Sarah 0:10
Hi, there. Hello y'all. This episode is dropping a few days late because I am in New York City, and I've come here for a training weekend, and inspired by that experience. This is essentially my first time in New York City. I passed through here once years ago, really briefly, but this is the first time I've spent a chunk of time in the city, and I am inspired to talk a little bit about nature in the city, about supporting nervous systems in a city environment.
Speaker 1 1:01
So that's what I'm here to do. I have to reiterate that I am not a city girl.
Sarah 1:13
In fact, this experience is making me remember that when I moved to Anchorage from small town Alaska, from Valdez. So Valdez has 4000 residents, and I moved into Anchorage, which, in the Alaska world is big city, but anchorage has 300,000 people in it, which, by the way, is half of the state's population in Alaska is huge geographically. So there's just not that many people in Alaska in general. So anchorage for us, feels like a big city. And I had, I went through a phase of really, kind of struggling with that change, and how much more urban it felt from what I was used to inside of small town Alaska, living really close to nature. And I think I'm going to share, I'm going to share some of those thoughts here, because feels like a there's a similar process that I went through and explored in that transition of like, how do I connect with nature when I'm now living in a city that feels relevant Here, when now I'm in a real, legitimate city I'm still looking for ways to support my nervous system and explore what it means to live in an urban live or just be in an urban environment, whether it's a place you live or it's somewhere you're visiting temporarily, like I am right now. So I'm walking in Central Park today. The class finished yesterday, and I have this extra day here, and it's cloudy and drizzly, and amazingly, just now, I walked up on a tree that has little tiny buds on it. Oh my gosh. This is like the first little budding plant I feel like I've seen in this winter season. That's amazing. Okay, I'm going to pause and take a picture. So that actually ends up being a great place to start into what I've been thinking about with this, because this quote, unquote practice, though, honestly, calling it a practice feels like almost a little too formal for me, essentially, this is like how our nervous systems are designed to operate, though many of us have maybe forgotten that ability or because we're maybe not practice it using it is the practice of Using your eyes, letting like, letting the eyes be able to like, roam around and in an open vision kind of way, which means the peripheral vision is available online and open so our eyes are In this kind of it's called exploratory orienting in nervous system jargon. But the purpose of that exploratory orienting is to look for where we want to take our bodies, where we want to go, and things that we want to notice. And what you just heard me do is like. I come across some buds and caught them with my eyes and then took delight in them, I guess would be one way of like naming what just happened there that is a nervous system nourishing practice to be able to use those eyes to notice something on the pleasant, neutral to pleasant side of the continuum. If we put like unpleasant to Pleasant on a continuum, this side of things that's like from neutral to Pleasant is where we have the potential to come across sensory pleasures that when we notice them in a sensory way and then spend a little time with the experience of that, somatically, the delight of it and the way that that lands in the body, often through some like opening in the chest, maybe, or brightening of the facial muscles, and often there's like a desire to share it with others, and just feeling the way that the body responds to that, those are the little nuggets of somatic nourishment that, again, I think of this as like what our bodies are evolved to do, and they're also, I mean, of course, evolved to like, utilize the neutral to unpleasant side of The continuum to recognize what it is that we don't want to go closer to, or what we need to avoid, or the potential threats. And we're often, like pretty practiced at accessing that side of things. And so the reason I often emphasize this other, this pleasant side, is because we often need some intentionality to bring those muscles back online. So it's not that like one side is more important than the other, but we want to be able to, just like in a muscle group, you know, we want to be able to strengthen both our biceps and the triceps so that our arms are balanced and can move in both directions. And I think of that similarly to this continuum practice so inside the city, I wonder if you off, you maybe need even more effort or intention around the use of orienting, and especially for the things that are pleasant or delightful, just because of the way that there is So much more stimulus inside of an urban environment that it almost feels to me like it's fairly This is my observation of my body, and again, like not really used to the quantity of stimulation inside of a place like New York City, so I can feel the way that my body kind of organically, starts to close down my senses so that the stimulus doesn't register as loudly, in contrast to the way that I feel after spending A chunk of time in the wilderness, in the mountains, where I can feel the way that my senses come online in a really, yeah, I want to spend, I want to, like, really deepen into this exploration At some point. But the short example, the short explanation here, is that after a week or multi week backcountry experience, I feel my senses open up into the ability to sense lots of subtleties with inside the environment, and it's like them, like my eyes are after a backcountry trip, able to sense the difference between different shades of green in a way that, like in my normal Life, is imperceptible, but inside of a back country experience, especially off trail in the Arctic. That's important information, because one shade of green might mean really nice, firm ground that's good to walk on, and another shade might mean that's some nasty brush that we don't want to go over there. But. Oh, it's starting to rain. Maybe you can hear that I love it.
