Welcome to Destiny. Now here's your host, Cliff Dunning.
Hey, how you doing. I hope you're doing well today. Come on in, let's talk. Hey. I talk about and present data and information on energy healing. I am a reiki teacher. I have been for over twenty years. I don't teach anymore. I use it on friends and myself for the most part. And I have been focusing on and this has been going on for god thirty years, focusing on the pyramid tech that the Maya has developed,
probably related to a mother culture. We can identify it perhaps as Lemoria or Atlantis, or even a previous epoch where earth energy, gravity, tolleric fields whatever were developed and utilized over what we use today, which is very very toxic nuclear energy and other forms of well, I mean, you know, thermonuclear kind of stuff, pretty toxic. But it seems to me that this dialogue, these programs are falling in line with a growing understanding that we are energetic beings.
Now I get acupuncture once a month, and these are needles that go into what they call the Meridian, the bodies energy super Highway. But we've presented the fact that the Earth, our planet, has its own super highway known as ley lines or earth meridians that crisscross in specific areas. And what's a fascinating notion is that places like the Giza Plateau where the great Pyramids are, TiO Tiva Kan and Mexico and a variety of other locations that are
spread out also sit on top of lay lines. And how they how they our ancestors understood this is really the question. Did they naturally seek out these locations in place their pyramids and temples and buildings on top of them. Were they aware? It does appear that they were aware of these signatures, these energetic signatures that bubbled up from the ground and were captured in the body of pyramids, transmuted and enhanced in certain ways, and then distributed. Now
we don't know exactly how they were distributed. If we look to more modern scientists, people like Nikolai Tesla, he seemed to understand that this natural rhythmatic earth energy could be tapped and he had plans to do this and
provide free energy. His Wardencliffe Tower, which was built in New York that never got off the ground, was a capture device and trans transmutation device which would provide free energy to provide to power cars, submarines, airplanes, and who knows what else could be powered by this stef And this is and of course the story goes it was shut down because his investors didn't want to have free energy.
They wanted a Westinghouse, who was one of his big investors, discovered this and he thought, I can't make any money if we pump out free energy. So he was that
Warncliffe machine. That generating tower was shut down. But when we begin looking at nature from an energetic point of view, and we devise and we have technology that can capture like chakras and have devices that can actually see the energy, then we can begin understanding how important it is to stay well, to make sure that our environment is not polluted, that we don't cut down all the trees, because are huge trees. Our forests are the lungs of our world.
So this is all critical stuff and it's important to be aware of energy. So my whole thing is that I think that our and we hear this from people like Christopher Dunn, We hear it from a lot of people.
We heard it a little bit recently from Scott Walter that the Templars found technology and also Michael's John Michael Greer in his interview discovered that the earlier civilizations developed temples that not only captured earth ancient earth energy, but also distributed it in crops in animal husbandry, so you had healthy animals and also the humans who are interacted
with those temples and places of residence. Which makes us think, and we've talked a little bit about this, that the earlier epochs, earlier civilizations that we really don't know about prehistory, perhaps the late Dynatic, early Dynastics and early civilizations understood it, but they were aware of the importance of tu lurk energy, the emissions that come from the Earth, and they built
their dwellings on top of these places. Now, doctor Lydia de Leong has been very forthright about standing in rooms that are pumping this energy out and the fact that you shouldn't stay more than an hour or two or otherwise it becomes a problem. And it's funny she said that because I've been to Egypt at the Hathorp Temple, and that Hathorp Temple sits on a some kind of an energy filled and if you stand in certain of these smaller rooms too long makes it throws you off.
