by nature described some of
Speaker 1: that for us? Yeah, definitely. So one of my for me,
Speaker 1: it feels the most iconic memory is I was I
Speaker 1: grew up in Northumberland, up in Newcastle, which is north
Speaker 1: eastern England and on the close to the border Scotland,
Speaker 1: kind of hardy and wild and cold, and we lived
Speaker 1: on the edge of farm fields and so me and
Speaker 1: my mates and brother would go out and we are
Speaker 1: kind of refuge was to like lose ourselves in the
Speaker 1: farm land, and we'd create these little tunnels and would
Speaker 1: go out into the middle of a big wheat or
Speaker 1: barley field and just create these little cocoons and so
Speaker 1: we couldn't be seeing. We're lying down. And I was
Speaker 1: out there one day on my own, lying down on
Speaker 1: my back and just looking at swaying these golden stands
Speaker 1: of wheat and the blue sky, little whispy clouds, and
Speaker 1: I felt incredibly peaceful, like incredibly held and just this
Speaker 1: sense of peace. And you know what I'd called love now,
Speaker 1: but I didn't call it that then, and I didn't
Speaker 1: even make too much of it then. It was just like, oh,
Speaker 1: that's my happy place. That's my sort of place of refuge,
Speaker 1: get away from the chaos of home and school life
Speaker 1: and being bullied and all the other stuff that was
Speaker 1: going on. You know. It's probably about eight or ten,
Speaker 1: and I think that really informed me. And I spent
Speaker 1: a lot of time along the coastline along streams and
Speaker 1: the woods, playing and rummaging and just getting into trouble,
Speaker 1: but was mostly in nature, and I think that you know,
Speaker 1: when kids have contact with the natural world in that way,
Speaker 1: it lives in us. And so when we grow up,
Speaker 1: when we go out and even if like I did,
Speaker 1: I moved to the city, and I love London is
Speaker 1: a great city, but every weekend I would then go
Speaker 1: out to a park. I would jump on a train
Speaker 1: and go to the coast or just get out into
Speaker 1: the woodland forests. So I think that those early formative
Speaker 1: years of just feeling that just the joy and the
Speaker 1: peacefulness and the love and safety and beauty, that just
Speaker 1: being a theme through my life. And even when I
Speaker 1: was in London and I was a punk and you know,
Speaker 1: I take this, you know, white mohawk, and I got
Speaker 1: into the country probably scared the living daylights of people.
Speaker 1: When I started meditating, then the combination of meditation and
Speaker 1: nature they felt very similar. Like what I felt in meditation,
Speaker 1: which was more calm, more present, more ease, more relaxation,
Speaker 1: was really the same qualities I was just feeling in nature,
Speaker 1: And that's sort of been a lifelong learning for me
Speaker 1: of how much of the experience we have in nature
Speaker 1: is very similar to what we can experience through meditation.
Speaker 1: And it's it's also what meditation teachings are pointing to
Speaker 1: meditation teachings whatever tradition, pointing to being present, to being aware,
Speaker 1: to being connected, to being open, to being receptive, to listening.
Speaker 1: So for me, at some point, meditation and nature just
Speaker 1: became fused. And the only place that I wanted to
Speaker 1: meditate was outside, because why wouldn't you want to meditate
Speaker 1: under a tree or by a pond, or you know,
Speaker 1: watching the ocean or listening to bird song in the morning.
Speaker 1: And so those two loves nature meditation sort of fused,
Speaker 1: and that's become really the rest of my life that
Speaker 1: is really beautiful. And as you're talking, I'm thinking, you know,
Speaker 1: you know, in nature, so many of those qualities just
Speaker 1: seems so available to us, more so than in the
Speaker 1: buzziness of our day to day life, you know. And
Speaker 1: in fact, you lead people now in nature retreats, and
Speaker 1: I want to hear more about that as we talk.
Speaker 1: But as I was reading your book, it came to
Speaker 1: me that maybe a way to orient our conversation could be,
Speaker 1: you know that modern life tends to cause us some imbalances,
Speaker 1: um tends to create some states within us that can
Speaker 1: be very distressing. You know, we'll talk about some of those,
Speaker 1: but that nature truly being time and nature time connecting
Speaker 1: with nature can be a powerful antidote to those modern afflictions.
Speaker 1: If we can say that so to regain balance from
Speaker 1: this modern culture, nature can really help us with things
Speaker 1: like we can start off, for example, with isolation and
Speaker 1: feelings of isolation. You write that by looking beyond the
Speaker 1: surface of things, we can begin to see that every rock,
Speaker 1: every grass blade, every drop of water is related to
Speaker 1: every other thing. When we realize how connected we are
Speaker 1: and always have been, our painful sense of alienation can dissipate,
Speaker 1: leaving in its wake a loving embrace of life. And
Speaker 1: I wonder how you've seen that to be true. Can
Speaker 1: you say some more about that? Yeah, yeah, so it's
Speaker 1: true that we, especially with the pandemic, there's a lot
Speaker 1: more sense of being isolated, being separate, being stuck in
Speaker 1: your home, not being able to friends and family. And
Speaker 1: so I think that that sense of alienation is much stronger,
Speaker 1: you know, being indoors, being on our screens, and then
Speaker 1: when we step outside, whether it's into a garden or
Speaker 1: on the street, or in a park, or if you're lucky,
Speaker 1: a woodland or hills or beach or mountains. We come
Speaker 1: into an environment that our body evolutionarily speaking, knows, right.
Speaker 1: We've we've grown up in the forest. We were lived
Speaker 1: as a species for hundreds of thousands of years outdoors.
Speaker 1: It very very very recently we've become an indoor species
Speaker 1: and an urban species, and so we have sally a
Speaker 1: memory literally that knows place and knows forest. Like, our
Speaker 1: brains are much less stressed in nature because our brains
Speaker 1: are designed to know that environment and not designed to
Speaker 1: know an urban environment. And so we naturally start feeling
Speaker 1: more ease, more relaxed, and literally there's there's some great
Speaker 1: research being done about how being outside engages our attention
Speaker 1: but doesn't stress it, whereas being in the urban environment
Speaker 1: taxes it and draining. Yes, so we go outside, and
Speaker 1: especially if we're present, and that's why I teach mindfulness
Speaker 1: in nature. When we're present, When we're mindful, we start
Speaker 1: to feel the sensory impressions of life around us. Right,
Speaker 1: We feel the air maybe touching our skin. We might
Speaker 1: feel the breeze blowing our hair. We might feel the sunlight,
Speaker 1: you know, warming us. We might hear the sounds of
Speaker 1: birds or crickets or something so our senses wake up,
Speaker 1: and our senses are always connecting us to life around us.
