Dr James Doty says Balance Your Nervous System To Manifest Your Desired Goals 

The word manifest may put you off, but I like James Doty (MD)’s  definition of manifesting. He says “once the body and the mind are in a state of balance, we have the power of manifestation, we can start thinking clearly about what we want to manifest.” Renown Stanford neurosurgeon and neuroscientist  Dr James Doty says we all  have goals and intentions. When your nervous system is balanced you can begin to manifest.Studies  show that as little as 5 minutes outside in nature or even looking at an image of nature balances your nervous system. When you are outside in nature your autonomic nervous system shifts to the parasympathetic (PNS) and you become less self focused, calm, and more connected to others and your world around you. You experience joy and awe. The relaxed PNS state (that can also be achieved by breathing and just thinking about the joy and awe in the world) is what Dr James Doty’s recent book “Mind Magic: The Neuroscience of Manifestation and How It Changes Everything” (link: https://www.amazon.ca/Mind-Magic-Neuroscience-Manifestation-Everything/dp/1399710966/ref=monarch_sidesheet_title) teaches. The book is well worth the read and fits beautifully with your practice of spending time in nature or green spaces. 

The ability to manifest is based in Neuroscience

Doty’s idea of manifestation is not the self-serving get rich quick scheme,  tarot cards, crystals, or pseudoscience.  Doty’s view is based in “significant developments in brain imaging that allows us to watch the brain transform on a cellular, genetic, and even molecular level. We can now speak about manifestation in terms of cognitive neuroscience……and the brain’s extraordinary ability to change, heal, and remake itself, known as neuroplasticity.” 

Manifesting according to Dr. Doty is the process of intentionally embedding thoughts and desires into your subconscious. For this he suggests visualization and picturing powerful positive emotions of your desired goal. Why? Because your brain will not know the difference between the real and the imagined.  Dr Doty says this is manifestation is not magic – it is neuroscience.

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 my website https://treesmendus.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

This is Verla Fortier of your Outside Mindset show. This podcast is about taking back  your outside mindset by exploring and practicing new ways of noticing when you are outside  close to nature  whether you live in the city or country. 

Two podcast episodes ago I did a solo podcast on a great book “Better In Every Sense: How the New Science of Sensation Can Help You Reclaim Your Life.” This is the link to that podcast episode is titled Get Intentional About Using Your Senses.
 
Today I have the author of this book with me. This is his bio. 

 Norman Farb, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Toronto Mississauga, where he directs the Regulatory and Affective Dynamics laboratory. He studies the cognitive neuroscience of well-being, focusing on mental habits, such as how we think about ourselves and interpret our emotions. Together with Prof. Zindel Segal, he wrote Better in Every Sense, a book that describes the surprising role of sensation in mental health. His current research explores online interventions to support  wellbeing, and neuroimaging of interoception, our sense of the body's internal state.

Tanscript of interview is on my website Treesmendus.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 my website https://treesmendus.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

Tristan Gooley is a New York Times best selling author of How to Read Water, How To Read Nature, The Natural Navigator, The Lost Art of |Reading Nature’s signs, and The Secret World of Weather. Today we are going to talk to Tristan about his latest book How to Read a Tree.

Tristan Gooley is a leading expert on natural navigation, and his passion for the subject stems from his hands on experience. He has led expeditions in 5 continents, climbed mountains in Europe, Africa, and Asia: sailed boats across oceans; piloted small aircrafts across Africa and the Artic. He is the only living person to both fly and sail single-handedly across the Atlantic, and he is a Fellow of the Royal Institute of Navigation and The Royal Geographical Society. 
2:47:   In my 20s I went on big adventures finding my own way with bits of kit. After that I decided that instead of doing thousand mile expeditions , I would do very small journeys just using nature to find my way. 

Transcript Treesmendus.com
 natural navigator.com.  IG thenaturalnavigator. Fb the naturalnavigator. 

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 my website https://treesmendus.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

 Let’s Get  Sensual: Get Intentional About Using Your Senses 

I read a good book recently titled “Better In Every Sense: How the New Science of Sensation Can Help You Reclaim Your Life.” The main message of the book is that by taking time to pause and engage  with your senses (seeing, hearing, touching, tasting) you can  feel better right away. You can do this indoors or outdoors. 

University of Toronto psychology professors – Dr Farb (neuroscientist) and Dr Zindel (clinical psychologist)  urge you to – “ break out of negative thought patterns by engaging your senses.”