It throws your equilibrium off, which means that there's some form of energy emission coming out of those floors. That is pretty strong stuff. Now, I want to remind you that we do have a tour coming up in December. It's our Guatemala to Our Sacred Pyramid Tour December first through the twelfth, and doctor Lydia will be with us. And unlike Mexico where you can't really climb pyramids anymore, in Guatemala, we get to climb not only the Lost World Pyramid at t Call, but the whole trip is
about energy and we're about half full. If you want more information on that tour, go to Earth Ancients dot com forward slash Tours check that out. Because not only are we going to be in t Call, northern Guatemala, we're actually going to get a chance to go to Almador perhaps see doctor Richard Hanson and climb those pyramids
as well. And those are very very active pyramids. So we are going to do what our ancestors did, which is not only interact with pyramids, but climb them, meditate with them, and intent on healing, on prosperity and on willness. As our forefathers, as our ancestors did thousands and thousands of years ago. So today our program is on interacting with nature and the program is called Sacred Forest Bathing
the Healing Power of Ancient Trees and wild Places. And my guest is author Ellen D. Davidson, and listen closely to her interactions with not only trees, but with the force in general and how powerful the healing can be of body, mind, in spirit Earth. Ancients does a number of tours every year and it's really important to have a really good camera. I just found the Insta three sixty x five recently, and I gotta tell you it
is an outstanding camera. It is an artificial intelligence camera, which means that automatically can adjust to the tones either day or evening. It has a huge battery, one of the best image quality you've ever seen, and you can edit on the fly. I mean you quick edit mode where you can actually edit while you're standing there, and for a limited time, they'll throw in a selfie stick if you're one of the first thirty people who purchase
the standard package. Go to store dot Insta three sixty dot com and punch in Ancients and you'll qualify for that that selfie stick, which is worth twenty five bucks. Again, it's store dot Insta three sixty dot com. Use the word Ancients and you'll get that deal. This is an outstanding camera. Hold it in the palm of your hand. It's waterproof and it is a great camera. Check it out the Insta three sixty x five. I'm really lucky to live in northern California, and I say this all
the time. We're close to the Great Sequoiah Redwoods. I'm close to John Muir Park, which is in Marin County. I'm over here in the Berkeley across the bay from San Francisco area, and I think we're blessed not only for the environment, but it's just a sacred place. And I'm always talking about getting out and being one with nature. And today's program is something that kind of unique, and I think I've hinted on it but haven't really talked
about it, which is called Forest Bathing. And the book we're talking about today is called Sacred Forest Bathing, The Healing Power of Ancient Trees and Wild Places. And my guest is Ellen D. Davidson. She goes by d and this book not only is it remarkable because it talks about these paths from illness to wellness, but also her interconnection and connection to these ancient forests that are surrounding us.
There's a few lefts, thank God. And what I didn't understand in my somewhat intuitive focus on forest bathing is that the Japanese have a kind of a term for it too. I think probably if we look to Europe this there's groups that are doing forest bathing that maybe they don't call it that. But I'm looking forward to speaking with D today and it's great to have her on the program. So D, welcome to Destiny. Great to have you on the program.
Thank you.
Talk about and give us a sense of entering the sacredness of the forest area that you're in. And you opened the book talking and telling us about illness. You had illness just as I guess as a form of stress, right, fibromyalgia isn't a comfortable condition to have. But talk about where you were at the time prior to really integrating with the forest.
After I had my first daughter, she was colicky and she didn't sleep, and somehow, in the stress of all that, my body forgot how to sleep. And then I started into this whole cascade of symptoms that went into fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue. I couldn't turn my neck. I was in a lot of pain, and I tried everything. I went to hypnosis, I went to psychiatrists. I tried some of their drugs, but I lasted for about three days. They made me sick, and I took herbs, I jeused,
I did massages, al chemical hypnotherapy, you name it. I went through the gamut with a little bit of relief here and there, but nothing really ever worked along the journey. I did try Vajuriana Tibetan Buddhist meditation, and that helped. It didn't help me sleep, but it did calm me down and I became I softened around the illness so that I could live with it. But I still was in pain and not sleeping. And I had been having
these dreams. I have an old growth redwood in my backyard, and that tree had been visiting me in dreams for years. I was really into my too. I'd been writing them down for decades and analyzing them, trying to figure out decode what they meant. But I always did it as if everything in the dream represented a part of me, and back then it just this is in the nineteen ninety about. Back then, it never even occurred to me that a tree could be sentient or communicate with me.
That was so far beyond my wildest imaginations. But now looking back, that's what was happening. The tree was teaching me at night. Then the next thing on my odyssey that happened was during these meditations with a Vadriana Tibetan buddhislama. He suggested we follow the juice, and what he meant by that was that we be guided by what was our heart's desire, what filled us with energy and joy. So on my free days, and my youngest started had just gone off to college, so there were more free days.
On my free days, I started playing a game with myself. I'd wake up when I had slept for a few hours, but anyway, I'd get up and I think, what do I want to do today? Every day it was go to the forest. It's just insane. I thought I'd want to do other things, but I wanted to go to the forest. So I started doing it, and I had no expectation that this was going to heal me. So profoundly.
