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Episode 54:
Lessons from the Natural World
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Hosted by: Marina Robb
Show Notes:
In this episode, I explore the deep connections between nature, energy, and the way we live and learn. Although navigating the hidden costs of our modern lives often weighs heavily.
I reflect on how we can develop greater awareness and resilience together and here are some of the areas I discuss:
- How our daily lives are built on fossil fuels, from transportation to everyday products, making us deeply reliant on resource extraction.
- While electric vehicles seem like a solution, their production still depends on intensive mining, impacting both communities and ecosystems.
- Different perspectives, such as those shared by Nate Hagens, offer insights into energy, society, and the challenges of systemic change.
- Coming to terms with how true sustainability difficult to achieve, without a massive and unlikely shift in our structures and belief systems.
- How Nature teaches us about sustainability, balance, and resilience, offering models like biomimicry to guide our choices.
- Lasting change requires both external actions and an internal shift in mindset, aligning with what Stephen Bruner calls the "internal climate of mind."
- Education often ignores the complexity of real learning, which thrives on sensory, interconnected experiences rather than rigid structures.
- Deep learning and meaningful connections with people or nature require time, space, and presence.
Thriving systems are built on balance, reciprocity, and leadership that values nature, relationships, and community over endless growth.
Music by Geoff Robb: www.geoffrobb.com
Links
Nate Hagen’s The Great Simplification: https://www.thegreatsimplification.com
Stephen Buhner's Book: Earth Grief: The Journey Into and Through Ecological Grief: The Journey Into and Through Ecological Loss
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Transcript
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(transcribed by AI so there maybe some small errors!)
What if wild, not domesticated, should be our normal instead of factory farmed lives? What if you could cultivate fulfilling lives and contribute to a healthy natural world? The wild minds podcast is brought to you by me. Marina Robb an author, social entrepreneur, Forest School and nature-based trainer and consultant and pioneer in developing green programs for the health service in the UK.
Join me as I discover new perspectives on what it is to be a human in a more than human world, challenging dominant paradigms, finding ways to be kinder on ourselves and harder on the system. I'm also the founder of the outdoor teacher and creator of practical online Forest School, outdoor learning and nature-based trainings for people in health, education and business. Tune in for interviews, insights, cutting edge and actionable approaches to help you to improve your relationship with yourself, others and the natural world.
I'm really grateful for all your support, and thank you for your feedback. We are almost at 40,000 listeners, so I can't really believe that, because I sit in my shed and share some of my thoughts and feel a lot of the time completely inadequate to be doing this. And you know, maybe I am, but when you are compelled to give something a go and to share something, I guess it's good to follow that. So I'm really grateful for your support. And if there's anything here that is a value that can make a difference, then then that's good enough for me.
So, I've titled this episode, Episode 54, lessons from the natural world, and I want to already say that lessons kind of implies school, and you know what I'm going to learn and stuff. And in my experience, what I learn from the natural world is not a directed experience, like, here you go, gonna fill me up with knowledge, like a lot of education, it's very experiential, and it comes and enters in different ways. And this sort of sits in me for a long time.
But here I am speaking to you, and I've been thinking this season has been much more tricky to kind of dive into a lot of the kind of issues, the bigger societal, cultural issues, and definitely stepping out of my comfort zone into other areas. But I feel compelled to do that, because when I talk about outdoor learning or forest school, and I think about why I'm doing that, and you know, to build that real, important, meaningful relationship to the natural world. I can't ignore how we are treating and being in this world that we live in, and our roles within that so here's an episode where I try and pull together these different threads and yeah, thank you. Thank you for being with me
So in our own lives, when we know we should change or do something simple that's going to be better for us, like not eat the third packet of crisps, or maybe I should do some exercise or switch off that phone. I've been listening to it for so long. It can be surprisingly difficult, can't it? And sometimes it takes particular focus or willpower, and other times you just need to have support or a reason. And there's many, many other ways that can support us to change our habits and our thinking, but it is difficult in our modern lives for so many of us, definitely for me, day to day, we go to the supermarkets, we get in our cars, we use our gadgets. We're involved in some kind of production or service for our work, and all of this is in some way being energized by petroleum. Now, that's a big jump, isn't it, but I want to talk having interviewed Rob Hopkins last week and really looked at our petroleum, fossil fuel-based lives. I want to bring that in as well, and I know that all our plastic that is around, the food I buy is created from, from basically people that are chemists, I suppose, heating chemicals from the raw materials that we get from the earth, like coal, natural gas and crude oil.
