#today is a be very autistic about shows and also become horse day

[reikunrei]

realized I never shared my horsegender sona here 🥰 I love it sm it makes me so happy!!

[pink-rainbow-sparkles]

Jodie’s Journey - Review

[Image description: Book cover, Jodie’s Journey, Colin Thiele. Cover is a traditional art (coloured pencil?) illustration of a young woman lying in tall, yellow grass with a manual wheelchair fallen over behind her. In the background is a horse running through light tree cover. The author’s name and title are printed over the top of the illustration.]

This review is for the Diverse Book Reading Challenge: Disability Read and Review Giveaway run by @ambiguouspieces. If you want to read more books with disabled characters, why not check it out? If you’re from Australia or New Zealand you can win prizes.

This book is by an author who had Rheumatoid Arthritis about a character with juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis. I have had lupus, which is a form of arthritis, since I was about the same age as the main character in this book.

Review Jodie’s Journey is a 1988 book that starts with Jodie’s first struggles with chronic illness, and follows through to her diagnosis and the years after that. Jodie lives in rural South Australia and loves her horse, but goes from show jumping to not being able to do any of the physical work of caring for him at all. This was one of the books in my crappy primary school library that I borrowed again and again, and I was interested to see how it held up to rereading it as an adult. (Sorry to my sister who takes meticulous care of their books. There is a tea stain and dog-eared pages on their copy which is definitely my fault. I have learned to be more careful with other people’s books with age.) One of the things that is really noticeable is that this is a children’s book, from a time long before Harry Potter, when there weren’t very many children’s books an adult would want to read. It’s well written, but there’s a simplicity about it I don’t see in many books today.

There is a lot of language in this book that is really dated now. The words used for disabled people and disabilities change a lot faster than most language. (Side note: It’s an interesting phenomena that’s been named the Euphemism Treadmill. A word becomes used as an insult, and a new term comes into favour. But eventually that term becomes used as an insult, so another term becomes the preferred one.) As a result, it’s pretty shocking that Jodie is referred to as “crippled” and in a few cases “the cripple girl” but these would have been totally appropriate terms. A bushfire is called a “holocaust” three times, which I found appalling, but when I looked at dictionary.com, the first definition is “a great devastation or complete destruction, especially by fire”. I feel like in 2017 the word “holocaust” has a single use, describing the Holocaust of World War 2, but I guess that wasn’t the case in 1988.

Star rating: 3 / 5 (It’s a good book, but it’s aged.)

What I liked Jodie has a horse, and her parents go to great lengths to make sure she is able to keep him. The rheumatologist (arthritis specialist) even talks about how important it is for kids with disabilities to have things that keep them hopeful. Today I think that her horse would be described as an emotional support animal, something lots of people are very cynical about, so it’s great to see that there are people who understood how important support animals are back then.

The author gets chronic pain, and what it’s like to be disabled. As a kid (maybe specifically an autistic kid) chronic pain was such a bewildering thing for me. I still don’t know what to say when doctors ask me to describe my pain, ask me what the worst part is, ask what the most challenging part of my chronic illness is. One of my favourite parts was this. “She was always in pain - during every minute of every day - and there was no way by which other people could know how severe it was. She could say ‘It’s very bad today.’ and there was nothing they could answer except, ‘We’re sorry.’ Or she could say ‘It’s not quite as bad as it was yesterday,’ and they would answer ‘That’s good,’ utterly unaware of her meaning - that the pain was still fiendish but not as double fiendish as it had been on the day before, or it might be again tomorrow.”

There’s also a fantastic understanding of invisible disability shown. This is demonstrated in the line “She was not regarded as sick, but rather as clumsy, slow, incapable. In short, as something of a nuisance.”

The whole story feels very Australian in a pre-internet sort of way. There’s lots of slang and words that I haven’t heard in a long time. That could make it hard to read for anyone who’s not Australian, though.

What I didn’t like The medical treatment in this book is 30 years out of date. There are so many more options available today! Honestly for me this wasn’t a negative, it was really interesting to hear about how different things were such a short time ago. However, I think if I was a young person just diagnosed with arthritis reading this, I’d be terrified!

The cover shows Jodie fallen out of her wheelchair. There are a lot of different covers for this book, and most of them show this scene in the book. I am sure there would be people able to better critique the actual part of the book this comes from, and even the choices of cover art. For a book with lots of scenes that would be awesome to see in art, and where Jodie has lots of achievements, I don’t like that the choice was made to depict her as powerless and without her mobility aid.

There is one bit where Jodie is resentful of people avoiding her because of her disability and there is a line about how “she didn’t have AIDS or leprosy”. I thought this was particularly offensive since the book was published during the AIDS crisis, but when people already knew HIV isn’t caught just by hanging around someone. I see HIV positive people as comrades who also have a chronic medical condition and I think it’s really shitty to throw them under the bus.

Final thoughts I don’t know if most kids today would enjoy this book compared to so many other options available to read. However, it gives an insight into juvenile arthritis that I haven’t seen in any other book. If you have a chronic illness like arthritis, you might really enjoy this book. (Just be mindful of dated language and medical treatments.) Where to get it: Jodie’s Journey is out of print at the moment, but try abebooks.com, amazon.com or your local library. I didn’t realise it was out of print when I wrote this review!

[brentrogers]

Podcast: Using Nature and Animals to Manage Anxiety



When was the last time you simply enjoyed being in nature? Whether it’s a camping trip to the mountains, a walk in the park or just watching the squirrels from your backyard, being in nature is profoundly healing. In today’s Psych Central Podcast, our guest Richard Louv, a journalist, author and co-founder of the nonprofit Children & Nature Network, discusses the science behind nature’s healing powers.

What counts as “nature?” Are pets included? What are some modern barriers to accessing nature, and how can we overcome them? Join us for the answers to these questions and more.

SUBSCRIBE & REVIEW

Guest information for ‘Richard Louv- Nature’ Podcast Episode

Richard Louv is a journalist and author of ten books.  Louv is co-founder and chair emeritus of the nonprofit Children & Nature Network, which supports a new nature movement through partnerships with such organizations as the National League of Cities. In 2008, he was awarded the Audubon Medal, presented by the National Audubon Society. Prior recipients have included Rachel Carson, E. O. Wilson, Sir David Attenborough and President Jimmy Carter.

    About The Psych Central Podcast Host

Gabe Howard is an award-winning writer and speaker who lives with bipolar disorder. He is the author of the popular book, Mental Illness is an Asshole and other Observations, available from Amazon; signed copies are also available directly from the author. To learn more about Gabe, please visit his website, gabehoward.com.

Computer Generated Transcript for ‘Richard Louv- Nature’ Episode

Editor’s Note: Please be mindful that this transcript has been computer generated and therefore may contain inaccuracies and grammar errors. Thank you.

Announcer: You’re listening to the Psych Central Podcast, where guest experts in the field of psychology and mental health share thought-provoking information using plain, everyday language. Here’s your host, Gabe Howard.

Gabe Howard: Welcome to this week’s episode of the Psych Central Podcast. Calling into the show today, we have author Richard Louv. Richard is the co-founder and chair emeritus of the nonprofit Children & Nature Network, which supports a new nature movement through partnerships with such organizations as the National League of Cities. Back in 2008, he was awarded the Audubon Medal, presented by the National Audubon Society. Richard, welcome to the show.

Richard Louv: Thank you.

Gabe Howard: Richard, it’s great to have you. A lot has been talked about the connection between mental health and nature, mental health and animals, and I kind of want to start off in this place. I’m a big fan of social media. Love it or hate it, it’s probably here to stay. And one of the things that I often see on social media is this meme that says the best antidepressant is a walk in nature. And I know that you don’t feel that nature replaces medical science, but you do feel that a walk in nature has real, real support and real help for people who are suffering from depression. Can you talk about that for a moment?

Richard Louv: And that’s new, when I wrote Last Child in the Woods, it was published in 2005, this was ignored. The impact of the natural world on human well-being, on health, on cognitive functioning, all of that, it would have been basically ignored. And I could find maybe 60 studies. Many of them were about the growing disconnect between children and therefore adults, too, and nature and some of it. Some of those studies dealt with the benefits and some of those studies dealt with mental health and physical health. That is a drop in the bucket compared to how much money is spent researching just about everything else. And it struck me that something so large as the impact of the natural world experience on human health and well-being had been ignored. How could that be? And as I looked into it, I was working with some neuroscientists then. They were studying brain architecture development in young children. And they were looking at all kinds of things and how that affected brain architecture development. Everything from parent child attachment to bad day care to dangerous neighborhoods and all of that. And those things they were finding literally shapes the brain in early childhood. And I asked them once. Have you ever thought about how the natural world helped shape the brain in young children? Experiences? Actual contact with the natural world? And they looked at me with a blank face and they said, what’s nature?

Richard Louv: And I understand that science has a difficult time defining nature. But, you know, I said to the neuroscientists, this isn’t rocket science. And it isn’t brain surgery. You come up with a hypothesis and test it. One hundred and twenty trees per acre or whatever. They still had trouble with it. So I decided that was one of the reasons why this was so understudied. Is the blind spot in science about nature. The rest of nature of which we are apart. The second reason was, where does the research money come from? What pill can you manufacture? What thing can you commercialize out of that? Now there are some things, I mean parks and outdoor hiking organizations, things like that. There are some. But for the most part, people don’t think about it. Certainly funders don’t think about this as something they can get something out of by funding. That’s changing. Today, if you go to the Children & Nature Network, which you mentioned in your introduction, we have a research library there that we’ve built. And it is for anybody in the world. It Is free. And there are now probably, it’s just tipped over 1000 studies that we have abstracts for and links to the original studies when they’re available. So it’s gone from about 60 to over a thousand in about 14 years after not existing before.

Gabe Howard: I think that it’s interesting that one of the things you said, and this really plays to the pessimist in me is we don’t want to tell people to go for walks because there’s no funding for it and you can’t make money prescribing it. You know, we can’t prescribe one walk a day or, you know, hug your dog every day. That that’s not something that you can fill at the pharmacy. And this is kind of counterbalanced against the, you know, medication is important. Look at the advances that we’ve made with cancer by coming up with, you know, better treatments, etc. But I would even argue that taking somebody who is suffering from cancer and completely isolating them, you know, taking away their friends, their support systems, their animals, and even a window would put them in more of a bad way than they already are. And I think that’s what you’re saying. And you’ve talked about in your work how animal assisted therapy is becoming one of the biggest health care trends. And I don’t think that’s a bad thing. But you also talk about the controversy surrounding it and then you back it up with science. Can you talk about animal assisted therapy for a moment? Because I just find it absolutely fascinating that people wouldn’t respond to this favorably. But I also understand that this is our culture. Everything is good and everything is bad, seemingly at the same time.

Richard Louv: I think it’s more nuanced than that. I think that most people understand that their dog helps them. You know, most people get it at a visceral level. And in terms of organized animal assisted therapy, whether it’s dogs or equine therapy with horses or going outside and connecting with wild animals, no matter what that is. People viscerally understand that. It’s the science is coming now and the science is really interesting. Some of it is controversial, but nobody that has watched a kid with disabilities in an equine therapy or horse therapy, horse assisted therapy setting cannot be not moved. It’s very moving to watch this. One person who works in this field told me that a mother was bringing her child, who is autistic, to the animal assisted therapy sessions, which involved horses. And he would ride horses with a helmet and somebody would lead the horse. And he was, I think, about nine years old and he had not talked ever. And one day when they didn’t go when they were supposed to to the horse therapy, her son walked into the living room and said the word horse, first time she had heard him say a word. So there are moving stories like that. I talk about a woman, another woman who is on the autism spectrum, and she tells quite a moving story about not only how her service dog, whose name is Kobo, helped her, but how she has learned to help Kobo using some of the same techniques that Kobo uses to help her. So often what is occurring is a kind of mutualism is a you know, it’s not one way. I don’t want it to be seen as just what we get out of our relationship with other animals. I promote something in the book called The Reciprocity Principle, which basically holds that for every bit of healing that they give us, that animals, whether they’re domestic or wild animals, give us, we need to give back to them the same. We need to protect them as they protect us.

Gabe Howard: And do you feel that reciprocity is what gives people that boost in mental health? Because you’re not just getting, you know, whether it’s love, companionship from the animal, but you are now responsible for the animals. That gives you a sense of purpose. What the science behind that? Or the, well, what are your thoughts on that?

Richard Louv: Well, I think that’s a really interesting way to put it. I think you’re right. I think, again, it’s not one way. We know a lot. There’s quite a bit of science about animal assisted therapy when it involves domesticated animals where dogs and horses and even goats and other animals. There’s not much known, there’s very little research about what we gain and what we could give regarding wild animals. And I’m sitting here and looking out the window and there’s a deer path goes through my yard. And I can tell you my endorsement spike every time I see deer go by. And as I walk in this neighborhood, we just moved here about a year ago. The deer are responding to me differently. They don’t run away as they stand and watch. And during those moments, it is absolutely impossible to feel alone in the world. One of the issues I deal with in Our Wild Calling is the epidemic of human loneliness. Medical folks, as you know, have been talking about this for about two or three years. They’ve been saying that loneliness, human isolation is about to overtake obesity as a cause of early death, not just because of suicide and that affects that, but because of all the diseases that are associated with loneliness.