Sarah 10:12
Feels really nice after, you know, having a break from winter Alaska mode and being in, like, very pleasant temperatures for a rainstorm right now, and knowing I can go back to my hotel and put on dry clothes right when I'm done with this. So okay, so what I'm saying here is that that type of sensory, like our senses have this ability to dilate, open up and sense all of the subtleties, and then they also have the ability to constrict and reduce how much input They take in and so inside of a city environment where there is so much stimulus, it makes sense that our sensory experience would go through that contraction, because we don't need to take in all of the sounds and sights and all of the people. It's It's overwhelming for the nervous system to if it was trying to track everything that's going on. So when that contraction happens, we, I mean, it's, it's important that it does, because it would be overwhelming otherwise to take in all of it. But it, my guess is that it also kind of limits the ability for some of those delights to land, because we're just like, a little bit more constricted in what we're paying attention to. So yeah, it's making me wonder about if the practice. I mean, I think all of us need to be in this practice these days in modern life, of like intentionally seeking out the sensory pleasures and noticing in them when they are around, and then giving them space and time to land in the body in a somatic way, so we can really reap the nervous system benefits of them. But I wonder if that's actually it's like extra true inside of city life. So that's one of my pieces that I wanted to explore here. I also want to say I'm very curious to hear from those of you who maybe you live in cities, or have spent more time in urban environments, or have considered these, these questions from a perspective that's maybe even more experienced in these realms. My version of city life is Anchorage, which compared to New York. I don't know if it even counts, okay, but then let's see the second piece of this that I wanted to explore, which is that really is more of an exploration than any sort of like answer that I might have is the idea that our nervous systems evolved to orient to use our senses to scan distance, to look far away through long, long sight lines, and that the view of a horizon line. It's like being able to see a long distance with your with your eyes, and see where the sky meets the land, or, you know the that place in the horizon, far away, that that is inherently settling for the body, that that's like, one of the things our eyes evolve to be able to do so if we I've seen some research around that, read some perspectives on it, and it certainly feels true for me as someone who is more used to living in places where horizon line is very available, and it's something that I kind of want to posit here and see what other folks have to say about it, because I think there's maybe kind of two things happening here that are both true, and I'm curious where it feels like The nervous system might prioritize these things. One of them is that there is this history of evolution of our bodies inside of accessing sight lines and long sight lines and horizon lines as a safety signal. Yeah. Yeah, so that's probably like, multi generational thing that's like landed in our bodies in some ways. And then the other question, it feels like it has to do with our in our in in our lifetime, adaptations that our nervous system does to the environment that we're exposed to. So this would be, you know, people who have maybe grown up inside of a city and only been in environments where there are lots of tall buildings and lots of people and the experience of spaciousness and like long sight lines and less people, less noise, which for my body feels like so grounding and supportive to be in quiet places where there's no noise and where there's no people around. Like I love experiencing nature where it's like, just me, but that's, that's like, a, I don't know, inside of humanity, and in the modern era, I think that it's like, that's like, relatively rare experience to be able to have that kind of relationship with the Natural World. And I know there's just so many people who have spent their lives in modern in urban places, and their bodies through that have adapted to the sound of traffic and other people and the view of buildings, and just knowing that there's lots of humanity around you might, like, actually have that grounding sense. And then I've heard people talk about from that place, like, when they end up in a place where there's like, nobody around, it can be really, like, jarring for the body and land as less safe, potentially. So I, I have this curiosity around what, what of those wins? You know, like is the is the body inherently settled by quiet and long sight lines because of the like evolutionary history inside of our human bodies, and then is the experience that happens in side of the busier lives, more of an experience of coping with the noise in a way that has more to do with like, I don't know, it's hard to say this in neutral words. I feel like all the words I'm coming up with feel like a little bit judgy. They're like, is it numbing? Is it like a numbing or like a shutting down of that part of the body when we have a an urban life style instead. Or it also seems like just as possible to me that the because our bodies and nervous systems are so adaptable that the experience could change inside of one human's lifespan, and that the nervous system could get really used to and comfortable inside of the environment that doesn't have those long sight lines or the kind of quiet that maybe we evolved inside of that being said, I do think like I don't know that we've caught up evolutionarily with the lived experience of having so many social connections and so much awareness of other communities outside of our own, the way we do in modern life right now, and like I'm thinking about the way that social media and the news cycles connect us with news and social problems and the sense of other humanity that are that is just like so beyond the scope of like, what we if we evolved inside of like, communities of like, 30 to 60 people, where we kind of knew what was going on inside of that number of people's lives. And now we're kind of trying to take in information about what's going on with the whole planet, essentially, and like so many more people's lives, and we have practice with in in the in a body way, and the way that that inherently has a
Sarah 19:56
