Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - We Know Nature Is Good for Us. Here’s How To Make Time for It, Scandinavian Style | Linda Åkeson McGurk

Episode Date: August 28, 2023

Today’s guest is Linda Åkeson McGurk, a Swedish American writer and author of There’s No Such Thing As Bad Weather: A Scandinavian Mom’s Secrets for Raising Healthy, Resilient, and Confident Kids. Her latest book is called The Open-Air Life: Discover the Nordic Art of Friluftsliv and Embrace Nature Every Day. She is the founder of the blog Rain or Shine Mamma, a resource for parents and other caregivers.In this episode we talk about:Why humans are so drawn to nature and what the many scientific benefits areThe historical roots of friluftsliv in Nordic countriesWhy we should go outside even when the weather sucksWhy we should go camping The benefits of cold plungesThe benefits of silenceThe danger of seeing ourselves as separate from natureAnd why she believes appreciation of nature and meditation are complimentaryFull Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/tph/podcast-episode/linda-akeson-mcgurkTheMightyFix.com/HAPPIEROther Resources Mentioned:Wim HofAdditional Resources:Download the Ten Percent Happier app today: https://10percenthappier.app.link/installSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hello, everybody. If you want to get happier, get out in nature. That is one of the blazingly obvious pieces of advice we hear all the time. I'm guilty of this in fact. You may have heard me talk about my pantheon of no brainers, the simple things everybody can do to boost their health and their happiness, including sleep, meditation, exercise, healthy eating, etc. I usually have nature

right there on the list. We know it can improve your mood, induce awe, help you sleep, and much more. But how helpful is the advice, really, if it becomes the kind of thing that you know you should do, but you don't actually have the time to do it. So it just ends up making you feel less happy every time you hear it. Today, we're going to get some very practical and to be a little cute down to earth advice with a Scandinavian twist. We haven't covered all of the Scandinavian approaches to happiness that much on this show. I consider that to be a little bit of an oversight on my part. You may have heard of some of the Scandinavian happiness concepts such as Kuga, which is

all about the joy we can derive from being in cozy and convivial indoor atmospheres. Today, we're going to talk about the flip side of the coin, which is called free-liftsleeve, which is harder to pronounce than it is to understand. I promise you, basically, it's all about the joy of what's called the open air life of being outside. My guest today has made a whole career of giving people practical strategies

for boosting well-being via nature. Her name is Linda Ocasin-Megurk and she's a Swedish American writer. Her first book was called There's No Such Thing as Bad Weather, a Scandinavian mom's secret for raising healthy, resilient, and confident children. Now she's got a book for everybody, parents or not. It's called The Open Air Life, Discover the Nordic Art of Freellifts leave and embrace nature every day. In this conversation, we talk about why humans are so drawn to nature and what the many scientific benefits are, the historic roots of free-lifts leave in Nordic countries.

Why we should go outside even when the weather sucks? Why we should go camping, which I find her on, the benefits of cold plunges, the benefits of silence, the danger of seeing ourselves as separate from nature, and why she believes appreciation of nature and meditation are complementary. Have you been considering starting or restarting your meditation practice? Well in the words of highway-build boards across America, if you're looking for a sign, this is it. To help you get started,

we're offering subscriptions at a 40% discount until September 3rd. Of course, nothing is permanent. So get this deal before it ends by going to 10% dot com slash 40. That's 10% one word all spelled out. dot com slash 40 for 40% off your subscription. Linda Ocason McGurk, welcome to the show. Thank you so much. Excited to be here. I'm still suspecting that I kind of mangled your name. Say it correctly, just so everybody hears it correctly. Okay, so it's Ocason, it's Swedish.

Ocason. Ocason, yeah. Okay, all right, I think I'm like, you know, 60% of the way there, but it's a beautiful name. Sorry, I'm messing it up. More importantly, I'm really happy to have you on the show and I'm excited to talk about another word that I will mangle. I think it's free luths leave. Am I close on that one? Yeah, almost, almost. I would go with free luths sleeve. so you can hear the F in there too. So it's free Luftsliv. Free Luftsliv. Yes, a nice rolling of the R there too.

Thank you. At least I've done something right this morning in this interview. Can you describe or define please free Luftsliv? Yes, so this word is, I would say, not very well known in the US, at least not yet. I'm hoping my book might change that, but like another Scandinavian word, who get, which you might have heard of? Yes, that is just for the uninitiated spelled, H-Y-G-G-E, and has been the subject

of at least one massively best-selling book. Yes, there's probably like 20 on the topic at least. And so who gets kind of co-ziness roughly translated? And I would say that feed of sleeve in very simple terms is like the outdoorsy cousin of who get. It's sort of all the things that we do outside before we come home and cozy up in front of the fireplace with our wool socks on and hot cocoa. So it's basically spending time outside and the cultural and natural landscape partly for personal wellness, but also to just experience nature without any pressure to achieve or compete. It's typically non-motorized, it's non-competitive, it's usually very simple, slow activities that you can do with few means and doesn't necessitate a lot of money.