Richard Louv: I make the case that, yes, Facebook is part of the problem. Anti-social media is part of problem, that urban design is part of the problem and all of that. But I think that that epidemic of human loneliness is rooted in an even deeper loneliness, which is species loneliness. We are desperate to not feel alone in the world. One of the studies that I find most interesting is of urban parks. And they find that, the study found that, the urban parks that have the best benefit for human psychological health happened to be the urban parks with the highest biodiversity, the highest number of wild animals and plants. Again, I don’t think that’s an accident. We are desperate not to feel alone in the world. And the irony is we are not alone in the world. There is a conversation going on all around us. I call that the intimacy that exists all around us. All we have to do is pay attention.

Gabe Howard: I’m 43 years old, and when I was younger, there were parks and recreation centers all over the place. I could walk to one. And as somebody who suffers from bipolar disorder, I was a very depressed child. I was untreated and my family didn’t know. But I did have these parks. Now, I was an overweight child. And I don’t want to convince anybody that I went on a lot of nature walks. But I did go on some and I was aware that they were there and I did have a place to go. And, you know, this is my childhood in the 80s and now here we are and in 2020. And I don’t have a single recreation center within walking distance from my house. And I live in a neighborhood with children, which means the children in my neighborhood don’t have this. This is a trend that, of course, was created to save money. And because we decided that people didn’t want them. And also, I suppose because we wanted people to pay to join gyms or clubs or golf courses, I guess how do we pull this back? Because, again, even though I didn’t use the parks and recreation centers as much as I could of, I did use them a little bit. And now children don’t have this benefit. Many children don’t have this benefit. What say you to that?

Richard Louv: Well, I talk about cities. I talk about the idea that cities can become engines of biodiversity. They don’t have to be the enemy of nature. And in fact, more and more wild animals are moving into cities, whether we like it or not. And so there’s an opportunity there. This has a lot to do with urban design, with biophilic design. And there’s a lot going on that is of notice is of, is good. There are more and more cities that are creating wildlife corridors through the city so that animals can pass through. And we can have the connection with them. There are more and more urban gardens. There are more and more native plant gardens. People are turning in their backyards into native plants, which of course is what nurtures the food chain because of insects. And then they can bring back bird migration routes. They can bring back bees. They can bring butterfly migration routes. So there’s a lot going on out there people really aren’t aware of. Now, you’re right, the trend has been against. I mean, even in schools, the trend has been toward either dropping or reducing recess in elementary school or some elementary schools are now being built with no playgrounds, let alone a natural playground. On the other hand, there’s a real trend among many schools to create natural play spaces.

Gabe Howard: We’re going to step away and we’ll be right back after these messages from our sponsors.

Sponsor Message: This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp.com. Secure, convenient, and affordable online counseling. Our counselors are licensed, accredited professionals. Anything you share is confidential. Schedule secure video or phone sessions, plus chat and text with your therapist whenever you feel it’s needed. A month of online therapy often costs less than a single traditional face to face session. Go to BetterHelp.com/PsychCentral and experience seven days of free therapy to see if online counseling is right for you. BetterHelp.com/PsychCentral.

Gabe Howard: We’re back discussing the interplay between nature and mental health with author Richard Louv.

Richard Louv: You mentioned bipolar. I want to tell you, I’ll try to keep it short, a story about that. My father, my family and I tell this story in The Nature Principle. Our best times when I was growing up were in nature. They were spent fishing or in the backyard, in the garden or in the woods behind our house where I walked with my father and followed rabbit tracks and all that. That garden was particularly important. I remember following him as he would rototiller the back yard and then I would run around and I would pick up bones and other things and rocks out of the ground. He was happy there and over time we moved to a more affluent neighborhood. He got a better job. We didn’t need to garden anymore, supposedly. And he seldom went outdoors. He was a devoted fisherman. His dream was to retire early and move to Lake of the Ozarks or one of the lakes in the Ozarks. They finally did that, to Table Rock Lake in southern Missouri and got a little house and he finally got his dream. But by then, it was too late. He seldom left the kitchen table. He was probably bipolar and he was an alcoholic on top of that.

Richard Louv: Which produces some of the symptoms of schizophrenia. It was not a pleasant time, from the time I was about eleven on in terms of my dad, I tell that story in The Nature Principle to confess that I have a bias. I have a bias that nature experience is connected to health, to mental health, to physical health. Because of that early experience now, I don’t cherry pick the studies that I cite and almost all of them point the same direction. But I do admit that I have a bias. He did not have a happy ending. And I wonder sometimes what would have happened. And I asked this question, what would have happened if not only psychiatry in the late 50s, early 60s, had included children in the family, included the rest of the family? They did not. And what would have happened if nature therapy had been popularized by then? Could that have helped him? I asked some eco psychologists that question. They say, of course, they can’t tell. They don’t know. But what they, what one said is that we know for certain it would have made life better for you and your mother and your brother.

Gabe Howard: I really like that story and I like what you say there, because there are moments where people are happy and sometimes we don’t give those moments enough do. We don’t pay enough attention to those moments, whether it’s working in the guard and going for a walk, reading a book, making dinner, whether we find happiness in in a mundane task or not. And I know that

Richard Louv: Right. 

Gabe Howard: Especially in America, we really look down on manual labor. As you said, he got a better job. So he didn’t need to have a garden. He didn’t need to work in a garden, even though it was something that made him happy. Do you think that there’s just a bias against gardening or working in nature where people feel that they’re too successful to do it, as you suggested in your story? Is this going on in in droves around America where people just don’t want to do it? Because after all, that’s beneath them or whatever words you want to use, because the average family does not have a garden anymore.

Richard Louv: Well, I don’t think that there’s a bias specifically toward gardening. There’s not a bias specifically toward hiking or anything else that people do outdoors. What has happened is these barriers to that experience have risen. And one of them is affluence. One of them, my father, got a better job. It demanded longer hours. It imbalanced his life and ours. So I don’t think it’s really a bias against that. You’re right about manual labor, but not about those experiences that connect us to the natural world. In fact, there’s quite a resurgence in gardening. And as I mentioned, in native plants in our yards and focusing on that more, that’s part of the good news. There is a lot of good news out there, even though the trends may not look like they’re going in the right way. There’s good news in terms of urban design, biophilic design. There’s good news in terms of an awareness now that nature has something to do with our health, our mental health and our physical health, those experiences. I can tell you that did not exist very much in 2005, not among the general population.

Richard Louv: There was a study done a few years ago called The Nature of Americans that reproduced research that was done about 20 years ago, and they compared how people felt about different aspects of nature. What they found was that families that people, particularly parents. That their awareness that nature experience is connected to health had skyrocketed since 2005. What has not happened is the barriers have not gone down. They’re still there. Now, there are people working very hard to reduce those barriers, particularly for kids, but for all of us. And they’re working on that all over the world. I think China and Brazil that have launched programs to connect kids to nature and therefore their whole families. You mentioned the National League of Cities. We’re working with that organization, which represents 18,000 mayors and other municipal officials to try to help cities become better places to connect families to nature. Schools. There are now nature preschools have taken off is a phenomenon. They’re sometimes called forest schools. There’s an increase of about 500 percent of those just in the last few years. So there’s a lot of good stuff happening.

Gabe Howard: Richard, thank you so much for being on the show. Do you have any last words for people who want to get out in nature more? But as you mentioned, the barriers are just too much. How can they overcome them?

Richard Louv: Well, one is to be careful how you define nature. It doesn’t have to be Yosemite. It can be in an urban neighborhood. You know, there was a program a few years ago that the Sierra Club had.  What they do is go into urban neighborhoods. They put backpacks on kids and go for a five mile walk in their neighborhood and they would look for nature. They’d always find it. Sometimes in the cracks between the sidewalks, sometimes in the alleyways. If you change your perspective of what nature is, you’ll find it. The second thing is conservation is no longer enough. Now we have to have to create nature to maintain or bring back the kind of biodiversity we need. In the act of creating urban gardens, in the act of planting trees in cities, children and their parents reconnect to nature and they feel really a lot better about themselves, about where they live. All of that. But finally, I would say, you know, in addition to seeking out information on how to do that, because it doesn’t come naturally to the new generation of parents, or at least many of them, because many, most of them did not have much experience when they were kids in nature as I did. So, it doesn’t necessarily come that naturally. And they don’t even know where to start sometimes when they want that.

Richard Louv: But it’s possible, particularly if you band together with other families. People are starting Family Nature clubs. Family Nature Club in San Diego now has about, I believe about 3,000 families as members of it. And that’s a pool of families you can dip into and find out if somebody wants to go take a hike, multiple families next Saturday. That deals with the fear of strangers. That deals with the sense that we don’t know how to do this, but other parents do. So there’s all kinds of ways to do it. But it has to be a conscious act. We put sports on the calendar. We should put nature there, too. And finally, and this is the primary lesson, I think, of Our Wild Calling, is to recognize that there is intimacy all around us. There is connection all around us. But to find that, to hear that conversation, you have to pay attention. And that’s why, you know, as we’re talking, a row of wild turkeys just walked by my house. And I pay attention to that. I think about what they’re doing. I think about what they’re feeling. Empathy is the greatest way, I think, to take us out of ourselves.

Gabe Howard: Richard, I love that. Thank you so much for being here. Where can folks find you on the Internet?

Richard Louv: Well, I have a Web site, RichardLouv.com. And that’s L O U V is the last name, but also the Children & Nature Network, which is ChildrenAndNature.org. And of course, Amazon, you can find me there, obviously.

Gabe Howard: Thank you, Richard, for being here and thank you to our listeners for tuning in. Wherever you downloaded this podcast, please rate, rank and subscribe. We would really appreciate that. Share us on social media and use your words in the description and tell folks why you like the show and why you listen. Finally, remember, you can get one week of free, convenient, affordable, private online counseling anytime, anywhere, simply by visiting  BetterHelp.com/PsychCentral. We will see everybody next week.

Announcer: You’ve been listening to The Psych Central Podcast. Want your audience to be wowed at your next event? Feature an appearance and LIVE RECORDING of the Psych Central Podcast right from your stage! For more details, or to book an event, please email us at show@psychcentral.com. Previous episodes can be found at PsychCentral.com/Show or on your favorite podcast player. Psych Central is the internet’s oldest and largest independent mental health website run by mental health professionals. Overseen by Dr. John Grohol, Psych Central offers trusted resources and quizzes to help answer your questions about mental health, personality, psychotherapy, and more. Please visit us today at PsychCentral.com.  To learn more about our host, Gabe Howard, please visit his website at gabehoward.com. Thank you for listening and please share with your friends, family, and followers.

  Podcast: Using Nature and Animals to Manage Anxiety syndicated from

[whorchataaa]

Podcast: Using Nature and Animals to Manage Anxiety



When was the last time you simply enjoyed being in nature? Whether it’s a camping trip to the mountains, a walk in the park or just watching the squirrels from your backyard, being in nature is profoundly healing. In today’s Psych Central Podcast, our guest Richard Louv, a journalist, author and co-founder of the nonprofit Children & Nature Network, discusses the science behind nature’s healing powers.

What counts as “nature?” Are pets included? What are some modern barriers to accessing nature, and how can we overcome them? Join us for the answers to these questions and more.

SUBSCRIBE & REVIEW

Guest information for ‘Richard Louv- Nature’ Podcast Episode

Richard Louv is a journalist and author of ten books.  Louv is co-founder and chair emeritus of the nonprofit Children & Nature Network, which supports a new nature movement through partnerships with such organizations as the National League of Cities. In 2008, he was awarded the Audubon Medal, presented by the National Audubon Society. Prior recipients have included Rachel Carson, E. O. Wilson, Sir David Attenborough and President Jimmy Carter.

    About The Psych Central Podcast Host

Gabe Howard is an award-winning writer and speaker who lives with bipolar disorder. He is the author of the popular book, Mental Illness is an Asshole and other Observations, available from Amazon; signed copies are also available directly from the author. To learn more about Gabe, please visit his website, gabehoward.com.

Computer Generated Transcript for ‘Richard Louv- Nature’ Episode

Editor’s Note: Please be mindful that this transcript has been computer generated and therefore may contain inaccuracies and grammar errors. Thank you.

Announcer: You’re listening to the Psych Central Podcast, where guest experts in the field of psychology and mental health share thought-provoking information using plain, everyday language. Here’s your host, Gabe Howard.

Gabe Howard: Welcome to this week’s episode of the Psych Central Podcast. Calling into the show today, we have author Richard Louv. Richard is the co-founder and chair emeritus of the nonprofit Children & Nature Network, which supports a new nature movement through partnerships with such organizations as the National League of Cities. Back in 2008, he was awarded the Audubon Medal, presented by the National Audubon Society. Richard, welcome to the show.

Richard Louv: Thank you.

Gabe Howard: Richard, it’s great to have you. A lot has been talked about the connection between mental health and nature, mental health and animals, and I kind of want to start off in this place. I’m a big fan of social media. Love it or hate it, it’s probably here to stay. And one of the things that I often see on social media is this meme that says the best antidepressant is a walk in nature. And I know that you don’t feel that nature replaces medical science, but you do feel that a walk in nature has real, real support and real help for people who are suffering from depression. Can you talk about that for a moment?

