When Neurobiology and Culture Conflict: Finding Our Way From Here  

We don’t see things as they are, we see things as we are.
— Anaïs Nin
 
Richard Louv, in his groundbreaking book, Last Child in the Woods, tells the story of a fourth-grade boy. The boy tells him, “I like to play indoors better, ‘cause that’s where all the electrical outlets are.”
 
Louv coined the term ‘nature deficit disorder’ to describe this disconnection we are experiencing from the natural world. The famed biologist, Edward O. Wilson, borrowed the term biophilia from Eric Fromm and extended its reference from the innate ‘love of life’ to include ‘our unconscious affinity for connection with nature’. What we now know however is that this love of ‘all’ life is developmentally hinged.

If children are not exposed to forest and stream, to frog and toad while their neurological system is yet developing, they biologically will not develop the capacity to hear and find pleasure in Robin’s song or to stop and fascinate in the fluttering Monarch’s golden beauty. This evolving loss of sensory sensitivity and orientation is a reflection of what demands or screams for attention from us (a TV or video game) verses what invites a deeper attention and perhaps subtler listening, perceiving and reflecting (i.e. noticing the concentric ripples evoked on a quiet pond of water by a pebble thrown in.)
 
“Attention is the holy grail,” as one brain researcher reported on in Part I said. And nature-deprived children are attentionally undeveloped and will likely evolve into environmentally miss-oriented business people, politicians, teachers and parents who cannot see the world of nature in front of their eyes. They become like the New World natives captured in Jane Hirshfield’s poem, Global Warming, from her book, After:
 
When his ship first came to Australia,
Cook wrote, the natives
Continued fishing, without looking up.
Unable, it seems, to fear what was too large to be comprehended.
 
The point here is not to blame or accuse but to seek understanding and to see what is, without flinching. We are incapable of attending to that which has no place in our identity, our worldview; nature deficit disorder is also ‘nature attention disorder’, or we might call it, ‘nature identity disorder’.
 
Children who lack playful interaction with the natural world do not learn to identify their own ‘self’ with it, as also being forest and mountain and desert and river and frog and bear and butterfly. They will not learn to perceive and appreciate that the world is woven not of things but of relationships, that they too are ecological landscapes, that their own body is sustained by the ecological wonder of intelligent and communicating bacteria.
 
A world of humans without a self-identification that extends into the other than human realms is an unsustainable world. It will lack the ability to pay attention to the very relationships that ultimately sustain it. It will not know the health of its children is inseparable from the health of its soils and forests and waters, for example, and so through nature attention disorder it will sow the seeds of its own collapse.
 
The early psychologist, William James, reminds us:
“Each of us literally chooses, by his way of attending to things, what sort of universe he shall appear to himself to inhabit.”
 
The emerging and controversial science of Neurological Marketing not only confirms James’ sentiment but also now knows how to use your own neurobiology against both you and your unwitting child. They want the attentional real estate of your brain, of our brains.
 
And the sophistication of brain imagining now allows for marketing researchers to watch what areas of your brain light up as you watch a TV commercial or as a child stares into the screen. And when they can align the sought for neurological sweet spot of the Virgin Mary with patriotic fervor and national pride and family loyalty and images of beauty in nature, all in association with their product and brand, it’s “Bingo!” time: “Loyalty through brain mapping….”
 
 “The things we make, make us” however, as the Jeep commercial says, and we are ever becoming the self-referential creators our own creation: creatures that have forgotten where we come from and so cannot see where we are going. The brain that is unaware of the neurological onslaught of marketing manipulation actively seeking its attention will have little to no defense against the same.
 
The distance between the forth-grade boy playing indoors, because that is where the electrical outlets are, and the adult who believes he is playing outdoors by driving his SUV through an old growth forest, have become but a virtual Madison Avenue synapse apart.
 
This is a loss of orientation, and thus too a loss of knowing where and even who we are: beings of wonder and mystery and of interconnectivity with all life on the planet, creatures who are yet living the ongoing adventure of a cosmos yet emerging out of the womb of Being and Becoming.
 