So our world is constantly being created from raw materials the cars we drive, including the electric cars that we feel good about are also created through the complex process of mining the earth, refining it, smelting mineral rich deposits that are in the Earth's crusts, and then we get steel and aluminum. And again, I'm sure many of you know this, but I'm on a journey here to educate myself as well and also to remember re put together all these thoughts and intellectual knowledge, but really try and integrate that into my body.
Now, some of the producers you might not know of a lot of these kind of minerals are countries like China, Australia, Brazil, India, Russia and many others. And of course, all of this has to be transported. So when we start creating electric vehicles, and I understand feeling good about it, you know, we're buying these things because it feels like we are contributing, as people, as communities, to making a difference. But I don't want to green wash the situation and also need to be very aware that those raw materials for batteries need lithium cobalt, nickel and graphite, and that these things are being extracted lithium, for example, when it's extracted, needs tons of water, which is taken away from local communities, and then you've got all the potential leak of chemicals into the water supplies.
If we look into it, we'll know that children are being asked to work as labor and indigenous rights are being affected and forests are being cut down to take nickel and all of this requires so much energy, often from coal still. So we may feel great on the one hand with electric cars, but all human made products stand outside of what we could call natural cycles. And like you, I've been born into this, and here we are facing, I would say that reality, and I know many of you know this and are involved in things that make a difference. And I if this is not what you want to hear, I would definitely focus on some of the amazing work that Transition Network has supported, all the POS, the real things that are happening that we need to be doing, that are really positive around the world, because they do exist as well.
And as Rob Hopkins talked about that narrative like changing the narrative, but I am in the moment in this episode, in this season, really holding the trouble of it all for me, you know. And also, the research shows that in US and the UK that we have about nine to 13 devices per person, and of course, all of that relies on raw materials, metals, minerals, petroleum-based plastics, including bits of gold, which are amazing conductors of Energy, silver, copper, tin and all that is happening on this earth to give us all these devices.
So we need to consider the whole picture, how everything works together. And this is what we what so many people now talk about, systems thinking and systems theory and not seeing anything in its parts, because you can't possibly understand it if you only look at its parts, you need to look at the relationship with everything else. And as you'll see during this podcast, that I'm also linking that to our body and how our body works, that we can't just focus. Purpose as a medical model might on one aspect of our body. It's how it all relates together.
I am an amateur in this stuff, and I'm trying to figure it out in my own way, but not just figure it out through my head. So I've recently discovered, and I'm listening to a guy called Nate Hagen, who's got a podcast called the great simplification, and I'll put the link on the show notes, but really appreciating his understanding of energy and the complexity of how everything works, and his sort of straightforward talking, but also what he's calling generally a great simplification, the kind of acceptance of almost all these systems are they have their own energy, in terms of momentum, it's going to be very hard as the whole society to change it.
So one of the ways of looking at that is to think about how we can simplify our lives and regret, regain the kind of balance through that and these are my words. You have to listen to the hours and hours of information and offerings, I suppose. But I do. I did want to link to that because this word great simplification feels really important to me and to possible paths that will help us. It makes sense to me now, I don't think that currently, we're able to really slow down the rate at which we're producing all the products, and that makes me sad. I don't feel powerless, but I know that when I slow down enough, there is a great sadness underneath that that we are really damaging ourselves the planet.