Speaker 1: That that they're the portals of how we know the world,
Speaker 1: and unlike indoors and I could say, well, that's happening indoors,
Speaker 1: but I'm being connected to something that's quite static, like
Speaker 1: a wall or a lamp shade or a table, and
Speaker 1: they will find things and useful things, but they're not alive.
Speaker 1: They're not living in the same way that when I
Speaker 1: go outside and I'm feeling the breeze blow or the
Speaker 1: moisture in the air, or the smells from spring flowers
Speaker 1: or the sound of birds, like, I'm immediately connected to
Speaker 1: whole swathe of life around me. And there's an intimacy
Speaker 1: to that, and there's curiosity in that. So that's why
Speaker 1: I'm always advocating people like, if you don't do anything
Speaker 1: but go outside, do that. Go outside and just be present.
Speaker 1: See what you notice, See what you hear, what you smell,
Speaker 1: what you taste, what you touched, what you sense. Notice
Speaker 1: the spaciousness that comes just by not having a you know,
Speaker 1: eight ft or six ft roof. You've got you know,
Speaker 1: mile high sky um, you've got vista to too. Relaxed
Speaker 1: the eyes. You've got infinite variety of color and smell
Speaker 1: and sound, and you know, it's very enlivening, it's engaging,
Speaker 1: and we start to come alive, we start to come
Speaker 1: feel more more connected, as you were asking about. So
Speaker 1: that's one one simple way that that stuff to happen.
Speaker 1: We realized that we're actually part of this system. We're
Speaker 1: not just looking at it, but we're actually you know,
Speaker 1: we're of the earth. We're an animal, and we're part
Speaker 1: of this living, beautiful ecosystem, not just an observer in it.
Speaker 1: Isn't that true? And I think about I mean, if
Speaker 1: you spend a day indoors at home, I mean, if
Speaker 1: you don't have let's say houseplants, you could be inside
Speaker 1: without another living thing or animals, you know, without another
Speaker 1: living thing in your immediate environment. But you step outside
Speaker 1: and then all of a sudden you're one among many
Speaker 1: living things, just life teeming all around you. Yeah, yeh innumerable. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean even you know, like most of us, I
Speaker 1: live in a sort of urban there's a lot of nature,
Speaker 1: but it's a sort of small town. But there's lots
Speaker 1: of trees and golden and shrubs and flowers, and birds
Speaker 1: and clouds, and you don't have to go to Yosemite
Speaker 1: or to the Grand Canyon to have that experience. You
Speaker 1: just noticed a tree or you opened the window and
Speaker 1: it's like, oh, there's a whole massive life happening. And
Speaker 1: and from meditation point of view, brings us into the present,
Speaker 1: you know, brings us out of our head, out of
Speaker 1: our stories, out of our thoughts, worries, plans, fears, and oh,
Speaker 1: what's happening now? The birds are singing, now, the gael
Speaker 1: is howling, all the rains coming, or it's freezing and
Speaker 1: I'm feeling winschill from living in Wisconsin or whatever or Ohio,
Speaker 1: it's been cold. Yeah. I interviewed a woman just yesterday.
Speaker 1: I don't know when the episodes will come out, but
Speaker 1: her name is Florence Williams, and she wrote a book
Speaker 1: called The Nature Fix. Yes, I quote, I interviewed her
Speaker 1: on her newest book about heartbreak. But we did one
Speaker 1: on The Nature Fix, and there's so much great research about,
Speaker 1: as you say, how healing nature is. And even in
Speaker 1: this newest book of hers, where she's sort of chronicling
Speaker 1: a journey back from heartbreak and what heartbreak is and
Speaker 1: all that. You know, nature is still a huge component
Speaker 1: of it, right, And we were talking about connecting with people,
Speaker 1: but she went back multiple times to Yes, connection with
Speaker 1: people is good and important, and you can also just
Speaker 1: connect with nature too, because there is a deep connection there.
Speaker 1: You're not alone when you're there in nature. And I
Speaker 1: think that's such a beautiful idea if we can really
Speaker 1: sort of start to internalize it that we are not alone,
Speaker 1: you know, there's all these other living things that we
Speaker 1: are connected with. It to this point really helps with isolation.
Speaker 1: And as you were talking, it made me think a
Speaker 1: little bit about I've had this experience multiple times where
Speaker 1: I'm walking outdoors in the woods and I just have
Speaker 1: this feeling like, you know what, whatever happens, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: be okay. As long as I can get to a
Speaker 1: place like this, you know, as long as I can
Speaker 1: occasion really get this sort of being around something beautiful,
Speaker 1: whatever else happens, okay, I can handle, agreed. One thing
Speaker 1: it's interesting that I like to invite people to pay
Speaker 1: attention to is when you go outside, say that like
Speaker 1: the woods that you're talking about, there is the experience
Speaker 1: of us knowing something like seeing the trees and hearing
Speaker 1: the birds, but we're also being known. We are in relationship, right,
Speaker 1: The birds are very aware of us, that the snakes
Speaker 1: and the gophers feeling our vibration walking and no, no,
Speaker 1: that we're there. The bugs very much know that there
Speaker 1: because they come feed on you. And there's even now
Speaker 1: research about how plants and trees also can register the
Speaker 1: presence of people another species, and so we are actually
Speaker 1: literally entering into relationship. We tend to have this one
Speaker 1: way street like I'm going for walk in the woods,
Speaker 1: I'm going to see the ocean. I'm going to look
Speaker 1: at the deer and actually, no, the deer is listening
Speaker 1: and tracking us right in the cougar hiding in the
Speaker 1: woods that will never ever see is there. And the
Speaker 1: skunk kids smelling you. And so just to open that
Speaker 1: ups oh yeah, right, I am in relationship always. So
Speaker 1: I just got chills and he said that, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I love that idea. I love sort of trying to
Speaker 1: sort of recognize that, like there's this two way interaction,
Speaker 1: like there is an interaction that is happening with with nature.
