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This podcast episode featured Verla Fortier interviewing Luke Suddards about his community-building initiative for new dads called The Walking Dad Club. Luke, a 37-year-old carpenter from Essex living in southwest London, created the walking group after experiencing a lack of community connection as a new dad. The club meets every 1st and 3rd Sunday at 9:30 AM at District Cafe near Battersea Park, where participating dads receive free coffee before taking a 45-minute walk around the park with their babies. Luke also conducts interviews with dads called "The Talking Dads" to share their experiences and struggles, which include sleep deprivation and balancing work and family life. The club has gained popularity with both regular attendees and new participants joining each session, and Luke envisions expanding the concept globally for dads worldwide to connect in nature. The Walking Dad Club  This year, my son became a father for the first time—and I became a grandmother  for the first time! As a retired community health nurse, I was delighted to see my lovely daughter-in-law connect with every local resource available to new mothers. At the same time, I found myself worrying about how few community supports seemed to exist for my son as a new dad. New Moms Find New Moms  My daughter-in-law is extremely resourceful and quickly tapped into her community. New moms tend to find other new moms, and many community resources are built with them in mind. What I could not find, however, were fun, welcoming community spaces designed specifically to support dads. My son Max did have a couple of dads from his “Baby Bump” prenatal class whom he met for a quick drink now and then. One of them was Luke Suddards, a 37-year-old carpenter and joiner from Essex. Can you imagine my joy when I heard that Luke was starting a Walking Dad Club for new dads and their babies at Battersea Park on the first and third Sunday of every month? The turnout has been staggering. Most of the men did not know each other before showing up, and new dads continue to appear every month. They meet at 9:30 a.m. at the District Café near Battersea Park for a free coffee, then head out together for a walk. The group just keeps growing. Why Start a Walk for New Dads?  Luke had lived in east London during his twenties before moving to southwest London to be with his partner, Chelsea. They were looking for a flat and soon began thinking about having children. As Luke said on my podcast Your Outside Mindset, “There were two parts to this. I had physically moved away from a close-knit group of guy friends. And psychologically, I had moved on from where I was in terms of that young guy, going out and drinking and all the fun things you do in your twenties. A lot of my friends from east London were a bit younger, or they were older and had moved out of the city. I found myself in southwest London, enjoying it very much with my partner Chelsea, but I was lacking a community of guys in particular—people I could meet up with, often just on a whim, and chat with about random stuff.” “Not long after I moved to southwest London, we got pregnant, and finding this community was put on the back burner. Everything became about being a new dad, which was amazing. Still, there was this niggle in my head that I was missing out on sharing the journey with people in the same place as me.” “I had this idea for a group for dads that would have a low barrier to entry, because dads are knackered and short on time. Chelsea owns a café on the edge of Battersea Park, which is a stunning park and perfect for a walk with babies and prams. The idea was that we would meet at the café, get a coffee, and do a lap of the park together. I guess it was about finding a community that wasn’t already there.” These New Dads Are Flourishing   Luke, who started this successful outdoor group for new dads and babies and my son Max  are flourishing as fathers. I am not sure how much to attribute to the Walking Dads Club, but they both say they look forward to those Sundays. They love being with their babies, strolling beneath the trees with other dads in the beautiful park. When I was there, people stopped to take photos of all these young dads smiling and laughing with their friends and babies. It was an uplifting image for everyone. These walking dads are regularly connected to their local environment (green space) and connected to the dads around them while they are shaping their beliefs about fatherhood – their outside mindsets –  it feels good to have fun outside under the trees with other dads and their babies.  The Walking Dad Club Is a Play on “The Walking Dead” Luke brings a sense of fun to all of this. The name “Walking Dads Club” is a nod to the zombie series The Walking Dead, because, as Luke says, “that is how you feel as a new dad.” Although I never thought I would watch the series, I have now started because of Luke and the Walking Dads Club. As one reviewer says, the series is really about remaining human when everything familiar has disappeared. Survival becomes a metaphor for life: waking up each day, adapting, enduring loss, and finding a reason to keep going. In a world where tomorrow is uncertain, ordinary moments—a shared meal, laughter, music, or a safe night’s sleep—become extraordinary. Love, loyalty, and friendship sit at the heart of the message. Sound like being a new dad to you? Well done, Luke. He said he chose the name to appeal to dads his age with a similar sense of humour, and it is clear he enjoys the work, which he describes as both a hobby and something he loves to do. Easy to Do, Easy to Repeat and So Much Positivity A walk in the park with his baby, alongside another new dad and his baby, is exactly what my son—and so many other dads—need. When I asked Luke what surprised him most about starting the group, he said it was “the number of people turning up and how much people need this. There are regulars who come every week, and there are always new people as well. That is a healthy sign of a strong and growing community.” As we know from the green space research translated in my books, even five minutes outside near trees can lift your mood, give you energy, help you think more clearly, and support problem-solving. These new dads and their babies are getting 45 minutes of green-space goodness combined with meaningful social connection and laughter. It is a triple whammy. A Global Walking Dad Club  Luke paints this picture of the future:  “It is 9:30 a.m. on the first Sunday of the month, and all over the world dads are waking up, dusting themselves off, giving Mom a kiss and telling her to keep sleeping. They head downstairs, get the baby out of the crib, dress them, put them in the pram, walk to the nearby café, meet other dads, say hello, catch up, and all go for a walk. This is so easy to do, so easy to repeat, and there is so much positivity. I do not see why it cannot happen everywhere. It would be amazing to think of all these dads taking a walk at the same time.”   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