And, you know, I have children, and you'll have children, and all the species have children. You know, we're really creating a situation that's going to make life hard in the future, if it isn't already hard. So we're unlikely. Really currently looking out there, let's be realistic that things are actually slowing down, and whilst we are switching some of our energy to renewables, and it is making a difference. And you know, government, some governments, are trying this to get to net zero. We can't do that. We can't live well within planetary boundaries if we are obsessively following this relentless growth, and I keep hearing it everywhere, economic growth, economic growth, economic growth.
So somewhere we need to look at why we are, why this is apparently the only way we can work as a economic system, is this kind of relentless growth, because we know all of that requires further energy, further mining, further destruction. So the more we produce and consume, whether it's food, clothes, building or our technology, the more energy we need to power these factories, to transport the goods, to run our businesses. And most of this energy does come from fossil fuels and solar and wind, which will make will slow it down. Still requires materials from the land and resources to build and maintain. You know, all our manmade products have hidden costs and need to be extracted process transport, and that causes pollution and waste.
And you know, we know that the digital services which are exciting, the AI is exciting, and I'm leaning into that as well, but it uses lots of energy. So what can we do now? My solutions are not going to be mind blowing, and I'm still working within my framework of health and education, and that's important, because our individual changes and where we can operate from are exactly that. So we don't, I don't think it helps to try and take on or imagine we can do more than we actually can whilst living a life, and we only have this one life. So I definitely want to have joy and have pleasure and make the most of it as well. Making the most of it is and how I do that is probably where the my focus needs to be.
So what can we do? And how does this relate to education and health? I want to share that the. Lots of research, lots of theorists, one of which very well known, Loris Malaguzzi, who was the Italian educator and founder of Reggio Emilia, an approach to early years education, and many others who have influenced our early years education do talk about nature as the third teacher.
Hence why I thought I'd call this episode lessons from nature, because there are there's so much in that, and that's one of the themes I keep returning to, and we'll return even more strongly in the next episode. But he talked about nature as the third teacher. And if you want to know about that, more go into that. But within education, we have that. We have this understanding that we don't just learn from humans and our interactions. We learn from all the relational sensory experiences that we have given the opportunity and space and time to experiment and be in the natural world. A deeper connection happens, very important connection that is and makes sense to our body hardware, very healthy for us. Alongside that, we know about biomimicry, for example, which is a whole way of designing our systems and promise and products that mimic nature's designs. I'll put some links in there.
There's some free online courses that you can do, but there's these ways of reminding us to learn and lean into how these natural systems, amazing systems, work, and learn from them, and this is really the natural world. Has it like it's our primary natural design, and it's taken years and years to create, and it really does represent an integrated system of intelligence that adapts that is sustainable, and By studying and aligning with these kind of natural principles, we can develop educational approaches, technologies and ways of living that are more resilient, efficient and harmonious with the world around us.
So on one hand, I'm saying, Wow, look at what we're doing and what our children are entering into largely unconsciously, definitely not trying to blame any one person. Here we are as a collective human race, participating in different ways in that. And yes, there's definitely more that have more influence. I've been talking a lot about that, and a lot of power, and that's true, but let's not blame I don't think that really helps when we blame it. I think the invitation more is to go in individually, into our inner world, inner self, and what does that really mean to us that this is happening? It never works to blame anyone else. I know that I've been a blamer and I blame and I know that it just shifts the issue and actually makes me powerless when I do that.
So my exploration of the wild mind is really a deep reverence for nature's wisdom and the guidance of elderhood. And I really felt that as I've been, yeah, feeling this incredible Earth's ancientness and incredible complexity, of which no scientist living today could grasp the entirety of that. I know you get that, but I think we forget that. We think we're so kind of clever. This is a really wise system. We can decide that it's inanimate, like it doesn't have a living conscious intelligence. I don't really mind whether we do that or not. Regardless, we it is a incredibly complex, amazing system. Going to look at that in the middle in a minute as to what it teaches us and what we're doing that we're not, you know, we're not doing that.
