The One You Feed - How to Find Joy, Wisdom, and Wonder in Nature with Mark Coleman

Episode Date: June 13, 2023

In this episode, Mark Coleman shares the many benefits of spending time in nature and explores several mindfulness practices that cultivate joy, wisdom, and wonder in your life!   You'll discover: How we need to practice paying attention to what’s right in our lives rather than what’s wrong How mindfulness is always in service of wisdom, understanding, and freedom Why we need to widen our lens to be able to see what else is “here” How nature invites us to be in the present moment in a joyful and effortless way Defining mindfulness simply as clear awareness and the capacity to be present Understanding how multitasking diminishes our attention How nature teaches us about knowing and being known Grasping the reality of impermanence in nature and in our lives To learn more, click here!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We all know that genuine self-compassion and self-love are absolutely crucial in the quest for healing, transformation, and everyday growth. But what if we struggle to get there? One of the most powerful yet effortless ways to settle our nervous system and reconnect with our true selves is by spending quality time in nature. It's for this reason that this August I'll be offering an in-person Awakening in the Outdoors retreat at the beautiful Kripalu Center this summer. I'll be co-teaching the retreat with Ralph De La Rosa, who's a three-time guest of the podcast, author, psychologist, meditation teacher, and friend. During these five days together, we'll enjoy hikes, outdoor meditations, art, insightful workshops, and lively discussions. insightful workshops and lively discussions. Our goal is for you to walk away feeling restored with a firm awareness of new resources and a new relationship with the gifts nature holds for us.

To learn more about this special retreat and sign up, go to oneyoufeed.net slash nature. We actually all have the ability to be inherently mindful, inherently aware, and nature supports that. Welcome to The One You Feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like, garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think ring true. And yet, for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious,

consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really Know Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor, what's in the museum of failure, And does your dog truly love you? We have the answer.

Go to reallynoreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. The Really No Really podcast. Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Mark Coleman, an instructor at Spirit Rock Meditation Center who has taught insight meditation retreats since 1997 worldwide. Mark is passionate about integrating meditation in nature and leads wilderness retreats through

his organization Awake in the Wild, as well as nature-based meditation teacher trainings. As the co-founder of the Mindfulness Training Institute, Mark also leads year-long mindfulness teacher trainings in the US and Europe. He's the author of Awaken the Wild, Mindfulness in Nature as a Path of Self-Discovery, and Make Peace with Your Mind from Suffering to Peace, and his latest book, A Field Guide to Nature Meditation, 52 Mindfulness Practices for Wisdom, Joy, and Wonder. Hi, Mark. Welcome to the show. Hey, good to see you, Eric and Ginny. Yeah, it's nice to have you on again. And as you just mentioned, Ginny is sitting here next to me.

So happy to be here. Happy to have her here. And we're going to be discussing your book called A Field Guide to Nature Meditation, 52 Mindfulness Practices for Joy, Wisdom, and Wonder. But before we do that, we'll start like we always do with the parable. In the parable, there's a grandparent who's talking with their grandchild, and they say, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love. And there's a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and bravery and love. And there's a bad wolf, which represents things like

greed and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops, they think about it for a second, they look up at their grandparent and they say, well, which one wins? And the grandparent says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. Yeah, thanks, Eric. It's a great question and a great parable when I use it in my own teaching. And what it brings to mind is having studied in the Buddhist tradition for a long time. And I remember really early on in the 80s, I walked into this Dharma Center, this Buddhist center. And like we've talked about this, I was a punk walking into that center and I was very unhappy. I was very fixated on what was wrong with society, governments, politics,

the world, people, my family. I had very critical negative mind, including towards myself. And you could say I was really feeding that very negative, critical, angry, blaming, judgy side of myself. And I was miserable. I was stressed. I was suffering. I was hurting. And I heard this teaching from the Buddha where it goes something like, whatever the mind frequently dwells and ponders upon, that becomes the inclination of the mind and the heart. Something about that really struck home that, oh, whatever I'm focusing on, that's what I become. You know, what they now say in neuroscience, whatever fires together, wires together. And so I really got, oh, I can actually shift my frame of attention, shift my focus to not necessarily just looking at what's wrong,

what's problematic, who's to blame, but actually also noticing what's okay. So I was living in East London. It was very run down at the time, very depressed, very gritty, urban. I was in this working class neighborhood. And I took this teaching to heart and I decided to focus on anything that was uplifting, like the sun hitting a building, a London poplar tree on my street in Bethnal Green, any birds that happen to kind of survive London smog. And so I just started noticing that which was uplifting or noticing a mother being very sweet to her kid, you know, or kids playing in the park near me and shifting my attention to not fixating on what was negative and wrong, but what was actually wholesome or good or uplifting, especially for me around nature, really transformed

my mental state. I began to actually feel brighter, feel more positive, less negative and less depressed, actually. So that's one theme that comes from hearing that story comes to mind. Would you like to follow that up? Yeah. Yeah. Can I? I was hoping you would. Yeah, because I feel like I might know where you're going. That's great. So, you know, I love that idea of not focusing so much on the negative, turning towards the positive. And there's a similar idea that goes along with a lot of mindfulness, which is to be with what is, whatever's arising, right? So on one hand, there's that teaching of the Buddha that you talked about that seems to point