And it's simplest forms, it can be as simple as going for a walk around the neighborhood. And in fact, I think that's the most common form of freedom of sleep. But it can also be like riding a bike or foraging, camping, kayaking, ice skating, cold swimming, cooking over an open fire, learning survival skills, all kinds of activities, but it's really not so much about the activities as it is about connecting with nature in simple ways and most of the time is you're nearby nature so the nature that's accessible to you on a regular basis so it's this sort of culturally learned rhythm and it's also something that's passed down from one generation to the next. It's a lifestyle source. And it's something that, you know, if you grow up in the Nordic countries, it's just something

that you're raised in. It's a culture that you're raised in. And the primary goal, like I said, part of it is wellness, but it's also to feel joy because people feel a genuine joy out there. And it actually goes back to the 1850s. And from the beginning, it was a reaction against industrialization and urbanization, you know, you think, 1850s. That was 170 years ago, like even back then,

people were starting to realize that they needed to get away from the noise and the crowds and the pollution that the factories were causing in the cities and they loosely became that way to sort of reconnect with the countryside that so many people had left behind to seek work in the city. So people started to go for excursions to the countryside and just sort of enjoy the fresh air. It started in the upper classes actually because they were the ones who were the most separated from nature and from the manual labor in the fields. So they had to sort of create

this to reconnect. They had to reinvent it for themselves. So Flavius leave became that way to reconnect. And then the government actually caught on to this as well. And in the beginning of the 20th century, and especially sort of in the 1930s, when people are starting to get a little more time off than the working class started discovering Felicity as well. And the government supported it because they realized the benefits early

on long before there were any studies on the health benefits of nature. So they started creating parks and green spaces where people could go outside and reconnect with nature. So it's been sort of evolving since the 1850s. And there's also a conservation aspect of it. So the idea being that if people are connected with nature, then we will also act to protect it. So from the beginning, it was about creating national parks and other green spaces for preservation. And then it moved more to conservation.

And today, we talk about climate change and we know that it's not enough to just preserve certain wilderness areas and parks, but we also, the politics, and I also have to come with it to protect against global climate change. So those two have kind of gone and in lockstep from the early days. And as I understand it, free looks leave means fresh air living? Yes, so open air living is what I translated to in my book. But literally yes, it literally means free air living.

Open air living is a little more loosely translated. You could say that the main point is to spend as much time as possible outside. And who got my pronouncing that right? Well, that's Danish. So that's a little out of my expertise and some Swedish, but I would pronounce it Huga. Huga.

I love that. OK, well, but let's go with Huga. Huga is what you do after you've done the free lift sleeve. And I love that Huga is what has caught on in America, because we don't want to do the work part. We love the chilling lift sleeve. And I love that who guys is what is caught on in America because we don't want to do the work part. We love the chilling part afterwards. Right, right. That's a good point because a field of sleeve dust

involved challenging yourself in certain ways too. Physically, since it's non-motorized, it's about getting places with your feet or like paddling. So that's an important part of it as well. To feel that contrast, to feel that you've worked for something, it's viewed as a way to instill resilience, which is part of the reason why the military, actually, the defense department supported it when I was just

starting to catch on. They were quick to embrace it because they saw the value in a fit population, of course, for defense reasons. And it's been taught in schools too, it's been a part of the curriculum for students as well, for well over 100 years here, because it is seen as a good way to strengthen yourself physically and mentally. So it sort of covers all those bases, really. Why is this of such urgent interest to you? Um, I think it really hit home for me when I moved to the US and I had children there and I realized that they were going to have a very different childhood from the one I'd had growing up here. I noticed that people

just weren't outside almost at all in the wintertime where I lived. And I just thought it was a shame because I didn't want my children to miss out on a good, you know, six months of the year just because the weather wasn't agreeable. Because that's another important part of Felicity of this, that we do this on a more less daily basis, regardless of the weather. So that's where the saying, there's no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing comes in, which is frequently used over here, especially with children who don't want to go outside. So I realized that they weren't going to get that, and that a lot of people were just

sort of hibernating and saw it as, I have normal almost to be outside. So I stuck out, like I would take my kids out in the freezing weather and I was told, even by health professionals, that it was dangerous and some people thought I was brave for being out there. Oh, there's probably just thought I was crazy, but I thought I was just doing what I had done or what my parents had done with me when I was little. And I thought I was just doing what everybody was. So that's kind of when it dawned on me that this freedom-sleeved culture wasn't really a thing,