Richard Louv: And that’s new, when I wrote Last Child in the Woods, it was published in 2005, this was ignored. The impact of the natural world on human well-being, on health, on cognitive functioning, all of that, it would have been basically ignored. And I could find maybe 60 studies. Many of them were about the growing disconnect between children and therefore adults, too, and nature and some of it. Some of those studies dealt with the benefits and some of those studies dealt with mental health and physical health. That is a drop in the bucket compared to how much money is spent researching just about everything else. And it struck me that something so large as the impact of the natural world experience on human health and well-being had been ignored. How could that be? And as I looked into it, I was working with some neuroscientists then. They were studying brain architecture development in young children. And they were looking at all kinds of things and how that affected brain architecture development. Everything from parent child attachment to bad day care to dangerous neighborhoods and all of that. And those things they were finding literally shapes the brain in early childhood. And I asked them once. Have you ever thought about how the natural world helped shape the brain in young children? Experiences? Actual contact with the natural world? And they looked at me with a blank face and they said, what’s nature?

Richard Louv: And I understand that science has a difficult time defining nature. But, you know, I said to the neuroscientists, this isn’t rocket science. And it isn’t brain surgery. You come up with a hypothesis and test it. One hundred and twenty trees per acre or whatever. They still had trouble with it. So I decided that was one of the reasons why this was so understudied. Is the blind spot in science about nature. The rest of nature of which we are apart. The second reason was, where does the research money come from? What pill can you manufacture? What thing can you commercialize out of that? Now there are some things, I mean parks and outdoor hiking organizations, things like that. There are some. But for the most part, people don’t think about it. Certainly funders don’t think about this as something they can get something out of by funding. That’s changing. Today, if you go to the Children & Nature Network, which you mentioned in your introduction, we have a research library there that we’ve built. And it is for anybody in the world. It Is free. And there are now probably, it’s just tipped over 1000 studies that we have abstracts for and links to the original studies when they’re available. So it’s gone from about 60 to over a thousand in about 14 years after not existing before.

Gabe Howard: I think that it’s interesting that one of the things you said, and this really plays to the pessimist in me is we don’t want to tell people to go for walks because there’s no funding for it and you can’t make money prescribing it. You know, we can’t prescribe one walk a day or, you know, hug your dog every day. That that’s not something that you can fill at the pharmacy. And this is kind of counterbalanced against the, you know, medication is important. Look at the advances that we’ve made with cancer by coming up with, you know, better treatments, etc. But I would even argue that taking somebody who is suffering from cancer and completely isolating them, you know, taking away their friends, their support systems, their animals, and even a window would put them in more of a bad way than they already are. And I think that’s what you’re saying. And you’ve talked about in your work how animal assisted therapy is becoming one of the biggest health care trends. And I don’t think that’s a bad thing. But you also talk about the controversy surrounding it and then you back it up with science. Can you talk about animal assisted therapy for a moment? Because I just find it absolutely fascinating that people wouldn’t respond to this favorably. But I also understand that this is our culture. Everything is good and everything is bad, seemingly at the same time.

Richard Louv: I think it’s more nuanced than that. I think that most people understand that their dog helps them. You know, most people get it at a visceral level. And in terms of organized animal assisted therapy, whether it’s dogs or equine therapy with horses or going outside and connecting with wild animals, no matter what that is. People viscerally understand that. It’s the science is coming now and the science is really interesting. Some of it is controversial, but nobody that has watched a kid with disabilities in an equine therapy or horse therapy, horse assisted therapy setting cannot be not moved. It’s very moving to watch this. One person who works in this field told me that a mother was bringing her child, who is autistic, to the animal assisted therapy sessions, which involved horses. And he would ride horses with a helmet and somebody would lead the horse. And he was, I think, about nine years old and he had not talked ever. And one day when they didn’t go when they were supposed to to the horse therapy, her son walked into the living room and said the word horse, first time she had heard him say a word. So there are moving stories like that. I talk about a woman, another woman who is on the autism spectrum, and she tells quite a moving story about not only how her service dog, whose name is Kobo, helped her, but how she has learned to help Kobo using some of the same techniques that Kobo uses to help her. So often what is occurring is a kind of mutualism is a you know, it’s not one way. I don’t want it to be seen as just what we get out of our relationship with other animals. I promote something in the book called The Reciprocity Principle, which basically holds that for every bit of healing that they give us, that animals, whether they’re domestic or wild animals, give us, we need to give back to them the same. We need to protect them as they protect us.

Gabe Howard: And do you feel that reciprocity is what gives people that boost in mental health? Because you’re not just getting, you know, whether it’s love, companionship from the animal, but you are now responsible for the animals. That gives you a sense of purpose. What the science behind that? Or the, well, what are your thoughts on that?

Richard Louv: Well, I think that’s a really interesting way to put it. I think you’re right. I think, again, it’s not one way. We know a lot. There’s quite a bit of science about animal assisted therapy when it involves domesticated animals where dogs and horses and even goats and other animals. There’s not much known, there’s very little research about what we gain and what we could give regarding wild animals. And I’m sitting here and looking out the window and there’s a deer path goes through my yard. And I can tell you my endorsement spike every time I see deer go by. And as I walk in this neighborhood, we just moved here about a year ago. The deer are responding to me differently. They don’t run away as they stand and watch. And during those moments, it is absolutely impossible to feel alone in the world. One of the issues I deal with in Our Wild Calling is the epidemic of human loneliness. Medical folks, as you know, have been talking about this for about two or three years. They’ve been saying that loneliness, human isolation is about to overtake obesity as a cause of early death, not just because of suicide and that affects that, but because of all the diseases that are associated with loneliness.

Richard Louv: I make the case that, yes, Facebook is part of the problem. Anti-social media is part of problem, that urban design is part of the problem and all of that. But I think that that epidemic of human loneliness is rooted in an even deeper loneliness, which is species loneliness. We are desperate to not feel alone in the world. One of the studies that I find most interesting is of urban parks. And they find that, the study found that, the urban parks that have the best benefit for human psychological health happened to be the urban parks with the highest biodiversity, the highest number of wild animals and plants. Again, I don’t think that’s an accident. We are desperate not to feel alone in the world. And the irony is we are not alone in the world. There is a conversation going on all around us. I call that the intimacy that exists all around us. All we have to do is pay attention.

Gabe Howard: I’m 43 years old, and when I was younger, there were parks and recreation centers all over the place. I could walk to one. And as somebody who suffers from bipolar disorder, I was a very depressed child. I was untreated and my family didn’t know. But I did have these parks. Now, I was an overweight child. And I don’t want to convince anybody that I went on a lot of nature walks. But I did go on some and I was aware that they were there and I did have a place to go. And, you know, this is my childhood in the 80s and now here we are and in 2020. And I don’t have a single recreation center within walking distance from my house. And I live in a neighborhood with children, which means the children in my neighborhood don’t have this. This is a trend that, of course, was created to save money. And because we decided that people didn’t want them. And also, I suppose because we wanted people to pay to join gyms or clubs or golf courses, I guess how do we pull this back? Because, again, even though I didn’t use the parks and recreation centers as much as I could of, I did use them a little bit. And now children don’t have this benefit. Many children don’t have this benefit. What say you to that?

Richard Louv: Well, I talk about cities. I talk about the idea that cities can become engines of biodiversity. They don’t have to be the enemy of nature. And in fact, more and more wild animals are moving into cities, whether we like it or not. And so there’s an opportunity there. This has a lot to do with urban design, with biophilic design. And there’s a lot going on that is of notice is of, is good. There are more and more cities that are creating wildlife corridors through the city so that animals can pass through. And we can have the connection with them. There are more and more urban gardens. There are more and more native plant gardens. People are turning in their backyards into native plants, which of course is what nurtures the food chain because of insects. And then they can bring back bird migration routes. They can bring back bees. They can bring butterfly migration routes. So there’s a lot going on out there people really aren’t aware of. Now, you’re right, the trend has been against. I mean, even in schools, the trend has been toward either dropping or reducing recess in elementary school or some elementary schools are now being built with no playgrounds, let alone a natural playground. On the other hand, there’s a real trend among many schools to create natural play spaces.

Gabe Howard: We’re going to step away and we’ll be right back after these messages from our sponsors.

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Gabe Howard: We’re back discussing the interplay between nature and mental health with author Richard Louv.

Richard Louv: You mentioned bipolar. I want to tell you, I’ll try to keep it short, a story about that. My father, my family and I tell this story in The Nature Principle. Our best times when I was growing up were in nature. They were spent fishing or in the backyard, in the garden or in the woods behind our house where I walked with my father and followed rabbit tracks and all that. That garden was particularly important. I remember following him as he would rototiller the back yard and then I would run around and I would pick up bones and other things and rocks out of the ground. He was happy there and over time we moved to a more affluent neighborhood. He got a better job. We didn’t need to garden anymore, supposedly. And he seldom went outdoors. He was a devoted fisherman. His dream was to retire early and move to Lake of the Ozarks or one of the lakes in the Ozarks. They finally did that, to Table Rock Lake in southern Missouri and got a little house and he finally got his dream. But by then, it was too late. He seldom left the kitchen table. He was probably bipolar and he was an alcoholic on top of that.

Richard Louv: Which produces some of the symptoms of schizophrenia. It was not a pleasant time, from the time I was about eleven on in terms of my dad, I tell that story in The Nature Principle to confess that I have a bias. I have a bias that nature experience is connected to health, to mental health, to physical health. Because of that early experience now, I don’t cherry pick the studies that I cite and almost all of them point the same direction. But I do admit that I have a bias. He did not have a happy ending. And I wonder sometimes what would have happened. And I asked this question, what would have happened if not only psychiatry in the late 50s, early 60s, had included children in the family, included the rest of the family? They did not. And what would have happened if nature therapy had been popularized by then? Could that have helped him? I asked some eco psychologists that question. They say, of course, they can’t tell. They don’t know. But what they, what one said is that we know for certain it would have made life better for you and your mother and your brother.

Gabe Howard: I really like that story and I like what you say there, because there are moments where people are happy and sometimes we don’t give those moments enough do. We don’t pay enough attention to those moments, whether it’s working in the guard and going for a walk, reading a book, making dinner, whether we find happiness in in a mundane task or not. And I know that

Richard Louv: Right. 

Gabe Howard: Especially in America, we really look down on manual labor. As you said, he got a better job. So he didn’t need to have a garden. He didn’t need to work in a garden, even though it was something that made him happy. Do you think that there’s just a bias against gardening or working in nature where people feel that they’re too successful to do it, as you suggested in your story? Is this going on in in droves around America where people just don’t want to do it? Because after all, that’s beneath them or whatever words you want to use, because the average family does not have a garden anymore.

Richard Louv: Well, I don’t think that there’s a bias specifically toward gardening. There’s not a bias specifically toward hiking or anything else that people do outdoors. What has happened is these barriers to that experience have risen. And one of them is affluence. One of them, my father, got a better job. It demanded longer hours. It imbalanced his life and ours. So I don’t think it’s really a bias against that. You’re right about manual labor, but not about those experiences that connect us to the natural world. In fact, there’s quite a resurgence in gardening. And as I mentioned, in native plants in our yards and focusing on that more, that’s part of the good news. There is a lot of good news out there, even though the trends may not look like they’re going in the right way. There’s good news in terms of urban design, biophilic design. There’s good news in terms of an awareness now that nature has something to do with our health, our mental health and our physical health, those experiences. I can tell you that did not exist very much in 2005, not among the general population.

Richard Louv: There was a study done a few years ago called The Nature of Americans that reproduced research that was done about 20 years ago, and they compared how people felt about different aspects of nature. What they found was that families that people, particularly parents. That their awareness that nature experience is connected to health had skyrocketed since 2005. What has not happened is the barriers have not gone down. They’re still there. Now, there are people working very hard to reduce those barriers, particularly for kids, but for all of us. And they’re working on that all over the world. I think China and Brazil that have launched programs to connect kids to nature and therefore their whole families. You mentioned the National League of Cities. We’re working with that organization, which represents 18,000 mayors and other municipal officials to try to help cities become better places to connect families to nature. Schools. There are now nature preschools have taken off is a phenomenon. They’re sometimes called forest schools. There’s an increase of about 500 percent of those just in the last few years. So there’s a lot of good stuff happening.

Gabe Howard: Richard, thank you so much for being on the show. Do you have any last words for people who want to get out in nature more? But as you mentioned, the barriers are just too much. How can they overcome them?

Richard Louv: Well, one is to be careful how you define nature. It doesn’t have to be Yosemite. It can be in an urban neighborhood. You know, there was a program a few years ago that the Sierra Club had.  What they do is go into urban neighborhoods. They put backpacks on kids and go for a five mile walk in their neighborhood and they would look for nature. They’d always find it. Sometimes in the cracks between the sidewalks, sometimes in the alleyways. If you change your perspective of what nature is, you’ll find it. The second thing is conservation is no longer enough. Now we have to have to create nature to maintain or bring back the kind of biodiversity we need. In the act of creating urban gardens, in the act of planting trees in cities, children and their parents reconnect to nature and they feel really a lot better about themselves, about where they live. All of that. But finally, I would say, you know, in addition to seeking out information on how to do that, because it doesn’t come naturally to the new generation of parents, or at least many of them, because many, most of them did not have much experience when they were kids in nature as I did. So, it doesn’t necessarily come that naturally. And they don’t even know where to start sometimes when they want that.