But when we step into the holy cathedrals and sacred spaces of these ancient forests that have been undisturbed for millions of years, there is a palpable energy field. So my little energy field that was disregulated and had been for now decades, I would step into this field of wholeness, and it allowed me to experience the part of myself that new wholeness. I'd go home, I'd sleep a little better and think, Oh, that's interesting. My neck, Oh I
can turn my neck. Oh, how cool is that? And at first I didn't even equate it with the fact that I was forest bathing. But and I didn't know the word forest bathing. I'd never heard of it. I
didn't know there was such a thing. It was only I don't know, fifteen years and ten years maybe into it, that I started reading books about The Japanese call it shinrin yoku, and they've been studying it scientifically and proving that even a couple days spent in a forest has healing effects that last for a whole month.
Wow, amazing. Yeah, you've said something that and you write about this as well, that you believe that these trees are sentient and which is a another way of saying self aware or conscious? Can you give us some examples of that position that thought, because I've always thought that the ancient trees, the ancient Sequoia redwoods, have some kind of sentient and that just them. I think all older trees, apparently at a certain period, begin to provide information to
us if we ask for it. But how are you interacting with these ancient trees.
Well, it happened is I would usually I would go into the forest a lot of times by myself. I didn't plan on doing that, but nobody wanted to go as often as I did, so I braved it. And so you know, I'd go in there with my bare bells so that wild animals wouldn't get me in, Not that they do, They're not after us. But I'd go in with the bare bell and I would just my thoughts would settle like a stream coming clear. And then I always found myself a lot more present, And after
hiking three four miles, I would sit. I have some favorite trees that I've gotten to know over the years, and I would sit at the trees. I guess summer tree called me. I was on a hike with a friend of mine, and this is at the very beginning, and we sat down to have lunch, and then she suggested, why don't we try meditating with the tree. I'd never meditated with a tree before. This friend was also part of the Buddhist meditation group, and so she was a
really good meditator. And we sat and then a voice spoke in my head and it said come back. It was so clear and distinct that I thought she'd spoken, and my eyes popped open and I said, did you just say come back? No, not her. We looked around, there was no one there. And I don't think the tree actually said in English, come back, but I think my brain translated some kind of bioelectric communication, which science
now proves that trees do with each other. And I just had an interview with Ellen Camey of the Natural Nurse, and she told me that scientists have discovered that human brains have receptor sites for interspecies communication.
Wow.
Yeah, So it's coming together. These experiences that just seemed so fanciful to me when I was having them. But I did come back, and I didn't know I'd be coming back for seventeen years and continuing. But that's what happened, and it's a relationship, just a love affair.
Yeah, what's the name of the tree that you are kind of I'm talking about summer tree, some summer trees. Is this is once a couple of miles from your home.
Uh, well, I have some old growth near my home, but there aren't any remaining old growth forests. I have to drive half an hour north or south to get to because everything was logged. There's only really five percent of the old growth forests I redwoods left, And so I do drive. I drive about forty minutes, well thirty minutes maybe forty to get and then and the drive is actually beautiful. I pass lagoons and forested hills in
the coastal cliffs. And then when I and that gives me a chance to worry and think about everything that's bothering me in life and whatever is whatever my you know. So then by the time I get to the trail, I'm ready. They just become present and it's so beautiful and beauty. I think beauty's a goddess and she and chances in the presence.
I mentioned before we started that I think that you have elf energy and you kind of jokingly say that in the in your book. But I think there's something too, what I would call the elementals, the elf beings, the fairies, the gnomes that are unseen, but there's a presence there when we go to these ancient forests. Can you talk a little bit about a sense of that.
Yeah, I definitely feel the elemental intelligences. And it's not like I'm seeing little fairy well sometimes I can imagine them, but it's not like I'm seeing little fairies and gnomes all over the place. What I'm experiencing is the intelligence in the water, those crystal clear creeks definitely communicates something to me. Or the air, the way the air caresses
my skin, and knowing, knowing or visions or ideas. And there's an interesting book, the story is in Our Bones by ospre oriole Lake, and she was talking about how almost all of our ancestors made decisions outside Western ancestors too, not just not just Native American, but made decisions outside by what we're known as council trees. And what I've noticed is the quality of my thoughts, what I think
the ideas I have are subtly different. And I think that's the influence of these intelligent natural energies, the nature intelligences and so elementals. You know, they've been defined in various traditions all around the world. Almost every culture has some version of nature spirits, the air, the earth, the water, the fire, and the ether.