probably outside of the Nordic countries, or at least not in Indiana, where I lived at the time. And that's when I kind of embarked on this mission to sort of inspire and educate. I started a blog, I wrote my first book. There's no such thing as bad weather. And it just started advocating and speaking about the importance for children to be outside all year round. But it's not just for kids. It's important for us adults too. Once again, I come back to that environmental part of it. And that is that if we are just inside

and we're not experiencing the seasonal changes outside and we're becoming alienated from nature, then who's gonna be there to protect nature when climate change is happening and all sorts of other environmental challenges and pollution. So from childhood and up, we need to know how the ecosystem works, and how we're so intimately connected, all of us. And that's another important difference, I think.

I feel like in the Nordic countries, I think we view humans more as part of nature where in the US, we tend to have more of an other perspective, that we've viewed nature as something separate from ourselves. And I think there's a danger in that point of view, where you just see nature as something to extract resources from, then you don't realize that without nature there are no humans either. Nature could go on without us, but we obviously were nothing without nature. So it's crucial that we reconnect with nature, with a wild. And not just with the wild places. This is something that I talk about a

lot too. I think nearby nature is sort of undervalued and I feel like when we think of nature we often think of those really wild places you know out west the national parks where you might take a road trip once a year whereas we really need to be looking at the places where we live the cities and the industrialized world that's where almost 80% of us live now. And we really need our cities to be walkable and green. That's where you got to start, because that's the nature that's accessible to us now. And even if you live in a city like New York, there are those pockets of green where you can go for recuperation and restoration.

Those are so important. So I think city planners have a real responsibility here. And local governments too, where you can create those spaces where people can really go to boost their mental health because it's one of the cheapest forms of preventive health care there is, really. Just like meditation, Fuyu Sleeve has a lot of the same health benefits. They actually overlap a lot. You can get that sort of relaxation from stress and prevention of anxiety and depression and stress reduction. And also like physical responses that are

measurable when you're outside. Your cortisol levels go down which you know cortisol is a stress marker and blood pressure goes down you know and all these are measurable effects of being out there in green spaces. Actually that was where I was gonna go, which is to what the benefits are. You said a little bit there. Can you say a little bit more about why we should take you seriously and operationalize this advice? Yeah. So there's a range of physical benefits. I mentioned a few already. Another one is vitamin D, for example. We've gotten used to being very scared of the sun now.

And of course, we should have respect for the sun because of the cancer risk. But we must not forget that we also really need the sun for vitamin D production, which vitamin D is key to our immune system and just a host of other processes in the body. There is, like I said, the effect on the cortisol levels and stress reduction.

Thelus leave is by nature. I mean, physical activity is sort of built into it. I mean, you don't have to be physically active every time you're outside. If it's really hot out there, like lying in a hammock can be open air life too. But a lot of times it does involve physical activity and that's known to have a huge effect on our health.

Even some forms of cancer and heart disease. I mean, look at any of the big lifestyle diseases today and physical activity has a positive effect on that. So essentially, any of those effects from physical activities you can get through open air life. And it doesn't have to be that you're out running marathons either. Like I said earlier, philous philous philous is non-competitive. So just a brisk walk a few times a week.

That alone can reduce your risk of serious disease. And then the mental benefits. Like I said, stress reduction and there's also a known link between nature exposure and the less risk of anxiety and depression. And so for example here in Sweden, nature, therapy and freedom of sleep are commonly used by the public health system actually to treat people who have been burnt out. Some from work, some from just emotional events like in their personal lives, but a lot of it work-related.

And there are these programs. They can last for a couple of months. And the participants, they get to come and be outside create things like making nature crafts going for walks and the forest they plant things they have like little gardens and then when they've evaluated these programs they've found that they've actually been more effective at getting people back to work than the traditional methods, which has been just like sick leave and therapy. And this is people who have been on sick leave for a long time, some of them for several years. And it's quite amazing to see the transformation

that they've gone through. It started out as just a few pilot programs, a few decades ago, and now these programs are everywhere, so they've kind of been incorporated into the public health system, which is pretty cool. Indeed. I think another benefit is sleep. Yes, yes. Daylight is, of course, really important to our circadian rhythms, all living beings sort of run on these 24-hour cycles called circadian rhythms. And when we're indoors, which most of us are a lot these days, in just being exposed to this artificial light, that sort of disrupts our natural circadian rhythms. So these are our natural timing devices, and they affect so many things in our bodies,