overwhelming impact in the you. The nervous system because of our evolution hasn't caught up with that. So I don't know that our evolution has caught up with like. Our social nervous system has caught up with the experience of that we're giving it in this lifetime. So I guess what may be inherent in, like, what I'm what I'm questioning here is like, how much adaptation is possible in our bodies inside of a lifetime, and how much is more like a multi generational process that we settle into over, you know, many, many, many years and generations, and can't necessarily, like, override or expect to impact with and we're like, working with the with the hardware, maybe is what would be another way to say that, versus Working with, like a software system. I don't love machine metaphors for the human body, because it feels like it oversimplifies things, but there might be something there in like how how much of our experience is inbuilt, and how much are we able to adapt inside of our lifetime. But yeah, so I guess inside of that question, if we're like in this exploration with me of how to support a nervous system in an urban environment, it would be interesting for me to see what it would feel like for other people than myself to play with these, to play with this kind of question about what happens in my body when I when I, like, intentionally look for long sight lines and like, Let my eyes look at something that's like, really far away and look, look for a horizon, like, get yourself out into Central Park away from the big building so you can, like, see a long ways, or,
Sarah 22:17
yeah, or then compare that to what it's like inside of a the places where there's just like tall buildings everywhere, and is there an impact, soothing or activating or otherwise in that's different in those different built environments.
Sarah 22:40
Okay? And then the third piece of this that I had thought to bring forward is the experience of our feet. Here I am walking right now on a paved trail. I was a little bit earlier on a dirt path, which felt kind of remarkable to come across because there are so few dirt paths here in the city. And, oh, okay, I got to pause there, because I have one more thought for the previous point before I move to the feet part. I'm reminded of the Native Alaskan folks from the western part of Alaska who last fall were displaced from their homes because of Typhoon halag. I think might not have that right, but what that typhoon was called, but anyways, displaced from their homes in western Alaska and moved to Anchorage temporarily. Hopefully they're going to be able to go back there in the to their home areas in the summer and rebuild. But I was reading a piece that one of them wrote about what it's like to transition from their western Alaska environment, where this part of Alaska has no trees, far enough north and far enough, like, just the way the ecosystem is there tundra, which just means, like little teeny plants on The ground and some brush that might, you know, come up to, like knees or so, but there are no trees that are taller than a human. So they this incredible writer, I'll look for this piece and link it up in the show notes. But he was writing about how it like, what an adjustment It was to be an anchorage where there are trees and buildings, and buildings, like multi story buildings, because in their in their town, they had, like, single story dwellings, but not bigger than that. And he was particularly talking about the experience. So living in a place with trees, and how that was really notable for him, inside of the experience of not being able to see the horizon in the same way because the trees are blocking it. That for me, was so interesting to read and to consider that maybe the experience that I'm more used to of, like living in a place that has trees, is even even that is its own, in its own way, a an adaptation or a lived experience that my nervous system has adjusted to. And inside of what he was used to was having even more open space than that, and not even having anything that's visually tall enough to stop you from seeing like as far as you need to see in any direction. So I thought that was really cool to consider, and really interesting layer that maybe is a piece of all of this. Okay, so circling back to the feet part, what I'm talking about here is the way that, again, evolutionarily, our body, our vestibular system has like through generations, again, evolved to use the ankles, foot muscles, connective tissue, like all the little mini aspects of our the way our feet work, which of which? There's like so many. It's kind of like mind blowing when you think about all the ways that the body ends up like having to work together. But those, those joints and the connective tissue in them, it all. It talks to the vestibular system in our body, which is what keeps us balanced and helps us with proprioception, about knowing where our body is in space and time and in relationship to our other body parts and to each other, and that all has to do With the way that our feet work. So there is something interesting. I find it really interesting, at least, to think about what it's like to spend all of your days, most of your time with when you're moving your body walking on flat surfaces like pavement, versus, you know, which, again, has this question of, like, if that's all you've done, is that what your nervous system associates with as safe, or is there something even deeper, like underneath that, like a layer under that, that has more of Like, a primal quality to it that might reach for again, on a body level, the sense of making more sense of the world if there were used to the experience of walking on uneven surfaces, on different types of ground, soft ground and rocky ground and muddy ground and bumpy stuff and grass and like the uneven surfaces that require adjustment from knees and ankles and toes and all of the little mini muscles and connective tissue in between that all for sure, it's something that we have to do in our in this lifetime to be able to access, well, it's like something you have to be practiced that. But it, I'm like, super curious about the way that the like being in the practice of walking on uneven ground might also help our nervous system feel more settled in some kind of deeper way that that again, we're like talking about This, like connecting with the deep animal body, kind of layer of things. I know that for a little while I well for I lived in another little town in Alaska, Skagway, little little town of like, 800 people in