Grounded in decades of research, the authors explain, “we often think that when we are struggling with a problem or a bad habit or life in general,  we think we need  to try harder, or tough it out. However this rarely works…..when we do this, our brains double down on thinking patterns that got us stuck in the first place.”

This book explores the power of sensory experiences to liberate us from our ruts and dead ends.

Your Brain Has Two Networks

 According to Farb and Segal your brain has two networks: the habit and the sensory networks. 

 The habit network is devoted to rapid problem solving. You do need what the authors call your  “house of habit” to glide through the essentials of your daily life. The is the hardware of your brain that you cannot adjust. It is  also called the default mode network or DMN.  The DMN system prioritizes self-judgement which can lock you into resistance mode. Here is where you can get stuck. 

Your Sensory Network Needs Your  New Mindset 

Your sensory network is devoted to fresh insight. This is the software of your brain . This part you can adjust. You do this by 1) pausing and 2) noticing by using your senses.  So for example, if you are in your house and the lamp is on – you can notice where the light is cast on the wall, where it is strongest, and how far out the light reaches, and the quality of the light in different places. This simple type of activity can change your brain. This change is called neuroplasticity.  And you need the right mindset to get there.

 In my book “Take Back Your Outside Mindset: Live Longer, Stress Less, and Control Your Chronic Illness” I give you 101 ways to engage your senses and notice when you are outside in green space. By for example when you notice a tree,  this taps into your DMN and tells it to let go – to relax. 

 As I say in my books, your  time is green space is non-pharmaceutical therapy that provides immediate relief, increases your ability to pay attention, to think clearly, to solve problems, increases your working memory and recall, helps you to regulate your behavior, increases your positive mood, lowers your resting heart rate…and  let’s your brain restore itself. 

Make a Game With Your Senses

What I like about “Better In Every Sense” is the simple exercises to practice noticing by engaging your senses. 

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 my website https://treesmendus.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

This solo podcast episode is about managing difficult emotions when loved ones move away. I am working on managing my emotions as both my kids who are Canadian settle in London England.

The first things kind people might say to me is : oh that must be hard having them both so far away or you must miss them.. and both are true in moments. And because I have the tools that I use to manage my chronic illness which is systemic lupus or SLE, I find this is a time in my life when again I can view the situation with fear as a loss or with curiousity as an opportunity to learn something new. And I know from my hero Ellen Langer Stanford social psychologist that “every thought affects every part of the body” so what I say to others matters if I want to feel good about my siutaion with my kids living away.

For my recent trip to England I packed my 5 point plan.

1. Noticing difficult emotions as they arise. So here they are: anger, fear, stress. So before I left I had negative and fearful thoughts like “why do I have to get on this plane, contribute to climate change to see my kids?” I am still naming these various emotions watch them come and go. I do my best not to judge them and try to watch them come and go like the weather.
2. I pack my outside mindset with me everywhere. it is my guiding star. The kids, who also have outside mindsets – thank goodness already know that all I wanted to do was walk outside with family in green space while I was there. We all know this is where we are our best selves – smiling more, more relaxed, and noticing new things to keep us in the present. As Ellen Langer says simply noticing is mindfulness. So I ended up having so much fun outdoors with mu kids in England. We took a train to Lulworth Cove, near Bournemouth  and hiked together for 4 hours, we spent an entire rainy day strolling around Hampstead Heath Park in London, and we spent two days roaming the grounds of Leeds Castle in Kent County. And I have the social media pictures to prove it on IG, facebook and linkedin.
3. Dr Ellen Langer says that when we are having fun, we are being mindful. And when we are mindful we are attracted to others and they are attracted to us. The poet Keats must have known this too. When we  toured his house in Hampstead, we learned that when he became very sick before his death in his early twenties, he became more and more jealous of his lover and asked her “who have you smiled with today?” When I moved back to my hometown of Pine Falls I noticed that everyone liked to find humor – to laugh. You meet someone on the street, chat, and have a laugh about something. I believe this has something to do with the native community close by Sagkeeng and more so in Pine Falls where laughter is used so often and so beautifully to articulate and recognize loss.
4. Hand on my heart and say good for you, you are doing the best you can, and everything is ok. Langer goes even further and tells us to “assume everthing is going to be ok.” What can I thank right now? The fresh air, a tree, a bird….and notice how that feels.
5. Climate action.  Find transcript 

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 my website https://treesmendus.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

Stephen Leahy is an award-winning international environmental journalist with over 25 years of experience in the field. His work has been published in a wide range of prestigious publications around the world, including National Geographic, The Guardian, Vice, New Scientist, Maclean’s, Al Jazeera, and many others. Leahy's journalism focuses on critical environmental issues such as climate change, water scarcity, and biodiversity loss, aiming to bring global attention to these urgent matters.