Richard Louv: But it’s possible, particularly if you band together with other families. People are starting Family Nature clubs. Family Nature Club in San Diego now has about, I believe about 3,000 families as members of it. And that’s a pool of families you can dip into and find out if somebody wants to go take a hike, multiple families next Saturday. That deals with the fear of strangers. That deals with the sense that we don’t know how to do this, but other parents do. So there’s all kinds of ways to do it. But it has to be a conscious act. We put sports on the calendar. We should put nature there, too. And finally, and this is the primary lesson, I think, of Our Wild Calling, is to recognize that there is intimacy all around us. There is connection all around us. But to find that, to hear that conversation, you have to pay attention. And that’s why, you know, as we’re talking, a row of wild turkeys just walked by my house. And I pay attention to that. I think about what they’re doing. I think about what they’re feeling. Empathy is the greatest way, I think, to take us out of ourselves.

Gabe Howard: Richard, I love that. Thank you so much for being here. Where can folks find you on the Internet?

Richard Louv: Well, I have a Web site, RichardLouv.com. And that’s L O U V is the last name, but also the Children & Nature Network, which is ChildrenAndNature.org. And of course, Amazon, you can find me there, obviously.

Gabe Howard: Thank you, Richard, for being here and thank you to our listeners for tuning in. Wherever you downloaded this podcast, please rate, rank and subscribe. We would really appreciate that. Share us on social media and use your words in the description and tell folks why you like the show and why you listen. Finally, remember, you can get one week of free, convenient, affordable, private online counseling anytime, anywhere, simply by visiting  BetterHelp.com/PsychCentral. We will see everybody next week.

Announcer: You’ve been listening to The Psych Central Podcast. Want your audience to be wowed at your next event? Feature an appearance and LIVE RECORDING of the Psych Central Podcast right from your stage! For more details, or to book an event, please email us at show@psychcentral.com. Previous episodes can be found at PsychCentral.com/Show or on your favorite podcast player. Psych Central is the internet’s oldest and largest independent mental health website run by mental health professionals. Overseen by Dr. John Grohol, Psych Central offers trusted resources and quizzes to help answer your questions about mental health, personality, psychotherapy, and more. Please visit us today at PsychCentral.com.  To learn more about our host, Gabe Howard, please visit his website at gabehoward.com. Thank you for listening and please share with your friends, family, and followers.

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Podcast: Using Nature and Animals to Manage Anxiety



When was the last time you simply enjoyed being in nature? Whether it’s a camping trip to the mountains, a walk in the park or just watching the squirrels from your backyard, being in nature is profoundly healing. In today’s Psych Central Podcast, our guest Richard Louv, a journalist, author and co-founder of the nonprofit Children & Nature Network, discusses the science behind nature’s healing powers.

What counts as “nature?” Are pets included? What are some modern barriers to accessing nature, and how can we overcome them? Join us for the answers to these questions and more.

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Guest information for ‘Richard Louv- Nature’ Podcast Episode

Richard Louv is a journalist and author of ten books.  Louv is co-founder and chair emeritus of the nonprofit Children & Nature Network, which supports a new nature movement through partnerships with such organizations as the National League of Cities. In 2008, he was awarded the Audubon Medal, presented by the National Audubon Society. Prior recipients have included Rachel Carson, E. O. Wilson, Sir David Attenborough and President Jimmy Carter.

    About The Psych Central Podcast Host

Gabe Howard is an award-winning writer and speaker who lives with bipolar disorder. He is the author of the popular book, Mental Illness is an Asshole and other Observations, available from Amazon; signed copies are also available directly from the author. To learn more about Gabe, please visit his website, gabehoward.com.

Computer Generated Transcript for ‘Richard Louv- Nature’ Episode

Editor’s Note: Please be mindful that this transcript has been computer generated and therefore may contain inaccuracies and grammar errors. Thank you.

Announcer: You’re listening to the Psych Central Podcast, where guest experts in the field of psychology and mental health share thought-provoking information using plain, everyday language. Here’s your host, Gabe Howard.

Gabe Howard: Welcome to this week’s episode of the Psych Central Podcast. Calling into the show today, we have author Richard Louv. Richard is the co-founder and chair emeritus of the nonprofit Children & Nature Network, which supports a new nature movement through partnerships with such organizations as the National League of Cities. Back in 2008, he was awarded the Audubon Medal, presented by the National Audubon Society. Richard, welcome to the show.

Richard Louv: Thank you.

Gabe Howard: Richard, it’s great to have you. A lot has been talked about the connection between mental health and nature, mental health and animals, and I kind of want to start off in this place. I’m a big fan of social media. Love it or hate it, it’s probably here to stay. And one of the things that I often see on social media is this meme that says the best antidepressant is a walk in nature. And I know that you don’t feel that nature replaces medical science, but you do feel that a walk in nature has real, real support and real help for people who are suffering from depression. Can you talk about that for a moment?

Richard Louv: And that’s new, when I wrote Last Child in the Woods, it was published in 2005, this was ignored. The impact of the natural world on human well-being, on health, on cognitive functioning, all of that, it would have been basically ignored. And I could find maybe 60 studies. Many of them were about the growing disconnect between children and therefore adults, too, and nature and some of it. Some of those studies dealt with the benefits and some of those studies dealt with mental health and physical health. That is a drop in the bucket compared to how much money is spent researching just about everything else. And it struck me that something so large as the impact of the natural world experience on human health and well-being had been ignored. How could that be? And as I looked into it, I was working with some neuroscientists then. They were studying brain architecture development in young children. And they were looking at all kinds of things and how that affected brain architecture development. Everything from parent child attachment to bad day care to dangerous neighborhoods and all of that. And those things they were finding literally shapes the brain in early childhood. And I asked them once. Have you ever thought about how the natural world helped shape the brain in young children? Experiences? Actual contact with the natural world? And they looked at me with a blank face and they said, what’s nature?

Richard Louv: And I understand that science has a difficult time defining nature. But, you know, I said to the neuroscientists, this isn’t rocket science. And it isn’t brain surgery. You come up with a hypothesis and test it. One hundred and twenty trees per acre or whatever. They still had trouble with it. So I decided that was one of the reasons why this was so understudied. Is the blind spot in science about nature. The rest of nature of which we are apart. The second reason was, where does the research money come from? What pill can you manufacture? What thing can you commercialize out of that? Now there are some things, I mean parks and outdoor hiking organizations, things like that. There are some. But for the most part, people don’t think about it. Certainly funders don’t think about this as something they can get something out of by funding. That’s changing. Today, if you go to the Children & Nature Network, which you mentioned in your introduction, we have a research library there that we’ve built. And it is for anybody in the world. It Is free. And there are now probably, it’s just tipped over 1000 studies that we have abstracts for and links to the original studies when they’re available. So it’s gone from about 60 to over a thousand in about 14 years after not existing before.

Gabe Howard: I think that it’s interesting that one of the things you said, and this really plays to the pessimist in me is we don’t want to tell people to go for walks because there’s no funding for it and you can’t make money prescribing it. You know, we can’t prescribe one walk a day or, you know, hug your dog every day. That that’s not something that you can fill at the pharmacy. And this is kind of counterbalanced against the, you know, medication is important. Look at the advances that we’ve made with cancer by coming up with, you know, better treatments, etc. But I would even argue that taking somebody who is suffering from cancer and completely isolating them, you know, taking away their friends, their support systems, their animals, and even a window would put them in more of a bad way than they already are. And I think that’s what you’re saying. And you’ve talked about in your work how animal assisted therapy is becoming one of the biggest health care trends. And I don’t think that’s a bad thing. But you also talk about the controversy surrounding it and then you back it up with science. Can you talk about animal assisted therapy for a moment? Because I just find it absolutely fascinating that people wouldn’t respond to this favorably. But I also understand that this is our culture. Everything is good and everything is bad, seemingly at the same time.

Richard Louv: I think it’s more nuanced than that. I think that most people understand that their dog helps them. You know, most people get it at a visceral level. And in terms of organized animal assisted therapy, whether it’s dogs or equine therapy with horses or going outside and connecting with wild animals, no matter what that is. People viscerally understand that. It’s the science is coming now and the science is really interesting. Some of it is controversial, but nobody that has watched a kid with disabilities in an equine therapy or horse therapy, horse assisted therapy setting cannot be not moved. It’s very moving to watch this. One person who works in this field told me that a mother was bringing her child, who is autistic, to the animal assisted therapy sessions, which involved horses. And he would ride horses with a helmet and somebody would lead the horse. And he was, I think, about nine years old and he had not talked ever. And one day when they didn’t go when they were supposed to to the horse therapy, her son walked into the living room and said the word horse, first time she had heard him say a word. So there are moving stories like that. I talk about a woman, another woman who is on the autism spectrum, and she tells quite a moving story about not only how her service dog, whose name is Kobo, helped her, but how she has learned to help Kobo using some of the same techniques that Kobo uses to help her. So often what is occurring is a kind of mutualism is a you know, it’s not one way. I don’t want it to be seen as just what we get out of our relationship with other animals. I promote something in the book called The Reciprocity Principle, which basically holds that for every bit of healing that they give us, that animals, whether they’re domestic or wild animals, give us, we need to give back to them the same. We need to protect them as they protect us.

Gabe Howard: And do you feel that reciprocity is what gives people that boost in mental health? Because you’re not just getting, you know, whether it’s love, companionship from the animal, but you are now responsible for the animals. That gives you a sense of purpose. What the science behind that? Or the, well, what are your thoughts on that?

Richard Louv: Well, I think that’s a really interesting way to put it. I think you’re right. I think, again, it’s not one way. We know a lot. There’s quite a bit of science about animal assisted therapy when it involves domesticated animals where dogs and horses and even goats and other animals. There’s not much known, there’s very little research about what we gain and what we could give regarding wild animals. And I’m sitting here and looking out the window and there’s a deer path goes through my yard. And I can tell you my endorsement spike every time I see deer go by. And as I walk in this neighborhood, we just moved here about a year ago. The deer are responding to me differently. They don’t run away as they stand and watch. And during those moments, it is absolutely impossible to feel alone in the world. One of the issues I deal with in Our Wild Calling is the epidemic of human loneliness. Medical folks, as you know, have been talking about this for about two or three years. They’ve been saying that loneliness, human isolation is about to overtake obesity as a cause of early death, not just because of suicide and that affects that, but because of all the diseases that are associated with loneliness.

Richard Louv: I make the case that, yes, Facebook is part of the problem. Anti-social media is part of problem, that urban design is part of the problem and all of that. But I think that that epidemic of human loneliness is rooted in an even deeper loneliness, which is species loneliness. We are desperate to not feel alone in the world. One of the studies that I find most interesting is of urban parks. And they find that, the study found that, the urban parks that have the best benefit for human psychological health happened to be the urban parks with the highest biodiversity, the highest number of wild animals and plants. Again, I don’t think that’s an accident. We are desperate not to feel alone in the world. And the irony is we are not alone in the world. There is a conversation going on all around us. I call that the intimacy that exists all around us. All we have to do is pay attention.

Gabe Howard: I’m 43 years old, and when I was younger, there were parks and recreation centers all over the place. I could walk to one. And as somebody who suffers from bipolar disorder, I was a very depressed child. I was untreated and my family didn’t know. But I did have these parks. Now, I was an overweight child. And I don’t want to convince anybody that I went on a lot of nature walks. But I did go on some and I was aware that they were there and I did have a place to go. And, you know, this is my childhood in the 80s and now here we are and in 2020. And I don’t have a single recreation center within walking distance from my house. And I live in a neighborhood with children, which means the children in my neighborhood don’t have this. This is a trend that, of course, was created to save money. And because we decided that people didn’t want them. And also, I suppose because we wanted people to pay to join gyms or clubs or golf courses, I guess how do we pull this back? Because, again, even though I didn’t use the parks and recreation centers as much as I could of, I did use them a little bit. And now children don’t have this benefit. Many children don’t have this benefit. What say you to that?

Richard Louv: Well, I talk about cities. I talk about the idea that cities can become engines of biodiversity. They don’t have to be the enemy of nature. And in fact, more and more wild animals are moving into cities, whether we like it or not. And so there’s an opportunity there. This has a lot to do with urban design, with biophilic design. And there’s a lot going on that is of notice is of, is good. There are more and more cities that are creating wildlife corridors through the city so that animals can pass through. And we can have the connection with them. There are more and more urban gardens. There are more and more native plant gardens. People are turning in their backyards into native plants, which of course is what nurtures the food chain because of insects. And then they can bring back bird migration routes. They can bring back bees. They can bring butterfly migration routes. So there’s a lot going on out there people really aren’t aware of. Now, you’re right, the trend has been against. I mean, even in schools, the trend has been toward either dropping or reducing recess in elementary school or some elementary schools are now being built with no playgrounds, let alone a natural playground. On the other hand, there’s a real trend among many schools to create natural play spaces.

Gabe Howard: We’re going to step away and we’ll be right back after these messages from our sponsors.

Sponsor Message: This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp.com. Secure, convenient, and affordable online counseling. Our counselors are licensed, accredited professionals. Anything you share is confidential. Schedule secure video or phone sessions, plus chat and text with your therapist whenever you feel it’s needed. A month of online therapy often costs less than a single traditional face to face session. Go to BetterHelp.com/PsychCentral and experience seven days of free therapy to see if online counseling is right for you. BetterHelp.com/PsychCentral.

Gabe Howard: We’re back discussing the interplay between nature and mental health with author Richard Louv.