Reading recent research on making connections and creating community made me want to share this story.  Last month, I was a regular granny in Clapham Common Park in the UK, pushing her grandson in the infant swing – all I could see was his smiling eyes.  Nothing else in the world mattered.  I am 73 and had just arrived in London to celebrate my only grandchild’s first birthday and my son’s first father’s day. I live in Manitoba, Canada.  After our lovely time in Clapham Common, my grandson and I both went down for our needed naps in my son and daughter in law’s home in the Battersea area of South West London.  When I woke up from my nap, my lovely daughter in law said to  me “you left your purse in the park by the swings. The mom who found it is on her way over to drop it off.”  When this mom immediately appeared with her sweet daughter  - both all smiles and grace at the door, all I could do was thank her over and over again. This is what I pieced together from what she and my loved ones told me. The mom had seen me in Clapham Common Park pushing my grandson in the swing. When she left the park she noticed a purse on the ground by the swing. She looked inside and asked if anyone named “Verla” was in the park. No one by that name answered her.  In my purse was my phone and this mom somehow found and called my first emergency contact, my partner in Canada. He said “thank you so much I will call her!”  The young mom replied “ you won’t be able to do that because I am calling you on her phone.”  Then this young mom  found my eldest son’s number, my second  emergency contact and he has a UK number. She was able to reach him while he was in a corporate meeting. He excused himself and together they figured out the logistics of how to  get my purse with my phone, credit cards, and  government information back to me.  This mom offered to drop it off on her way home saying “it is no trouble – we live in the Battersea area.” After this mom talked to my son and they figured everything out, she called my partner in Canada again to tell him that everything was sorted. He was relieved and so grateful that she took the time to call him back to let him know all was fine.  Now that I am back to my small hometown, Pine Falls, Manitoba, my friends are amazed and tell me  how lucky I was to  have had this angel find my purse. This mom’s good will has spread across the Atlantic and will keep going. She is still making people feel good about other people in the world.  Thank you again to this mom’s act of  compassion for this granny who only had eyes for her grandson that lovely morning in Clapham Common Park. It could have gone so horribly wrong if not for this angel in the park.  To this wonderful mom: you  make me, my friends, and my family even more in love with this world, it’s people, and Clapham Common.  To this human angel in Clapham Common: you are my hero. Thank you for all that you do for others. May your kindness circle back to you over and over again.  I will be in contact with you to thank you again for making this world a little brighter.    PS. I have made contact with this mom now. She said she and her daughter found the whole thing a “great adventure” and they were happy to do what they did. So there you go, what a lucky little daughter to have a mom to model such kindness. And I do wonder if the research that shows generosity increases in green space helps to support angels like this mom and daughter. And of course I am sending a little gift to that lovely daughter who is just like her mom.    The green space research I am referring to says that the problem is that modern communities frequently struggle with a lack of social cohesion, loneliness, and, in some cases, high rates of crime. Green spaces act as social catalysts that encourage interaction, strengthening community bonds. Studies show that neighborhoods with more greenery have stronger ties, better "neighboring" behaviors, and lower crime rates. Shared natural areas increase feelings of community, belonging, and safety.  All the best to you this summer wherever you may live and may it involve some time in a lovely green park with your purse close at hand while you take back your outside mindset.    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

