into English, despite its invaluable significance illuminating profound musical practices not well known outside of Tuva. This was one of many reasons I traveled across the world to interview her in 2014. Together, we journeyed to remote villages near the borders of Kazakhstan, Mongolia, and China to meet musicians, shamans, hunters and instrument builders. These remarkable people embody the unique ways traditional Tuvan culture syncretizes music, spirituality, and a quantum perception of nature. The following is an excerpt from a considerably longer interview with Valentina, some of which is included in “Echoes of the Invisible.” The accompanying photos were taken by my pr... posted on Sep 2 2021 (3,925 reads)

of financial, social or physical challenges. The Sounds True Foundation is a nonprofit dedicated to providing these transformational tools to communities in need, including at-risk youth, prisoners, veterans, and those in developing countries. If you’d like to learn more or feel inspired to become a supporter, please visit soundstruefoundation.org. You’re listening to Insights at the Edge. Today is a special rebroadcast of a classic episode with someone who is a force of nature, Wim Hof. Originally from the Netherlands, Wim Hof has been nicknamed “The Iceman” for his ability to withstand extreme cold. He has set 21 Guinness world records including the ice ... posted on Nov 2 2021 (3,384 reads)

people use, and for which no individual is solely responsible. Moreover, in asking the question, “What happens when everyone says me first!?” he recognized the impact of individual decisions on the larger whole. Without knowing it, he stepped right into the middle of the greatest dilemma in commons-related issues: each individual action is defensible on its own, but they can combine to have a devastating impact on the larger whole. Many children intuitively grasp the nature of systems, as Jack did. They can see, for instance, how a common but limited resource, such as water, air, land, highways, fisheries, energy, or minerals becomes overloaded or over-used, and h... posted on Dec 24 2012 (20,105 reads)

focus, unable to understand our multi-faceted problems from an interdisciplinary perspective, we urgently need a science and technology that honor and respect the unity of all life, recognize the fundamental interdependence of all natural phenomena, and reconnect us with the living Earth. What we need today is exactly the kind of synthesis Leonardo outlined 500 years ago. A science of living forms At the core of Leonardo's synthesis lies his life-long quest for understanding the nature of the living forms of nature. He asserts repeatedly that painting involves the study of natural forms, of qualities, and he emphasizes the intimate connection between the artistic representati... posted on Apr 21 2014 (20,225 reads)

wildness. —David W. Orr There is a bold new movement underway in school systems across North America and around the world. Educators, parents, and students are remaking K–12 education to prepare students for the environmental challenges of the coming decades. They are discovering that guidance for living abundantly on a finite planet lies, literally, under their feet and all around them—in living soil, food webs and water cycles, energy from the sun, and everywhere that nature reveals her ways. Smart by Nature schooling draws on 3.8 billion years of natural research and development to find solutions to problems of sustainable living, make teaching and learning more m... posted on May 21 2016 (15,642 reads)

and many with both. An estimated 6 million American children have been diagnosed with ADHD. Physical activity is known to help combat and prevent these disorders, but a walk down a busy traffic-filled street doesn’t cut it. A walk in the woods, however, works. Just 90 minutes can decrease activity in the subgenual prefrontal cortex—a region associated with rumination (dwelling on negative thoughts, for example). Perhaps unsurprisingly, exposure to nature can significantly reduce stress. It also alleviates symptoms of anxiety, depression, and ADHD. Spending even a short amount of time in green space can lower blood pressure; it ca... posted on Oct 7 2018 (10,612 reads)

communication. I knew I would get tossed to the dogs. And so it was with a great deal of trepidation, to use this language, and I am getting a lot of backlash over it, especially since the book has been published, but — Tippett:Oh, you are, again, now — still? Simard:Yes, I am. But to me, we’re at the point where we have to — I feel, you know — I felt it was really important. We’ve got to move beyond this, right? We’ve got to embrace our place in nature as one with nature and that these trees, they evolved long before we did, and these networks — for example, the biological neural networks which we’ve found, they exist throughout n... posted on Jun 1 2022 (4,087 reads)

early formative years? Matthew: Sure. I grew up in Madison, Wisconsin. It's a capital city and it's also a university city, though it wasn't very large. It was about 65,000 in population when I was a kid. It had four really severe seasons. I remember one winter when I was young, there was so much snow, we had to go out on the second floor. You couldn't open the doors downstairs. So, I knew what winter was [chuckles] as well as fall and spring and summer. It was very nature-based. There are five lakes within the city grounds. And, there's a great presence of Native American spirit in Wisconsin. I had many dreams as a child about Native American consciousness. ... posted on Sep 8 2022 (3,305 reads)

this assignment, says Bill McDonough in a recent TED talk: Design something that makes oxygen, sequesters carbon, converts nitrogen into ammonia, distills water, stores solar energy as fuel, builds complex sugars, creates microclimates, changes color with the seasons, and self-replicates. Sound impossible? Well, nature’s already completed this one. It’s called 
a plant. And the fact that it does these things safely and efficiently is inspiring engineers and designers to reconceive the ways we manufacture such basics as soap bottles, raincoats, and wall-to-wall carpeting. The trio wrote two pivotal books—Benyus’ Biomimicry: ... posted on Feb 27 2013 (12,441 reads)