like our hormone levels, eating habits, our body temperature even, and also our feelings of alertness or sleepiness. So when we're outside, and we're exposed to this natural daylight that regulates our circadian rhythms. And studies have shown that if you go out camping, even just for a couple of nights,

that can reset your circadian rhythms and that effect can actually last for several weeks. And it's pretty interesting here at these latitudes, I'm approximately at the same latitude as Alaska here in Sweden. So right now we have about 18 hours of daylight compared with six hours in the winter time and it's amazing. I can feel how it really affects my energy levels and those contrasts are pretty extreme and it's not unusual for me to wake up at 4.30 in the morning

and just get up and start my day, actually. I wouldn't say I have three times the energy that I do in the winter time, but I do have a lot more energy in the summer than in the winter time. And of course, the other way around in the winter, we know that a lot of people here struggle with seasonal effective disorder, which has been tied to our circadian rhythms too, because when there's so little daylight

that can really affect how we feel mentally to a lot of people struggle with filling down and just filling blue, it's a big issue here in the winter time, actually. So that makes it even more important to actually do get out in the wintertime. I always try to get out during my lunch break or in the middle of the day, sometime, morning light is the best according to research. But here, daylight is so scarce that I try to get out whenever the light is the strongest, just to get that little dose. And I think it makes a huge difference in energy levels, even if you're just out for like half an hour, I can tell my productivity goes up in the afternoon immensely when I do that. So that's why it's just as important, if not more important to get

outside in the wintertime. I know a lot of people are uncomfortable with a cold, but I really do try to inspire people to do it anyway because you're never regret a walk, just like you never regret a cold plunge. You always feel better afterwards, even if you have to make yourself do it. It is uncomfortable at first, but once you've done it, you don't regret it, and you feel so much better afterwards. So sometimes you just have to use that as your motivation. You think

about the way you're going to feel, and then that becomes your inner motivation. That inner motivation is so important. That's the motor that makes it happen. Are there right ways and wrong ways to do this open-air living? Do's and don'ts? No. I always encourage people to start where they are and use what they have and do what they can paraphrasing the Arthur Ashe, the tennis player. Some people might feel like, well, I can't do this. I live in the city, there's traffic, and there are some obstacles. I think the key here really is to try and hone in on those spaces that you do have. And then I would also encourage people to really try to unplug while their outdoors. Screens can become a distraction when you're out there, but they can also

enhance the experience if you're taking photos, for example, of flowers or whatever it might be. So I'm not going to say, you know, don't take your cell phone. Cell phones are actually a great thing to have when you're out there, especially if you're out hiking somewhere, you know, that's your first survival tool right there is your phone, but don't make it too complicated. I would say do what's accessible to you on a regular basis, get the low hanging fruit for starters, just to make a habit of it. And then you can go after those wilder places. I you can go after those wilder places. I think we all need those wilder places to feel that sense of awe. We need to get to the places where we can really get away from it all,

all the man-made stuff. But like I said, just start at home, start where you are and take it from there. The most important part is to build a habit, build a rhythm. Like I said, just start at home, start where you are and take it from there. The most important part is to build a habit, build a rhythm. It can be life transforming. I've heard it so many times from people who have read my books that it's been really a life changer once they started making

nature a part of their everyday lives. I've done some of this because my family moved to the suburbs during the pandemic, although as I'm listening to you talk, because I'm in such a Western productivity mode, I often think of getting outside as like another thing to do on my checklist. And often I'm multitasking, meaning, okay, if I go outside, I'm going to do a few of my calls outside or I'm going to work outside. Sometimes I am not multitasking, sometimes I'll meditate outside. When I go running, I'll listen to music. So I'm wondering

if all of those that I just listed fall under doing open air living incorrectly? No, I don't think so. I think there needs to be a balance. If those things help you get outside, then that's a good thing. I would challenge you to not use your phone at least sometimes, part of the time, just because it is a different experience, because your phone tends to create a bit of a barrier. So I think it's just different types of recreation really. I think you do get closer to nature if you're not on a call or if you're not listening to an

audio book, but I would never tell anybody to never do that. I mean, when you look at what you're describing here, you're taking a call outside. Actually, I think that's a great way to get outside. If one of your obstacles to getting outside is a lack of time, and I know that's a common obstacle for a lot of people, then I think that's a great way of making sure that you actually get outside. If nothing else, you get the physical activity. Yeah, so maybe you're not going to appreciate the bird song while you're on a conference

call while you're walking, but you're at least going to get the physical activity and the fresh air and the daylight. Those benefits remain. And here in Sweden is actually quite a common practice to go on walk and talk meetings during the work day. I mean, we even have the term walk and talk meeting. And a lot of companies actually do it because they recognize that as beneficial to the workers productivity and focus, just because it has other benefits

than sitting in a conference room. It's just a different setting where you can have a conversation with people in a more democratic fashion or it's just a creates a different dynamic when you're out walking side by side rather than sitting, facing each other in a conference room. So walk-in talk meetings are a way, you can see it as a way of incorporating open-air life into your work day. So that's one form of free-list sleep. So there are many different forms.