Speaker 1: You know, it's not just me. It does speak to
Speaker 1: that sort of deep connectedness, right, right, what I like
Speaker 1: about it. Also is this sort of humbling in that,
Speaker 1: you know, we tend to think of ourselves as the
Speaker 1: center of the universe, and when we go out into natures,
Speaker 1: like clearly, we're not clearly with just one. You know,
Speaker 1: I'd like to say, you know, we're part of the
Speaker 1: Earth's moving surface. We were all unique and have our
Speaker 1: own unique expression, but we're part of the us moving
Speaker 1: surface in relationship with each other. Right. And then this
Speaker 1: other theme I like to explore with interconnectedness is again
Speaker 1: we think of ourselves as a skin bound body, and
Speaker 1: that's who I am. And but when we think about
Speaker 1: what what makes it this body? Well, like when I
Speaker 1: drink this glass of water, right, this water is ocean,
Speaker 1: it's rain. It's literally snow melt from the Sierras that
Speaker 1: comes down the pipes through to this house. Because I'm
Speaker 1: warm right now, it's because the Sun ninety three million
Speaker 1: miles away has been warming the planet. And I'm digesting food,
Speaker 1: releasing energy that the plants happen to metabolize. And the
Speaker 1: food that I'm eating it comes from the earth. That's
Speaker 1: my bones and my flesh and muscles, and and it's
Speaker 1: you know, it sounds like a nice idea, but it's
Speaker 1: also very real. We are just these elements, just like
Speaker 1: the trees and the rocks and grasses and beaver and
Speaker 1: elk and whatever else. And so so again, it's like
Speaker 1: knowing that we're part of is very helpful for our
Speaker 1: psyches that can feel often so separate and alienated. Indeed, indeed,
Speaker 1: so you also write about how nature can be an
Speaker 1: antidote to the dizziness of modern culture. We certainly all,
Speaker 1: at times, if not more often than not, move at
Speaker 1: a pace that quite frantic or quite hurried, with an agenda,
Speaker 1: with ideas of how things need to go. And you
Speaker 1: write quite a bit about that, about how stepping outdoors
Speaker 1: away from this frenetic pace, we may begin to question
Speaker 1: if all this hurry brings us the peace of mind
Speaker 1: and satisfaction for which we so deeply long say more
Speaker 1: about that, Yeah, I think, like echoing Eric's earlier point, Yeah,
Speaker 1: when we're around people and the workpace that we live at,
Speaker 1: and that's just the pace of life, and that sort
Speaker 1: of seems normal, it's what everyone's doing. And then we
Speaker 1: go outside, say into a forest or a park or
Speaker 1: a garden, you know, there's definitely things moving fast the
Speaker 1: scrolls are dotting, and the birds are moving quickly. And
Speaker 1: it's not like things don't move quickly, but there's a
Speaker 1: certain kind of peacefulness or balance or steadiness, like Jesus
Speaker 1: talked about the peacefulness of birds, because they're not busy
Speaker 1: worrying about tomorrow. They live for today only, for example.
Speaker 1: And you know, we come into the into a forest
Speaker 1: and we and we kind into different sense of time, right,
Speaker 1: we live on linear time clock time, minutes, second hours.
Speaker 1: And then you around, you go outside, maybe up to
Speaker 1: the hills and the mountains that have been there for
Speaker 1: millions of years, you get a different sense of time
Speaker 1: or even like where I leve the red woods that
Speaker 1: have been around for a thousand or two thousand years,
Speaker 1: and suddenly it's like, oh, there's other ways to be right,
Speaker 1: Not that we can just live like a tree, because
Speaker 1: we can't, but something of nature's pace rubs off on us,
Speaker 1: you know, because we're so connected. The stillness of stone
Speaker 1: or the steadiness of trees, or the immensity of the ocean.
Speaker 1: There's something about that that reminds us. Oh, yeah, the
Speaker 1: world that we live in. The stories like oh, I've
Speaker 1: got to do this, and I've got to finish my
Speaker 1: to do Listen, they've got to get all up created.
Speaker 1: And that's just mentally driven activity that's not necessarily always
Speaker 1: either healthy, useful, or truth. And so again, I think
Speaker 1: when we go outside we tap into our biological evolutionary heritage.
Speaker 1: There wasn't busy running around with to do lists and
Speaker 1: iPhones and tracking the stock market or whatever it is
Speaker 1: that we do slower, more in tune with rhythms of
Speaker 1: the sunrise and the sunset and seasons. And we can
Speaker 1: reinvoke that if we spend time outside, because I think
Speaker 1: most of us are outside. That we go to the beach,
Speaker 1: you know, that weekend say, or we go to a park,
Speaker 1: and then we start feeling relaxed. We start feeling the
Speaker 1: influence of nature on us and the danger that I see,
Speaker 1: all right, we're becoming an indoor species, and the average
Speaker 1: American spends time indoors. That the less we have contact
Speaker 1: with nature, the more we stay in this very frenzied
Speaker 1: urban you know, techno driven life. And so the more
Speaker 1: we can go outside, the more it can relax the
Speaker 1: nervous system, calm the mind, open the body, and we
Speaker 1: can come back into a little more balanced there's physicians
Speaker 1: now in Scotland and South Korea and other places that
Speaker 1: are prescribing nature literally not written in or in antidepressants,
Speaker 1: but actually go out in nature one hour a week
Speaker 1: or five hours a month, because that's actually going to
Speaker 1: do more for your nervous system than medication sometimes can't. Yees.
Speaker 1: So I think it behooves all of us to go outside,
Speaker 1: even if it's just ten minute break. You take your
Speaker 1: cup of tea or whatever, and you just sit on
Speaker 1: your doorstep your porch, and I go. I have a
Speaker 1: little backyard, is tiny, and I just you know, take
Speaker 1: my lunch out there and just look at the trees
Speaker 1: and look at the flowers and feel like, all right,
Speaker 1: there's busy freneticness that I might feel from doing email
Speaker 1: all morning. Suddenly it's like, who cares. You know, it's important.
Speaker 1: You got to do emails. It's just part of life.
Speaker 1: But going outside I think puts us in touch with
Speaker 1: with a deeper thing that what's really important. What's amazing
Speaker 1: about nature too, is that it helps put in perspective,
Speaker 1: you know, where we are in the scheme of things
Speaker 1: and in the scheme of life. And it does so
Speaker 1: in a way. I mean we get very out of
Speaker 1: balance easily with thinking that we are the center of
Speaker 1: the world, you know, and we operate with a lot
Speaker 1: of the ego driving the car. But then when we
Speaker 1: go into nature, whether it's the size and scale of
Speaker 1: mountains that if we live near a mountain range, or
Speaker 1: the trees, or just the vastness of a sunrise or sunset,
Speaker 1: we start to become humbled, but then also simultaneously know
Speaker 1: that life and our life is still sacred. Right. It
Speaker 1: both puts it into perspective so that we can see
Speaker 1: it in proportion to things, but without causing us despair,
Speaker 1: because you know that it is somehow utterly insignificant that
Speaker 1: we have some sense of the sacredness of our own
Speaker 1: life as well as the life around us. Right, Yeah, Ideally,
Speaker 1: you know, we go outside with some presents, we feel
Speaker 1: the positive influence of that, and then when we go
Speaker 1: back into whether it's our home office, we we enter
Speaker 1: with a little more presence, just like we might do
Speaker 1: if we've done our meditation or yoga practice or whatever
Speaker 1: it is that we do that helps us bring some balance.
Speaker 1: Then we come back and I noticed this. I come
Speaker 1: back from ten minutes sitting outside having a cup of tea,
Speaker 1: and then there's just more presence. I'm more balanced, I'm
Speaker 1: a little more calm, and all the stuff that was
Speaker 1: like annoying me or frustrating me, it's just like, okay,
Speaker 1: well let's just you know, and there's this more calm,
Speaker 1: there's more there's more capacity to meet whatever, you know,
Speaker 1: whether it's parenting or emails or meeting or teaching or something.