So whilst we do need to change human behavior in the outer world, we're going to keep repeating that my behavior, my individual behavior, our collective behavior, our community behavior, how we run our local governments and governments and systems. And you know, Rob Hopkins and the Transition Network, among many others of you. And other groups out there are showing us how we can do that. We also need to change the human baby behavior in our interior world, what I could call our inner ecology, and that's why I'm always doing this kind of outer world and inner world.
And I find that extraordinary, how almost magical, actually, the way we our outer world reflects our inner world. That kind of how we project whatever's going on inside us, the kind of structures and systems that we have inside us, whether we're aware of it or not. We project onto the outer world. You know, if we think somebody doesn't like us, some somewhere we have that sense in US of not being liked, and we may project that. It's a silly example, in a way, but I'm just trying to show the link of that, and I guess also the way we put different parts of us.
We talk about parts. I talk about parts all the time, but really, we're not a part, are we? We are constantly moving changing system within ourselves. And that's really good to know, because otherwise we think we can get stuck in one, one space and that's generally not very healthy. So our inner ecology, changing our inner ecology, and this requires shifting our internal paradigm, our internal worlds and structures to what Stephen Bruno, and I'll put the link of this in the show notes, calls the internal climate of mind. And I want to share his wise words. He says, we need a sustainable way of life in here as well as out there, a way of being that is regenerative, that is orientated towards life, that reclaims what we have lost, including important elements of our humanness. I love the word humanness. Our full humanness, we can't possibly be humaneness. Be humaneness, to be human without our access to our feelings.
So in my nature based practice, I come as a facilitator. Well, I come here to the podcast, also with lots of doubts. Recently, through some mentoring, I can say that I'm working towards experiencing my doubt as something of an ally, now that my doubt is an ally, because actually, it allows me to be humble to know that I absolutely don't know, and I've been exploring that as well. There's the aspects of me that really just don't have any knowledge, and I know that the external world out there values knowledge, but I've got no words. Don't know, not really sure all that. And I come to this work often with that sense of unease, because, you know, who am I to be doing this, and at the same time, I'm going to show up with that doubt, and that inevitably makes me more human. So that's a little bit of wisdom from a mentoring session that I had, and it's helpful for me, because actually it's it facilitates me being able to know that that is human and that is normal, and that's probably quite healthy, because how can I possibly know what I feel I need to know in order to be valuable or to have enough or to have a voice?
So my humanness involves access to other parts, let's call it parts of me that are not so intellectual, but rather are feeling based intuitive and continually impressed by life, in awe of life incredible, this incredible life I'm grateful for that I'm never going to have enough knowledge or scientific understanding, there are those that have so much more than me, but even them, they can't have enough knowledge to see the whole wider picture together, we get a little glimpse together the many eyes, the many views, the many perspectives, have a greater chance of seeing more including the non-human or the more than human world. I guess I can have my full experience, though. I can have my experience of what it is to be alive.
So, I really don't need any more evidence to tell me that something is not. K in the way our systems and structures are operating. And I want to just say that, because I do value science and evidence on the one hand, but I also know after 30 years, I've got boxes of evidence, some of which I've hardly read, some of which I've read long time ago and forgotten. I don't know if that's actually made much difference in change and in fact, and as we know really worryingly, that pretty much anyone can say anything they want, and if you want to, you'll believe me. We know that from our leaders at the moment, and that is scary, because then that requires us to have the ability to be, to think for ourselves and to investigate and to feel into what feels right and really, really pull on a lot of different ways of knowing to move in this world, learning from late nature, in nature, there is no waste, as everything is reused.
That's incredible. The living system metabolizes. I'm going to use the word like eats. I don't think that's necessarily scientific, but it eats and metabolizes and transfers chemicals and nutrients and all kinds of things continually, constantly doing that. It's complex. It's ancient, full of relationships between water, earth, sun, air, the great elements, and all the kind of micro stuff within that. And it keeps the living system in balance. It's circular, like networks. Mycelium. It is not linear. What's this got to do with education? Education is so linear at the moment, so directive. It doesn't permit this kind of spaghetti like approach to learning, which is, I think what learning is like. I'm getting all kinds of inputs and insights and experiences and thoughts at the same time.