towards changing the channel towards what's positive, right? And then there's at the same time instructions that say, be with what's present. How do you find that you balance sort of those two energies? Yeah, that's a great question. So how I frame that is you can think of it in terms of sequentiality, if that's a word, sequencing, where it's true in mindfulness practice, the emphasis on be with what is, notice, be aware, feel, sense, allow, accept, be curious, right? And they're mostly receptive, passive, observational qualities, orientation. And that's really the essence of mindfulness practice, which is quite radical because we're so often not with experience. We're busy fiddling, fixing, proving, judging, changing, avoiding, right? So just that is so radical to be with whatever it is, both the beauty

and the sorrow. But mindfulness is always in service of wisdom, service of understanding, service of freedom. So we don't just stop with the noticing, right? So I might notice, for example, like I have chronic pain. So I can't ignore the chronic pain because it's there. So I feel the pain, feel the sensation, or I might wake up in the morning and feel grumpy or tired or achy from, you know, exercising or from body stuff i'd be with that i feel it i notice it and then i ask what else is here what else is present oh i notice yeah my backache is there but i look out the window and the rains have stopped from these storms we're having here in northern california and it's a beautiful sunny day and it's actually a spring day and there's light on the leaves and

there's blossoms on the trees and my cat's sleeping on the bed looking very cute and so it's yes and right it's not yes but or no not quite I'll go somewhere else no it's acknowledging and then also widening the lens yeah and of course at times we need to just be with our heartache or our sadness or our body pain or tenderness or whatever we're with. And there's also a lot of times where to fixate on the pain, for example, or what I'm not liking about myself or my life, that's not healthy. It just leads to more negative, critical, spiraling mind states and actually to shift the attention to say yes and helps bring balance. I love that. I realize now that something I frequently do when I'm meditating as it relates to when I catch myself thinking, that the practice and the language I use likely now I realize came from you because you just said it, but I thought

that I had come up with it. However, there's no original thought as it turns out in the world, right? But that's what I do with my thoughts is I'll notice, oh, thinking. And instead of making that bad or like, oh no, don't think, don't think, focus on something else. I've been saying yes to thinking and then say, and what else is here and what else is present So that I'm widening that aperture to include more instead of cutting the thinking out of my experience in service of some other type of experience. Right. So I love the way that you just said that. I really connect with it. Beautiful.

Yes. And yeah, very helpful. A framework I heard, I think it was Dr. Rick Hansen who shared about it, which is like, you know, think of a garden, like you've got to be aware of what's in the garden. You know, that's the mindfulness being with seeing what's there. And he didn't come up with this analogy, but planting seeds, putting good things in and pulling weeds. And that kind of all three of those have their place, knowing which to use at what times, I think is the nuance. And I love the idea of sequentiality, meaning start in one place and

then move to the next. I think that's really important because we're so quick to get to the fix, improve, resolve, strategize, get rid of, and so not trained in just first allowing, accepting, being with, really feeling fully what's here, whatever that is, in a non-defended way. And often just the being with, with awareness is actually the resolution. But sometimes other strategies are also needed to balance. I assume five seconds is enough time to be with those negative emotions. Should that do it? Yeah, it's the five second rule. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Well, I love, Eric, that you brought up the garden. It segues us beautifully into Mark's work in nature and practicing mindfulness in nature, which you really have decades of practicing and also teaching

others to do. And in this new book you have, and I love the way you titled it, A Field Guide to Nature Meditation. You can bring it out with you into nature like a field guide. It's so clever and so useful. And you write about nature in such a vivid way, in such a beautiful way. I can tell how close you've been to nature and how much you've fallen in love with it in the way that you write about it. I was wondering if you would read for us, just so that we can hear your voice reading these beautiful words, to bring us into this place of imagining what it is like. Maybe we can all think back to an experience that connects, but what it's like to be mindful in nature. So in your introduction, I was wondering

if you could just read maybe the first four small paragraphs. Starting with, as I step outside? Yes. All right, here we go. As I step outside of the isolated cottage in the woods at dawn, I leave behind the familiar and muted experience of being indoors. I move into the crisp morning air and feel a jolt of alertness as I sense the cold against my face. My attention quickens as I step barefoot on the spongy ground carpeted in pine needles. I realize how soft the forest floor is. Suddenly I'm attuned to innumerable things I was oblivious of indoors. I'm acutely aware of all the faint sounds, whispers of the forest beginning to wake up and birds beginning their morning conversations.

I recognize the subtle fragrance of the earth after the evening rain has moistened the soil. I begin to see infinite shades of green as light enters the forest canopy. When I come across a small pond I pause a while. The stillness of the water naturally draws me into a state of contemplation. I sense the quietude of the morning, the hush of the forest, the tranquility of stones that line the water's edge. I feel invited into a natural meditation, attuned to the serenity of nature. I notice the same peacefulness arising within me. The notion of

being a visitor in the forest vanishes as I begin to feel part of the forest, welcomed and connected. This, I remember, is why I step outdoors as often as possible to experience the beauty, serenity and joy of nature. It allows me to access a natural quality of meditation, a state I call meditative awareness, where one is naturally attentive. It is a quality that is fully embodied, meaning I am inhabiting my physical experience, attuned to my senses, grounded and alert. This is mindfulness in nature, and it is at the heart of nature meditation. It is a quality of attention we can cultivate in any landscape. And with the right intention, it is possible to access any time we spend time outdoors. Beautiful.