southeast Alaska for about five years. And part of the work there that I did one season was some guiding for the people that came in off of cruise ships, and we would take them on hikes and the hiking or. Found Skagway was on some, like, dirt trails, kind of, you know, like Rocky, not, you know, for Alaska, they're, like, pretty typical trails. But it was remarkable to see how lot of the people that came in for these hikes had maybe never walked on uneven ground before, or certainly weren't very practiced at it. And the difference in their in the ways that their ankles functioned and their like bodies balanced on this like somewhat uneven ground was was really different, and you could kind of tell how it was challenging for their body physically, but also for their nervous system to be like navigating all of this instability and unevenness that they were just not practiced at After spending probably most of their life walking on what I'm walking on now, which is pavement. So, yeah, I like again, lots of curiosity about what that means, about our about that like animal body, part of ourselves. And for sure, it bringing my like, Alaska lens to this. I'm definitely like, Man, if I lived here, I'd be like, really, like, wanting to seek out places where there were dirt trails or ways to get off of flat ground, so that my ankles could move a little bit more freely and my body could, like, continue to remember what it's like to have to adapt the environment and be a little bit more connected through the way it it like bends and change and changes and flexes and all of that. It's like that adapting is it feels to me like a form of listening to the natural world, to the world around me. And it my sense of that is that that that that back and forth that our bodies have with their with the environment, is a part of what helps us again, this like animal part of ourselves feel like we're in relationship with the land that we are living on.
Sarah 32:30
And I don't know this, this is just, you know, personal riff on this, but it really, it feels to me like it is that, like we've been having so many conversations about CO regulation here, and if you, like me are like here and compelled by this idea of CO regulation and relational connection with everything around us as A way of helping our nervous systems feel more at home and settled and supported and safe. Then I My theory here is that more these even just the way we pass through the world. Excuse me, I
Sarah 33:27
even just the way we walk through the world and the way that our feet interact in this conversation about what does this land feel like, and what do I need to move inside me, to pass through this land, to relate to it in a way that works for my body and also works for the land like that that, in a way, is a relational experience that we have when we're not only using these super built environment ways of relating to the world where we're in. The environment is like built so that it serves us like pavement is built so that it is like requires nothing from us to travel on and from nothing from our bodies. And I'm proposing here that that that effort of like requiring a little bit of something from our bodies in the relationship that we're in is is actually part of what helps our bodies then feel like we are in a relationship with the experience that we're that we're having, and we're not just living inside our own selves, inside our own brains, and not connecting through our bodies to the rest of our the life that we're living. I don't know. Is that too? Does that mean? Thinking too much of the experience of of walking, I don't know, but it's certainly something that I feel inside myself when I'm able to spend time walking and being out in in the environment for long periods of time away from the creature comforts of modern life, is that my body feels like it lands more and more settled inside of myself and inside of like relational connection With the world, and that feels so good on this like deep, primal nervous system level, that I think it's maybe worth looking for ways to pull in, even to our modern lives and urban lives. Okay, so this is then where I am thinking about landing this conversation is in the idea of, what is it? What do we do? Then, if we live in urban places, and we want to access some of these nervous system ideas, we want to support our nervous system as much as possible, and we're having to maybe be a little bit more creative and figuring out how to do that. This is like the the exploration I was in when transitioning to Anchorage from from small town Alaska, and trying to, like, really actively pursue, what does it mean to be in connection with nature inside of a urban environment? Okay, so my big learning from this, from like that exploration that I would think applies to a place like New York City too, is to be on the lookout for micro nature. Micro nature. So you know, both previously and Valdez, it was just like, you walk out the door and there's just like, boom, mountains everywhere, and they're so gorgeous, and you can't help but notice them, because it's just like, they're just like, right in your face, like, shooting beauty at you all the time. It's just like, so amazing. You can't help but notice it. I mean, I Gosh, such a great place to live for that reason. Also has its like challenges, no doubt. But the difference inside of urban environment feels like, instead of having that like nature's just coming at you can't help but notice it kind of experience you have to instead look for the small, little interactions with the natural world and and catch them like let them, let them be noticed, and let them land. And I'm thinking about the way that noticing a tree that's like, in the middle of the city, like in an urban place, but there's a tree there, and it has a really cool bark pattern, you know, or it's in bloom, and we're like, wow, it's blooming. And it might be all buildings are all cement, but there's this. Maybe there's like a plant that's like peeking its way up through the cement. It like pushed its way through. I love seeing that, by the way, like the sense that even inside of a lot of cement or human built like world that there's nature is still like pushing on and like making things happen. Yeah, maybe there's a bird flying by or a beautiful cloud in the sky, you know, like could be many things there, there are, but there is potential for many different ways of encountering nature, even in the the urban
Speaker 1 39:17
space, they're Just more micro, but that does not make them less real.