Speaker 1: So yeah, so we want to draw on that. And
Speaker 1: as you mentioned, like I can see a beautiful orchard
Speaker 1: plant here? Can you see that? A little? A little?
Speaker 1: I can see a pedal? Thank you word for it?
Speaker 1: So you know, it could just be something as simple
Speaker 1: as a plant on your desk, right, doesn't have to
Speaker 1: be like you know, you know a two thousand year
Speaker 1: redwood trail over there, if you can, that's nice, but
Speaker 1: it's amazing how just you know, like watching a bird
Speaker 1: land on the window sill, or watching the rain. I
Speaker 1: love watching rain and padded down the window pane or
Speaker 1: snow where you are before it turns brown and slushing. Um.
Speaker 1: You know that this it many simple things we can
Speaker 1: do to a tune to nature with mindful presence and
Speaker 1: allow it to influence us in a way that being
Speaker 1: out in a beautiful landscape can. So I have a
Speaker 1: question about sensitivity to nature. So you're describing for you,
Speaker 1: you've got sounds like a fairly well tuned sensitivity to nature. Right,
Speaker 1: you go out in your backyard and it acts somewhat
Speaker 1: profoundly upon you. Do you think that for some people
Speaker 1: we are desensitized to the point that it takes a
Speaker 1: certain amount of exposure. Because what I often see with
Speaker 1: meditation or going into nature, or lots of other things
Speaker 1: that we're told are good for us, is we go
Speaker 1: and we do them once or twice and they don't
Speaker 1: have a profound effect. You're describing like it's this profound,
Speaker 1: sacred thing, right, it's this beautiful thing. But I think
Speaker 1: a lot of people when they start with nature or
Speaker 1: meditation again, they go out and that's not their experience.
Speaker 1: And do you find that this is the sort of
Speaker 1: thing that the more often you go to nature, the
Speaker 1: more rewarding it's going to be, And it's the sort
Speaker 1: of thing that rewards additional exposure and patience with It's
Speaker 1: a great question, and I think a few things about that.
Speaker 1: One is, I think it is important to monitor your expectation,
Speaker 1: like I'm going to go outside and this great you know,
Speaker 1: life changing, mysticulous things. Now you can go outside and
Speaker 1: see what happens, you know, and you know, often for
Speaker 1: me it's not mystical, it's ordinary. But the key difference
Speaker 1: is what's the quality of my attention. If I'm really
Speaker 1: paying attention, if I'm really present, mindful, and I just
Speaker 1: look at something like right now, it's blossoms and blossoming everywhere.
Speaker 1: It's ridiculous, it's January, but here we are in it's
Speaker 1: February in California. Or I look at a cloud, you
Speaker 1: know for some minutes, or I listened to the sound
Speaker 1: of a bird. It's the quality of presents that will
Speaker 1: allow that experience to be impactful. You normally will We'll
Speaker 1: be walking along the street and we'll see a beautiful
Speaker 1: flower or cool tree. Girl, it's cool, and then we
Speaker 1: go back to our phone and we go back to chatting,
Speaker 1: we go back to thinking about our problems versus Like,
Speaker 1: you know, we see something, he's like, okay, stop and
Speaker 1: give yourself a minute, Like you pass a few months
Speaker 1: where you are going to be trees and blossom and
Speaker 1: it's gorgeous, you know, And we go that's cool, but
Speaker 1: like stop, like take a minute, like, okay, well what's
Speaker 1: cool about Let me actually just look at it? See
Speaker 1: it all the colors, the light, the texture, smell it,
Speaker 1: feel it. So I think often I think we've lost
Speaker 1: the art of how to pay attention because we're so
Speaker 1: stimulated with screens and intensity. And if you're at a cinemax, right,
Speaker 1: you're watching mad Max Cinemax. Right, it's a leaf on
Speaker 1: a tree is not going to hold water to that,
Speaker 1: right unless you love trees and leaving it. And it does.
Speaker 1: But so it's almost like we have to kind of
Speaker 1: like slow down enough to meet the slowness and the
Speaker 1: subtlety of nature and then not not to have an expectation.
Speaker 1: But you know, and again it can be quite ordinary.
Speaker 1: And even if it doesn't feel great, there's something's happening
Speaker 1: that's healthy. It's healthy for your eyes, just to give
Speaker 1: your eyes a break from the screen, healthy for your brain,
Speaker 1: to give your brain arrest. I also want to say,
Speaker 1: your nature isn't everybody's cup of tea. Friends who you
Speaker 1: know love New York City and you know think the beaches,
Speaker 1: like a good friend of mine is a wonderful and
Speaker 1: well known dormat teacher and she was with a friend
Speaker 1: and they were staying on this hotel the beach, and
Speaker 1: he said, you want to go for a walk on
Speaker 1: the beach, she said, She said, now, that's too much sand,
Speaker 1: you know. And so it's definitely not for everybody, But
Speaker 1: I think everybody can probably appreciate something like a beautiful
Speaker 1: sunset or watching waves crash against the cliffs or something.
Speaker 1: So you know, not to expect that it should be
Speaker 1: great or you should love it. You know, it's really
Speaker 1: you know, each to their own. But I think if
Speaker 1: we learn how to cultivate mindfulness, some kind of meditative presence, attention,
Speaker 1: then we're more likely to be touched by things, whether
Speaker 1: it's people, the beauty of an urban landscape, the beauty
Speaker 1: of the park in the city. Yeah, and it can
Speaker 1: be quite ordinary. In ordinary is okay too. It's interesting
Speaker 1: you say that because I found myself as I was
Speaker 1: reading your book, sort of secretly thinking, like, there are
Speaker 1: plenty of times that I don't feel like going out
Speaker 1: in nature, although I feel like I really should be
Speaker 1: this animal nature like just craving its environment of the
Speaker 1: natural world, But sometimes I just do not feel that way.
Speaker 1: And then I read the passage that said, you know,
Speaker 1: even for those of us who long to feel more
Speaker 1: a part of nature, our fear of discomfort can hold
Speaker 1: us back. And I thought, oh aha, you know, that's interesting,
Speaker 1: because I do think that part of any kind of
Speaker 1: reticence I have to spending time in nature and at
Speaker 1: one moment or another, is that there's a level of
Speaker 1: discomfort inherent and being in nature. And I found that
Speaker 1: a very interesting way to sort of reorient around that
Speaker 1: and then become curious about my relationship to discomfort, And
Speaker 1: so I wonder if maybe I'm not alone in that,
Speaker 1: and you could you could speak to that a little more.