I mean, that to me just sets the table, right? We get to see what is possible when it comes to connecting with nature. And for many of us, we don't get to spend that much time in nature. And so this might feel something that was present for us in our childhood or was once present for us or we wish could be more present for us in our childhood or was once present for us or we wish could be more present for us. But the beautiful thing that you point out is that first step out into nature with awareness that this attention and this present moment embodiment can come quite effortlessly. And that's the beauty of doing so in nature. Can you talk a little bit about what it means to be mindful in nature and to meditate in nature and why we would use that setting as a place to do so?

Yeah, thanks. London and I would learn meditation. And much as I love the city, I also needed green space to just sort of balance all that kind of busy urban craziness. And I noticed that when I'd go to a park or go visit my parents in the country and I'd take my meditation and I just sit quietly, like I mentioned, sit by a pond or by a tree or in the woods somewhere, that all that struggle that I used to feel indoors trying to meditate, as most of us do, struggling with our thoughts, our minds all over the place, hard to focus. We notice a breath or two, and then we've gone onto some memory, thought loop, story. And I just noticed that when I was outside, that happened much less,

that there was so much more stimulation that was pleasantly inviting me into the present moment with ease rather than struggle. And so whether it was listening to the sound of birds, because in England, the bird song is really loud and beautiful, or the sound of the wind, or feeling the warm sun on my face or walking through the woods and just noticing the beauty of the trees or whatever flowers, sky. I just began to see that nature invites us into the present in a very natural, relaxed, organic way. And as I said, the struggle to be mindful sort of fell away. And it's just like, oh, I just have to be here. I just have to put my body here and just pay attention to what's happening around me. Sight, sound, smells, touch,

breeze, movement, light. And that was a very easy way to just settle into the present moment. And also very joyful, very heart opening. We-seeking beings. So if an experience is pleasant, like birdsong, breeze, light, forest smells, green, we want to be present. You know, I often joke with people, I take the people in these beautiful places and the Big Sur coast or up in the mountains, and I say, why wouldn't you want to be present here, you know, with the sunrise or with the sound of birds or the green valleys that we're looking at or the flowers in spring and so it's a great counterpoint especially for the many if not majority of people who find meditation kind of like a lot of work and it's kind of burdensome and it's kind of like oh I've got to do this because I know it's good for me but I really it's like going to the gym it's like I

don't really want to go but I know it's good for me so I'll do it whereas we can just relax and actually the more you relax in nature the more present you become and know it's good for me, so I'll do it. Whereas we can just relax. And actually, the more you relax in nature, the more present you become. And so it's a great teacher in what it means to be mindful, which is we actually all have the ability to be inherently mindful, inherently aware, and nature supports that. Nature invites that natural quality, and it becomes more effortless and more engaging that was absolutely my experience you know i had tried meditating for a long time doing the standard sitting breath practices and all that and at one point i started meditating outdoors and i just did it on my way to work as i would drive in i would stop there was a couple of

different parks i could go to and it wasn't completely quiet as far as like, you know, there were birds, there were trucks. It was all there. But there was something about it doing the sound that really was so helpful. And up till now, I hadn't put two and two together. I had thought it was because I was listening and sound is my thing. But I realized that it was the part of it also was the nature. And it really was far easier for me to do than more of a standard meditation. It's not that I didn't still have to put effort forth. It wasn't that I didn't still have to try and focus, but it felt like 75% easier to me and I loved doing it. So that certainly is my experience. And I think it's important that you point out in the book. And the point I'm making here is you don't have to be

deep in the woods for this stuff to apply. Yeah, I do a lot of my meditation. So that out there is my rooftop of my office. And I jump out this window, which I've been doing for years. And that's one of my main meditation spots. In fact, when I teach the sunrise meditation, which I did since the beginning of the pandemic on Zoom, I would mostly broadcast from there. And then also from my front patio, which I can see the sunrise. And just that, like there's a beautiful oak tree. Like we're between two streets here, but there's oak tree. There's a redwood tree next to that.

There's sky above. There's clouds. I noticed the migrating birds coming back now in winter and spring. I feel the fresh air. I smelled the smell of the rain. Yeah, it can be sitting in your garden. It can be sitting in a park. It can be looking at a tree through your window on a cold, rainy or windy day in Minnesota where it's, you know, 10 below wind chill. It's amazing how even the smallest access to nature, plant, tree, garden, or the view of a sky from a window, you know, we're a nature species, right? We've grown up, we evolved in nature. It's only recently we live in these buildings and glass encased houses. And so

our body resonates, you know, there's this lovely phrase, attention restoration therapy that studies how our brain is much more restful in nature because the brain is familiar with processing trees, leaves, clouds, flowers, animals, because that's what we've evolved with. We haven't evolved with lampshades and screens. And so that's a lot of work for the brain. So there's something very naturally restful. And also that restfulness for most people, not for everybody, but for most people is also, it's a lovely support for meditation. Our nervous system relaxes, our heart rate goes down, our cortisol goes down, and we start to feel more ease.

So many of us are craving that ease or that antidote to the revving anxiety and the stress and the overstimulation. So my main instruction to people at the end of every teaching I give is go outside, go outside, go outside. The Buddha at the end of a teaching used to say, there are trees and there are the roots of trees.