Listeners thank you again for keeping this podcast in the top 5% of podcasts of 3.7 million podcasts globally as reported by Listen Score.   In addition I want to thank Million Podcasts for recently recognizing Your Outside Mindset in the top Aging and Well Being Podcasts in Canada. As you may know I am an active member of the Global Nature Nurses Collective and interviewed the chair of the group Susan Alliston Dean and will add a link for that. In our last meeting Sue asked me to do a grounding mediation of my time in the boreal forest bush. So I thought I would just share that with you today.  I mean hope in the way psychologist Scott Barry Kaufman and Dr. Dan Tomasulo’s book describe it as a teachable skill based on agency and many pathways. Hope changes everything – hope helps us feel differently about what is coming at us.  Finding small ways to feel better (like getting outside into the woods) activates hope which an be regulated, improved and cultivated. This is not so much a state of mind but a practice or a learned habit of mind. More on hope in Kaufman book "Rise Above"  in this link. Hope is a form of energy and very frequently that energy is strongest at times when we are outside in the trees. So dear listeners keep trusting that being outside makes you feel good, you become energized, and your perspective shifts.  Being outside sharpens your ability to chose a new outlook as you take back Your Outside Mindset.  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

Verla Fortier introduces her podcast "The Outside Mindset Show" and discusses her experiences with nature and community walking initiatives in London, England.    The conversation features Alison Palmer, who shares details about the Walk and Talk movement she and her colleague started in Wimbledon Park, which has since expanded to multiple locations and attracted thousands of participants.  They discuss the benefits of walking groups for social connection and community building, with Alison highlighting her work in education and Verla sharing her positive experiences organizing similar walks in her own community. Walk and Talk  Alison Palmer on Linkedin 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

Dear Baby Brooks,  As you will come to know, you and your parents love to be outside. Although you live in the big city of London, you have beautiful life spent outside.  I am your Nana and I came to spend over a month in your house when you were just 2, and then 3 months old.  If You Could See What I See   I see you outside in your back yard or in a nearby park at least 5 times a day.   I see how you are spending your time falling in love with the people and your world around you.  Brooks, with a name of  tree and water spirits, you are safe in a world of love. Your mom and dad share you easily with family and close friends.  They seem to know that the more love we  give to you, the more love there is to go around. And I am beginning to realize that being brave might be the same with them too.  You are a Dream Sleeper You are a dream sleeper.  If you could see how this saves us and restores us every night. Although you are just 3 months old you have slept all through the night in your own room. Your mom (my lovely daughter in law) sleeps since she gave you your “dream feed” at 11 pm to help you to sleep through the night.  Your dad (my son) comes into your bedroom at 0700 am. You greet him with smiles that create rapture while you move your legs and arms with the excitement of new daylight, love, and attention.  As soon as you get on to the diaper change table – which we now call your massage table – you smile as he tells you how beautiful and amazing you are. He massages your arms, feet, legs, shoulders, and tells you how lucky we are to have you in our lives. You smile, look into his eyes and coo something gentle that  feels and sounds like you feel the same way too.  Your Mornings Outside  It is late August 2025 and your dad gives you your bottle after he wraps you in a warm blanket, takes you in his arms to the outdoor couch in your soft green backyard. On either side white jasmine flowers bloom and give off a heavy sweet scent of summer. The front facing wall is lush   green bamboo. The evening before, your mom pumps breast milk so that your dad can give this to you in your bottle in the morning. This is her way of giving your dad the great gift of you fixing your eyes on your dad’s eyes as you hum pure sounds of mmmmm  with each draw of that magic breast milk.   You snuggle deep into your dad’s arms.  He is in heaven and you are too.  Your dad  wakes up before you do, getting ready for work so that he can spend every minute he can with you before he leaves for work. Once when I thought it was time for him to go to work he said “I get to have 5 more minutes with him Mom” with a smile as he moved around the backyard with you in his arms.  see full transcript on Verla Fortier's substack  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