Sarah 39:25
And it often feels to me like, like a skill to notice them and let them be a part of the experience, like they're not going to come and like, hit you in the face the way the mountains of Valdez will most likely most of the time, but they can still be there, and they can still have the very similar impact on the nervous system, honestly. Okay, now I'm back closer to the road. You probably hear some road noise. Here we are in urban. A podcast recording. Yeah, so this invitation to look for the micro nature moments and let them land is one of my big my big invitations for this kind of practice of of connecting with nature, connecting with our bodies and nervous systems in that urban environment. And then my other invitation would be to, like, pursue these questions with me and get to know what it means inside of your system with the these questions about like, do long sight lines feel good? Do they have a calming impact, or is it the opposite? You know do is my body, like the tall buildings and they it feels safer when there's, like, lots of built structures around me. I don't have a, like, a prescription on this, but the question feels like it's there about, like, what? What is it that inside of these environments that helps land my nervous system in a place where it feels connected both to myself and to the world around me. I wonder if there's a sense that you can kind of gain about when your senses are doing that constricting to let yourself not be overwhelmed by stimulus, versus when they're able to kind of like the visual I have here of like stepping into central park after being in the middle of city. Is like that my senses, my body, can just kind of expand and almost like kick back onto a, like a, like a lounge chair, like a beach chair, and like they can, I can, like, open up and get soft through the eyes and get more spacious in my brain. So I wonder if there's any noticings about that, that you might notice about, like, what happens with your senses when they dilate, when they expand, when they constrict, the question of long sight lines versus like shorter ones versus noise versus quiet, and also flat ground and uneven dirt walking experiences. So all of these might be just inquiries to have in mind about what it is, what the impact of those different experiences has for you. And then the kind of meta question inside of that is, if things are landing in a way that feels like, not as not as yummy initially, is that because we're not practiced at it in this current moment. And do we need? Is it that that like the body wants it, but isn't practiced at it currently, in which case, maybe what we need is, is like, more of that in order to access the resource inside of it? Or is that just the body? A no to that, like, now and always,
Sarah 43:30
yeah, and then this is making me also think about, like, of course, the benefits of paved path and the way that it they can make things accessible for people that maybe wouldn't have a way to get out into the trees other ways, and how important it is to have these kind of access points as bridges between the urban world and the natural world That might help people who, like, haven't grown up with a lot of that type of relationship with nature to be able to, like, start their foray into what it's like to be in wild places or connecting with natural beauty, but in a way that feels like a little bit more controlled and potentially more safe for their system while that relationship is growing. So yeah, I mean yes to all of it, and then the rest of this is just like a curious exploration of how these different experiences land for you. Okay, I am nearing the end of my central park wander, and it's been nice to have this space to share some of what I've been thinking about this weekend with you. And I'm really curious to hear what you have to share with me about it. Leave a comment please if you're listening to this. Yes. On Spotify, there's comments sections. You can always send me a DM if you have some thoughts to share, or we'll have the question box in the show notes as well if you want to send some thoughts over there. Okay, thanks for being here. Take really good care of yourself no matter what environment you're in, and I'll see you next time you.
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