Speaker 1: Definitely good point, for sure. For many people, much of
Speaker 1: the time or some of the time, you know, it's uncomfortable,
Speaker 1: you know, like where you are it's freezing right now
Speaker 1: in winter and buffalo, or it's hot and muggy, or
Speaker 1: it's buggy, or it's just uncomfortable nowhere to sit and
Speaker 1: this flies this who knows what, or this fear of
Speaker 1: predators or the dark. I love that dimension of being
Speaker 1: outside as a meditation teacher because I'm also helping people
Speaker 1: learn how to be with life, and life's not just
Speaker 1: all roses. It's also challenging, difficult, lots of adversity, and
Speaker 1: so being a niche is a great teacher because it
Speaker 1: teaches us how do we be open to life? Like
Speaker 1: just a weather like whether it's you know, changes all
Speaker 1: day and it's hot, cold, rainy. I mean I've I've
Speaker 1: done meditation retreats where we've literally been meditating and in
Speaker 1: ten minutes there's an inch of hailstones at our feet,
Speaker 1: you know, just like beautiful sunny day in New Mexico,
Speaker 1: and then they winter, there's summer storms come in and
Speaker 1: it was hail or I've done river rafting trips and
Speaker 1: it's been raining the whole time because it was the
Speaker 1: monsoon and I didn't know about monsoons. Or it's buggy,
Speaker 1: you know, I teach in Mexico. These little little flies
Speaker 1: they don't bite, but they just love to crawl into
Speaker 1: your eyes and your nostrils, you know, and it's like
Speaker 1: who wants to be with it? I don't want to
Speaker 1: be with that, you know, but here we are. It's
Speaker 1: part of being outside and you know, you do what
Speaker 1: you can. Like I tell people am saying, goes, there's
Speaker 1: no bad weather, just the wrong clothing right. So like
Speaker 1: when I meditate outside watching the sunrise, you know, I'll
Speaker 1: often have like three layers of wool and two down
Speaker 1: jackets and a hat and gloves and a scoff because
Speaker 1: I like to be outside, but I don't like to
Speaker 1: be called, you know, And we'll so smart about it.
Speaker 1: Like I don't choose to do meditation retreats in a swamp,
Speaker 1: you know, on the East coast in black fly season,
Speaker 1: or in Arizona in the summer where it's baking hot,
Speaker 1: like you know, I choose places that are moderately comfortable,
Speaker 1: knowing that there's always going to be something. There's always
Speaker 1: something that's going to teach it, whether the end crawling
Speaker 1: up our leg or the mosquito that wants to say hello,
Speaker 1: or it's unexpectedly cold or hot or something. Then you know,
Speaker 1: part of mindfulness practice is learning training. How do we
Speaker 1: be present with anything? We were trying to find some
Speaker 1: balance and steadiness with it, right, just like we have
Speaker 1: to be present with our neighbors, noise, and things we
Speaker 1: don't like about our partner or the political system. You know,
Speaker 1: there's many, many things we have to deal with. So
Speaker 1: nature is a great teacher. It's like Okay, So I'm
Speaker 1: sitting here in this little bug going it's not body,
Speaker 1: so it's not gonna harm me or anything, but it's
Speaker 1: annoying or it's particularly how do I just stay present
Speaker 1: and not get all in the tizzy about it? Or
Speaker 1: I put my mosquito head net on and then it
Speaker 1: doesn't bother me, and then it can buzz all around
Speaker 1: because it's not going to get into my nose, you know.
Speaker 1: So there's also I'm not into masochism, right. You know,
Speaker 1: if it's cold, wrap up. If it's hot, you know,
Speaker 1: find the shade. And then when you can't do anything
Speaker 1: about it, then you have to find that ease in
Speaker 1: your own mind. And it's a great training for life. Indeed,
Speaker 1: maybe that makes me think about your backpacking trip when
Speaker 1: it rained so hard. Just described the experience that you
Speaker 1: had a little bit. Well, first, I want to birth
Speaker 1: a new idea for Mark, which is Mark Coleman's crocodile
Speaker 1: concentration experience. You'll be very focused if you're like, there
Speaker 1: could be a crocodile speaking up on me, so in
Speaker 1: the swamp. In the swamp, there you go. Perfect. Was
Speaker 1: it was this year I decided I was going to
Speaker 1: go backpacking. I've never been actual backpacking, you know. I've
Speaker 1: been camping, but not backpacking, and uh, that's a whole
Speaker 1: different thing. Yeah. We got completely drenched, like just real
Speaker 1: lentless rain. You know. I learned that like waterproof boots
Speaker 1: or waterproof up to a point exactly, nothing's fully waterproof.
Speaker 1: And make sure to close the rain flap on your tents.
Speaker 1: Oh yes. We we set up camp and it was
Speaker 1: nice and I was like, okay, and everybody I was
Speaker 1: with was like, I think the rain is over. And
Speaker 1: I was like, well, in that case, I'll leave the
Speaker 1: rain flap open and try and let this thing draw
Speaker 1: out a little bit. It was indeed not. It was not.
Speaker 1: It was not done. So yeah, so it happens. One
Speaker 1: of the things that mindfulness has had the most profound
Speaker 1: healing effect on for me is just the ability to
Speaker 1: be with difficult emotions and to be able to be
Speaker 1: with them, and to be with them in such a
Speaker 1: way that feels grounded and steady and open and strong.
Speaker 1: You know that there's some equanimity there um and compassion,
Speaker 1: but nature can bring up some intense experiences emotionally. You've
Speaker 1: talked about some experiences you've had in the teacher training
Speaker 1: class that I've been a part of. But you know,
Speaker 1: grief is one of those intense emotions that can actually,
Speaker 1: as Eric was mentioning earlier, can really be processed out
Speaker 1: of nature. You know that nature actually can show us
Speaker 1: a lot about our immense ability to heal, no matter
Speaker 1: how great the damage inflicted is. You know that life itself,
Speaker 1: nature shows us has an innate momentum towards wholeness, growth
Speaker 1: and healing you right, which I think is truly beautiful.
Speaker 1: And I wanted to explore that. And then the next
Speaker 1: piece I thought we could touch on is talking about fear.