The wild mind is circular and sensory. It doesn't have one director. Even my brain, as you guys know, it's definitely not just got one director. Most educational theorists know that learning and development is not linear. They know that space and time to explore relationships enhances learning. And we could talk about how space and time is an essential ingredient for connection for human-to-human connection, for nature connection, I can't be hurried into real connection. It doesn't work. And it's when I have the space and time, then I drop in and I can feel my body. And when I talk about my body, it's that I'm much more open to sensory information and sensations. And that is connection. So this incredible world is not controlled by humans as we may believe. We really do feel that control. We have control over our lives and over our future.
And yeah, I have huge fear of losing people I love, because actually, what control do I have, and how am I going to manage that if something happens? How do people do that? How do people go through grief? Our human made creations integrate into our systems. Why I'm saying that is because everything that we make that's human from materials. These raw materials end up back into our systems. They enter our bodies through our air, the water, the food that influence our hate, our health. So we are connected. We don't get to have a body now that doesn't have plastics in it. For example, our rational mind is not able to fathom all this complexity. It does provide limited perspectives. I talk a lot about how humans grow and learn, and I include the senses and our bodies and our deep feeling and our spiritual awareness, because these are how we grow and how we learn, amongst other things. So our natural world creates resilience through diversity. It through adaptation and growth, which happen in cycles, but they doesn't happen in expansion.
Thinking about economics, everything is about expansion growth, but actually what's happened to the cycles, to the learning from this really ancient system you. Our human body, we grow up so physically fast in our early years, and that's why all the work about play and movement and being in connection to nature and all the changes that happen are so important. But then we grow internally. We hit a point in our in our cycle of life, where we turn inward. In the same way of our solar cycle, we're about to be here in England. I'm recording this as we approach Spring Equinox. So in the same way, the first cycle of our life is very much about well, the summer of our life, the east of our life, is very much about growth, fast growth, and then the turning at the summer solstice, where we turn and it becomes about internal growth.
Again, the external natural systems are mirroring our internal systems. Our natural systems know how to regenerate through complex feedback that's developed over billions of years, and our bodies are exactly the same. So for a long time, we've been using raw materials to make our lives without thinking about the impact. Oh, it's hard to realize that. It's hard to really let that in. We didn't see the impact. We didn't know how to change. Humans have made all these concrete structures or technology, and they all take so long to biodegrade, and they crumble, and then they get remade, maybe after 60 years, or much less, as I've said before in another podcast, with our phones every few years, then they get dumped, and that all goes into our water and our air and our fire.
Don't despair, fellow friends, don't despair. Be with the feeling of it. People have got through very difficult things. All the waste goes back into the living system, and the living system tries to metabolize it. Our bodies try to metabolize what we put in. I don't think any of us need a degree or a master's degree or a PhD to know any of this. I think we know it in our bodies and our hearts. We don't need more knowledge. I don't think a scientist, no matter how good intentioned we are, they are, or a politician is going to really look after us and the health of the planet. So it's not me giving up on those leaders and those scientists and the everyday people. I'm not giving up on us. We're in it. I'm in it, but I also want to face that we need some serious leadership and change and collective agreements and not being in denial.
So to do this, we need some radical acceptance of reality. We do need to adapt ourselves to this living world and try and live within these cycles to conserve our energy when we need to know our limits. We don't want to burn out. Actually taking time to rest and play. You hear me talking about it is a great adaptation. Think of the communities that live closer to the land. They have a lot of time to play, hang out, talk, feel connected, look in each other's eyes, and feel that someone's going to get our back. You know, that's really important. Having time to share food is a great adaptation. You know, with not phones on the table, growing some parsley, I put this in because that's what I was able to grow last year. Is a great adaptation, I think, to buying parsley. What I used to buy in a plant. I'm trying to plant it. In fact, at this time of year, I've got to plant the seeds so I can have parsley, and then I can make a pasta sauce. Remembering my mum, Italian, great pasta sauce.