Go sit by them, lest you regret it later. My instruction is just get outside. Sit anywhere is good or walk anywhere is good. When we're indoors, most of our focus is about me, myself, and I. Me and my life and my dramas, my stories and my plans and my project. And that's all fine. It's just being human. When we go outside, it's like, oh, oh, there's a whole world. Oh, it's raining. Oh, it's spring. Oh, it's dusk. Oh, there's a moon. You know, there's a crow outside my deck and my house. There's a pair of them and they're

building a nest. Like, oh, it's springtime and the birds are building nests it just takes us into this whole other world beyond ourselves which going back to the early thing about shifting attention from me myself and my problems to oh there's a whole world out there and that actually is just good for our mental health to widen that lens of attention. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer.

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I love having a name or a term for why our brains can be almost at rest with some support of just remembering. It's really just remembering how to be present, you know, learning how to be where our feet are. And nature just is so supportive of that. And I love having a term for that. You know, maybe we should back up just a step and define this term mindfulness. I did not mention this to listeners at the beginning, but you are one of my two teachers who created the curriculum and then guided me through the

process of becoming a certified mindfulness teacher. So one of the exercises, one of the very first exercises that you and Martin Aylward, the other teacher, had us do in small groups is to define what is mindfulness, which seems, you know, at first glance, like it should be a very easy thing to do. However, the more you learn about mindfulness, the harder it is to find words that actually capture the depth and breadth of it, isn't it? So you talk about how mindfulness is both a quality of mind and a practice that anyone can develop systematically. But how do you define mindfulness? Six million dollar question. So I like to keep things really simple. Simple is good. So I mostly define it as clear awareness, as the ability or the capacity to

be present, to know what's happening in our inner and outer experience. And that awareness is what allows us to know experience intimately and also illuminates experience so we can live and relate to experience in the world with wisdom and clarity and care. But it really comes down to a simple, simple awareness, the simple knowing of experience of what's happening. Like right now, I'm aware of looking at you two. I'm aware of feeling the light from outside. I'm sensing my body. I'm hearing other sounds in the background. I'm aware of my thoughts and my hand moving like it's just that simple innate human ability to be aware of what's happening and then people might say well what's the big deal if we're already aware then you know why all this meditation and

training and retreats and because as we know we have this ability but our attention is so often not in the present moment, so often pulled into the habit of thinking, daydreaming, lost in memories and plans. And so most people, most of the time, need support to actually learn how to really stay and abide present here in the moment. And that's what mindfulness practice is and meditation is and training is and retreats are. But I think it's always important for all of us to know that it's natural and it's available. And why I like, again, dovetailing to nature, why I love doing this practice outside is that people realize, oh, when I'm at the beach and I'm just, you know, sitting looking at the ocean and, you know, as we do, we can watch waves for hours and that is being mindful. It's not a

big deal. I'm just present, sitting, watching, listening to the waves. That's being mindful. If I go for a walk in the park, like it's not hard to be present, you know, I mean, of course, park. Like it's not hard to be present, you know? I mean, of course we space out and we get drifted thoughts and we daydream, but you know, we can mostly be aware of, you know, walking and smelling, seeing and enjoying. So nature, as I said, just makes the availability of mindfulness so much closer and easier. And then people realize, oh, I can do this. And of course we can cultivate it and refine it and deepen it and all of that. But it really is available here now. This may be a question that's above both of our pay grades.

But you've been teaching people mindfulness for a while now. And it is this natural ability. Do you think that, generally speaking, that it's becoming harder to be mindful? Do you feel like people were better able, easier to be mindful 10, 15, 20 years ago? Have you noticed anything like that? I'm just kind of curious because it feels a little bit to me like it's harder. And I hear people say that, but I'm kind of curious to someone from your perspective who's kind of watched people, students over a great number of years. Yeah, absolutely, Eric.

I think these things, I'm lifting up a phone for those who can't see, our devices, particularly our phones and our computers, I think the research is really pretty clear. The data is pretty clear that when we're using technology, it tends to at minimum bifurcate our attention. It splits our attention. You know, most of us, when we're working on a computer, have 10 screens open and we're jumping between tasks all day long and checking our phones. And so we're always multitasking. And when we always multitask, we're always splitting our attention, which means we're not focused our attention.

So when we come to be mindful and try to focus on one thing like the breath, which is not that exciting compared to, you know, scrolling through, you know, TikTok or whatever it is that is our chosen feed of interest. It's hard because we've trained our attention to focus on something for a few seconds. And then as soon as we're bored, as soon as we want a dopamine hit we just open up another window and you know look at something you know whether it's google or video and i think the research also showed microsoft did this longitudinal study where they were tracking people's attention on a screen from 2000 to 2016 or 17, their research showed that our attention span where people were focusing on one thing went from 12 seconds to eight seconds, which is a 50%

reduction in ability to sustain attention on the task at hand. So the joke is that goldfish can sustain their attention for nine seconds and we've dropped down to eight. We're sub that goldfish can sustain their attention for nine seconds. And we've dropped down to eight. We're subpar goldfish at this point. But no, definitely, I think I noticed it myself. I've been meditating since the mid-80s. And I had the luxury of having a meditation practice for a good 20 years or more before phones came out. Computers had come out in the late 90s for me anyway.