Richard Louv: You mentioned bipolar. I want to tell you, I’ll try to keep it short, a story about that. My father, my family and I tell this story in The Nature Principle. Our best times when I was growing up were in nature. They were spent fishing or in the backyard, in the garden or in the woods behind our house where I walked with my father and followed rabbit tracks and all that. That garden was particularly important. I remember following him as he would rototiller the back yard and then I would run around and I would pick up bones and other things and rocks out of the ground. He was happy there and over time we moved to a more affluent neighborhood. He got a better job. We didn’t need to garden anymore, supposedly. And he seldom went outdoors. He was a devoted fisherman. His dream was to retire early and move to Lake of the Ozarks or one of the lakes in the Ozarks. They finally did that, to Table Rock Lake in southern Missouri and got a little house and he finally got his dream. But by then, it was too late. He seldom left the kitchen table. He was probably bipolar and he was an alcoholic on top of that.

Richard Louv: Which produces some of the symptoms of schizophrenia. It was not a pleasant time, from the time I was about eleven on in terms of my dad, I tell that story in The Nature Principle to confess that I have a bias. I have a bias that nature experience is connected to health, to mental health, to physical health. Because of that early experience now, I don’t cherry pick the studies that I cite and almost all of them point the same direction. But I do admit that I have a bias. He did not have a happy ending. And I wonder sometimes what would have happened. And I asked this question, what would have happened if not only psychiatry in the late 50s, early 60s, had included children in the family, included the rest of the family? They did not. And what would have happened if nature therapy had been popularized by then? Could that have helped him? I asked some eco psychologists that question. They say, of course, they can’t tell. They don’t know. But what they, what one said is that we know for certain it would have made life better for you and your mother and your brother.

Gabe Howard: I really like that story and I like what you say there, because there are moments where people are happy and sometimes we don’t give those moments enough do. We don’t pay enough attention to those moments, whether it’s working in the guard and going for a walk, reading a book, making dinner, whether we find happiness in in a mundane task or not. And I know that

Richard Louv: Right. 

Gabe Howard: Especially in America, we really look down on manual labor. As you said, he got a better job. So he didn’t need to have a garden. He didn’t need to work in a garden, even though it was something that made him happy. Do you think that there’s just a bias against gardening or working in nature where people feel that they’re too successful to do it, as you suggested in your story? Is this going on in in droves around America where people just don’t want to do it? Because after all, that’s beneath them or whatever words you want to use, because the average family does not have a garden anymore.

Richard Louv: Well, I don’t think that there’s a bias specifically toward gardening. There’s not a bias specifically toward hiking or anything else that people do outdoors. What has happened is these barriers to that experience have risen. And one of them is affluence. One of them, my father, got a better job. It demanded longer hours. It imbalanced his life and ours. So I don’t think it’s really a bias against that. You’re right about manual labor, but not about those experiences that connect us to the natural world. In fact, there’s quite a resurgence in gardening. And as I mentioned, in native plants in our yards and focusing on that more, that’s part of the good news. There is a lot of good news out there, even though the trends may not look like they’re going in the right way. There’s good news in terms of urban design, biophilic design. There’s good news in terms of an awareness now that nature has something to do with our health, our mental health and our physical health, those experiences. I can tell you that did not exist very much in 2005, not among the general population.

Richard Louv: There was a study done a few years ago called The Nature of Americans that reproduced research that was done about 20 years ago, and they compared how people felt about different aspects of nature. What they found was that families that people, particularly parents. That their awareness that nature experience is connected to health had skyrocketed since 2005. What has not happened is the barriers have not gone down. They’re still there. Now, there are people working very hard to reduce those barriers, particularly for kids, but for all of us. And they’re working on that all over the world. I think China and Brazil that have launched programs to connect kids to nature and therefore their whole families. You mentioned the National League of Cities. We’re working with that organization, which represents 18,000 mayors and other municipal officials to try to help cities become better places to connect families to nature. Schools. There are now nature preschools have taken off is a phenomenon. They’re sometimes called forest schools. There’s an increase of about 500 percent of those just in the last few years. So there’s a lot of good stuff happening.

Gabe Howard: Richard, thank you so much for being on the show. Do you have any last words for people who want to get out in nature more? But as you mentioned, the barriers are just too much. How can they overcome them?

Richard Louv: Well, one is to be careful how you define nature. It doesn’t have to be Yosemite. It can be in an urban neighborhood. You know, there was a program a few years ago that the Sierra Club had.  What they do is go into urban neighborhoods. They put backpacks on kids and go for a five mile walk in their neighborhood and they would look for nature. They’d always find it. Sometimes in the cracks between the sidewalks, sometimes in the alleyways. If you change your perspective of what nature is, you’ll find it. The second thing is conservation is no longer enough. Now we have to have to create nature to maintain or bring back the kind of biodiversity we need. In the act of creating urban gardens, in the act of planting trees in cities, children and their parents reconnect to nature and they feel really a lot better about themselves, about where they live. All of that. But finally, I would say, you know, in addition to seeking out information on how to do that, because it doesn’t come naturally to the new generation of parents, or at least many of them, because many, most of them did not have much experience when they were kids in nature as I did. So, it doesn’t necessarily come that naturally. And they don’t even know where to start sometimes when they want that.

Richard Louv: But it’s possible, particularly if you band together with other families. People are starting Family Nature clubs. Family Nature Club in San Diego now has about, I believe about 3,000 families as members of it. And that’s a pool of families you can dip into and find out if somebody wants to go take a hike, multiple families next Saturday. That deals with the fear of strangers. That deals with the sense that we don’t know how to do this, but other parents do. So there’s all kinds of ways to do it. But it has to be a conscious act. We put sports on the calendar. We should put nature there, too. And finally, and this is the primary lesson, I think, of Our Wild Calling, is to recognize that there is intimacy all around us. There is connection all around us. But to find that, to hear that conversation, you have to pay attention. And that’s why, you know, as we’re talking, a row of wild turkeys just walked by my house. And I pay attention to that. I think about what they’re doing. I think about what they’re feeling. Empathy is the greatest way, I think, to take us out of ourselves.

Gabe Howard: Richard, I love that. Thank you so much for being here. Where can folks find you on the Internet?

Richard Louv: Well, I have a Web site, RichardLouv.com. And that’s L O U V is the last name, but also the Children & Nature Network, which is ChildrenAndNature.org. And of course, Amazon, you can find me there, obviously.

Gabe Howard: Thank you, Richard, for being here and thank you to our listeners for tuning in. Wherever you downloaded this podcast, please rate, rank and subscribe. We would really appreciate that. Share us on social media and use your words in the description and tell folks why you like the show and why you listen. Finally, remember, you can get one week of free, convenient, affordable, private online counseling anytime, anywhere, simply by visiting  BetterHelp.com/PsychCentral. We will see everybody next week.

Announcer: You’ve been listening to The Psych Central Podcast. Want your audience to be wowed at your next event? Feature an appearance and LIVE RECORDING of the Psych Central Podcast right from your stage! For more details, or to book an event, please email us at show@psychcentral.com. Previous episodes can be found at PsychCentral.com/Show or on your favorite podcast player. Psych Central is the internet’s oldest and largest independent mental health website run by mental health professionals. Overseen by Dr. John Grohol, Psych Central offers trusted resources and quizzes to help answer your questions about mental health, personality, psychotherapy, and more. Please visit us today at PsychCentral.com.  To learn more about our host, Gabe Howard, please visit his website at gabehoward.com. Thank you for listening and please share with your friends, family, and followers.

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[erraticfairy]

Podcast: Using Nature and Animals to Manage Anxiety



When was the last time you simply enjoyed being in nature? Whether it’s a camping trip to the mountains, a walk in the park or just watching the squirrels from your backyard, being in nature is profoundly healing. In today’s Psych Central Podcast, our guest Richard Louv, a journalist, author and co-founder of the nonprofit Children & Nature Network, discusses the science behind nature’s healing powers.

What counts as “nature?” Are pets included? What are some modern barriers to accessing nature, and how can we overcome them? Join us for the answers to these questions and more.

SUBSCRIBE & REVIEW

Guest information for ‘Richard Louv- Nature’ Podcast Episode

Richard Louv is a journalist and author of ten books.  Louv is co-founder and chair emeritus of the nonprofit Children & Nature Network, which supports a new nature movement through partnerships with such organizations as the National League of Cities. In 2008, he was awarded the Audubon Medal, presented by the National Audubon Society. Prior recipients have included Rachel Carson, E. O. Wilson, Sir David Attenborough and President Jimmy Carter.

    About The Psych Central Podcast Host

Gabe Howard is an award-winning writer and speaker who lives with bipolar disorder. He is the author of the popular book, Mental Illness is an Asshole and other Observations, available from Amazon; signed copies are also available directly from the author. To learn more about Gabe, please visit his website, gabehoward.com.

Computer Generated Transcript for ‘Richard Louv- Nature’ Episode

Editor’s Note: Please be mindful that this transcript has been computer generated and therefore may contain inaccuracies and grammar errors. Thank you.

Announcer: You’re listening to the Psych Central Podcast, where guest experts in the field of psychology and mental health share thought-provoking information using plain, everyday language. Here’s your host, Gabe Howard.

Gabe Howard: Welcome to this week’s episode of the Psych Central Podcast. Calling into the show today, we have author Richard Louv. Richard is the co-founder and chair emeritus of the nonprofit Children & Nature Network, which supports a new nature movement through partnerships with such organizations as the National League of Cities. Back in 2008, he was awarded the Audubon Medal, presented by the National Audubon Society. Richard, welcome to the show.

Richard Louv: Thank you.

Gabe Howard: Richard, it’s great to have you. A lot has been talked about the connection between mental health and nature, mental health and animals, and I kind of want to start off in this place. I’m a big fan of social media. Love it or hate it, it’s probably here to stay. And one of the things that I often see on social media is this meme that says the best antidepressant is a walk in nature. And I know that you don’t feel that nature replaces medical science, but you do feel that a walk in nature has real, real support and real help for people who are suffering from depression. Can you talk about that for a moment?

Richard Louv: And that’s new, when I wrote Last Child in the Woods, it was published in 2005, this was ignored. The impact of the natural world on human well-being, on health, on cognitive functioning, all of that, it would have been basically ignored. And I could find maybe 60 studies. Many of them were about the growing disconnect between children and therefore adults, too, and nature and some of it. Some of those studies dealt with the benefits and some of those studies dealt with mental health and physical health. That is a drop in the bucket compared to how much money is spent researching just about everything else. And it struck me that something so large as the impact of the natural world experience on human health and well-being had been ignored. How could that be? And as I looked into it, I was working with some neuroscientists then. They were studying brain architecture development in young children. And they were looking at all kinds of things and how that affected brain architecture development. Everything from parent child attachment to bad day care to dangerous neighborhoods and all of that. And those things they were finding literally shapes the brain in early childhood. And I asked them once. Have you ever thought about how the natural world helped shape the brain in young children? Experiences? Actual contact with the natural world? And they looked at me with a blank face and they said, what’s nature?

Richard Louv: And I understand that science has a difficult time defining nature. But, you know, I said to the neuroscientists, this isn’t rocket science. And it isn’t brain surgery. You come up with a hypothesis and test it. One hundred and twenty trees per acre or whatever. They still had trouble with it. So I decided that was one of the reasons why this was so understudied. Is the blind spot in science about nature. The rest of nature of which we are apart. The second reason was, where does the research money come from? What pill can you manufacture? What thing can you commercialize out of that? Now there are some things, I mean parks and outdoor hiking organizations, things like that. There are some. But for the most part, people don’t think about it. Certainly funders don’t think about this as something they can get something out of by funding. That’s changing. Today, if you go to the Children & Nature Network, which you mentioned in your introduction, we have a research library there that we’ve built. And it is for anybody in the world. It Is free. And there are now probably, it’s just tipped over 1000 studies that we have abstracts for and links to the original studies when they’re available. So it’s gone from about 60 to over a thousand in about 14 years after not existing before.

Gabe Howard: I think that it’s interesting that one of the things you said, and this really plays to the pessimist in me is we don’t want to tell people to go for walks because there’s no funding for it and you can’t make money prescribing it. You know, we can’t prescribe one walk a day or, you know, hug your dog every day. That that’s not something that you can fill at the pharmacy. And this is kind of counterbalanced against the, you know, medication is important. Look at the advances that we’ve made with cancer by coming up with, you know, better treatments, etc. But I would even argue that taking somebody who is suffering from cancer and completely isolating them, you know, taking away their friends, their support systems, their animals, and even a window would put them in more of a bad way than they already are. And I think that’s what you’re saying. And you’ve talked about in your work how animal assisted therapy is becoming one of the biggest health care trends. And I don’t think that’s a bad thing. But you also talk about the controversy surrounding it and then you back it up with science. Can you talk about animal assisted therapy for a moment? Because I just find it absolutely fascinating that people wouldn’t respond to this favorably. But I also understand that this is our culture. Everything is good and everything is bad, seemingly at the same time.