And same with, because I'm listening to an audiobook, but I would also challenge you to dare being in your own thoughts. And I suppose that's where meditation comes in a little bit too. There's a lot of overlap between meditation and where both are done for mental health benefits. They are relaxing and they offer a way to feel a part of something greater than yourself. So to actually marry the two and meditate while you're outside, I think it's fantastic. I'll go for some brownie points here and say that I read your book before coming on the podcast here and I felt inspired by it, especially the part where you talk about the silent retreat that you went on.

And I had already planned a three-day hike, a solo hike, so I decided, well, I'm going to do two of those days in silence and see how that goes. So I set out on this hike and it was very interesting. I had to modify it a little bit. I met some people on the trail and I felt like I kind of had to say hello or they would think I was a complete a-hole. So I wasn't a hundred percent silent. But overall I put my phone and airplane mode and I told all my friends and family that I wasn't going to be reachable for a couple of days and I found it very rewarding and it was a way for me to take

Freeliss leave to another level. I'm not usually a meditator so to me it was a new challenge that I found very interesting. I don't see a problem with combining the two. I actually think that they are very complimentary. Yeah, I think that probably the most free-lift sleeve thing that I do is take a walk on plug and just try to be mindful of what walking meaning. I tune into the raw data of my senses, the feeling of my body moving, air and my skin, sounds in the environment. And then every time I get distracted, I start again and again and again. And that is just walking meditation,

informal walking meditation. So I think that very much fits into what you're describing. It's some of the other true multitasking that it sounds like it's not bad, but it's maybe not all the way there. Right, right. Yeah, I think they're complementary, but definitely try to get some of that pure fetus-leave-in as well. To me, it's been immensely valuable over the years. I mean, you talk about your own sort of burnout in your book and I've been sort of on the verge two in a toxic work situation where I was starting to have like little blackouts

that really sort of scared me. I was in a bad situation work-wise and it was causing a lot of stress. and it was causing a lot of stress. I was at the same time going through a divorce, and I decided that I had to refocus and I decided to do more of what I was already doing. So more time outside, more time in the woods, and it helped me. Like when I'm outside, the only way I can describe it that seems fitting is that when I'm in the woods, I immediately feel like there's

no place I'd rather be and there's nothing that's more important at that very moment than to just be there and be in the present moment. That's the one of the few times when I'm actually able to completely shake off everything that has to do with work, just let go of that stress. It just has that immediate effect on me. And obviously a lot of other people too. I mean, it is a proven method for reducing anxiety and depression. So definitely helpful on so many levels. One of the things that the Free Lifts Leave literature does is that it puts nature on a spectrum. So essentially the wilder space is the more restorative it will be. And, you know, so you have the entire spectrum from the very wild places to a city where you have birds, for example, they live

everywhere. You have trees in the city. You know, nature can be anything in between that. Weather is also a form of nature or rain falling on our forehead, the wind blowing through our hair. So once you start thinking of nature as something that's all around us, then I think it helps shift your mindset a little bit and you start to really notice nature in your everyday life. That brings me back to what I was talking about earlier with the parks and how that space can really play into open air life in the US and in modern cities. So there was a Swedish researcher who studied the correlation between park space and people's health. So what they found was that people who live closer

to green spaces, they were in better health, both physically and mentally. So the farther away from a green space that people lived, the more stressed they were. They also had higher body mass index and they were just less satisfied with their home and their neighborhoods. But they wanted to dig deeper because they wanted to know, well, what else is there a magical distance to a green space? And they found that about a thousand feet, that's the distance of where it becomes a daily habit. If you live more than a thousand feet from a green space, then it becomes like a weekend thing. If it's less than a thousand feet, then it's more,

you're more likely to use it on a regular basis. So that was part of the study. And then another part of it was that they looked at different characteristics of the parks. So they tried to figure out what about the park space was it that people enjoyed. So it could be, for example, open space or more secluded areas or how biodiverse the parks were and how serene they were, noise level and so forth. And they found that the participants in the study that they rated serenity and space and having a lot of natural elements the highest. So those were the most sort of relaxing features.

So the conclusion of all this is that if we can create more spaces like that in our cities, that can be used as a place for people to improve their health. And you know, in the long run, it's so much more cost-effective than having people get sick and then treat the symptoms and treat the disease than to actually prevent the disease in the first place. Coming up, Linda talks about what cold plunging is and why it's so popular right now, whether there's actually proof that it's good for you, and why nature shows like Bird Radio and Moose TV became huge hits in Sweden during the pandemic.