Navigating from here: restoring our birthright
 
“You are never lost if you don’t care where you are.” — Unknown
 
Fortunately we all come with an onboard GPS system built in: our potential affinity and attunement to nature, our developmental capacity to pay an indigenous kind of attention to the natural world. These potentials for attunement are dramatically revealed in the ancient Polynesian’s skills for ‘wayfinding.’ Their watery environment so extended into their somatic self-referencing, as home, that they accurately navigated tiny canoes within a vast ocean world containing but a dotting of rare and isolated islands. National Geographic Explorer in Residence Wade Davis writes:
 
The science and art of navigation is holistic. The navigator must process an endless flow of data, intuitions and insights derived from observation and the dynamic rhythms and interactions of wind, waves, clouds, stars, sun, moon, the flight of birds, a bed of kelp, the glow of phosphorescence on a shallow reef—in short, the constantly changing world of weather and the sea.
 
What is even more astonishing is that the entire science of wayfinding is based on dead reckoning. You only know where you are by knowing precisely where you have been and how you got to where you are. pg. 60 (italics mine)
 
Davis also tells the story of the legendary master Polynesian navigator Mau Piailug, who during his own training as a child of eight became sea sick. It was life-critical the child learn to become at home on the seas and so, as resolution,
 
“…his teacher’s solution was to tie him to a rope and drag him behind the canoe until the nausea passed. As a young man of fourteen he tied his testicles to the rigging of the vessel to more carefully sense the movement of the canoe through the water. …It was said he could conjure islands out of he sea just by holding a vision of them in his imagination. pg. 53 (emphasis mine)
 
We now know our canoe and Ark to be Earth itself, soaring in space it seems amidst the great ocean of the Milky Way Galaxy. And our own future is equally tied to our willingness and ability to read the turbulent currents of our times, to come into harmony, attunement and a deep relationship with nature—as self. As we explored in Part I, neurobiological research confirms that this “Green Brain” is smarter and more creative than it would be absent of time spent in the out of doors and in natural settings.
 
When we know the health, vitality and resilience of our water and air and soil, of all our non-human relations, is also ultimately that of our own, only then shall we also be on the path of reclaiming the resilience of nature as our own.
 
Make no mistake: we are evolving, or de-evolving as some argue. But how are we unconsciously shaping ourselves into who we will become? And what of our children who may never know the sound of a wolf howling in the wild, or the sight and feel of a horned toad in their hand, or of their whole body opening into the experience of awe at the sight of a bejeweled starry night sky?
 
A question of story:
 
If you don’t know the trees you may be lost in the forest, but if you don’t know the stories you may be lost in life. —Siberian Elder
 
“We are more like the forest than we are different.” This is a phrase I repeat to my clients, whether we are outdoors or inside modern weather controlled conference rooms. “We are more like the rivers and all of nature than we are different.”
 
It turns out the modern sciences are confirming this ancient bit of wisdom, wisdom I claim no originality for, though still, for me it was a life transforming personal discovery. It was for me the discovery of a new story of belonging and of connectivity; therein is a hope that is deeper and more engaging than any repetitive depressing news today’s headlines might report.
 
This is a story of identity that can be rewritten in each of our spirits, minds and bodies as we come to experience and know and identify our self—with Life itself, with nature. Inherent within this new-yet-ancient story is a biognosis, the moist intimate wisdom-knowledge of Life and of our place within it. It is a story that each of us must claim for ourselves if we are to know and embody the birthright of our own belonging and the resiliency of nature as our own.
 
Each new year is a surprise to us.
We find that we had virtually forgotten the note of each bird,
and when we hear it again, it is remembered like a dream,
reminding us of a previous state of existence…
— Henry David Thoreau
 
 
Coming in Part III, Enhancing Resiliency Through Nature:
The Four Faces of Attention and Resilience — and Why You Care
 
Coming in Part IV, Enhancing Resiliency Through Nature:
Strategies and Practices for a Resilience of Thrivability
 
Also, coming in 2011, a webinar series on Resilience. Stay tuned.

“Look deep into nature and then you will understand everything better.”
- Albert Einstein

“Sometimes a tree tells you more than you can read in books.” 
 - C.G. Jung 

It’s all about attention:
“Attention is the holy grail,” a recent New York Times article quotes psychologist and researcher David Strayer from the University of Utah. The article is a story about brain researchers rafting the San Juan River in UT in order to experientially explore the effects of “logging off” and time spent in nature. Some job!

