Host Verla Fortier
Verla's website https://treesmendus.com

Verla's new book Optimize Your Heart Rate: BalanceYour Mind and Body With Green Space. 

Verla's previous book Take Back Your Outside Mindset: Live Longer, Stress Less, and Control Your Chronic Illness

Guest Ernesto Rodriguez, Executive Director Nature In  The Classroom (tree mural ceilings) and in hospitals Sereneview (nature  mural hospital curtains).

Shownote  Timeline

3:45 Ernesto grew up in Cuba, grandfather a renown muralist

6:30  Visited  his friend in hospital (got the creeps). Then went to assignment in the Redwood Forest. As  he  was waiting for the light to come through the trees (about  an hour) was thinking of his friend  in the hospital.  Ernesto felt so good  there and  wondered why hospitals can't feel  like this? Research  on scientist Roger Ulrich in the 80s.

10:11 Brain reacts so quickly to nature. 

11:36 Story  of Asia: emotional soothing with nature  curtain.

14:27 Professor Richard Taylor's definition of fractals

17:17 Hôspital curtains for veterans, National Parks

18:26 10 days in National Parks

22:11 Attention Restoration Theory (ART): nature helps to calm, focus, and learn. Nature gives brain a break. 

24:00 Pilot Project to put tree mural ceilings in school.

25:18 One of the drawbacks of introducing something new: only 2% off the population is going  to get it. It takes 18% before it goes mainstream. 

31:07 Images of nature has to be life-like. Canopy has blue sky, see branches, see leaves, camera on a  tripod combined with software. 12 by 12 foot  squares  or 16 foot squares. 

37:07 Tip: go outside -there is no substitute for that.

38:11 Tip: We don't recognize your own anxiety until we see nature or get outside

40:03 Follow Ernesto's work Nature in the Classroom on Facebook and Instagram
and Sereneview.com

For peer reviewed research on how your time spent in green space can change your mindset, balance your nervous system and your heart rate please go to verlafortier.substack.com and check out my books Take Back Your Outside Mindset: Live Longer, Stress Less, and Control Your Chronic Illness and Optimize Your Heart Rate: Balance Your Mind and Body With Green Space