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. For peer reviewed research on how your time spent in green space can change your mindset, prevent disease, balance your nervous system and your heart rate please go to my Substack website https://verlafortier.substack.com. Find my best selling books on Amazon  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. Thank you for providing a  review of my books.  Today it is my pleasure to speak with Pearlette Ramos. Let me read you her bio and then we will chat. To learn more please visit https://threeextraordinarywomen.com Pearlette Ramos was born in poverty and raised in the projects,  Pearlette's home environment was riddled with alcoholism, mental illness and domestic violence. Due to the trauma, Pearlette fled her parents’ home when she was 15 years old and moved in with an older brother. Within twelve months she was pregnant, married and a high school dropout. Tragically, after living four short months Pearlette’s baby girl, ChaviElle, died of acute bronchial pneumonia. Devastated by her daughter’s death, she channeled her heartbreak into studying. First obtaining her GED, she applied and was accepted into college, then law school – becoming the first in her family to graduate from both. After practicing law for 11 years, Pearlette went back to school and obtained a doctorate degree in psychology. She has raised two daughters, ages 27 and 36, while globetrotting around the world—having visited the seven continents and more than 80 countries.  4:02 Film is called Three Extraordinary Women who experienced extreme trauma in their childhood and how they went on to make meaning of that experience in their lives and each one became a social justice and human rights advocate in the world.  4:43 They tell their story as they climb Mount Kilimanjaro with the idea that we each have a personal Kilimanjaro. And they each have a collective Kilimanjaro  - giving voice to children and women globally.  5:23 My personal story and connection with nature. I grew up in poverty and had a TV. I was about 10 years old I saw the legendary film maker Jacques Cousteau.  Full transcript of this episode is at  https://verlafortier.substack.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

For over 40 years, Dr. Martin Moore-Ede has been a leading world expert on circadian clocks and the health problems caused by electric light at night. As a professor at Harvard Medical School (1975 – 1998), he led the team that located the suprachiasmatic nucleus, the biological clock in the human brain that controls the timing of sleep and wake, and showed how it is synchronized by light. Since 2010, he has been the Director of the Circadian Lighting Research Center, which identified the key blue signal that synchronizes circadian clocks and developed patented LED lights, which provide health-optimized light across day and night based on comprehensive medical research. He has published over 180 scientific articles and authored ten books. His latest book, THE LIGHT DOCTOR: Using Light to Boost Health, Improve Sleep and Live Longer,has just been released.  3:15 Story. My whole life has been focused on the trajectory of light and the human body - particularly as a medical intern working 36 hours on and 12 hours off – when couldn’t make sense of things that I had written the next day and that got me interested in the  circadian rhythm. So did a detour out of surgery and went to  Harvard Medical School to study the effect of light on the human body. At the time it was a new field – about 3 papers published a year on this. The papers  on circadian clocks are now in the thousands. I was invited to Harvard faculty and to open a lab. Here we discovered   the human brain SCN that regulates the body’s cycles and rhythms.  4:17  rhythms of our body eg some things peak just before dawn ,  in the middle of the night like melatonin, late afternoon like  body temp,  and that light was a key signal that kept our biological clocks in sync with the outside world was not known at the time.  5:07 There began to be a recognition of the huge medical problem of those exposed to light at night like shift workers or sleeping with the lights on or just having artificial lights at night . And it is very much related to the colors of the light spectrum.  5:37 It is very much connected to white light is made of all the colors of the rainbow plus invisible ultraviolet and  infrared.    transcript verlafortier.substack.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