Richard Louv: I think it’s more nuanced than that. I think that most people understand that their dog helps them. You know, most people get it at a visceral level. And in terms of organized animal assisted therapy, whether it’s dogs or equine therapy with horses or going outside and connecting with wild animals, no matter what that is. People viscerally understand that. It’s the science is coming now and the science is really interesting. Some of it is controversial, but nobody that has watched a kid with disabilities in an equine therapy or horse therapy, horse assisted therapy setting cannot be not moved. It’s very moving to watch this. One person who works in this field told me that a mother was bringing her child, who is autistic, to the animal assisted therapy sessions, which involved horses. And he would ride horses with a helmet and somebody would lead the horse. And he was, I think, about nine years old and he had not talked ever. And one day when they didn’t go when they were supposed to to the horse therapy, her son walked into the living room and said the word horse, first time she had heard him say a word. So there are moving stories like that. I talk about a woman, another woman who is on the autism spectrum, and she tells quite a moving story about not only how her service dog, whose name is Kobo, helped her, but how she has learned to help Kobo using some of the same techniques that Kobo uses to help her. So often what is occurring is a kind of mutualism is a you know, it’s not one way. I don’t want it to be seen as just what we get out of our relationship with other animals. I promote something in the book called The Reciprocity Principle, which basically holds that for every bit of healing that they give us, that animals, whether they’re domestic or wild animals, give us, we need to give back to them the same. We need to protect them as they protect us.

Gabe Howard: And do you feel that reciprocity is what gives people that boost in mental health? Because you’re not just getting, you know, whether it’s love, companionship from the animal, but you are now responsible for the animals. That gives you a sense of purpose. What the science behind that? Or the, well, what are your thoughts on that?

Richard Louv: Well, I think that’s a really interesting way to put it. I think you’re right. I think, again, it’s not one way. We know a lot. There’s quite a bit of science about animal assisted therapy when it involves domesticated animals where dogs and horses and even goats and other animals. There’s not much known, there’s very little research about what we gain and what we could give regarding wild animals. And I’m sitting here and looking out the window and there’s a deer path goes through my yard. And I can tell you my endorsement spike every time I see deer go by. And as I walk in this neighborhood, we just moved here about a year ago. The deer are responding to me differently. They don’t run away as they stand and watch. And during those moments, it is absolutely impossible to feel alone in the world. One of the issues I deal with in Our Wild Calling is the epidemic of human loneliness. Medical folks, as you know, have been talking about this for about two or three years. They’ve been saying that loneliness, human isolation is about to overtake obesity as a cause of early death, not just because of suicide and that affects that, but because of all the diseases that are associated with loneliness.

Richard Louv: I make the case that, yes, Facebook is part of the problem. Anti-social media is part of problem, that urban design is part of the problem and all of that. But I think that that epidemic of human loneliness is rooted in an even deeper loneliness, which is species loneliness. We are desperate to not feel alone in the world. One of the studies that I find most interesting is of urban parks. And they find that, the study found that, the urban parks that have the best benefit for human psychological health happened to be the urban parks with the highest biodiversity, the highest number of wild animals and plants. Again, I don’t think that’s an accident. We are desperate not to feel alone in the world. And the irony is we are not alone in the world. There is a conversation going on all around us. I call that the intimacy that exists all around us. All we have to do is pay attention.

Gabe Howard: I’m 43 years old, and when I was younger, there were parks and recreation centers all over the place. I could walk to one. And as somebody who suffers from bipolar disorder, I was a very depressed child. I was untreated and my family didn’t know. But I did have these parks. Now, I was an overweight child. And I don’t want to convince anybody that I went on a lot of nature walks. But I did go on some and I was aware that they were there and I did have a place to go. And, you know, this is my childhood in the 80s and now here we are and in 2020. And I don’t have a single recreation center within walking distance from my house. And I live in a neighborhood with children, which means the children in my neighborhood don’t have this. This is a trend that, of course, was created to save money. And because we decided that people didn’t want them. And also, I suppose because we wanted people to pay to join gyms or clubs or golf courses, I guess how do we pull this back? Because, again, even though I didn’t use the parks and recreation centers as much as I could of, I did use them a little bit. And now children don’t have this benefit. Many children don’t have this benefit. What say you to that?

Richard Louv: Well, I talk about cities. I talk about the idea that cities can become engines of biodiversity. They don’t have to be the enemy of nature. And in fact, more and more wild animals are moving into cities, whether we like it or not. And so there’s an opportunity there. This has a lot to do with urban design, with biophilic design. And there’s a lot going on that is of notice is of, is good. There are more and more cities that are creating wildlife corridors through the city so that animals can pass through. And we can have the connection with them. There are more and more urban gardens. There are more and more native plant gardens. People are turning in their backyards into native plants, which of course is what nurtures the food chain because of insects. And then they can bring back bird migration routes. They can bring back bees. They can bring butterfly migration routes. So there’s a lot going on out there people really aren’t aware of. Now, you’re right, the trend has been against. I mean, even in schools, the trend has been toward either dropping or reducing recess in elementary school or some elementary schools are now being built with no playgrounds, let alone a natural playground. On the other hand, there’s a real trend among many schools to create natural play spaces.

Gabe Howard: We’re going to step away and we’ll be right back after these messages from our sponsors.

Sponsor Message: This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp.com. Secure, convenient, and affordable online counseling. Our counselors are licensed, accredited professionals. Anything you share is confidential. Schedule secure video or phone sessions, plus chat and text with your therapist whenever you feel it’s needed. A month of online therapy often costs less than a single traditional face to face session. Go to BetterHelp.com/PsychCentral and experience seven days of free therapy to see if online counseling is right for you. BetterHelp.com/PsychCentral.

Gabe Howard: We’re back discussing the interplay between nature and mental health with author Richard Louv.

Richard Louv: You mentioned bipolar. I want to tell you, I’ll try to keep it short, a story about that. My father, my family and I tell this story in The Nature Principle. Our best times when I was growing up were in nature. They were spent fishing or in the backyard, in the garden or in the woods behind our house where I walked with my father and followed rabbit tracks and all that. That garden was particularly important. I remember following him as he would rototiller the back yard and then I would run around and I would pick up bones and other things and rocks out of the ground. He was happy there and over time we moved to a more affluent neighborhood. He got a better job. We didn’t need to garden anymore, supposedly. And he seldom went outdoors. He was a devoted fisherman. His dream was to retire early and move to Lake of the Ozarks or one of the lakes in the Ozarks. They finally did that, to Table Rock Lake in southern Missouri and got a little house and he finally got his dream. But by then, it was too late. He seldom left the kitchen table. He was probably bipolar and he was an alcoholic on top of that.

Richard Louv: Which produces some of the symptoms of schizophrenia. It was not a pleasant time, from the time I was about eleven on in terms of my dad, I tell that story in The Nature Principle to confess that I have a bias. I have a bias that nature experience is connected to health, to mental health, to physical health. Because of that early experience now, I don’t cherry pick the studies that I cite and almost all of them point the same direction. But I do admit that I have a bias. He did not have a happy ending. And I wonder sometimes what would have happened. And I asked this question, what would have happened if not only psychiatry in the late 50s, early 60s, had included children in the family, included the rest of the family? They did not. And what would have happened if nature therapy had been popularized by then? Could that have helped him? I asked some eco psychologists that question. They say, of course, they can’t tell. They don’t know. But what they, what one said is that we know for certain it would have made life better for you and your mother and your brother.

Gabe Howard: I really like that story and I like what you say there, because there are moments where people are happy and sometimes we don’t give those moments enough do. We don’t pay enough attention to those moments, whether it’s working in the guard and going for a walk, reading a book, making dinner, whether we find happiness in in a mundane task or not. And I know that

Richard Louv: Right. 

Gabe Howard: Especially in America, we really look down on manual labor. As you said, he got a better job. So he didn’t need to have a garden. He didn’t need to work in a garden, even though it was something that made him happy. Do you think that there’s just a bias against gardening or working in nature where people feel that they’re too successful to do it, as you suggested in your story? Is this going on in in droves around America where people just don’t want to do it? Because after all, that’s beneath them or whatever words you want to use, because the average family does not have a garden anymore.

Richard Louv: Well, I don’t think that there’s a bias specifically toward gardening. There’s not a bias specifically toward hiking or anything else that people do outdoors. What has happened is these barriers to that experience have risen. And one of them is affluence. One of them, my father, got a better job. It demanded longer hours. It imbalanced his life and ours. So I don’t think it’s really a bias against that. You’re right about manual labor, but not about those experiences that connect us to the natural world. In fact, there’s quite a resurgence in gardening. And as I mentioned, in native plants in our yards and focusing on that more, that’s part of the good news. There is a lot of good news out there, even though the trends may not look like they’re going in the right way. There’s good news in terms of urban design, biophilic design. There’s good news in terms of an awareness now that nature has something to do with our health, our mental health and our physical health, those experiences. I can tell you that did not exist very much in 2005, not among the general population.

Richard Louv: There was a study done a few years ago called The Nature of Americans that reproduced research that was done about 20 years ago, and they compared how people felt about different aspects of nature. What they found was that families that people, particularly parents. That their awareness that nature experience is connected to health had skyrocketed since 2005. What has not happened is the barriers have not gone down. They’re still there. Now, there are people working very hard to reduce those barriers, particularly for kids, but for all of us. And they’re working on that all over the world. I think China and Brazil that have launched programs to connect kids to nature and therefore their whole families. You mentioned the National League of Cities. We’re working with that organization, which represents 18,000 mayors and other municipal officials to try to help cities become better places to connect families to nature. Schools. There are now nature preschools have taken off is a phenomenon. They’re sometimes called forest schools. There’s an increase of about 500 percent of those just in the last few years. So there’s a lot of good stuff happening.

Gabe Howard: Richard, thank you so much for being on the show. Do you have any last words for people who want to get out in nature more? But as you mentioned, the barriers are just too much. How can they overcome them?

Richard Louv: Well, one is to be careful how you define nature. It doesn’t have to be Yosemite. It can be in an urban neighborhood. You know, there was a program a few years ago that the Sierra Club had.  What they do is go into urban neighborhoods. They put backpacks on kids and go for a five mile walk in their neighborhood and they would look for nature. They’d always find it. Sometimes in the cracks between the sidewalks, sometimes in the alleyways. If you change your perspective of what nature is, you’ll find it. The second thing is conservation is no longer enough. Now we have to have to create nature to maintain or bring back the kind of biodiversity we need. In the act of creating urban gardens, in the act of planting trees in cities, children and their parents reconnect to nature and they feel really a lot better about themselves, about where they live. All of that. But finally, I would say, you know, in addition to seeking out information on how to do that, because it doesn’t come naturally to the new generation of parents, or at least many of them, because many, most of them did not have much experience when they were kids in nature as I did. So, it doesn’t necessarily come that naturally. And they don’t even know where to start sometimes when they want that.

Richard Louv: But it’s possible, particularly if you band together with other families. People are starting Family Nature clubs. Family Nature Club in San Diego now has about, I believe about 3,000 families as members of it. And that’s a pool of families you can dip into and find out if somebody wants to go take a hike, multiple families next Saturday. That deals with the fear of strangers. That deals with the sense that we don’t know how to do this, but other parents do. So there’s all kinds of ways to do it. But it has to be a conscious act. We put sports on the calendar. We should put nature there, too. And finally, and this is the primary lesson, I think, of Our Wild Calling, is to recognize that there is intimacy all around us. There is connection all around us. But to find that, to hear that conversation, you have to pay attention. And that’s why, you know, as we’re talking, a row of wild turkeys just walked by my house. And I pay attention to that. I think about what they’re doing. I think about what they’re feeling. Empathy is the greatest way, I think, to take us out of ourselves.

Gabe Howard: Richard, I love that. Thank you so much for being here. Where can folks find you on the Internet?

Richard Louv: Well, I have a Web site, RichardLouv.com. And that’s L O U V is the last name, but also the Children & Nature Network, which is ChildrenAndNature.org. And of course, Amazon, you can find me there, obviously.

Gabe Howard: Thank you, Richard, for being here and thank you to our listeners for tuning in. Wherever you downloaded this podcast, please rate, rank and subscribe. We would really appreciate that. Share us on social media and use your words in the description and tell folks why you like the show and why you listen. Finally, remember, you can get one week of free, convenient, affordable, private online counseling anytime, anywhere, simply by visiting  BetterHelp.com/PsychCentral. We will see everybody next week.

Announcer: You’ve been listening to The Psych Central Podcast. Want your audience to be wowed at your next event? Feature an appearance and LIVE RECORDING of the Psych Central Podcast right from your stage! For more details, or to book an event, please email us at show@psychcentral.com. Previous episodes can be found at PsychCentral.com/Show or on your favorite podcast player. Psych Central is the internet’s oldest and largest independent mental health website run by mental health professionals. Overseen by Dr. John Grohol, Psych Central offers trusted resources and quizzes to help answer your questions about mental health, personality, psychotherapy, and more. Please visit us today at PsychCentral.com.  To learn more about our host, Gabe Howard, please visit his website at gabehoward.com. Thank you for listening and please share with your friends, family, and followers.

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The Mistery Of Why Some People Become Sudden Geniuses

It was the summer of 1860 and Eadweard Muybridge was running low on books. This was somewhat problematic, since he was a bookseller. He handed his San Francisco shop over to his brother and set off on a stagecoach to buy supplies. Little did he know, he was about to change the world forever.

He was some way into his journey, in north-eastern Texas, when the coach ran into trouble. The driver cracked his whip and the horses broke into a run, leading the coach surging down a steep mountain road. Eventually it veered off and into a tree. Muybridge was catapulted into the air and cracked his head on a boulder.

He woke up nine days later at a hospital 150 miles (241 km) away. The accident left him with a panoply of medical problems, including double vision, bouts of seizures and no sense of smell, hearing or taste. But the most radical change was his personality.

Previously Muybridge had been a genial and open man, with good business sense. Afterwards he was risk-taking, eccentric and moody; he later murdered his wife’s lover. He was also, quite possibly, a genius.