Yeah, why do you feel it's important that we walk among the forests? I totally feel that it's healthy for me, and I do it because I need a creative input. I need to relax off, I need to get off the internet and rest my nervous system. But what do you say, why do you feel that it's important to be in the forest.
It is extremely soothing for our nervous systems. There is a bioelectric field the forest puts out, plus the aerosols trees put out to protect themselves from rot and insects and even fires. The fight insides and terpenes. Those boost our immune systems and help fight cancer and viruses and colds and all kinds of things. So it's very healthy and that's scientifically proven. It's we evolved outside in nature, in different kinds of nature, but often in forests, and
I think it makes us feel more at home. And Plus, something I'm thinking about a lot lately, especially how fascinated people are with AI is how disembodied it is, and how it puts us on human beings created AI. And now what's programmed into AI comes from human beings, even if it's recording whale songs, which is kind of fascinating
what they're doing there. So we go along a trajectory that we're already on, and it's I think we desperately need to keep our connection to the more than human, the Earth, which is we're part of, and we only are beginning to explore how we can relate and connect on a deeper level. I do think the Earth is created, is capable of restoration, miracles beyond our wildest imaginings, if we just allow her to guide us more.
Yeah, you talk a lot about physical health in the book, of course, your own wellness Journey. What is it about being in the forest with these ancient trees that is neural receptive, neural positive, and how do you suggest that that's healing? Because that's something that I pick up from your book and that I think I get on my own. No, I'm here down south from where you are. We don't have the big red woods, but we do have oak
and some new growth for uts. You know, I'm here, like I said, on the east side of the bay, so I can feel it. But there's something even more integrative about the redwoods sequoia redwoods talk about that.
I'm actually on the coastal redwoods the centervirons, but the Sequoias are up in the sierras, and they're different from each other. But Kin Well, you were saying the neuro biology, I know from personal experience that my whole nervous system was just rewired. I'm a happier, calmer person then in every way. And there's a peacefulness in those trees that's palpable. I think what happens is when we spend time amongst them. And by the way, the oaks give a different energy,
but just as valuable to the druids. The word druid comes from the word oak. Dru means oak, so it's the wisdom of those trees. And they impart a sort of solid stability. So every type of tree or forests is going to give us something incredible, but it's different. And for the redwoods, their roots are very shallow and they hold each other up. They are they're really shallow. They don't go very far. Yeah, isn't that wild? Most trees, like an oak tree, what you see above is the
same as what goes down below. Not so for the redwoods. They have these shallow roots and yet they hold up these big trees. Part of how they do it is their roots are entwined and entangled, so they're very community oriented trees.
Wow. So a three hundred foot sequoia redwood has a shallow root base, but you're saying that their neighboring trees are all kind of interconnected and that's how they support each other.
I think. So. Their roots are very entangled and entwined together, and even the old stumps they will keep to alive, maybe for hundreds of years. These trees can live the semper environmens where I live, the coastal redwoods can live two three thousand years. The sequoias can even live longer. And I don't know exactly how much longer, but I think it might be four or five thousand years.
Yeah, they're very, very long lived. It's amazing. What do you think that means to us as humans? If we walk among these ancient ancient trees? Is there a period? And I think you write a little bit by where we begin connecting. And if we do, you ask intentionally for wisdom from them, how do you communicate with them?
Well, I sit with them for a long time, and I let myself become open and spacious, and I also I asked to receive the highest guidance for me and my loved ones at that moment, or for the earth or But so I'm not trying to control what comes in so much as just to become very receptive. But it's safe to be receptive out there. There's a protection. There's a feeling of psychic protection in the redwoods that
feels very real to me. And so then often I've had a sense of this ancient wisdom and timeless awareness, and and I feel I feel connected to in my to things like fabled Lemoria and MoU and to a sense of when we could understand the birds and we knew what the whale songs were singing, and there was a kind of a wholeness in my imagination. But it does seem like what I imagine is different with the
influence of the trees. It's almost like vibrationally or frequency wise, I'm not sure which, but it's almost like they hold these old memories, an old, healthier, more intact ways of being. There's still and because these remnant forests still have those feelings, it helps me imagine what it would you like for us to live in a clean, peaceful, whole environment ecology that we belong to and are part of. Intend.