And life felt simpler and slower. We were just less stimulated. So I think there's two things about your question. One is initially, it's harder. Like when we meditate either the beginning of our day or the end of our day, and we sit for 10, 20, 30 minutes, I think that general experience is harder because we're so overstimulated. We're so busy having an attention that's really multitasking that it's hard to settle. When people come on a retreat for, I'd say a minimum of like five to seven days, and they get to kind of let go of those habits of scattered attention in multitasking, screen orientation, then I would say the difference between, say, 20 years ago and now is less. Like, I think once people actually have the supportive conditions where they're learning

to train their mind, the hardware is still sort of the same. And so the mind is infinitely trainable. But yeah, I think we need to really pay attention to what we're doing with our attention. You know, we live in this attention economy and does checking your phone a hundred times a day or having 10 screens open or multitasking all the time, is that really supporting your focus and well-being? You know, it seems like, oh, I'm going to go for a walk and listen to a podcast and that's fine. But neuroscientists would probably say, well, you're not really doing either. You're half walking and paying attention and you're half listening to the podcast. And when we multitask, we do each task less well. So it seems more expedient. It says, oh, I can kill two birds

with one stone, catch up on my podcast, get some exercise in. And that's fine. And we all do that, you know, some variation on that. And it has an impact on our attention. And it's interesting, just a case in point. So I did a solo retreat recently. I was in a friend's house by the coast and I called it my kind of resting and being retreat. And I meditated some, but it was a very light schedule. I was just very relaxed. I'd get up, make some tea, sit on the balcony, look at the sunrise, meditate a little, slowly make my breakfast. It was a digital free retreat. So there's no screens, no phones. And I just did simple activity, no phones. And I just did simple activity, cooking breakfast without rushing and without phone or music or podcast. It was actually very pleasurable, ordinary, simple activity when we can just do it

without rushing and thinking it's doing this to get to the next best thing, the next stimulus. The whole retreat was quite lovely. It was super ordinary. I'd meditate some, I'd do walking meditation some, but mostly I was just being present, being human, doing ordinary stuff, cooking, cleaning, washing up, walking, sitting, drinking tea. And it was really pleasurable. It was a great contrast to see all that stimulation that we think we need, whether that actually improves our well-being and happiness is really questionable. Yeah, I love the teaching that mindfulness underscores, which is, you know, that we don't have to be anyone other than we are. We don't have to be anywhere else than where we are. That there is magic and mystery and wonder and beauty, along with many other things, right where we are,

who we are. You know, that it isn't something special. It's not a special state. You don't have to be extraordinary in some other way. It's effortless. It's actually removing the barriers that stand in the way of you connecting with your true deep nature, you connecting with this present moment as it's arising in a skillful way. And I think one of the reasons I love this book is that you share 52 meditations that we can do in nature. It's so incredibly practical. It's a book of practice. You can hear about what mindfulness is and learn it intellectually. And that's important. And the transformation, the real deep appreciation of what it is, comes in the practice of it. And your book is so directly useful in that way. You say,

in why I'm sharing this new work, you say, to offer a variety of simple, portable, and accessible practices that anyone can do in the outdoors, regardless of background, religious affiliation, or meditation experience. So it's really a book, a field guide that anyone can pick up. I thought we might just walk through a few of the meditations that I connected with based on some of my experiences. But actually, before I do that, I wanted to point out that you offer also an audio version that you read, that you narrate. So you can actually listen to these meditations on audio and be

guided, which sounds kind of magical. Yeah. And just an addendum to that, as you know, since you've been through my teacher training, I don't really believe in reading a meditation script. When I'm doing the audio book, I'm sort of reading the book, but I can't guide a meditation reading my book. Actually, the audio is a much more fleshed out, embellished version of each meditation because you write in a certain way. When you guide, you just teach in a certain different way. So there's actually a lot more in the audio book in terms of really feeling the fullness of the meditation. The meditations are longer. I weave in different things. So for those who are interested, I highly recommend the audio version because also it means you can take it outside, you can sit by a tree or stream

or park bench and then just listen to whatever meditation you want, whether it's a sitting meditation or you can take it when you're meandering and walking. So yeah, I highly recommend the audio so you're not encumbered by the book and you're just listening and then you're off. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor.

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It's called Really, No Really, and you can find it on the I heart radio app on Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. It sounds like a lovely way to maybe create your own short retreat that you could do even 24 hours of just using your guided meditations and nature. I mean, there you are. One of the concepts that you point out that both Eric and I really connected with and have loved is this idea of nature teaching us what it means knowing and being known. Can we realize how experience in nature is always a two-way process? You say there's a simultaneous dance of knowing and being known. Would you talk a bit more about that?

Yeah, I'm so glad that you plucked that out of the 50 too, because that's one of my favorite practices. And it's also a new development for me in my teaching. I wrote my first nature book, Awaken the Wild, 2005. And I wanted to write this new book because I've been doing this work, you know, it's 20 years since then. And one of the developments is understanding that we're always in relationship. We're always intimately connected to the earth, whether we're indoors or outdoors. But when we go outdoors into a park or a garden or into a woodland, you know, we might say to each other, oh, I'm going for a walk in the woods. I'm going for a walk in the park along the beach. And that's totally normal to say that. But what's really happening is when you go for a walk in the woods, you are entering a relationship, a relationship with those trees, with the bird

life, the insect life, the animal life, with the flora, with the soil. And from any other being's perspective in the forest, that when they see you, hear you, smell you, sense you, you are part of the forest walking through the forest. You're just another animal in that moment that's part of the forest ecosystem. But because we have this sort of egoic reference point, I'm going for a walk and to have an experience in the woods and we forget we're actually entering relationship and many of the beings are having experiences of us. I mean, a mosquito may have a very direct experience of you by thinking your lunch. The birds will change their bird song as

they see a two-legged walking through their meadow. And a gopher snake will probably feeling our vibration. And certainly a coyote and a skunk and manyher snake will probably feeling our vibration and certainly a coyote and a skunk and many other beings will be smelling our scent so it's a lovely thing to be mindful of oh it's not just me having this thing this experience but it's a two-way relationship and then we can even refine that like i live near redwoods and you know maybe you live near a park where there's some old trees. I do find that the older the tree, I feel more something. I feel presence. I feel, you know, these 1,000, 2,000-year-old redwood trees that just, you know, these old buddhas, you know, just standing forever.