1.    Would you please start by telling us why you became an environmental journalist and maybe a bit about that mid life crisis? 

5:07 For about 10 years I had a career in marketing. At one time I was the kind of the junk mail king of Canada sending out paper flyers  by mail.  I was at a direct mail conference and David Suzki was the guest speaker. It was kind of a downer because he was talking about climate change and environmental impact . And when he was asked "what can we  do as an industry?" he replied "stop what you are doing and do something useful."

6:01 I took that to heart because I was feeling tired of the long commute to work, the direct mail industry, wanted to do something more meaningful, spend more time with my family and more time outside of highly air conditioned offices. I wanted to integrate my work with my family life. 

Were you able to achieve what you set out to do?

7:14 Absolutely. I was there for my kids before and after school. Could go for walks and schedule my won time . It took a few years because I had a family, a mortgage, and there were financial pressures.  

2.    You wrote a book Your Water Footprint – please tell us a little about that and is there any good news here? What are the 3 things people can do day to day that will make a difference.  person can do on a very small scale to help protect water.

8:11 The book came about when someone in Uxbridge where I lived at the time  asked me to do a info graphic approach  to show in a visual the impact of our use of water.   An Ottawa school is using the book for a project called Blue Schools.  I ask the school kids if there is anything that we can make that does not require water. There really isn't anything.

Is there anything we can do to protect water?

10:18  Any time you consume anything be aware of the water consumption. The idea is to respect water. For thousands of years  water has been considered sacred because we cannot survive without it or do anything without it. I think having that mindset of awareness helps us and water.

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 my website https://treesmendus.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

Today my guest is Linda  Åkeson McGurk is a Swedish American writer and author of The Open-Air Life and the bestselling parenting memoir There’s No Such Thing as Bad Weather. She is a passionate advocate for the Nordic outdoor tradition friluftsliv and runs the blog Rain or Shine Mamma, where she shares tips and inspiration for outdoor play every day, regardless of the weather. McGurk and her work have been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Time Magazine, The New York Times, The New York Post, Huffington Post, Psychology Today and many more. When she is not working, she is usually found sauntering around the pine forests near her home in southwestern Sweden.

5:52 What prompted Linda to write my first book and blogs. Reaching out to community.

6:37 Latest book "The Open Air Life: Discover the Art of Friluftsliv and Embrace Nature EverY Day " wanted to share outdoor cultural traditions of Sweden. 

7:23 How to help people take the step

11:45 Why getting into nature feels like going home. But nature is not a bottomless pit. View nature in terms of personal health, important to attach to environmental policy. 

18:00 What is Friluftsliv? (below are 4 of the 10 principles)

 1) Appreciate and are one with nature

2) when you go to local nature spaces. If close by, much more likely to go. Get to know your local birds and trees.

3) Non competitive. Feel the joy and keep it simple.

4) Starts when the motor is turned off, when you compel yourself in space as in swimming, walking, running, cycling, cross country skiing, paddle boarding, kayaking..

24:00 water skiing vs swimming - activity and personal thrill vs being and communing with what is under the water, communing with nature. Also the difference in the environmental impact. And which is most sustainable. 

For a full transcript of this conversation go to https://treesmendus.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 my website https://treesmendus.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

What you might not know is that you will also be more beautiful or handsome  to others when you are outside. When I saw an Instagram reel of my 20 something kids out in the countryside last weekend with their friends, I saw this. They were even more beautiful, happy and carefree out there together in the Cotswold area in England.  I want to explain to you in graphic terms why you too look even more beautiful out there in the countryside. It’s about blood flow throughout your body when you are out there. To do this I have to draw on my nursing biology knowledge about your autonomic or automatic nervous system and blood flow.
In the last episode I talked about how getting outside loosens and relaxes your thinking – your thoughts relax, you get perspective. At the very same time there are changes in your physical body – your nervous system comes into balance. On pages 57-59 my book Optimize Your Heart Rate I discuss the see saw nervous system which goes up and down between the sympathetic (fight/flight – where the heart speeds up) and the rest and digest where the heart relaxes and slows down. We need both. To get things done we need out heart rate to speed up and that is ok. When you are in sympathetic f/f the blood goes to your arms and legs so you can run away. But you don’t want to stay in that hyped up productive state, you need to give your mind and body a break. This is what happens in green space. 
The other extreme of your see saw nervous system, called you R&D takes over to bring your body and mind back into balance. Your In the r/d the blood stays in your head  and core – so the blood vessels open up in your head, through your chest and heart (relaxed heart rate) and your abs – sphincters and organs are relaxing so that your food, waste, blood, and secretions  can pass through your body with ease, and down below that the blood flows to your kidneys, bowels and genitals. This is where my kids say “mom……” This is all good I am a nurse this is how we talk... So 7 specific things happen when your blood flows 