So I'm serious about seeking some basic simple pleasures, looking for basic simple pleasures with humans and nature, and seeing that as a great simplification, and thinking that this, this is helpful for me anyway. So little bit more go, guys. I'm seems to be a long one this time, but there's been, it's been quite a season balancing our wild, connective mind and leaning into a more holistic view of ourselves and lives. Does mean altering how we measure success in schools, in society, and valuing different ways of knowing I love.
Rob Hopkins again, talks. About, what if we measure different metrics? I'll let you’re listen to that podcast if you haven't already. We need direct access to nature, to the outdoors, to a playground, a walk in a park, the sea, Wilder spaces to Give us our whole selves, a chance to experience and connect with different parts of who we are, to allow our bodies to regulate the natural world is the great co regulator, the natural systems being close to trees, being out in the wind, and giving our senses time to work again and to deepen our listening to the more human world, the human nonhuman world, doesn't communicate in the way that we think. It's far older and it's far more powerful than we are now.
As you know you guys that I think a lot about, and work with mental health, the mental health services in the UK and continually aim to deepen my own experience, direct experience and understanding of our physiology seems really important, because we are animals, natural animals, and so because we're animals, we have the fight, the flight, the flea response, among some other responses that I'm not going to go into, which is our defense mechanism, and this internal fleeing aspect that we do not just external, internal fleeing is experience as disassociation. It's the kind of freeze mechanism that leaves us numb. Now this is important in this whole subject, because it looks like we don't care. You don't care. I don't care, because we can't feel it, because it's that trauma that we talk about that to feel it, to have a community or education that helps us, or parents or carers that help us feel well, it takes a lot of time to de-ice the system, but this internal process of disassociation, it may look like we don't care, but when we thought we do care, and it protects us.
This system of not caring protects us from feeling what's really going on. It's a great protective mechanism, but the challenge is, it also keeps us in denial. So in some ways, again, this fully alive system doesn't get to be fully alive and remember, this is our only life, and we're going to die. So you know, it's quite a nice thing to remember to be alive, to try and access this, and it doesn't rely on material goods for this. This is all in our own inner system, which is great. I love that. I love the medicine is here in us. So this denial isn't anyone's fault. I'm going back to that. It isn't anyone's fault.
We've inherited this within our cultures, our families, our systems. I've passed it on to my children, not being comfortable to feel lots of different moments and emotions. And by the way, I'm not saying that we should always be feeling emotional, not really saying that. I'm saying moving through things, having access to that as long as, as well as our heads, our thoughts, our imagination, our empathy, our spiritual orness of life, all that we've inherited this culture and unconsciously, we avoid the painful truths to protect ourselves from what will be distressful? What is distressful? And we can choose. No one's going to push you into that. No one can. I don't want to, and it's really your choice, your consent to yourself to feel it on our personal level, we can work and listen gently with kindness to our own physiology and in doing so, there are gifts. You know, they say the gift is in the wound. We can increase our regulation. At a systems level, our culture is as we know, generally supporting a massive collective denial and refusal to acknowledge, acknowledge what's going on.
We're living way out of the natural system and acting on problems. And I do. I'm wanting to keep saying, Go back. There are millions of people out there acting on problems. US do not want to make a binary here. It isn't a binary situation. The world isn't binary. It's complex. So in acknowledging, though, that there is an issue, there is a denial issue, I want to bring us back to the human everyday experience, where denial allows us to minimize the problem, we can say it's not that bad. My hand is up here. I do that. Maybe my drinking habit or dumping chemicals into the water, ah, it's not that bad. Someone else will sort it. Or maybe I want to blame others. It's not my fault. It's definitely that corporation over there, or that politician over there, you know, it's nothing to do with me. Or maybe I'm comparing, you know, I'm not as bad as them. Or, well, you know, I do this, but I don't do this and all these things, which fair enough, totally.