There's something you've mentioned a couple times that I would love to hear more about, which is cold plunging. That sound terrible. We've talked about it a few times on the show. Can you describe what it is and what the benefits are and how we could do it if we're that brave? Yeah, I thought it sounded awful, too, until I got hooked. Cold plunging is basically swimming all year round, even in the wintertime.

You cut a hole in the ice. If it's that cold, you know, you cut a hole in the ice and you go down and take a plunge. Sometimes there's a sauna involved but not necessarily. If you're a really hardcore, you don't use a sauna. You just go straight for the plunge and then up. And of course, it's a form of cold water therapy and there's really nothing new here. That's been around a lot longer than sweet asleep. Already the old Greeks used cold water therapy and they was believed to treat a host of diseases. Some of that hasn't been proven, but it gives you a bit of a shock to the system. And it sort of triggers the nori-genoline production, which makes us more resilient to stress. So it triggers a little stress reaction in the body, which sounds counterintuitive.

But you can compare it to a vaccination, for example, where your body gets a shot of a deactivated virus to start its own production of antibodies. And the cold plant works similarly in that it boosts the immune system. It triggers the immune system, puts it in high alert. There hasn't been a lot of studies on it, but the studies that have been done have been very promising. They've seen a reduced risk of airway infection, for example, which is also a bit counterintuitive. I think all mothers at some point

have told their kids, don't go outside without a hat on in the wetter time or don't go out with wet hair or because we think of us getting cold can cause us to develop infections but in fact the opposite seems to be true here with a cold plunge that we can actually strengthen our immune system by submerging ourselves in cold water. But I would say the reason why most people here do it is it boosts your general feeling of wellness. And I know people who've done it to treat depression and burn out as well stress.

It increases circulation. It's had some effect on fatigue and pain. I have a neighbor who has arthritis and she uses it to help soothe those symptoms. So, yeah, once again, lots of physical and mental benefits. So I started doing it a few years ago too and yeah, I enjoy it as strange as it might sound. As once again, it's like you just have to push yourself through the initial shock and once you're over that, then it's a pretty cool thing. And it really had a moment during the pandemic when people were looking for all sorts of ways of entertaining themselves without seeing other people

and preferably outdoors. It really caused a bit of a cold plunge craze, even here where a lot of people were already doing it. But now it's really quite common. And another one of those nature-based interventions that have proven more effective than pharmaceuticals even, according to some studies, least when it comes to like milder forms of depression.

Definitely worth trying because it doesn't have any side effects, so, you know, why not? Only thing is, if you have any history of heart issues, then talk to your physician, just throw that in there. What do you do if you live in an apartment in the city and you don't have ice, you can cut up hole in the backyard because you don't have a backyard? Yeah, that one is a little trickier in the city, but if you look at Finland, for example, and even here, I mean, in Stockholm,

it can definitely be done in the city too. That's not to say that it is done in the US today in cities, but here, there are places in the city where you can actually go swim. It's like a social thing where the city even provides little changing rooms and they might even cut up the hole for you and there's like a little ladder and you can do your plunge. So it can be done in the city too. It's just a matter of culture, I think. This may not count as open air living, but you could put a bunch of ice in the tub or just stand in

the shower under cold water. Yeah, exactly. You can get a similar effect. And I think that's what Iceman, Wim Hof, I think he's got a pretty large following in the US. And I know that his followers would do that. They would start the day by taking a cold shower for a few minutes, but obviously it's inside, so it wouldn't really count as open air living, but if it works for you, hey, go with it. We haven't had Wim Hof on the show, but we'll put a link to his website

if people want to learn more about him and Wim if you're listening, you're invited. But I want to keep trucking through this list of suggestions you have for people to operationalize, open or living into their own lives. You also talk about something called bird radio and moose TV. What does that mean? So yeah, I talk about that in my book as an example of showing how people here enjoy connecting with nature even when they can't physically go outside. So these are some nature shows that have become immensely popular.