Vision Quest she writes, “I don’t know anyone whose life hasn’t been an incredible journey of ups and downs, sorrow in the midst of great joy and, even more amazing, joy in the midst of the deepest chasms of sorrow.” How to make sense of it all? At some point, it’s necessary to realize that one’s own health is intricately connected to the health of the world we live in—thus her second program. And since our feelings of grief and despair about damaged nature may be mirrored by our own wounds, it’s not such a leap to see how personal healing and attending to damaged nature—to grieving what is lost and discovering nature’s hidden re... posted on Jul 22 2013 (18,853 reads)

to their physical, mental, and emotional health. One study he cites found that the average American child spends less than seven minutes a day outdoors, but racks up more than seven hours per day staring at screens. Sampson says that children can recognize more than 10,000 corporate logos, but fewer than 10 plants native to their region. He argues this disconnect threatens our planet and the very future of humanity. “If sustainability depends on transforming the human relationship with nature,” he writes, “the present-day gap between kids and nature emerges as one of the greatest and most overlooked crises of our time.” Throughout his childhood, this forest beca... posted on Sep 3 2015 (17,608 reads)

Willows" (c.1944), by Arthur Garfield Dove. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. American painter Joan Brown (1938-1990) presents a thick, clotted mass of paint strokes at the center of her Abstract Expressionist painting "Brambles." There isn't even the slightest hint of representation, yet the feeling is one of an almost impenetrable mass, the way we encounter actual brambles. "Brambles" (1957), by Joan Brown. Oakland Museum of California. Around the world, nature is depicted with paint, wood, clay, fibers, metal, and more. The results might be stylized, traditionally indigenous, classical, avant-garde, particular to a place or era. "Autumn V... posted on Mar 4 2020 (4,592 reads)

“Moss-in-Prison” project helped me bring my love for trees and forest to men and women in the deepest windowless reaches of the prison system. “We learned that the inmates who viewed nature videos committed twenty-six percent fewer violent infractions than those who did not view them, a convincing result for the prison officers and administrators—and for ourselves.” Photo by Samuel Zeller/Unsplash When one is in love—especially with something as huge and beautiful and complex as trees—there is an urge to share this emotion with everyone, especially to those who have no opportunity to experience s... posted on Jul 2 2018 (11,459 reads)

that's sitting in your backyard or in a park near where you live. Or maybe, if you don't have any of that, just sitting by your window and looking out and getting into a meditative state, noticing movement. And then, as the days and the seasons go by, beginning to understand and notice the movement of our relatives out there, who are flying and walking and crawling, and getting to know them. And that's a practice that we call "sit spot." It's known throughout the nature connection community as the "sit spot practice" and there's many different nature meditations that you can weave in, so that you can start to bring the mindfulness practice into y... posted on Jan 14 2020 (8,443 reads)

Dietmar Rabich, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=65060962 Watching the sun rise over the wetlands, the mist fading, even here in the midst of nature there is the strange stillness of a world in lockdown — waiting, wondering, anxiety, and fear its companions. I am writing these words in the time of the great pandemic, when for a few brief months our world slowed down and almost stopped; when as the stillness grew around us there was a moment to hear another song, not one of cars and commerce, but belonging to the seed of a future our hearts need to hear. This song comes from a place where the angels are present, where light is born, where the fu... posted on Sep 20 2020 (7,210 reads)

of gravity even with all that moving. Mr. Hempton: Oh, there definitely is, and that is Hawaii. Ms. Tippett: OK. Mr. Hempton: Yeah, the place of Hawaii, a place that I've recorded many times in my life, is the first experience I had was when I was six weeks old and then we moved away when I was four years old and I did not revisit the location until 1990 when all of a sudden I discovered that I had all these primal impressions of what it's like to be home in nature. The smells of Hawaii, the sounds of the surf, of all the places that I've recorded in Hawaii, and I've recorded all the islands in Hawaii for an exhibit on endangered species for the S... posted on Oct 18 2013 (39,624 reads)

Hempton is an acoustic ecologist. He has traveled the globe three times recording the vanishing sounds and silences of nature—from the songbird chorus that greets the dawn to the crash of waves on a rocky shore; from the call of a whale in the ocean depths to the drip of rain on a forest floor. After 30 years recording the natural world, he reports that “There are fewer than a dozen quiet places left in the United States. Even in our wilderness areas and national parks, the average noise-free interval has shrunk to less than five minutes during daylight hours.” Hempton makes his home in Joyce, Washington, so as to be near Olympic National Park, the place he calls ... posted on Aug 12 2016 (18,129 reads)

sun in the Andes, Chile | photography ©Yuri Beletsky For at least 50,000 years, humanity has been on a journey of separation—pulling back from nature and becoming ever more differentiated, individuated, and empowered. In recent decades, we have become so dominant as a species that we are producing Earth-changing trends—global warming, species extinction, unsustainable population, massive famines, waves of migration, and more—that threaten humanity’s future. Now, with stunning abruptness, humanity is being challenged to turn from the familiar path of progressive separation to an unfamiliar path of global caring and cooperation. The transition from self-... posted on Apr 30 2018 (15,663 reads)

the Garden-Hacking Grandmas and Grandpas of South Korea Know. Gardening here is not a hobby. It comes from the realization within people that there is inherent value in tending a garden and taking time to be a part of nature. More than a century ago, urbanist Ebenezer Howard invented the concept of a “garden city”—a city with a bustling urban core, fanning out in to green neighborhoods, and then farther out into farmland, all of it theoretically connected in a semi-closed sustainable cycle. As a kid growing up in San Jose, California, I wondered why I’d never seen one of these cities, especially because the idea was so old. With its low-density swath... posted on Jun 28 2018 (6,480 reads)

in which the universe speaks to us, whether it be through lapping waves on a beach that sift slowly into our souls layer by layer, or through birdsong in the backyard at sunset calling to us like vespers bells.  When we experience the world as alive, we share an intimate connection with all that exists. We can see the world as being made of a life-giving language, and our awareness of this language goes deep into our psyches and deep into the cosmos.  By listening closely to nature, we can hear an organized energy of life, full of patterns and meaning, that speaks to us. According to scholar Elizabeth Sewell, we experience our environment as alive and speaking to us in a ... posted on Oct 26 2020 (6,116 reads)