The NYT article, Outdoors and Out of Reach, Studying the Brain, continues: “Everything that you’re conscious of, everything you let in, everything you remember and you forget, depends on it.” [attention]

“Echoing other researchers, Mr. Strayer says that understanding how attention works could help in the treatment of a host of maladies, like attention deficit disorder, schizophrenia and depression. And he says that on a day-to-day basis, too much digital stimulation can “take people who would be functioning O.K. and put them in a range where they’re not psychologically healthy.”

The neurology of being outdoors: 

“Nature’s tranquility helps brain connect,” is the summation of recent research published in the journal Neuroimage and reported by Futurity.org.

“The findings demonstrate that tranquil environmental scenes containing natural features, such as the sea, cause distinct brain areas to become ‘connected’ with one another while man-made environments, such as motorways, disrupt the brain connections.”

… “People experience tranquility as a state of calmness and reflection, which is restorative compared with the stressful effects of sustained attention in day-to-day life, says Michael Hunter, from the department of neuroscience at Sheffield University.

This line of research is not in itself new, and some might argue is but confirmation of common sense. What is new is our capacity to image the brain and externally monitor the body during such “outdoor experiences.” What is also new is a more conscious application of this knowledge in settings from education to business to health care, from garden design to the presence of living plants in the board and classroom.

Health care may be leading the way; business and education interests will do well to pay attention.

“…a growing body of research is showing that exposure to natural environments can improve both the patient experience and health outcomes. …studies…have shown a connection between exposure to nature and improved healing, less medication use, shorter hospitalizations, and decreased anxiety and stress among family members and staff.” (Therapeutic Responses to Natural Environments)

In research reported by the Life Science Foundation, on the difference between taking a walk in an indoor shopping center vs. taking a walk in nature:

• 71%  reported decreased levels of depression after the green walk

• 22%  felt their depression increased after walking through indoor shopping center

• 71%  felt less tense after the green walk

• 50%  felt their tension had increased after shopping center walk

• 90%  had an increase in self-esteem after the green walk

• 44% said their self-esteem had decreased after window-shopping indoors

It is worth noting at this point that a more highly connected and integrated brain, the… shall we say… ‘green brain,’ is a more creative and resilient brain as well.

Spending time in natural settings is clearly a life-affirming path to strengthening our resilience. Research confirms that as little as 15 or 20 minutes a day can make a significant difference in your life, not only in your sense of vitality but also in your social intelligence. Consider what two, three or more days in a wild setting might do!

“Research has shown that people with a greater sense of vitality don’t just have more energy for things they want to do, they are also more resilient to physical illnesses. One of the pathways to health may be to spend more time in natural settings….” Spending Time in Nature Makes People Feel More Alive, Study Shows

Interesting isn’t it: spending time in nature is good for our health, creativity and resilience. Yet just as the neuroscience is pouring in confirming our need for ‘the wild,’ humanity stands at the precipice of a rapid decline and diminishment of this very resource. How will we navigate, where will we find the resilience to navigate what biologists call the sixth great extinction of life on planet Earth?

It is all about attention. Remember?

"In Wildness is the preservation of the World." — Henry David Thoreau

Coming in the next The Resiliency Imperative:

Enhancing Resiliency Through Nature: Part 2 
When Neurobiology and Culture Conflict: Are we in trouble?
Richard Louv, in his groundbreaking book, Last Child in the Woods, tells the story of a fourth-grade boy who states, “I like to play indoors better, ‘cause that’s where all the electrical outlets are.” …

Navigating from here — restoring our birthright:

A question of story:
Thinking Resources and References:

“The brain is lazy. It changes only when it has to. And the conditions that consistently force the brain to rewire itself are when it confronts something novel.” This unflattering statement about our brains comes from the book, Iconoclast, by Gregory Berns, a neuroscientist.   Recently my lazy brain got energized when I was listening to a radio series titled, No Place Like Home, on Bob Edward’s Weekend. What got its (my) attention was that it isn’t only novelty that opens our brains up to rewiring; it’s also adversity.