And when I sit with them or I walk with them or I lean against them, I definitely feel like I'm knowing them. against them, I definitely feel like I'm knowing them. And in some way, some way that my mind can't figure out that I'm being known or felt or something. And that might be a projection. But you know, when you listen to indigenous teachers who live in the forest, they're very much aware that each of these beings, whether it's a stone being, a tree being, they have presence and sentience. And so it's a lovely thing to feel into that sense of knowing and being known. Yeah. And a lovely extension to that, that I often like to think about is this idea that we tend to think we are seeing and hearing and tasting and smelling everything that's out there. Like we are forming some accurate picture of what's out there, but we're only picking up a portion of what's out there.

Other animals are picking up hearing things we can't hear, seeing things we can't see, smelling things we can't smell. There's just a mystery to that, that I love to contemplate. And also, as you said, just that sense that it's not just me seeing the animals, you know, they are having a reaction to me. There's something about that that does make it feel much more relational to me. It's one of my favorite contemplations. Yeah, no, I love that, Eric, that like when you see a bee and it flies by you, you know they're tracking, is it infrared?

Certain kind of light that we can't see, you know, and smelling things that completely go past us. Yeah. Yeah. Other animals, you know, they pass a deer and their ears are like radar dishes. And they're picking up a whole kaleidoscope of sound that we're oblivious to. Yeah. Just like when you go for a walk with your dog and it's like, oh, they're in a whole universe of smell. it's like, oh, they're in a whole universe of smell. And yeah, it's lovely to realize our view is one view of this huge panorama of experience. Yeah. And how being indoors so much and connected

so deeply to technology, it can be such a egocentric but isolating experience. This idea of knowing and being known for me is an instant experiential reminder of my interconnectedness with all things and that I am not just in nature. I am nature. I'm a part of nature. I'm connected with nature. So what an antidote to isolation and loneliness to know you're right at home and infinitely connected the minute you sort of step out the door and the beauty is just to become aware of it. Right. Yeah. I mean, there's ways when that happens. I've had that experience deeply at times in nature of feeling like I'm not really alone at all. You know, I'm never alone, you know, when I'm walking out, when I'm in nature, but again, in front of a screen,

you are alone. I mean, maybe the metal knows I'm here, but, you know, that even takes us into the world of AI. I knew you were going to say that. I don't even want to. No, not this time. But yeah, that sense of never alone. And I think that also, you know, these practices and a lot of the practices you talk about are specifically around using our senses as a way of connecting to now. Like we hear this insight, be here now, be present, but it's very difficult to do in the abstract. But using a sense is a way of becoming very present to what is right now. Can you say a little bit more about that?

Yeah. And I think those two things we just talked about dovetail. So for example, it's true that, you know, as much as we like our homes and like being in our homes and, you know, they provide all kinds of comforts and safety and whatnot, and that's all fine. They do isolate, they separate us. I mean, the walls and windows and roofs are designed to keep the world out, which is fine. It has its practical purpose, but we tend to then feel isolated and we feel separate and we feel lonely and we feel lonely and we feel disconnected and we feel alienated and even something as simple as you know opening the window in the morning and maybe hearing one or two birds singing suddenly it's like oh i'm not alone oh there's a whole array of life happening out there that's beautiful and and we're connected because I'm hearing it. And I go outside

and the birds might fly or they might change their song or their call. And so that's why it's so important that we get outside. And then you're pointing to like when the bird is singing, we don't have to strain to hear the sound. It just brings us into the present. Or maybe you walk outside like I'm doing here because it's spring and in my neighborhood, there's a lot of people planting, you know, jasmine flowers and this and that and the scotch broom. And it's so fragrant. You know, I walk in the eucalyptus and there's this pungent sort of eucalyptus menthol thing. Or the wind blows. You know, what I love about sitting in nature, walking in nature is, you know,

we space out, whether it's a meditation or in our life, we space out and get lost in thought thousands of times a day. But you're outside and the wind slaps your face, you're suddenly back here. Or the sun's behind the cloud and it comes out and you feel that warmth on your skin. It's like, oh, and it brings you here. And then you notice a fly brushes by your hair and you feel your hair. And then, you know, you're walking in the park and you walk from the dirt or the trail onto the grass and like, oh, it's really soft and spongy and moist. And because we have all these senses, we keep being brought into the present. And what's lovely about being brought into the present, mostly,

most of the time, not all the time, most of the time, the present moment is infinitely more pleasant and forgiving than where we go with our mind. Our mind tends to go to stress, worry, plan, angst, you know, and all kinds of catastrophes, worries. And mostly the present moment, unless you're in a really dangerous neighborhood or you're in prison, for the most part, the present moment's okay. Might not be perfect or what you want, but it's okay. And when we're outside, for me, it's even more okay. It's not just okay. It's usually pleasant, you know. I'm all about what works and what makes it easy. And going outside brings us into the present. It's easy and opens our heart.