One of them is called a Night of Bird Song and it's essentially a celebration of the migratory birds that come back every spring. It's a radio show and hundreds of thousands of people tune into this show every spring. It's a radio show and you know hundreds of thousands of people tune into this show every year. It runs through the night and it's quite amazing. I think I write in my book that it has more listeners you know in proportion to the population than both the Oscars and the Emmy Awards and it's just an example of how you can connect with nature even when you're inside. The whole point of the show is just to listen to different types of birds that have returned

from migration. And then there's the moose TV that's another show that tracks this herd of moose. That just became a huge hit during the pandemic. and I don't think that was coincidence because a lot of people were working from home Feeling a bit isolated and just looking for something To connect them with the outer world and a lot of people have this most show on the background as they were Working and it's just most of the time nothing happens at all. There's just this background of all you see is like pine forest. There's like absolutely nothing going on. But then eventually if you're like lucky enough, yeah, you might see a bird or even of course a highlight then

would be a moose walking by the camera. And that show too was just immensely popular. I mean, it would probably, yeah, like, viewer wise, it would probably compete with some of the most popular programs on air. Just an example of how you can connect with nature when you're not outside. Coming up Linda talks about why she thinks it's a shame that we don't go outside when the weather sucks. She makes an impassioned case for going camping, which is not a case that I receive all that well.

And she lays out some of the theories about why humans are so drawn to and so deeply in need of nature. I really like the expression about, there's no bad weather, only bad clothing, which I only started to learn in the past couple of years when we moved out of the city and my wife actually got my son and I snow pants and other gear that allowed us to go outside no matter what was going on. You argue that we should make the affirmative decision to take walks in the rain. Can you say more about that? Yes.

And I talked a little bit about this earlier, but I think it's a shame to shy away from whether that we find unpleasant because we're missing out on a unique experience and a way to experience nature, not just from this best side, but also when it's a little more challenging out there because nature obviously behaves differently during different types of weather. So when that rains outside,

you can discover things that you wouldn't see otherwise. And when it rains, the air is cleaner. Petricore, for example, that's when the raindrops hit like dry earth, bacteria are released from the ground. And that creates a very specific scent. If you know, you know, like if you've experienced it, you know what I mean. And there are just so many different sensory dimensions of experiencing different types of weather. And I just think it would be a shame to miss out on all that. I think in the Nordic countries, I suppose we've kind of made

a virtue out of necessity, because it rains here so much that we've just told ourselves, like we just got to take it till you make it, but you know, we can't just sit inside. Let's talk about camping because I think there's probably a non-trivial percentage of the audience that is thinking there's no fucking way I'm going camping. My parents were recovering hippies. They had the come of age in the 60s and then had children in the 70s

and they would force us to go on these long camping hiking trips in Maine and Colorado and I hated it. I was actually having lunch with my mom yesterday and she was telling the story that she always tells which is that Daniel used to say this thing every time we went hiking which is, there are only two things I don't like about hiking going up and going down which apparently was the thing that I said when I was little.

So I have done some camping as I've grown up, but that's actually always been in a professional context. I've done a lot of wildlife reporting around the world. My parents think it's hilarious that I've been all over Africa, Asia and South America, sleeping outdoors, even though I would never do that voluntarily in my personal life. So having given all of this preamble here, why should we take seriously this notion of camping,

which can be so uncomfortable? I think partly because it is an opportunity to really get away from it all, to get away from the noise, the crowds, the traffic, and to really experience a wilder place. I think there's no better way to sort of reconnect with the way we used to live. It is a way to live simply, which is becoming a lost art almost. But because to go camping, you need to know some simple survival skills. Like you need to make your food under certain simple circumstances,

and you need to know how to make fire. Like everything just boils down to the very basic nuts and bolts of just being and just surviving in nature. So to me personally, and I love camping, but if I were to try and convince somebody, I would say that it can really grow your self-esteem and self-confidence to know that you can do these things, that you can survive out there. To me, it's been very empowering. I've gone camping alone with my children a lot and to build those skills. I mean, that didn't happen overnight. My parents took me camping too when I was little, but then years went by without me doing any of it.

And then when I had children myself, I realized that I want them to know this stuff as well. So that kind of pushed me to learn and just do it. And it brought a lot of new experiences and skills that I wouldn't otherwise have known. I think in this day and age with the world being, I mean, this may sound like overly dramatic, but I think it's important to have survival skills. Like we're close enough to Russia here on Sweden that, I mean, we can clearly feel that threat. here on Sweden that I mean we can clearly feel that threat and even if we're not affected by the war, we are reminded by our government repeatedly that we need to be prepared for whatever it

is. Maybe it's a cyber attack or a natural disaster which are you know becoming more and more commonplace, then you need to be prepared for that. And you need to know how to take care of your basic needs. The government might not be able to come to your assistance immediately. So I think that component is very important. It's not something that I think about when I'm out camping, but it's something that's sort of at the back of my head that I need to have these skills and I need to pass them on to my children.