This radio series was about the aftermath of Katrina and how the city is rewiring itself to move forward with even greater resiliency. Tim Williamson, co-founder and CEO of The Idea Village was discussing his organization’s mission to help identify and support local entrepreneurs to build a varied and thriving business climate in New Orleans. Tim was asked, “New Orleans has its ways – is it open to new ideas?” His response was a textbook description and metaphor of how brains work and the process of building resiliency on micro/individual and macro/community levels. His response and I’m paraphrasing, was that indeed, New Orleans was a city of closed networks and it was difficult for anyone or anything new to break-in or through. What Katrina (adversity) did was fracture these networks, providing the opportunity for new ideas and ways to take hold. This process was assisted by thousands of volunteers, celebrities, and outsiders (novelty) coming in with compassion and new ideas and ways of doing things.  At a time of need the people and community of New Orleans was more open than at any other time.

We could all benefit from being more resilient than we are, particularly in these stressful times. One obstacle that prevents us from developing and strengthening our resiliency is that our brains:
 ·     Are lazy and like routine
·      Avoid discomfort
·      And thrives on familiarity and predictability

Our brain’s preferences can be traps to building and strengthening one’s resiliency. Most of what prevents us from being resilient is a set of hardwired brain patterns and habits that have developed over years. Berns says, “That novelty equals learning and learning means physical rewiring of the brain.” The same is true for adversity. When we experience adversity it is an OPPORTUNITY for learning. The question is, “Are you open to learning?” Are you curious enough to push your brain to explore or will you follow your brains preference for being a couch potato? The evidence is conclusive; our brains are capable of rewiring. There are amazing examples of stroke victims not accepting a victim’s role and rewiring their brains, with effort and perseverance, so that physical capacities initially lost were re-learned and rewired to other regions of the brain.

In another profile segment of, No Place Like Home, Paul Baricos of the Hollygrove Market and Farm shares an uplifting story of how one acre of urban land in the heart of New Orleans has become a thriving center of community where folks learn and share urban farming techniques. The center brings people together to learn, gain strength and courage in a community of common values.  

In his description of how this came about he says, “The storm created an opportunity – it forced people to do it themselves. We had to go through a self-assessment. What kind of life do we want?” Once again you can see the process of confronting an adverse situation, learning from it and transforming it into an opportunity to be more self-sufficient and resilient.

These same principles, concepts and actions that the people of New Orleans are employing to rebuild a thriving and resilient city are the identical steps you can take personally, professionally, organizationally and in your communities to strengthen your resiliency in these turbulent times.

Key Principles of rewiring your brain to be Resilient:
Purpose: What is my purpose and meaning for being? What do I want out of life and what do I want to leave as my legacy? From an organizational perspective, the key is does our purpose speak to the needs of employees as well as to executive and customer needs?

Self-Assessment: What is preventing me from pursuing my purpose and experiencing the best of others and myself? Organizations must assess what are preventing employees from being engaged and believing that they make a difference.

Commitment to Change: Can I commit to be open and to challenge my own point view?  It is important to commit to be a learner and to let go of the “I’m the knower role?”This is essential for leaders and managers also. To motivate people to use their creativity, to be innovative and to engage in their work,a leader needs to listen and to be open to new ideas.

Practice: Altering and changing a habit isn’t easy. To rewire, one has to practice, practice and practice being the person/leader you want to be. Not the old way, the new resilient way! Organizational execution isn’t magic; it’s a function of training, practice and continuous supportive feedback. 

Continuous Reflection: Am I focusing on what is most important? Am I moving towards my purpose? What have I learned and what is working and what is not and why?

Be Curious: The world is fascinating place. Don’t let your lazy, couch potato brain keep you from exploring it. Take yourself for a walk outside your comfort zone; even tiny steps can be insightful and energizing.  There are two sides to a coin and at least that many to every issue. Make a point to see the other side of the coin.

In my previous article/ blog I presented Salvatore Maddi’s, Hardiness Belief’s of Commitment, Challenge and Control. They clearly show up in the words and actions of the people interviewed for the program, No Place Like Home: 

Commitment: “What kind of life do we want?” 

Challenge: “The storm created an opportunity.”

Control: “It forced people to do it themselves.”

The 3 Cs are the cornerstones of resiliency. Everyday the world presents us with enormous challenges and opportunities.  Change is a constant and the speed and force of change will only intensify. Are you prepared physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually to experience it through resilient eyes or will you let your Lazy Brain accept the role of couch potato and victim? “What kind of life do you want?”  It’s your choice.