We're going to take a short commercial break to allow our sponsors to identify themselves, and we will return shortly with my guests today, Ellen D. Davidson, discussing her newly released book, Sacred Forest Bathing. Will be right back. My guest today is author Ellen D. Davidson. She's coming to us from northern California and the site of some of the largest Sequoia redwoods in the world, and she's discussing her new book, Sacred Force Bathing, on how to integrate
with nature. That's kind of cool. So you're saying that you get a projection from the tree of perhaps our ancestors, how they lived more naturally on the earth and more holistically. I guess is what you're saying, which is the ultimate wellness because you're one with guya right.
Yeah, it feels like it, And she feels incredibly into intelligent and I can glimpse fractals of that actually where it would be way before recorded history, it would be you know, the mythologies of the whole world have various versions of the Garden of Eden and the time when
we were living peacefully with the other creatures in harmony. So, yeah, those feelings come back to me and it gives me the sense of possibility that could be created that and I feel like the intelligence that comes through these trees and their connection to Gaya to me is almost like the Earth is wanting to restore and recreate that. It feels larger than me. It doesn't feel like I'm making it up. It feels like I'm receiving it. There's no
effort when I imagine something, I'm projecting something. This is not yeah, this is I'm sitting there and I'm receiving these beautiful visions.
Can you tell us about the goddess the different goddess traditions around the world and how they are integrative of the forest, because you do bring that up in the book. I do.
I was in an awakening woman's Sodna when I was writing that book with the Norse goddess Freya, and she's a forest goddess, and I was I identified here, I was off in the forest, and then I discovered that there are goddesses in almost everywhere on the world. In the world where there are forests, there is a forest goddess. There's the Japanese cherry blossom goddess, and there's Ajia, an African goddess, and there's Oh boy, do I remember all
the names we have in Greek mythology. We have Diana, and we Artemis and Daphne who turns herself into a tree. It's just all the traditions have these forest goddesses, and they are I think there's a deeply yin sort of feminine quality in the forest. I feel safe in the forest. I know everyone doesn't. We've our fairy tales and our mythologies have sort of demonized the forest and made it seem like a dark, scary place where you know, bad
things could happen. But that's that's layered on top of many cultures that we've evolved from that had sacred trees. The Norse have Yigdristle, who connects the nine worlds, the bail bob that stores water. So this tree worship is cross cultural around the world, and it goes with this sense that we have that we're nurtured and sheltered and protected in the forest, and I certainly feel that way.
Are you able to get a hint of the Goddess when you are in the forest and asking for her guidance and healing or is it more general intuition that you get from specific trees.
For me, beauty is a goddess and the forest is beautiful, and she enchants me with birds, song and butterflies and sparkling clean waters splashing over rocks, and so the whole forest becomes the embodiment of this goddess of beauty and brings me into a state of awe and reverence and worship and wonder and that joy we all felt as kids, most people felt who had halfway decent childhoods. We all felt this sense of wonder. We would see a sala bug and it would amaze us, or a butterfly life.
It's that quality of really being present with life and the whole miracle of it and this whole planet. I think Guya is an embodiment of the Goddess.
I think that we forget that though, and we are not going to nature for healing. I wanted to talk a little bit about what I experienced and how you can relate to it, which would be the being altered, because when I go into these areas and I'm walking and I'm off the ashphalt or cement and I'm walking in nature, my consciousness shifts. And I don't know if that is and you could probably speak better to this.
I don't know if that is the healing attributes of being in nature to shifting and and uh, this altered consciousness or it is what we do because we need to connect with the force with these natural settings. But I find that I'm altered, and I don't even pay attention until I think about it. I was like, wait a minute, you were out there, you were gone. But that's a that's a healing aspect of being in nature, isn't it kind of your body kind of switches into this into this natural world.