Speaker 1: But have you had some experience or even in the
Speaker 1: retreats that you have led, with nature being able to
Speaker 1: really heal profound grief. Yeah, definitely, definitely. I think going
Speaker 1: outdoors is a beautiful, powerful, healing place to be when
Speaker 1: your heart's broken, when your heart's hurting, when you're grieving
Speaker 1: the loss of someone or something. And it's often true
Speaker 1: when people come to my retreat and nature retreats and
Speaker 1: they are dealing with loss of a loved one, of
Speaker 1: an animal, of a stage of life or health, or
Speaker 1: you know, many many things to grieve in this life
Speaker 1: or grieving the ecological crisis, which is something that I
Speaker 1: grieve a lot, you know, And people will ask me, well,
Speaker 1: how do I deal with that? And I say, well,
Speaker 1: give it to the earth. You know. The earth can receive,
Speaker 1: it can hold all of your tears. That trees can
Speaker 1: hold all of your tears. The this landscape, this river
Speaker 1: can hold your sadness. And so I think sometimes when
Speaker 1: we go outside, especially alone, and we feel safe enough,
Speaker 1: we can feel like, you know, nature often feels like
Speaker 1: it's inviting, like it's welcoming. It's not judging. It makes
Speaker 1: space for whatever is happening, whatever weather, including whatever weather
Speaker 1: in you. And so I think it's just guided a
Speaker 1: lot of people just to you know, let nature hold
Speaker 1: the immensity of the grief. You lean up against a
Speaker 1: tree or lie down on the earth and sob your
Speaker 1: tears into the ground. And people have done that, you know,
Speaker 1: And there's something about releasing it into the earth, releasing
Speaker 1: it into the ground, into trees, like and there's a
Speaker 1: way that nature can hold it. Sometimes other people can't
Speaker 1: hold or handle our grief, can't deal with it too much.
Speaker 1: It's what they can't deal with their owns. They they
Speaker 1: can't deal with yours and natures are like, it's just
Speaker 1: kind of there. It's just as unconditional presence, and sometimes
Speaker 1: not for everybody, but we can feel that and something
Speaker 1: in us releases and we just become more present with
Speaker 1: ourselves and the tenderness. And you know, what we learned
Speaker 1: is that any emotion, especially grief, I think is a
Speaker 1: great example of it, it's wave like, it's not monolithic,
Speaker 1: you know, it comes, it bursts through, it feels like
Speaker 1: it's a tidal wave, and then it passes, and then
Speaker 1: we find ourselves walking or feet are in the stream
Speaker 1: or relying in the sun, and suddenly me feel peace.
Speaker 1: And then we get hungry and we have a snack
Speaker 1: bar and then another wave comes because our partner that
Speaker 1: we lost love snack bars and another wave and then
Speaker 1: we feel that and then that passes, and then we
Speaker 1: notice a bird come by or squirrel comes next to you,
Speaker 1: and you feel this tender love and it's making space.
Speaker 1: And particularly for grief, grief needs space. It needs space,
Speaker 1: and it needs a very spacious holding environment, and nature
Speaker 1: is in the quintessential spacious holding presence. H H. I
Speaker 1: love that idea grief needs space. Yeah, that is so true.
Speaker 1: It needs space to unfold in the way that it
Speaker 1: will unfold, and it needs the space for whatever emotion
Speaker 1: comes up. You're right, it's very difficult to do with
Speaker 1: other people. So yeah, I think that it's a beautiful
Speaker 1: way of saying it. I just want to touch on
Speaker 1: a bit about your work on the Inner Critic. I
Speaker 1: just have to read this one passage that you wrote,
Speaker 1: because it just really struck me talking about just having
Speaker 1: you know there'd be an immense amount of space in
Speaker 1: this world and now in this universe. You're talking about
Speaker 1: deepening into the silence. You say, the Earth rests in
Speaker 1: the vast darkness of space, in a universe that is
Speaker 1: inherently silent. And despite the chatter of birds, the rustle
Speaker 1: of leaves in the wind, and the roaring of ocean waves,
Speaker 1: a quality of silence always pervades the natural world, away
Speaker 1: from the sounds of words, conversation, and human activity. It's
Speaker 1: possible to since the stillness amid all nature's movements, all
Speaker 1: sounds arise from and return to this eternal silence. And
Speaker 1: I know on some of your retreats you practice what's
Speaker 1: called noble silence in Buddhism. So just briefly, can you
Speaker 1: talk a bit about engaging with the silence and the
Speaker 1: power that that can have. Yeah, silence is definitely huge
Speaker 1: part of my life and my practice and my my teaching.
Speaker 1: So all of my meditation retreats and programs are in silence.
Speaker 1: I loved the silence, and my love about it is
Speaker 1: we can be alone together. If we're chatting, we're all
Speaker 1: together if we're but if we're in silence, we can
Speaker 1: you know, I've lad groups of a hundred people are
Speaker 1: out in the field. If we're all in silence, we
Speaker 1: have our own experience, but we're together, so it's shared.
Speaker 1: Just that is a beautiful experience because it's so rare,
Speaker 1: like we have such a loud, busy culture that there's
Speaker 1: rarely any silence. And I mean at the beginning that
Speaker 1: can feel intimidating, like, oh, I you know, I don't
Speaker 1: know if I can handle that, and you to talk
Speaker 1: to somebody, and very quickly most people come to love
Speaker 1: silence because it's like taking an outbreath. We don't feel
Speaker 1: a social pression have to chit chat, and then of
Speaker 1: course as we close our mouth and stop talking, then
Speaker 1: our conversations and thoughts can settle on mine gets quieter,
Speaker 1: our body gets more settled, and then in the outer silence,
Speaker 1: then we can hear life. We can hear the world
Speaker 1: around us. We can listen to the sound of the
Speaker 1: breeze and silence and crickets and bird song, and we
Speaker 1: can also hear ourselves more clearly. And so for me,
Speaker 1: silence is a doorway into presence, into deep connection, into mystery,
Speaker 1: you know, all of the mystical traditions, and silence is
Speaker 1: very important in all those traditions for opening to the sacred,
Speaker 1: to the divine, with whatever word you call it. And
Speaker 1: when we're silent in nature, then we can tune into
Speaker 1: this many other rich dimensions that are not present when
Speaker 1: we say, go for a hike with a friend and
Speaker 1: we're chatting the whole way, and then we wonder why
Speaker 1: we didn't see any wildlife because they heard you from
Speaker 1: a mile away and they all scattered. Who wants to
Speaker 1: be around it too, loud humans and so, But when
Speaker 1: we just sit quietly in a meadow or in a
Speaker 1: forest store in our garden, and you know, birds, critters, flies,
Speaker 1: you know, squirrels, whatever will come to us. So I
Speaker 1: really invite people to not just spend time out in nature,
Speaker 1: but also to you know, to find time to be
Speaker 1: quiet and even with a friend or a loved one.
Speaker 1: Just often know we're hiking with friends, and I know
Speaker 1: we're going to be hiking through beautiful woodland or along
Speaker 1: a gorgeous creek or great view, and so how about
Speaker 1: we just quiet for the next twenty minutes or ten
Speaker 1: minutes or five minutes, and just so we can enjoy
Speaker 1: it without chatting about, you know, what's happening in the
Speaker 1: super Bowl or whatever, which totally takes us out of
Speaker 1: that experience, and then we can just enjoy it together.