Andrea Jaramillo  is a bilingual hospice nurse, urban farmer, ceremonialist, and beekeeper in training. She is the founder of Forest Nurse, a forest therapy practice that connects people with nature through guided, intentional sessions. As a certified forest therapy guide, she supports individuals through life’s transitions, drawing from her experience in both birth and end-of-life care. Originally from Ecuador, Andrea honors ancestral wisdom and integrates Mesoamerican and South American traditions into her work. She believes in cultivating a deep relationship with the land as a way to protect and care for it. She also sees nurses as guardians—stewards of both human and ecological well-being.  Andrea Jaramillo (Haramillo) and I know one another as members of  a new group called Global Nature Nurses Network – which so far,  is a comprised of nurses from US, Canada, and UK in the fields of  academia, public and private sectors practicing and promoting awareness of the vital reconnection with nature. One of the many goals of the Global Nature Nurses Network is to get the green space science and the nature connection piece into the nursing curriculum in Schools of Nursing. Last podcast episode I interviewed Susan-Allison Dean the Co Chair of the Global Nurses Network. I will put a link to that in the shownotes for your interest. Now over to you Andrea Jaramillo… 1.    Please tell us more about your personal story and connection to nature. 2.    You are an urban farmer. Please tell us more.  3.    You are a hospice nurse. How does that relate to nature?  4.    You are a forest therapist. Please talk about the evidence.  5.    How do your nature work in urban areas? 6.    Can you walk us through one of your sessions? 7.    You are from Equador. Please talk more about being an apprentice of traditional medicines in Central and South America.  8.    We are both in a new group called the Nature Nurses Network. Last week you opened with a beautiful grounding practice. Could you end our session today with that one? I loved it.    website: https://forestnurse.com/      LinkedIN: www.linkedin.com/in/andreajnurse Instagram: @forest.nurse    So listeners as Andrea Jaramillo, forest nurse  says immerse yourself in nature to improve physical and mental well-being. And because our bodies are sensing our environments all of the time…..  Use Andrea’s mindful approach to helps you to slow down, engage your senses, take in the light, notice how that makes you feel, notice how that makes you think, as you connect with your natural environment. And finally remember to thank yourself for taking back your outside mindset.  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

Susan Allison-Dean is a Board Certified Advanced Holistic Nurse and Certified Clinical Aromatherapy professional with over thirty years of experience in nursing.  During the first half of her career, she practiced mainly as a Certified Wound, Ostomy, & Continence Clinical Nurse Specialist, holding a joint position with Yale-New Haven Hospital & Yale University. In 1999, she experienced the profound loss of two significant family members just two days apart.  This loss and the profound healing experiences that she experienced in nature led her to leave the disease-care model and shift her practice to health promotion, specifically nature and health. Sue is the Founder and CEO of TheNatureNurse.com, which focuses on connecting women with nature so they may live more joyous, vibrant, awe-inspiring lives in harmony with Mother Nature.  She is the co-chair of the Global Nature Nurse Network, connecting nurses who specifically partner with the natural world to enhance holistic health and prevent disease. Sue also enjoys writing, traveling with her husband, and dabbling in other creative arts.  She lives in New York and North Carolina in the US. How you became a Nature Nurse 4:12 deep level grief, profound loneliness, pain 6:02  mother nature 24/7 availability - transformative - helped me to live a joyous and productive life. Bring light into people's lives. 9:03 Florence Nightingale "nature itself is healing" 14: Nurse Pioneers in Global Nature Nurse Network Verla cites podcast episode with Professor Andy Jones systematic review and meta analysis of green space exposure and health outcomes (103 observational and 40 interventional studies investigating 100 outcomes: green space exposure decreased heart rate and blood pressure, HDL cholesterol, increased HRV, decreased preterm birth, diabetes, and all cause mortality in particular cardiovascular mortality.  For transcript see [email protected]   Nature Nurse on Instagram https://www.linkedin.com/in/susan-allison-dean-rn-ms-ahn-bc-ccap/     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

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 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

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 [email protected] 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

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 [email protected]  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 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

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 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

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. 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.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.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.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.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 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

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. The water we have on the planet is all the water that we are ever going to have - so if we are dumping something down the drain that is harmful it is going to affect the water quality and it is not going to go away. It is going to be there, it is going to effect something - so to be conscious of that fact. Water conservation is really important because we are in climate era of droughts. This is happening in Canada which is considered one of the most water rich countries of the world. Out west there is an ongoing drought right now. Host: I am thinking about the fact that I just flushed my sour dough mixture down the toilet this morning.... For a complete transcript of this podcast go to 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