I want them to be able to handle a knife and to know how to build a fire, to know how to survive in the wild, to find shelter, to navigate. That might sound extreme, but really those are basic skills that are for bears all used to have, but we have lost them, it's become a lost art. And I think there's a lot of value to keeping them alive, even if we now live in cities and we feel like we don't need them. But then I also think that camping just gives us a unique opportunity to connect not just with nature but also with ourselves and our families because you remove all the distractions and you just have the basics left.

You've got to work as a team. You can't just do your own thing out there. You have to cooperate to survive and it's a great thing to do over the generations. It's a wonderful way to bond as a family and to get away from technology. Back in the 1850s, when Thelous leave was first developed, people didn't have smartphones. Well, today I think that's, sometimes I feel like that's what we need to get away from the most. It's just become such an ingrained part of our lives.

And I think there's definitely a need to just turn off all the notifications and dare to be in the silence. As we near the end here, you talk about some theories for why we need green. Can you just say a little bit more about why being outside is not just like a nice to have. It's actually we evolved to need it. Yeah, there are a few theories and hypotheses on this. I don't think they're mutually exclusive. I think they actually overlap and compliment each other. The most commonly referred to hypothesis is the biofilia hypothesis which holds that we have this sort of

innate need for the environments that have met our basic needs in the past. So basically green spaces and our blue spaces which have provided us with food and water. And to me that makes a lot of sense. I really think that that explains a lot. We cannot survive without nature. And then there's another theory called the attention restoration theory or ART. And according to this theory, nature is free from distractions. So it evokes this sort of effortless attention, and that makes it very restorative. It replenishes our energy instead of stealing it, because our daily lives that are full of these complex tasks,

like driving through busy traffic or solving complex problems that work, that takes a lot of directed attention and nature provides sort of the opposite of that. And then there's also psycho-evolutionary theory, which is a little bit of both, and is related to bioethylia. It was made famous by Roger Ulrich, who made this famous hospital study where he showed that just having a window with a view when you were in a hospital could actually help patients recover faster from surgery and reduce their need for medication. And I think that really says something about how powerful our connection with nature is

that just looking at scenes in nature can be physically and mentally healing. And then, you know, to some extent, there's also a cultural aspect of this too, so that we gravitate towards environments that we've grown up in, and that where we've had positive memories, which also makes a lot of sense. If you've grown up, well maybe not if you grew, if you didn't like camping, like you were saying that could turn you against nature, but a lot of people have positive memories from their childhoods. Like my grandparents took me out in the forest a lot and I've basically spent my whole childhood playing in the forest and swimming in

the lakes here and that means I've really learned to appreciate that biome and so when I'm in that biome, I immediately feel like home So I can feel at home and in just about any pine forest in the world Because that's where I grew up and I have a lot of positive memories with people that were close to me growing up And of course the opposite can be true too. Like people who grew up in countries where nature is not necessarily associated with something positive. I mean, there are places on this earth

where natural areas can be associated with gorillas or you might risk getting robbed or raped in the forest. Then of course, you're going to have a certain fear. And we see that here with some immigrants that come to Sweden, they don't necessarily have that idealized and romanticized view of nature that we do here because we've grown up in this peaceful country. So that can really affect your view of nature. But I think that's a learned behavior.

The default really is that we have this innate bond with nature and I think it's human actions that can turn people away from nature. There's also another theory that holds that one of the reasons that why we become calm and relaxed in nature is that it triggers the production of oxytocin in the body. It's the love hormone. So just like when we're with loved ones, it's the same type of hormone can be triggered. Well, we're in in nature and that can help us develop almost like a friendship with nature. That's a nice place to leave it a friendship with nature.

Before I let you go, can you just remind everybody of the names of your books and anything else? You're a website or social media anything else you're putting out that you might want people to know about Yeah, my first book is there's no such thing as bad weather and my other book is the open air life and People can find me on the web rain or shine mama.com And that's mama with two ends me on the web, reinershinemama.com. And that's mama with two ends. Also on social media, the handle is reinershinemama, Instagram and Facebook mostly. Linda, thank you so much for coming on. This was great. I learned a lot. Thank you. I really appreciate you having me on. Thanks again to Linda, Ocasin McGururk and thanks to you for listening seriously.

We couldn't and wouldn't do any of this without you so thank you. And thanks finally to everybody who worked so hard on this show. 10% half year is produced by Gabrielle Zuckerman, Justin and Gaby Lauren Smith and Tara Anderson. DJ Cash Mears, our senior producer, Marissa Schneiderman is our senior editor and Kimmy regular is our executive producer scoring and mixing by Peter Bonnaventure of Ultraviolet audio and we get our theme music from Nick Thorburn of the Great Band Islands. They've got a new record coming out I see. We'll see you all on Friday for a bonus episode. Hey, hey, prime members. You can listen to 10% happier early and ad-free on Amazon Music.

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