Speaker 1: It's a beautiful thing. How can people learn more about
Speaker 1: your retreats that you're leading this coming year. So my
Speaker 1: main website my name Mark Coleman, but it's dot org.
Speaker 1: It's Mark Coleman dot org that has my retreat listings
Speaker 1: and has lots of resources meditations and talks and other
Speaker 1: things you might find useful. And then I also have
Speaker 1: another website called a Wait in the Wild dot com
Speaker 1: and that's the name of my work away in the
Speaker 1: wild and that's where I also host the Sunrise the
Speaker 1: Morning meditations and having information about my nature meditation teacher
Speaker 1: trainings and other things. So those are the two place
Speaker 1: mark common dot organ Awake in the wild dot com.
Speaker 1: All right, we'll link to those also in the show
Speaker 1: notes for listeners to explore that more deeply. Before we
Speaker 1: wrap up with you, I couldn't let you go without
Speaker 1: at least touching on working with the inner critic. You
Speaker 1: have a book that I'm actually currently reading and highlighting
Speaker 1: the dickens out of about working with the inner critic.
Speaker 1: It's really the beginning of a deep dive that I'm
Speaker 1: going to take on this topic because what I have
Speaker 1: recently come to realize, and it was really sitting at
Speaker 1: your feet is my teacher, which is how my inner
Speaker 1: critics shows up. And I was really unaware of that
Speaker 1: for so long. And what I've going to really see
Speaker 1: is that it is actually possible to live without the
Speaker 1: tyranny of the inner critic running the show, and I
Speaker 1: long for that. So what I discuss or listening to
Speaker 1: you was really that my inner critics certainly at times
Speaker 1: shows up with critical words about me and what I'm
Speaker 1: doing or what I can't do or this, that and
Speaker 1: the other, but that it also often shows up as
Speaker 1: this atmosphere, as you called it this inner atmosphere that
Speaker 1: doesn't initially have words, that just feels heavy and sick
Speaker 1: and very dank and dark and gloomy. And so I
Speaker 1: guess I'm not the only one. And you say that
Speaker 1: that can happen, and I'd love free to expand on
Speaker 1: that or any aspect of the inner critic that you
Speaker 1: find particularly helpful. Yeah. Well, it's a big topic, as
Speaker 1: you know, and that's why I wrote a book about it.
Speaker 1: It's such a painful thing and afflicts most people. It
Speaker 1: rubs us of a sense of well being, in a
Speaker 1: sense of goodness and peace for ourselves. And certainly I
Speaker 1: was deeply afflicted by the critic from a young age,
Speaker 1: so I had to work with it, and that's why
Speaker 1: I wrote the book. As you know, a lot of
Speaker 1: experience with it. And as you say that the critic
Speaker 1: can come in different ways that we often hear it
Speaker 1: as words, as judgments, as as shaming statements, as criticisms,
Speaker 1: as you know, we're not good enough, we're not smart enough,
Speaker 1: we're not not enough in whatever way, we're not perfect.
Speaker 1: All those messages, all those ways of thinking and talking
Speaker 1: to ourselves negatively. The net effected that it leads to
Speaker 1: a sense of shame, a sense of unworthiness or unlovable,
Speaker 1: nous or hopelessness. Like it really you're saying this atmosphere
Speaker 1: of kind of heaviness, of not being enough, of not
Speaker 1: being fundamentally okay or fundamentally good, or not being worthy
Speaker 1: to be here wherever you are, and it's very, very painful,
Speaker 1: and it's like molasses. It's quite hard to even see.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you wake up in the morning sometimes you's like, oh,
Speaker 1: I just feel, you know, kind of blah. I feel
Speaker 1: like everything is useless or it's pointless. And I look
Speaker 1: at my writing that I did yesterday's like, well, that's
Speaker 1: just you know, who's going to read that? And it's
Speaker 1: like putting a lens like like dark, you know, like glasses,
Speaker 1: that everything appears gloomy, and I feel like seemed terrible
Speaker 1: and that the painful result of the critic is it
Speaker 1: leads to a sense of shame and a sense of
Speaker 1: just feeling bad in ourselves. What's sad about it is
Speaker 1: it's very common, but it's it's also inaccurate. Right, Those
Speaker 1: judgments and criticisms and shamings and put downs and evaluations
Speaker 1: about yourself are rarely, rarely, really true, or the implication
Speaker 1: that therefore you're not a good person, you're not likable,
Speaker 1: you're not lovable, you're not going to get your life together.
Speaker 1: Those implications are definitely not true. The book has a
Speaker 1: lot of different strategies how to work with those, whether
Speaker 1: it's the verbal judgments that you tell yourself that you believe,
Speaker 1: or just that net feeling of like I feel like,
Speaker 1: you know, like just not a good person, like a
Speaker 1: bad person. If you're lost in the atmosphere as you
Speaker 1: talk about it, you know, it's helpful just to ask yourself, well,
Speaker 1: what might my critic be saying about me right now?
Speaker 1: I can't hear the words, but I feel kind of
Speaker 1: low and defeated. If I had to guess what my
Speaker 1: critic was on my case about, just say, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I was really mean to my mother yesterday and I'm
Speaker 1: just a terrible person. Or someone criticized my work yesterday
Speaker 1: and it shows I'm just a loser, And so just
Speaker 1: see if you can conjure up the words. Because once
Speaker 1: we've got some of the judgments to work with, it's
Speaker 1: a little easier to work with because then we can
Speaker 1: stop and you know, bring some analysis and you know,
Speaker 1: inquire is this really true? Is that really Am I
Speaker 1: really a loser just because I didn't do a good
Speaker 1: presentation at work or I forgot my mother's birthday? Does
Speaker 1: that really mean I'm a failure or I'm not a
Speaker 1: good person? Like now, it just means I didn't something
Speaker 1: that I prefer not to have done, and I didn't.
Speaker 1: So it's really important. So that's why the subtitle that book,
Speaker 1: Make Peace with Your Mind, How mindfulness and compassion can
Speaker 1: help free you from the inner critic. It's essential thing
Speaker 1: is we have to be mindful. We have to know,
Speaker 1: have to be mindful of our mind, mindful of our thoughts,
Speaker 1: just to know when we're judging, notice when when we're caught,
Speaker 1: noticing when we're believing these negative, usually inaccurate stories. And
Speaker 1: then to be compassionate, because it's the whole thing is
Speaker 1: so painful. To be kind with ourselves and to be
Speaker 1: loving with ourselves. That's all easier said than done. Please
Speaker 1: read the book Efforts of interest. I will be teaching
Speaker 1: more about it because some workshops coming up. I think
Speaker 1: what you're saying there is really interesting. This is a
Speaker 1: topic that I think about a lot, which is there
Speaker 1: are times where we become aware of what's happening inside us.
Speaker 1: Let's say we recognize, okay, the inner critic is there.