The question of where creative insights come from – and how to get more of them – has remained a subject of great speculation for thousands of years. According to scientists, they can be driven by anything from fatigue to boredom. The prodigies themselves have other, even less convincing ideas. Plato said that they were the result of divine madness. Or do they, as Freud believed, arise from the sublimation of sexual desires? Tchaikovsky maintained that eureka moments are born out of cool headwork and technical knowledge.

But until recently, most sensible people agreed on one thing: creativity begins in the pink, wobbly mass inside our skulls. It surely goes without saying that striking the brain, impaling it, electrocuting it, shooting it, slicing bits out of it or depriving it of oxygen would lead to the swift death of any great visions possessed by its owner.

As it happens, sometimes the opposite is true.

After the accident, Muybridge eventually recovered enough to sail to England. There his creativity really took hold. He abandoned bookselling and became a photographer, one of the most famous in the world. He was also a prolific inventor. Before the accident, he hadn’t filed a single patent. In the following two decades, he applied for at least 10.

In 1877 he took a bet that allowed him to combine invention and photography. Legend has it that his friend, a wealthy railroad tycoon called Leland Stanford, was convinced that horses could fly. Or, more accurately, he was convinced that when they run, all their legs leave the ground at the same time. Muybridge said they didn’t.

To prove it he placed 12 cameras along a horse track and installed a tripwire that would set them off automatically as Stanford’s favourite racing horse, Occident, ran. Next he invented the inelegantly named “zoopraxiscope”, a device which allowed him to project several images in quick succession and give the impression of motion. To his amazement, the horse was briefly suspended, mid-gallop. Muybridge had filmed the first movie – and with it proven that yes, horses can fly.

Jon Sarkin was transformed from a chiropractor into an artist after a stroke

The abrupt turnaround of Muybridge’s life, from ordinary bookseller to creative genius, has prompted speculation that it was a direct result of his accident. It’s possible that he had “sudden savant syndrome”, in which exceptional abilities emerge after a brain injury or disease. It’s extremely rare, with just 25 verified cases on the planet.

There’s Tony Cicoria, an orthopaedic surgeon who was struck by lightning at a New York park in 1994. It went straight through his head and left him with an irresistible desire to play the piano. To begin with he was playing other people’s music, but soon he started writing down the melodies that were constantly running through his head. Today he’s a pianist and composer, as well as a practicing surgeon.

Another case is Jon Sarkin, who was transformed from a chiropractor into an artist after a stroke. The urge to draw landed almost immediately. He was having “all kinds” of therapy at the hospital – speech therapy, art therapy, physical therapy, occupational therapy, mental therapy – “And they stuck a crayon in my hand and said ‘want to draw?’ And I said ‘fine’,” he says.

His first muse was a cactus at his home in Gloucester, Massachusetts. It was the fingered kind, like you might find in Western movies from the 50s. Even his earliest paintings are extremely abstract. In some versions the branches resemble swirling green snakes, while others they are red, zig-zagging staircases.

His works have since been published in The New York Times, featured on album covers and been covered in a book by a Pulitzer Prize-winning author. They regularly sell for $10,000 (£7,400).

Most strikingly there’s Jason Padgett, who was attacked at a bar in Tacoma, Washington in 2002. Before the attack, Padgett was a college dropout who worked at a futon store. His primary passions in life were partying and chasing girls. He had no interest in maths – at school, he didn’t even get into algebra class.

But that night, everything changed. Initially he was taken to the hospital with a severe concussion. “I remember thinking that everything looked funky, but I thought it was just the narcotic pain shot they gave me” he says. “Then the next morning I woke up and turned on the water. It looked like little tangent lines [a straight line that touches a single point on a curve], spiralling down.”.

When you’re bashed on the head, the effects are similar to a dose of LSD

From then onwards Padgett’s world was overlaid with geometric shapes and gridlines. He became obsessed with maths and is now renowned for his drawings of formulas such as Pi. Today he’s incredulous that he once didn’t know what a tangent was. “I do feel like two people, and I’ve had my mum and my dad say that. It’s like having two separate kids,” he says.

Why does this happen? How does it work? And what does it teach us about what makes geniuses special?

There are two leading ideas. The first is that when you’re bashed on the head, the effects are similar to a dose of LSD. Psychedelic drugs are thought to enhance creativity by increasing the levels of serotonin, the so-called “happiness hormone”, in the brain. This leads to “synaesthesia”, in which more than one region is simultaneously activated and senses which are usually separate become linked.

Many people don’t need drugs to experience this: nearly 5% of the population has some form of synaesthesia, with the most common type being “grapheme-colour”, in which words are associated with colours. For example, the actor Geoffrey Rush believes that Mondays are pale blue.

When the brain is injured, dead and dying cells leak serotonin into the surrounding tissue. Physically, this seems to encourage new connections between brain regions, just as with LSD. Mentally, it allows the person to link the seemingly unconnected. “We’ve found permanent changes before – you can actually see connections in the brain that weren’t there before,” says Berit Brogaard, a neuroscientist who directs the Brogaard Lab for Multisensory Research, Florida.

But there is an alternative. The first clue emerged in 1998, when a group of neurologists noticed that five of their patients with dementia were also artists – remarkably good ones. Specifically, they had frontotemporal dementia, which is unusual in that it only affects some parts of the brain. For example, visual creativity may be spared, while language and social skills are progressively destroyed.

One of these was “Patient 5”. At the age of 53 he had enrolled in a short course in drawing at a local park, though he previously had no interest in such things. It just so happened to coincide with the onset of his dementia; a few months later, he was having trouble speaking.

Soon he became irritable and eccentric, developing a compulsion to search for money on the street. As his illness progressed, so did his drawing, advancing from simple still-life paintings to haunting, impressionist depictions of buildings from his childhood.

To find out what was going on, the scientists performed 3D scans of their patients’ brains. In four out of five cases, they found lesions on the left hemisphere. Nobel Prize-winning research from the 1960s shows that the two halves of the brain specialise in different tasks; in general, the right side is home to creativity and the left is the centre of logic and language.

 ‘Autistic savants’ can have superhuman skills to rival those of the Renaissance polymaths

But the left side is also something of a bully. “It tends to be the dominant brain region,” says Brogaard. “It tends to suppress very marginal types of thinking – highly original, highly creative thinking, because it’s beneficial for our decision-making abilities and our ability to function in normal life.”. The theory goes that as the patients’ left hemispheres became progressively more damaged, their right hemispheres were free to flourish.

This is backed up by several other studies, including one in which creative insight was roused in healthy volunteers by temporarily dialling down activity in the left hemisphere and increasing it in the right. “[the lead researcher] Allen Snyder’s work was replicated by another person, so that’s the theory that I think is responsible,” says Darold Treffert, a psychiatrist from the University of Wisconsin Medical School, who has been studying savant syndrome for decades.

But what about more mainstream geniuses? Could the theory explain their talents, too?

Consider autism. From Daniel Tammet, who can perform mind-boggling mathematical calculations at stupendous speed, to Gottfried Mind, the “Cat Raphael”, who drew the animal with an astonishing level of realism, so-called “autistic savants” can have superhuman skills to rival those of the Renaissance polymaths.

It’s been estimated that as many as one in 10 people with autism have savant syndrome and there’s mounting evidence the disorder is associated with enhanced creativity. And though it’s difficult to prove, it’s been speculated that numerous intellectual giants, including Einstein, Newton, Mozart, Darwin and Michelangelo, were on the spectrum.

One theory suggests that autism arises from abnormally low levels of serotonin in the left hemisphere in childhood, which prevents the region from developing normally. Just like with sudden savant syndrome, this allows the right hemisphere to become more active.

They are usually able to have a normal life, but they also have this obsession – Berit Brogaard, neuroscientist

Interestingly, many people with sudden savant syndrome also develop symptoms of autism, including social problems, obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) and all-consuming interests. “It got so bad that if I had money I would spray the money with Lysol and put it in the microwave for a few seconds to get rid of the germs,” says Padgett.

“They are usually able to have a normal life, but they also have this obsession,” says Brogaard. This is something universal across all sudden savants. Jon Sarkin compares his art to an instinct. “It doesn’t feel like I like drawing, it feels like I must draw.” His studio contains thousands of finished and unfinished works, which are often scribbled with curves, words, cross-hatchings, and overlapping images.

In fact, though they often don’t need to, sudden savants work hard at improving their craft. “I mean, I practiced a lot. Talent and hard work, I think they are indistinguishable – you do something a lot and you get better at it,” says Sarkin. Padgett agrees. “When you’re fixated on something like that, of course you do discover things.”

Muybridge was no exception. After the bet, he moved to Philadelphia and continued with his passion for capturing motion on film, photographing all kinds of activities such as walking up and down the stairs and, oddly, himself swinging a pickaxe in the nude. Between 1883 and 1886, he took more than 100,000 pictures.

“In my opinion at least, the fact that they can improve their abilities doesn’t negate the suddenness or insistence with which they are there,” says Treffert. As our understanding of sudden savant syndrome improves, eventually it’s hoped that we might all be able to unlock our hidden mental powers – perhaps with the help of smart drugs or hardware.

But until then, perhaps us mortals could try putting in some extra hours instead.

  Source: bbc.com

The post The Mistery Of Why Some People Become Sudden Geniuses appeared first on Linguoo.

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[brentrogers]

Podcast: Using Nature and Animals to Manage Anxiety



When was the last time you simply enjoyed being in nature? Whether it’s a camping trip to the mountains, a walk in the park or just watching the squirrels from your backyard, being in nature is profoundly healing. In today’s Psych Central Podcast, our guest Richard Louv, a journalist, author and co-founder of the nonprofit Children & Nature Network, discusses the science behind nature’s healing powers.

What counts as “nature?” Are pets included? What are some modern barriers to accessing nature, and how can we overcome them? Join us for the answers to these questions and more.

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Guest information for ‘Richard Louv- Nature’ Podcast Episode

Richard Louv is a journalist and author of ten books.  Louv is co-founder and chair emeritus of the nonprofit Children & Nature Network, which supports a new nature movement through partnerships with such organizations as the National League of Cities. In 2008, he was awarded the Audubon Medal, presented by the National Audubon Society. Prior recipients have included Rachel Carson, E. O. Wilson, Sir David Attenborough and President Jimmy Carter.

    About The Psych Central Podcast Host

Gabe Howard is an award-winning writer and speaker who lives with bipolar disorder. He is the author of the popular book, Mental Illness is an Asshole and other Observations, available from Amazon; signed copies are also available directly from the author. To learn more about Gabe, please visit his website, gabehoward.com.

Computer Generated Transcript for ‘Richard Louv- Nature’ Episode

Editor’s Note: Please be mindful that this transcript has been computer generated and therefore may contain inaccuracies and grammar errors. Thank you.

Announcer: You’re listening to the Psych Central Podcast, where guest experts in the field of psychology and mental health share thought-provoking information using plain, everyday language. Here’s your host, Gabe Howard.

Gabe Howard: Welcome to this week’s episode of the Psych Central Podcast. Calling into the show today, we have author Richard Louv. Richard is the co-founder and chair emeritus of the nonprofit Children & Nature Network, which supports a new nature movement through partnerships with such organizations as the National League of Cities. Back in 2008, he was awarded the Audubon Medal, presented by the National Audubon Society. Richard, welcome to the show.

Richard Louv: Thank you.

Gabe Howard: Richard, it’s great to have you. A lot has been talked about the connection between mental health and nature, mental health and animals, and I kind of want to start off in this place. I’m a big fan of social media. Love it or hate it, it’s probably here to stay. And one of the things that I often see on social media is this meme that says the best antidepressant is a walk in nature. And I know that you don’t feel that nature replaces medical science, but you do feel that a walk in nature has real, real support and real help for people who are suffering from depression. Can you talk about that for a moment?

Richard Louv: And that’s new, when I wrote Last Child in the Woods, it was published in 2005, this was ignored. The impact of the natural world on human well-being, on health, on cognitive functioning, all of that, it would have been basically ignored. And I could find maybe 60 studies. Many of them were about the growing disconnect between children and therefore adults, too, and nature and some of it. Some of those studies dealt with the benefits and some of those studies dealt with mental health and physical health. That is a drop in the bucket compared to how much money is spent researching just about everything else. And it struck me that something so large as the impact of the natural world experience on human health and well-being had been ignored. How could that be? And as I looked into it, I was working with some neuroscientists then. They were studying brain architecture development in young children. And they were looking at all kinds of things and how that affected brain architecture development. Everything from parent child attachment to bad day care to dangerous neighborhoods and all of that. And those things they were finding literally shapes the brain in early childhood. And I asked them once. Have you ever thought about how the natural world helped shape the brain in young children? Experiences? Actual contact with the natural world? And they looked at me with a blank face and they said, what’s nature?

Richard Louv: And I understand that science has a difficult time defining nature. But, you know, I said to the neuroscientists, this isn’t rocket science. And it isn’t brain surgery. You come up with a hypothesis and test it. One hundred and twenty trees per acre or whatever. They still had trouble with it. So I decided that was one of the reasons why this was so understudied. Is the blind spot in science about nature. The rest of nature of which we are apart. The second reason was, where does the research money come from? What pill can you manufacture? What thing can you commercialize out of that? Now there are some things, I mean parks and outdoor hiking organizations, things like that. There are some. But for the most part, people don’t think about it. Certainly funders don’t think about this as something they can get something out of by funding. That’s changing. Today, if you go to the Children & Nature Network, which you mentioned in your introduction, we have a research library there that we’ve built. And it is for anybody in the world. It Is free. And there are now probably, it’s just tipped over 1000 studies that we have abstracts for and links to the original studies when they’re available. So it’s gone from about 60 to over a thousand in about 14 years after not existing before.