 Transcript https://treesmendus.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 my website https://treesmendus.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

This podcast, Your Outside Mindset  is now in the top 5% most popular shows out of 3.2 million podcasts globally. Thank you to each one of you in 56 countries for listening and sharing Your Outside Mindset podcast episodes. 

For science- based information with easy to use tools, tips and practical advice on how to get the most of your time in green space see my website https://treesmendus.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.

In this solo episode today, I want to share something that happened to me at my son Max’s wedding to Sarah - which took me by surprise and made me step back and revaluate who else needs to hear the message I am sharing in this podcast. 

So let me take you to the big day. I was there mother of the groom and asked to do a big speech.I was nervous, practicing, second guessing whether this was the right thing to say-all the things that parents feel before making a momental speech.. I won’t read you the whole speech.  So listeners here is part of my speech on that precious loved filled day: 

When the kids were small we lived on Loughborough Lake near Kingston. One day I  was rushing around tidying our house and saying, “I just want to get things back to normal.” Max who was in Grade 1 at the time said, “Mommy Where’s normal?” I replied “ I don’t know, where do you think it is? Max said “Out in  the middle of the lake somewhere.” 

And when Max was little he loved to lie on  the ground and look  up into the  tree branches – for a  very long time. So long that I finally decided to start lying down next to him. When I did,   he said “look mommy angels” – he  was referring to the light glancing through the tree branches. 

I don’t know, but if I asked Max today “where  is normal?” I am pretty sure he would say anywhere in  the world – and mostly outside and always with Sarah.|”

At the end of the speech his friends shared with me  the impact that my speech had on them - what it also showed that with their  careers, technology and screens  they have lost touch with the importance of making time for nature and green spaces in their busy lives.

So this is for you the 20-30 year olds at Max and Sarah’s wedding:

I get it. If I rewind my time back in my career and busy life in my 20s and 30s, I made time for the gym and workouts but that was it. Now you probably know that I have lupus today. I look back and think that if I had made time for more nature and green space daily in my busy career life – if I had spent more time outsi

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 my website https://treesmendus.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

Christiane Wolf, MD, PhD is a former physician and an internationally known mindfulness and Insight (Vipassana) meditation teacher. She is passionate about translating ancient wisdom teachings into accessible and applicable modern-day language. She aims to live from the heart informed by the brain and inspires her students to explore the same. 

She is the author of “Outsmart Your Pain – Mindfulness and Self-Compassion to Help You Leave Chronic Pain Behind”and the co-author of the classic training manual for mindfulness teachers “A Clinician’s Guide To Teaching Mindfulness”. Christiane is the lead-consultant and teacher trainer for the VA’s (US Department of Veteran Affairs) National Mindfulness Facilitator Training and a senior teacher at InsightLA.

3:38 Originally I just wanted to provide a print out for patients and providers of what mindfulness and self compassion are and where to find resources. We ended up with a user friendly book.
4:45 When our body goes into pain, this is the body's priority: paying attention to pain.  This gets complicated with chronic pain.
6:48 Our body  learns pain. In chronic pain our body becomes over protective.
When we say the pain is killing me today, be careful because your body is  listening.
8:00 When we are in pain, the mind goes into rumination, replays stories of what happened to us. 
10:00 We have a story with a history.  What did you do? what are you regretting? We have a story of the past  and a story  of the future. With each thought comes a particular emotion.
10:57 We might have a future story - we might know that the condition we have is progressive. We might worry that the pain will not go away....so you will not be able to go on hikes, lift your grandchildren.....

11:47 When the pain comes rushing in, this is a reminder of our past and future story:  fear, frustration, and worry set in.

12:08 The past is over and the future isn't here. You might recognize your thoughts and say "the past story is really running right now."

12:16  You can  learn practices to put that story down for a while. May say "I don't need to go down that path right now...at this moment."

For further episode transcript please visit my  website Treesmendus.com

Follow Christiane Wolf on her website here
and on Instagram: christianewolfmindfulness

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 my website https://treesmendus.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