Speaker 1: There seem to be times that the right approach to
Speaker 1: that is too. As you said, can I engage cognitively
Speaker 1: with these thoughts? Can I work with them? Can I
Speaker 1: see where they're not true? Can I say, hey enough
Speaker 1: write one approach? Another approach that we hear a lot
Speaker 1: about is just step back, let it be. You know,
Speaker 1: it's the invite mara in for t Idea, It's the
Speaker 1: let it be. And I'm always really curious about for you,
Speaker 1: how do you recognize or no, which of those approaches
Speaker 1: might be right for the situation you're in, because they
Speaker 1: seem both to be valid approaches. Yeah, but sometimes one
Speaker 1: is more effective than the other. Do you have any
Speaker 1: thoughts on that? Yeah? I do. I mean again, it's
Speaker 1: it's a complex topic. But I think for many people
Speaker 1: in the beginning of the work with working with those
Speaker 1: voices and views and judgments, it's important to actually kind
Speaker 1: of create space so you don't feel completely drowning in them.
Speaker 1: If you're drowning in them and you feel overwhelmed by them,
Speaker 1: or you're collapsing because you're believing them. If someone like
Speaker 1: a friend was with you who was saying those things
Speaker 1: and you were feeling collapsed around them, well, what's the
Speaker 1: best thing to do. Will not be around that person, right,
Speaker 1: to try and create some space from those voices, because
Speaker 1: without space, there's no way to even begin to navigate.
Speaker 1: If you invite them and fatigue, you're just going to
Speaker 1: keep kind of being more overwhelmed with feeling terrible. So
Speaker 1: I think in the beginning of that work, and not
Speaker 1: just in the beginning, but at times when you're feeling
Speaker 1: sort of well, just like stop like enough, like enough
Speaker 1: of this judgment, you know, and go outside, shift your attention,
Speaker 1: put on some music, talk to a friend, like try
Speaker 1: and change the channel so you're not just kind of inundated, right,
Speaker 1: you know, So for me, I go outside, like just
Speaker 1: put my attention in the neighborhood, talk to a neighbor,
Speaker 1: and just like get up from in that sort of mess.
Speaker 1: And then other times, when you know you're feeling clearer,
Speaker 1: you're not feeling so collapse, you're feeling you know, brighter cognitively,
Speaker 1: and the judgment comes, you know, like you know, you're
Speaker 1: just never gonna make it in your work. You know,
Speaker 1: you just you know, you're just you're just an imposta.
Speaker 1: You know, who do you think you are? It's like, okay, well,
Speaker 1: let's look at this thought. Let's look at huh. Well,
Speaker 1: I wonder why that thought came up right now? What
Speaker 1: is it actually saying? What it's saying, is it true?
Speaker 1: Is accurate? But more importantly, what's fueling that thought? Underneath
Speaker 1: that thought is I want to be successful in my
Speaker 1: work or I want to be loved for what I
Speaker 1: do in my work. When I put in a bad
Speaker 1: day at work, I do a bad podcast or whatever
Speaker 1: it is that our work is. And we're like her,
Speaker 1: we're feeling kind of like collapsed. The critic comes in
Speaker 1: because we're vulnerable because we want to be liked, we
Speaker 1: want to be accepted, we want to you know, shine
Speaker 1: in our work, and when we don't, we feel vulnerable.
Speaker 1: And the critic comes in mistakenly trying to protect us
Speaker 1: from the vulnerability by shaming us and judging us and
Speaker 1: shooting us. It's trying to help, but it's just misguided.
Speaker 1: So it's like, oh, right, I see I'm feeling vulnerable
Speaker 1: because I really blew it at that meeting yesterday my
Speaker 1: critics telling me what a pathetic performance that was, because
Speaker 1: that situation was vulnerable. If I blew a meeting in
Speaker 1: front of my boss, that's not gonna look good. I'm vulnerable.
Speaker 1: But that shaming, shoulting, judging is the very last thing
Speaker 1: that's going to help. What's going to happen is like
Speaker 1: thanking the critic. Okay, thank you for that opinion. Let's
Speaker 1: look at what how but at this meaning? How can
Speaker 1: I blew it? Did I really blew it? Or you know,
Speaker 1: what can I learn? The critic occludes learning. That's one
Speaker 1: of the key things. If you're judging yourself, there's no
Speaker 1: way you can learn. Is this sort of view of
Speaker 1: I just keeping like telling myself, don't forget that thing
Speaker 1: you keep forgetting. That's not gonna make you forget. It's
Speaker 1: going to make the more stressed, intense and much more
Speaker 1: likely to forget. So different strategies at different times. One
Speaker 1: of the things that I believe you said it was
Speaker 1: you were Martin, but that the critic that voice shows
Speaker 1: up as the truth. That's like it's default position, you know.
Speaker 1: And when I heard that, I thought it's one of
Speaker 1: those things that when brought into awareness now that just
Speaker 1: doesn't have the power over me. It used to. Like
Speaker 1: I realized now that I had taken it as the truth,
Speaker 1: and it was almost like the secret truth that I
Speaker 1: can never let anybody know that's the worst of me,
Speaker 1: you know, which just breeds more secrecy and shame, and
Speaker 1: then secrecy and shame and it just is worse. And
Speaker 1: so once I realized, oh, it's like posing is the truth,
Speaker 1: it's not the truth, that was really powerful. So I
Speaker 1: love in both of your books each chapter seems to
Speaker 1: have a teaching and then it concludes with a practice
Speaker 1: or a meditation or application. And I find your work
Speaker 1: incredibly accessible and helpful in that way. So Eric and
Speaker 1: I were talking with you before we we got started
Speaker 1: that we thought we would go ahead and wrap up
Speaker 1: this part of the show, but in the post show
Speaker 1: conversation that you might just take a few minutes to
Speaker 1: lead listeners in a quick guided meditation. It's a meditation
Speaker 1: you offer in your book Awake in the Wild, and
Speaker 1: it's meditating on nature indoors. Because so much of our
Speaker 1: time is spent indoors, it's awful helpful to have a
Speaker 1: way to access that aspect of nature while we are
Speaker 1: inside so for those that can, we um invited to
Speaker 1: stick around for that right right. If you'd like access
Speaker 1: to the post show conversation to add free episodes to
Speaker 1: a special episode we do each week called Teaching Song
Speaker 1: and a Poem and the joy of supporting something that
Speaker 1: you value, you can go to One you Feed, dot
Speaker 1: net slash Join. So, Mark, thank you so much. It's
Speaker 1: been such a such a deep pleasure to talk with you.
Speaker 1: I feel like we could have gone another two hours here. Totally,
Speaker 1: totally thank you. Also, I was really delightful to be
Speaker 1: with you both. If what you just heard was helpful
Speaker 1: to you, please consider making a monthly donation to support
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