Gabe Howard: I think that it’s interesting that one of the things you said, and this really plays to the pessimist in me is we don’t want to tell people to go for walks because there’s no funding for it and you can’t make money prescribing it. You know, we can’t prescribe one walk a day or, you know, hug your dog every day. That that’s not something that you can fill at the pharmacy. And this is kind of counterbalanced against the, you know, medication is important. Look at the advances that we’ve made with cancer by coming up with, you know, better treatments, etc. But I would even argue that taking somebody who is suffering from cancer and completely isolating them, you know, taking away their friends, their support systems, their animals, and even a window would put them in more of a bad way than they already are. And I think that’s what you’re saying. And you’ve talked about in your work how animal assisted therapy is becoming one of the biggest health care trends. And I don’t think that’s a bad thing. But you also talk about the controversy surrounding it and then you back it up with science. Can you talk about animal assisted therapy for a moment? Because I just find it absolutely fascinating that people wouldn’t respond to this favorably. But I also understand that this is our culture. Everything is good and everything is bad, seemingly at the same time.

Richard Louv: I think it’s more nuanced than that. I think that most people understand that their dog helps them. You know, most people get it at a visceral level. And in terms of organized animal assisted therapy, whether it’s dogs or equine therapy with horses or going outside and connecting with wild animals, no matter what that is. People viscerally understand that. It’s the science is coming now and the science is really interesting. Some of it is controversial, but nobody that has watched a kid with disabilities in an equine therapy or horse therapy, horse assisted therapy setting cannot be not moved. It’s very moving to watch this. One person who works in this field told me that a mother was bringing her child, who is autistic, to the animal assisted therapy sessions, which involved horses. And he would ride horses with a helmet and somebody would lead the horse. And he was, I think, about nine years old and he had not talked ever. And one day when they didn’t go when they were supposed to to the horse therapy, her son walked into the living room and said the word horse, first time she had heard him say a word. So there are moving stories like that. I talk about a woman, another woman who is on the autism spectrum, and she tells quite a moving story about not only how her service dog, whose name is Kobo, helped her, but how she has learned to help Kobo using some of the same techniques that Kobo uses to help her. So often what is occurring is a kind of mutualism is a you know, it’s not one way. I don’t want it to be seen as just what we get out of our relationship with other animals. I promote something in the book called The Reciprocity Principle, which basically holds that for every bit of healing that they give us, that animals, whether they’re domestic or wild animals, give us, we need to give back to them the same. We need to protect them as they protect us.

Gabe Howard: And do you feel that reciprocity is what gives people that boost in mental health? Because you’re not just getting, you know, whether it’s love, companionship from the animal, but you are now responsible for the animals. That gives you a sense of purpose. What the science behind that? Or the, well, what are your thoughts on that?

Richard Louv: Well, I think that’s a really interesting way to put it. I think you’re right. I think, again, it’s not one way. We know a lot. There’s quite a bit of science about animal assisted therapy when it involves domesticated animals where dogs and horses and even goats and other animals. There’s not much known, there’s very little research about what we gain and what we could give regarding wild animals. And I’m sitting here and looking out the window and there’s a deer path goes through my yard. And I can tell you my endorsement spike every time I see deer go by. And as I walk in this neighborhood, we just moved here about a year ago. The deer are responding to me differently. They don’t run away as they stand and watch. And during those moments, it is absolutely impossible to feel alone in the world. One of the issues I deal with in Our Wild Calling is the epidemic of human loneliness. Medical folks, as you know, have been talking about this for about two or three years. They’ve been saying that loneliness, human isolation is about to overtake obesity as a cause of early death, not just because of suicide and that affects that, but because of all the diseases that are associated with loneliness.

Richard Louv: I make the case that, yes, Facebook is part of the problem. Anti-social media is part of problem, that urban design is part of the problem and all of that. But I think that that epidemic of human loneliness is rooted in an even deeper loneliness, which is species loneliness. We are desperate to not feel alone in the world. One of the studies that I find most interesting is of urban parks. And they find that, the study found that, the urban parks that have the best benefit for human psychological health happened to be the urban parks with the highest biodiversity, the highest number of wild animals and plants. Again, I don’t think that’s an accident. We are desperate not to feel alone in the world. And the irony is we are not alone in the world. There is a conversation going on all around us. I call that the intimacy that exists all around us. All we have to do is pay attention.

Gabe Howard: I’m 43 years old, and when I was younger, there were parks and recreation centers all over the place. I could walk to one. And as somebody who suffers from bipolar disorder, I was a very depressed child. I was untreated and my family didn’t know. But I did have these parks. Now, I was an overweight child. And I don’t want to convince anybody that I went on a lot of nature walks. But I did go on some and I was aware that they were there and I did have a place to go. And, you know, this is my childhood in the 80s and now here we are and in 2020. And I don’t have a single recreation center within walking distance from my house. And I live in a neighborhood with children, which means the children in my neighborhood don’t have this. This is a trend that, of course, was created to save money. And because we decided that people didn’t want them. And also, I suppose because we wanted people to pay to join gyms or clubs or golf courses, I guess how do we pull this back? Because, again, even though I didn’t use the parks and recreation centers as much as I could of, I did use them a little bit. And now children don’t have this benefit. Many children don’t have this benefit. What say you to that?

Richard Louv: Well, I talk about cities. I talk about the idea that cities can become engines of biodiversity. They don’t have to be the enemy of nature. And in fact, more and more wild animals are moving into cities, whether we like it or not. And so there’s an opportunity there. This has a lot to do with urban design, with biophilic design. And there’s a lot going on that is of notice is of, is good. There are more and more cities that are creating wildlife corridors through the city so that animals can pass through. And we can have the connection with them. There are more and more urban gardens. There are more and more native plant gardens. People are turning in their backyards into native plants, which of course is what nurtures the food chain because of insects. And then they can bring back bird migration routes. They can bring back bees. They can bring butterfly migration routes. So there’s a lot going on out there people really aren’t aware of. Now, you’re right, the trend has been against. I mean, even in schools, the trend has been toward either dropping or reducing recess in elementary school or some elementary schools are now being built with no playgrounds, let alone a natural playground. On the other hand, there’s a real trend among many schools to create natural play spaces.

Gabe Howard: We’re going to step away and we’ll be right back after these messages from our sponsors.

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Gabe Howard: We’re back discussing the interplay between nature and mental health with author Richard Louv.

Richard Louv: You mentioned bipolar. I want to tell you, I’ll try to keep it short, a story about that. My father, my family and I tell this story in The Nature Principle. Our best times when I was growing up were in nature. They were spent fishing or in the backyard, in the garden or in the woods behind our house where I walked with my father and followed rabbit tracks and all that. That garden was particularly important. I remember following him as he would rototiller the back yard and then I would run around and I would pick up bones and other things and rocks out of the ground. He was happy there and over time we moved to a more affluent neighborhood. He got a better job. We didn’t need to garden anymore, supposedly. And he seldom went outdoors. He was a devoted fisherman. His dream was to retire early and move to Lake of the Ozarks or one of the lakes in the Ozarks. They finally did that, to Table Rock Lake in southern Missouri and got a little house and he finally got his dream. But by then, it was too late. He seldom left the kitchen table. He was probably bipolar and he was an alcoholic on top of that.

Richard Louv: Which produces some of the symptoms of schizophrenia. It was not a pleasant time, from the time I was about eleven on in terms of my dad, I tell that story in The Nature Principle to confess that I have a bias. I have a bias that nature experience is connected to health, to mental health, to physical health. Because of that early experience now, I don’t cherry pick the studies that I cite and almost all of them point the same direction. But I do admit that I have a bias. He did not have a happy ending. And I wonder sometimes what would have happened. And I asked this question, what would have happened if not only psychiatry in the late 50s, early 60s, had included children in the family, included the rest of the family? They did not. And what would have happened if nature therapy had been popularized by then? Could that have helped him? I asked some eco psychologists that question. They say, of course, they can’t tell. They don’t know. But what they, what one said is that we know for certain it would have made life better for you and your mother and your brother.

Gabe Howard: I really like that story and I like what you say there, because there are moments where people are happy and sometimes we don’t give those moments enough do. We don’t pay enough attention to those moments, whether it’s working in the guard and going for a walk, reading a book, making dinner, whether we find happiness in in a mundane task or not. And I know that

Richard Louv: Right. 

Gabe Howard: Especially in America, we really look down on manual labor. As you said, he got a better job. So he didn’t need to have a garden. He didn’t need to work in a garden, even though it was something that made him happy. Do you think that there’s just a bias against gardening or working in nature where people feel that they’re too successful to do it, as you suggested in your story? Is this going on in in droves around America where people just don’t want to do it? Because after all, that’s beneath them or whatever words you want to use, because the average family does not have a garden anymore.

Richard Louv: Well, I don’t think that there’s a bias specifically toward gardening. There’s not a bias specifically toward hiking or anything else that people do outdoors. What has happened is these barriers to that experience have risen. And one of them is affluence. One of them, my father, got a better job. It demanded longer hours. It imbalanced his life and ours. So I don’t think it’s really a bias against that. You’re right about manual labor, but not about those experiences that connect us to the natural world. In fact, there’s quite a resurgence in gardening. And as I mentioned, in native plants in our yards and focusing on that more, that’s part of the good news. There is a lot of good news out there, even though the trends may not look like they’re going in the right way. There’s good news in terms of urban design, biophilic design. There’s good news in terms of an awareness now that nature has something to do with our health, our mental health and our physical health, those experiences. I can tell you that did not exist very much in 2005, not among the general population.

Richard Louv: There was a study done a few years ago called The Nature of Americans that reproduced research that was done about 20 years ago, and they compared how people felt about different aspects of nature. What they found was that families that people, particularly parents. That their awareness that nature experience is connected to health had skyrocketed since 2005. What has not happened is the barriers have not gone down. They’re still there. Now, there are people working very hard to reduce those barriers, particularly for kids, but for all of us. And they’re working on that all over the world. I think China and Brazil that have launched programs to connect kids to nature and therefore their whole families. You mentioned the National League of Cities. We’re working with that organization, which represents 18,000 mayors and other municipal officials to try to help cities become better places to connect families to nature. Schools. There are now nature preschools have taken off is a phenomenon. They’re sometimes called forest schools. There’s an increase of about 500 percent of those just in the last few years. So there’s a lot of good stuff happening.

Gabe Howard: Richard, thank you so much for being on the show. Do you have any last words for people who want to get out in nature more? But as you mentioned, the barriers are just too much. How can they overcome them?

Richard Louv: Well, one is to be careful how you define nature. It doesn’t have to be Yosemite. It can be in an urban neighborhood. You know, there was a program a few years ago that the Sierra Club had.  What they do is go into urban neighborhoods. They put backpacks on kids and go for a five mile walk in their neighborhood and they would look for nature. They’d always find it. Sometimes in the cracks between the sidewalks, sometimes in the alleyways. If you change your perspective of what nature is, you’ll find it. The second thing is conservation is no longer enough. Now we have to have to create nature to maintain or bring back the kind of biodiversity we need. In the act of creating urban gardens, in the act of planting trees in cities, children and their parents reconnect to nature and they feel really a lot better about themselves, about where they live. All of that. But finally, I would say, you know, in addition to seeking out information on how to do that, because it doesn’t come naturally to the new generation of parents, or at least many of them, because many, most of them did not have much experience when they were kids in nature as I did. So, it doesn’t necessarily come that naturally. And they don’t even know where to start sometimes when they want that.

Richard Louv: But it’s possible, particularly if you band together with other families. People are starting Family Nature clubs. Family Nature Club in San Diego now has about, I believe about 3,000 families as members of it. And that’s a pool of families you can dip into and find out if somebody wants to go take a hike, multiple families next Saturday. That deals with the fear of strangers. That deals with the sense that we don’t know how to do this, but other parents do. So there’s all kinds of ways to do it. But it has to be a conscious act. We put sports on the calendar. We should put nature there, too. And finally, and this is the primary lesson, I think, of Our Wild Calling, is to recognize that there is intimacy all around us. There is connection all around us. But to find that, to hear that conversation, you have to pay attention. And that’s why, you know, as we’re talking, a row of wild turkeys just walked by my house. And I pay attention to that. I think about what they’re doing. I think about what they’re feeling. Empathy is the greatest way, I think, to take us out of ourselves.

Gabe Howard: Richard, I love that. Thank you so much for being here. Where can folks find you on the Internet?

Richard Louv: Well, I have a Web site, RichardLouv.com. And that’s L O U V is the last name, but also the Children & Nature Network, which is ChildrenAndNature.org. And of course, Amazon, you can find me there, obviously.

Gabe Howard: Thank you, Richard, for being here and thank you to our listeners for tuning in. Wherever you downloaded this podcast, please rate, rank and subscribe. We would really appreciate that. Share us on social media and use your words in the description and tell folks why you like the show and why you listen. Finally, remember, you can get one week of free, convenient, affordable, private online counseling anytime, anywhere, simply by visiting  BetterHelp.com/PsychCentral. We will see everybody next week.

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