Absolutely, And I think it's not a unique experience to just you or me. I think it's a people might define it or describe it differently, but I think it's a pretty common experience to have our consciousness altered by being in the forest. And one reason is we're literally
out of the box. Most of the structures we spend time in that we humans have created are rectangular, they're linear, so we're kind of living in various triangles and rectangles and boxy shapes, and we go out there and everything is fractal, it's curvy. So there's that. Then there's all of our senses. We're smelling, and smelling is a very deep sense. It's undervalued. It opens us up tremendously to other cities of consciousness, especially when the smells are so
utterly pleasant, which they usually are outside of nature. We smell the mulchy earth and the scent of the subtle fragrance of trilling flowers or whatever's around. And then there's the sounds. Sounds expand our consciousness. We know that now because so many people are experience and into sound healing. The difference being in a forest is we're not isolating each of these senses with taking a flower essence or a sound bath or getting you know, all of them
are at once. We're in a symphony where every sense that we have, including the subtle ones that are less developed like instinct and intuition, are enlivened with this gentle stimulation. And it's very gentle. The nature blends things in such a beautiful palet. So the color is in the visual,
which tends to be our dominant sense. But even then we're soothed instead of bombarded, and it definitely all here's our consciousness, And then there's whatever frequencies and vibrations in the palpable field created by these trees, who I think are friends. They're all there communing with each other and creating this environment and interrelating with other species that make the forest their home.
So there we are talk about Summer tree a little bit, because this is a unique connection. Do you feel this is a relative of some kind or is it more of a friendly teacher, the relationship you have with that special tree.
Well, she called me, and right off the bat, none of the other trees that I've gotten, except for the one in my backyard, which I named Grandmother dragon tree. Actually my children named her that because she has this big spike at the top and the snout nose, and she looks just like a dragon. So but other than those two trees, none of them called me. I went and sat and asked permission, and some of them aren't
interested in me being there at all. They want to be left alone to do whatever they're doing.
Do you get that sense like people like, you know, hey, I'm not nice to see you, but keep moving.
Yeah. Yeah. Some of them are just like, don't bother me now, I'm busy talking to the stars.
Yeah.
But summer Chie wanted a relationship with me and called me, and so that is unique right there. And I went back and back. I've called her summer Ty because I have to cross a creek to get there, and in the winter of that creek is too high across, so I can go for about six months of the year.
And then OK, wow wow.
So that and then there was this thing that happened sitting over time with summer Ty where I felt this grandmother in the tree and even had some almost hallucinatory visions. One happened with my friend and she saw it too. We felt like we were there's this beautiful little clearing. Sometimes we do yoga beneath this tree because there's a flat duff area that yeah, and she had this vision right with me. We were both meditating. She meditates too, and we are sitting for a long time with this tree.
Time goes really fast. Sometimes it'd be two hours and we'd open our eyes and it would feel like five.
Minutes you're altered, very.
Altered, and kind of blissed out. It's how I could describe it with an experience lots of people have had is occupuncture needles or a really good massage where you just feel those currents of energy running through your body and it feels good. So it's not like I'm making myself sit there, it's it's just feels good. And so we both had this hallucination or vision that we were that there were these grandmothers, Indigenous grandmothers. They were all
dressed differently. Some of them had like drindle skirts and some had feathers. And we opened our eyes and we saw these grandmothers in this little clearing where the tree was around us, and we're looking at her, going do you see what I'm saying? And we could tell they weren't physical flesh and blood, but they were like looking at a hologram or something. You could really see them three dimensionally. It's never happened again, but I've continued to
sense the sense of a grandmother in this tree. I still haven't figured out the mystery of that. This is partly what I've gone back for seventeen years. It's really fascinating.
That is yeah. Wild wow.
And by the way, we weren't on any drugs. We were completely in our normal stay to consciousness.
That's funny anyone thought about, you know, was she on an ayahuasca journey or was she taking some fantastic cannabis or d MT or something. You don't talk about that at all in your book, which means that you are that you're using natural frequencies to get your high.
Yeah. I mean, I've done cannabis, but I don't I've never even taken ayahuasca and I'm not drawn to it. Yeah, but I know a lot of people haven't have had good experiences. But that's just but no, we were like complete, but we're not normal by the time. We've sat with the trees for a long time because, like you said, walking in the forest alters you. And then sitting if if if a person finds a comfortable spot to sit that and the redwood forest doesn't have very many ticks or hazards or poison.
Oaks bring that up, which I'm glad you did because my son had a tick bite and he was in trouble for a couple of years, So yeah, it's a very good for those of you listening. Ticks can really be a problem. You can get limes disease, which is just a devastating neurological problem, so I appreciate you adding that to it. So that's something you've brought up. No ticks, so you can sit sip by the tree without too much of a worry.