Let's bring that in to the mix and, and let's stay with the trouble that there is inevitably some kind of denial. We need denial. Remember, I You can't stay in a place. Don't want to stay in one place all the time. The world keep moving. The emotions keep moving. Change keeps happening. So is frightening to face our reality, to face what might be underneath our behaviors, as facing problems does feel overwhelming, and as our culture and our surroundings and our systems, our education, normalize this harming of the world, there's a social reinforcement that's really powerful that exists, and I guess that's what cultures do we get socially we, you know, it's like the sheep thing, poor sheep. But you know, we kind of all follow each other, and we don't have our own minds or know how to sit with difference around a table.
So I totally think it's human to be in denial, but it's definitely not healthy all the time. I want to acknowledge again that this is a survival mechanism with so many people needing to make ends meet, and we're not taught to let our bodies feel this and reach out for support. If I did reach out for support, if I did feel any of this, would anyone even be there? That's a genuine fear. Do I trust that? Am I actually? Do? I actually believe I'm worth anything I often, you know people I know, just someone recently said feels absolutely invisible, because no one has any sense of what she's going through as somebody trying to get home. For example, nature shows us that balance is more important than progress and expansion, that when we shift our minds to focus on wellbeing, connection and less consumption, things can improve.
We could call this a great simplification, and through this, we can find increased health, happiness and ecological stability. So my work with the NHS and schools is underpinned by a nature centric model that relates to the first ever podcast I did where I interviewed Betsy about a model of humanness, a humanness that supports us to not disassociate and trust more in our instincts, our community, the humans that care genuinely, and the nonhuman or more than Human world. When we feel differently. We perceive life differently, you know, is our domestication at breaking point. I think of Max, the podcast interview that I did with Max about rewilding education and what it takes to break a wild person or a wild horse. And you know, what do we all lose when we break things and break the natural world? Of course, there's more to say about that. Last week, Rob showed us about the power of community, and I really look forward to finding out about how we can bring more outer health through these amazing regenerative projects and inner health through more wise, deep experiences. It's comforting for me to know that change does happen at the individual level and works its way upwards, and that usually politicians follow the crowd.
I really, completely, utterly welcome great, honorable leadership, and we need it more than ever. We need it in government, business, schools, health, we need to follow the urgings, longings of our hearts, to follow a path, to do the task that calls us to specific action and then let the rest the why. Community do what it does, hopefully in service of this life. It feels appropriate for me to end with reciprocity and to consider the Earth's perspective. That we are as humans are also very valuable to the earth. We have valuable ness to the earth too. We can simplify our lives. We can slow down. We can value relationships. We can value these things over material wealth.
Of course, we need a certain amount. We can buy less. We can learn local skills. We can laugh with our friends. Spend more time in wilder spaces. Have simple food together. I think I've already said that I like food and learn from this greater, wise elder, living, extraordinary being. We can move ourselves from disconnection to connection and practice reciprocity, where we give back because we can, because we have value. We have lots to give. Everybody has something to give. In my practice, we can plant flowers, we can plant trees. We can look at our sites, forest school sites or sites around hospitals and rewild them and create spaces to leave nature to do its thing.
Can we might feed birds checking what we're giving the birds. We can avoid putting chemicals in our gardens. We can share these ideas and stories and practice gratitude. There's lots and lots of ways to simplify our lives so as we integrate ourselves on this life, life long, long journey we can take on certain tasks. Listen to the task that's calling the ones that we do, because we just must do it. They don't have to be big. They can just be little. Perhaps all of us could do the unique and innovative work that is in us to do. Thank you.
Thank you for joining me again on this journey. Please join me next week for a stonker of an episode where I have the pleasure to meet Debi-Keyte-Hartland, who's an early years childhood consultant and who's passionate about young children's learning and development, and she reflects eloquently, deeply, wonderfully about pedagogy and how we can create meaningful, ecological curriculums even at that early stage, and how we bring that into our Educational Systems.
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