That's also, you know, especially in this pandemic, post-pandemic world we're now in, you know, there's so much stress. There's so much anxiety. There's so much mental health challenges. There's so much sense of not enough time. And then when you go outside, maybe you sit in your garden or you're gardening or you're watering your plants on the deck, which I do. I've got mostly pots here where I live. And there's something just very soothing, just very relaxing. Even just watering a plant,

you know, just deadheading a plant or pruning. Like I just, it's so satisfying. You know, just five minutes. I'll go out between sessions, you know, walk around and pull out some dead weeds. And it's just present sensory here. And we need more of that. You know, more time away from screens, more time not stuck in our small rooms, yeah, and connecting with this natural presence. There's a couple different directions I could go here based on what you said. One is just to point out what I think is also an important point, which is that, you know, it's not to make

our inside lives bad, you know, technological lives, and the outdoor world is good, right? But I think for me, my mindfulness practice and then practicing mindfulness outdoors in nature, the value of it, if mindfulness is sort of always in service to well-being, being present in well-being, we are counterbalancing. The scale has been incredibly tipped towards bifurcated attention and isolation indoors and all of these things that when taken to extreme do not support well-being. There's a lot of suffering there and a lot of missing out on the beauty and the gifts. But the practice of mindfulness every day or regularly and then being outside in nature, practicing mindfulness, it's such a wonderful counterbalance. So we're correcting for the imbalance that exists so that we can live with more ease through our days.

Yeah, it's true. I do not want to give the impression that being indoors is bad. It's fine. I spend most of my time indoors, just like everybody. And I love my home and I love good Netflix series. And we're doing this digitally and it's great. I get to connect with people. And even for myself, I'm a nature nature writer nature meditation teacher nature lover and i still have to remind myself like this morning i went to the gym i'm not really a gym person but you know it's good to train your body strengthen your body especially as we get older and i had to thought myself how why didn't i go for a bike ride it was just beautiful still morning and you know usually we have to push ourselves through a little a beautiful still morning. And, you know, usually we have to push

ourselves through a little discomfort. You know, our homes are cozy. You know, we look out the window and often it's like, you know, it's cloudy, it's gray, maybe it's drizzly or foggy where I am. But I know for myself, I know a hundred percent every time I go outside, and this is a hundred percent, I feel better. I feel more energy. I feel happier. I feel more connected and maybe not the whole time. Maybe it's cold, windy day. And then I get wet and you know, I'm this some unpleasant parts of that, but I always feel brighter, more spacious. And it could be, as I say, just going into my yard, which is mostly concrete and driveway and not that actually pretty really. And just go into my mailbox which

is takes like 20 steps and i look around oh blue sky oh and there's my neighbor oh and there's the bird sitting on the tree building its nest and just that it's like it's very simple and so we just have to encourage ourselves you know for a lot of us it's going to be taking a walk around our neighborhood and as i did when i was in London, noticing the gardens, noticing trees, notice looking up, noticing the sky, noticing what season we're in. And it's just very healthy. We're social species. And I think the data now, the average American spends 95% of their time indoors.

And that's not how we've lived evolutionarily. We've lived more relationally. Like even when I walk down to the local shop and I get some milk, just that is sort of uplifting. It's a break from screen life. And it's like these simple things, they really make a difference. We were just in Atlanta. Is this what you're going to say? Yeah, I was going to say we were just in Atlanta and we were staying in a part of Atlanta we're not normally in, but it was very walkable. There was a park and a trail right nearby. And we could walk to like every store we might need.

I just loved it. But you're right. I had to keep reminding myself like, yes, you could drive the car and save five minutes, but you could also just walk. And every time I did walk, like you said, I was always glad I did. I was always glad. It takes a little bit more effort, but it is one of those things, like a lot of things in life, we do sometimes need that little extra push from ourselves to get out of our comfort and into what's best for us. And going back to the book for a second, I don't know how many, but the 52 practices,

there's at least 10, 15 of them involve walking, walking, meandering, strolling. And so a lot of these practices, it's not like you need to dedicate an extra amount of time. Oh, now I've got to do my major meditation practice as well as my yoga and all that. No, you can do it while you're walking down, as you say, to go to the store or walking in your dog and bringing mindfulness to that. So there's ways that we can integrate being aware when we're outside and it doesn't take any extra time.

It's really the intention and the quality of attention that we bring. Do we take that 10 minute walk to the store through our neighborhood and we're just lost in worry or planning? Or can we let that go and just be in our senses and being in the present moment and with appreciation or with curiosity or with wonder? And it's such a wholehearted, uplifting experience. Before I was able to leave my job and do this full time, I worked in an office or a series of offices or different places. And I just trained myself that

when I walked from my car to the office door and from the office door to my car, I was just going to be present to my senses. You know, what can I see? What can I hear? What can I feel in my body? And just that little practice done every day, those two times a day, really developed a quality of attention and ability to be present to what was around. So I love this idea, like we don't necessarily have to add something else to our day. We can take something we're already doing, but do it in a way with a slight change of orientation and focus that's really beneficial. Yeah, exactly. There's often that view that we need to add something. No, we just shift how we're doing what we're doing with intention. So there's one other bit of wisdom that nature can really help us deepen our connection to and that really supports our well-being. And I was hoping we can explore that for a moment, which is how nature is a masterful teacher of the truth of change and how we can understand transience in an experiential way in nature and then also subsequently reflect on it for ourselves. You say that nothing stays the same in nature,