Well, there could be a tick. I do check and I wear I try and wear long pants that cuff in at the bottom, and we look afterwards. And a tick won't give you limes if you get it within the first twenty four hours. It has to actually engorge. And if you do pull one out, you can take it to your local CDC and they can check to see if it's a limes tick. But basically, if you take antibiotics quickly after getting a tick that has limes, you're fine, and if you don't, it is an ordeal.
So I'm pretty careful. But the redways have far fewer ticks than the grassy oakland, and that's why I wanted to bring that up, because you're in the oaks, So if you're just going to PLoP down and sit next to a tree, you have to be careful.
Thank you for that reminder. Yeah, we're going to talk in a minute here about your technique for force bathing, but before we do that, you and this is fascinating to me. You talk about lay lines. And I am somebody who studies ancient Maya traditions, and a lot of their pyramids sit on lay lines, sit on tealloric energy fields, and the belief is that they understood these earth neurosystems you can call them, or energy systems known as what
the English called lay lines. Would you say that summer tree and these other big trees are connected in some way and sit over energy fields.
I'm one hundred percent sure they do. Now whether or not they're what we traditionally call lay lines is an ongoing inquiry for me, because I can kind of see them sometimes when I'm altered, like I can envision, and they look really my sillial. They're like curvy and woven, but they light. There's light. I can see this light going through the earth sometimes and I can sense it.
But lay lines, So I wondered about that, and I started looking into lay lines, and they're always described as more straight and networked in like a grid I'm sure the red woods are connected to those, but maybe they curve into them and then get onto those main they're energetic highways like occupuncture points in the Earth, and the red woods are connected. They are connectors. And what I also experienced with the red woods is they connect Heaven
on Earth. They connect the cosmic storry intelligences with the Earth intelligence. In fact, I think are antennas and they channel that right through.
I love that analogy that they're working with the cosmos. That's something I was curious about is that if these are teachers, you know, ancient teachers, how do you learn with them? Did you sit there and ask them questions like summer Tree, do you do you have periods where you know what Summer Tree, I'm curious about this earth situation? Or can you tell me about myself? You use them
kind of as a sounding board. Maybe that's disrespectful. Maybe you need to go in and be respectful and say, Summer Tree, I honor you, but I need to know about this my relationship with this person who sucks or something.
You know, when I was really ill for a while and I could never sleep, I actually ended up every once in a while in cheer desperation taking tranquilizers. I was taking some las of pen and then my youngest daughter ruptured her appendix and was near death in the hospital for ten days. I had like flirted with this for like a decade, every once in a while when I was desperate for night of sleep, but I would I took the lowest dose. I wouldn't take them every
night because I was determined not to get addicted. When she was in the hospital, I took them every day for two weeks while this crisis happened, and then I did get addicted, and because I tried to just quit, because I had always quit before. If I took them and I couldn't get off them, and the doctor said, well, you're on the lowest dose, it shouldn't be a problem. It was a total problem. I could not get off them. So I did go to the trees in this abject
misery of like, oh my god, I'm an addict. Now, how did this happen to me? I was really upset and I begged for help, and it was very direct. The help. I mean, I can't remember it's written in my journals now, all the information they gave me. They literally guided me step by step for how to get off of these Oh.
My god, it was very very like like specific, like go to bit at this time, only these foods don't get alcohol h weed.
Yeah. Yeah, it was that specific. And it was those things you're very intuitive too. It was the thing you just said, you know, it was more and it was like they told me how to get I had to ask that. I didn't even know they existed. The doctor didn't tell me this. The trees told me that I could get drops and lower my dose every three days by drop by drop by drop. And that's how I did it with that because when I first tried to cold turkey, after I got addicted, my brain was little,
literally creaking and crackling and rattling. The insomnia went through the roof. I had non stut headache, and I was nauseated and a sweating. It was bad. I could not get off this side.
I gotta stop you d so are you bringing out your journal or are you bringing out a recorder? And you're talking, You're closing your eyes, You're meditating with your with the summer tree and going summer tree. I'm I can't stand this drug. I'm dealing with. What do I do and then every time you close your eyes you got a hint as to withdrawal or something. Tell me about it.
I did record things into my phone. Sometimes I would run home and write it in my journal right away because I could remember it. This was These were vivid.
Oh okay, so were vivid.
