nature | Forward Health Coach

Adventures in Humaning - Episode 12: Frustrated Forager | Frank Hults of Frankly Well & Meredith Rhodes of Forward Health Coach Hello again!

Frank and I return with a follow up to our previous show about our familiarity with market foods vs the weeds outside. We’re both new-ish to foraging – but I have a year’s worth of paying attention AND a mentor to guide me… whereas Frank has a passion an understanding of the nutrient riches out there, but a crazy frustration because he feels lost in the weeds – so to speak.

In this show – we chat about some of those frustrations and get around to recommending resources and approaches to get you passed road blocks to collecting and eating wild foods.

I go off on a wild tangent about pollen in the rock record. I have a lot to learn about living pollen – having only experienced the fossilized remains (queue the massive googling).

Some resources mentioned in the show:

We have also received our first carrier pigeon! Jen asks about ticks and what we do about them. Frank refers her to a great episode that Daniel Vitalis does for one of his Rewild Yourself episodes with Stephen Harrod Buhner.

In the words of Frank – Peace out bipedals!

Click here to go right to the show in iTunes or on Stitcher or on WebTalkRadio.net.

How would you feel if you had headaches and you were stressed out and you couldn’t figure out what was wrong but you wanted to feel right again. And you went to your doctor and they did a medical intake, and talked to you about what was going on in your life, and then they left you with a prescription, a prescription to go outside and spend time in nature.

This might actually happen today. There is growing evidence that time spent in nature is healing to a body.

I was recently introduced to the field of ecotherapy when I stumbled across an article and video in The Atlantic. Ecotherapy is an emerging field of care that facilitates healing by introducing nature into your equation. I recently talked with Phoenix Smith, a certified Ecotherapist, about what exactly ecotherapy is, and what health conditions can be treated by ecotherapy, and how exactly does nature heal us.

We discuss what ecotherapy is and all of the different types of evidence-based ecotherapy approaches, find out if ecotherapy is right for you, what nature deficit disorder is, what sets us up for nature deficit disorder, what health issues can be addressed using ecotherapy (anxiety, depression, lack of creativity, trauma, isolation, other mental health issues), we chat about how nature heals, the explosion of the awareness of nature as a healer, and what it’s like to work with an ecotherapist.

There are many resources out there for you to learn more about ecotherapy and ways for you to reconnect with nature. There’s the Healthy Parks, Healthy People campaign and the Children and Nature Network. You can also pick up Richard Louv’s book Last Child in the Woods, Theodore Roszak’s book The Voice of the Earth, or Howard Clinebell’s book Ecotherapy: Healing Ourselves, Healing the Earth.

Phoenix’s Bio:

Phoenix Smith, MSW has been a certified Ecotherapist for the past 5 years. She provides ecotherapy through teaching, community engagement and ceremonies designed to awaken, restore and heal our connections to the natural world. Her work has been featured in a video and article entitled: The Nature Cure in the national magazine The Atlantic.www.ecosoulwisdom.org

Music by Audionautix.com and Listening Earth.

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