right? Similarly, we can include the awareness of our bodies changing landscape, that we can notice how sensations, no sensations are forever, right? They're changing constantly, they're intensifying, they're ceasing. So I just hope we can maybe spend a moment exploring how this shows up in nature and how that might awaken something within ourselves. Yeah. Yeah. And that's a great theme. I'm just looking at this oak tree outside my house. I was on the roof the other day and it's a beautiful flourishing oak tree, but there's limbs that are dying. There's leaves that are dead. The deck is basically scattered with dead leaves and acorns and branches. And you can't go anywhere in nature, whether it's your garden

or even looking at one plant or tree that doesn't show signs of change. Just like we're in springtime and we're coming out of that sort of fallow winter and the dead ground and all the dead grasses and plants. And then suddenly, I was walking in the woods yesterday

and there's all these cattails, like asparagus poking up through the ground. And just seeing that sense of part of the forest is decaying still from the winter and half of it's now regrowing with saplings and new buds and bright green leaves and you know the weather here we've had one day storms and then next day sun and next day howling wind and beautiful, beautiful transients change, ephemerality, dynamism, where no two moments are the same. The light changes, the wind changes, the leaves change, the birdsong, the breeze, the smell, like it's just this constant dance. Or you go to the ocean. I teach a lot by the ocean and just the restlessness of the waves and the surface and the movement and the wind and the surf. And there's something, again, the contrast not making our houses bad, but we build our houses in defense against change, against weather, storms, rain, you know, bugs.

And so we keep all that out. So it creates a sense of relative stability, right? There's not much changes in our house, which is fine, but it's sort of deadening to the senses. And our brain, as I was chatting with a couple of neuroscientists yesterday, a couple of days ago, our brain is wired for novelty, novelty and change and stimulation. And I was really reflecting as I've been hiking the last few days, nature is nothing but novelty. Like even if you walk the same hike, which I do often, a hundred times, every time you do that

hike, there's so much diversity and change. It's different light, different weather, different temperature, different shade, different birds and animals, and the trees falling down and things grown up here. And it just, it's so stimulating, and such a nice contrast to the stillness, and I could say sometimes the deadness of our built landscapes, where we come into connection with reality, and reality is changing. It's always changing. We're changing our thoughts, feelings, bodies, moods, and so is nature, and so is nature and so it's a massive mirror of helping us realize oh life is change like life is dynamic fluid femoral fleeting moving and so am i my mind my body my relationships my feelings my everything and so it normalizes it you know we try to build so much against change we try to stop our body aging or we grab onto a pleasant feeling.

We don't want that to change. Or we grow an orchid like, don't die, even though you're flowering for like six months. When it dies, I'm like, no, don't die. But nature teaches us everything is beautiful and it comes and it goes and it passes and it wanes and it flowers and it dies and metamorphosizes and reflowers again. And it just helps us land that truth of change, which means that when things change in our lives, whether it's our body, our health, our relationships, our money status or work, that there's a little more like, oh, right, of course it's changing because life changes. Everything changes. Can't hold on to anything. Yes. And isn't that a beautiful thing to remember when, for me, in moments when I feel the most sad or just unpleasant in my body or things are difficult, the first thought,

invariably in my mind as well, this is how it's always going to be. I don't know why I think that, but every single time I think that. Every single time I'm aware that that's my thought. And so in those moments, connecting to the absolute law of change in nature, and therefore it's true for me too, is such a wonderful gift. Yeah. It's a great reminder. It's true.

We think whether it's something pleasant, we go, oh, it's going to be like this forever. Or something's hurting. Oh, it's going to be like this forever. It's so funny that that's our first thought. And it's so not true of anything. And yet that's where we go. And then as you say, the more we've studied change in life, the more we go, oh, yeah, it's bad. And it's going to shift. oh yeah, it's bad and it's going to shift. Yeah. So I think that's a great place for us to wrap up. You know, in the beginning, Mark, you said that everything we do is in service to wisdom, you know, and I love that idea. It's a, it's a really great orientation. And I think understanding this transience that we're talking about, this impermanence is one of the core aspects of becoming more wise and nature is a great way to do it. So thank you so much for taking the time to come on. It's always a pleasure to talk with you and it's inspired me to get outdoors more. Yeah. Great. Thank you, Mark. Yeah. Thank you. It's always a delight to talk to you both and happy to share my love and passion of nature and mindfulness and hope your

listeners have enjoyed it. And thanks again. Yeah. And we'll have links in the show notes where people can find your work, your trainings, your book, all that good stuff. So thank you, Mark. If what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a monthly donation to support the One You Feed podcast. When you join our membership community with this monthly pledge, you get lots of exclusive members-only benefits. It's our way of saying thank you for your support. Now, we are so grateful for the members of our community. We wouldn't be able to do what we do without their support, and we don't take a single dollar for granted. To learn more, make a donation at any level, and become a member of the One You Feed community,

go to oneyoufeed.net slash join. The One You Feed podcast would like to sincerely thank our sponsors for supporting the show. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really Know Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor, what's in the museum of failure, and does your dog truly love you? We have the answer. Go to reallyknowreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast,

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