Well not. Some of them are like pulling back a dream that you only can remember a few images because I'm so deep and some of them, but these ones were I could mostly remember. I did speak into my phone, usually when I'd be walking back. I would record it and then write it in my journal as soon as I got home. And that's just a very speci the thing. Most of the time, I have to confess, I wasn't asking all these big questions of the trees. I was
just receiving what needed to come through next. It's how I received the book. That book, my book. It was written in two months. I want to I didn't want to write it because I'd written some children's books and gone through a whole onslaught of rejections and then had books and then had publishers go out of business and books everything that could happen to me, and I had just gotten tired of working so hard for not much.
So when I first was sitting at the tree and had this vision of this book that I was to write, and it was blazing with light, I said no. And then every time I go sit at the tree and try and meditate, I couldn't get anything because I just see this book again. And finally I just came and I said, I'll write the book.
And as soon as ID going, girl, you got to write it. You're not going anywhere until you've finish this book exactly in two months. That that means that that that was a major data download waiting to come.
I was blissed out too. It was amazing. I mean I was like getting up at four in the morning to write sometimes or writing late at night, but it was I was higher than a kite. It was like this blaze of white light was just blowing into my body. So I hardly noticed. I mean I did have to go back and edit it after that, and that took a few more months. But but I had never written a book like that. It took me years to write some of you know, a young adult fantasy. It took
me years. I was plotting it out. This wasn't that I didn't write it on that level. And I felt like I was just in service to the trees, the forest and nature. And if you're.
A you're a tool for them, you're a you're a channel.
I was for this and and I just felt like, you know, kind of commissioned. I think lots of us are. I think certain things are ripe and they're ready to come through, and a lot of people will receive those ideas or inventions or creative images at the same time. But I made myself available because I was out in the forest, so I was available to the nature spirits to.
We're going to take a short commercial break to allow our sponsors to identify themselves, and we will return shortly with my guest today, author Ellen D. Davidson, discussing Sacred Forest Bathing. We'll rejoin you shortly. My guest today is Ellen D. Davidson. She has written a new book called Sacred Force Bathing. This is all about connecting with nature, connecting with the earth energy gaia energy for healing, for
spiritual growth and for wellness. Seems okay about it? I mean to write a book in two months is unreal. That's oh, just create I know.
I haven't even confessed that to any other interviewers.
Oh oh, hey, guess what we heard her first? Hear our destiny. But I have to say that you don't seem to be angry about it. You don't seem to be put off. You accept the role as the channel or the tool for the nature world and bringing this book forward, which I think is a wonderful acknowledgment. You may not think about that well, but I mean, you're smiling right now, so you must be okay, okay with it. And it's a wonderfully written book, so it ca at worked.
Hey.
And the other thing is you got Inner Traditions to publish it. They have great editors there, so you had some good people to help you right.
Well, actually, before Inner Traditions publish it, I've been a Twee Sister for a long time. It's an organization, a nonprofit that plants trees all over the world. And Mary Reynolds Thompson both teaches writing and she published with Inner Traditions ironically The Wild The Way of the Wild Soul Woman, and she is also a professional editor. So I had an editor at Inner Traditions who was interested in my manuscript.
I just did a cold call query, but he said it needed some work at that point, so I hired Mary and she helped me and then it went through. So I did have some good editing help, which probably most channel books need.
So yeah, I mean they have certain standards, which is actually good because it makes it more legible and it flows probably better. There's certain things that editors can help you with that really make a book outstanding, so the end result is positive. Let's talk about the technique of forest bathing. You suggest your suggestions for nature therapy, so let's go through them. So you suggest to sit for two hours in nature to receive the benefits, to start
from the top. So how would we identify a place that would be the ideal location to do the work.
Well, first off, I think it's good to find a place close to home that you can visit over and over again, because this is a relationship. What we're doing is we're creating relationship, and that's not a one off. It's okay to go to some place that you want to see and you've dreamed of your whole life, and everyone has their bucket list. There's nothing wrong with that. But I think what we're starving for in our modern culture where we're always doing new everything is to really
bond deeply with specific places and trees. And it's just so lovely to get to know a place in all weathers and all moods and what blooms when. And there's an inmacy in that that I think we're craving because I keep reading articles about how lonely we all are, and part of that is we've become disconnected. And part of reconnecting is to reconnect to place. So for people that are housebound, that could be a house plant or maybe even a pet or but that deep bonding, or
a garden outside or even a window box garden. And then if people live in a city, it can be a park and finding a special plant or tree there to really open up to and meet get to know.
Let me stop you real quickly. D you said plant. I thought that it's really important to be around trees to get this interconnection. Are you saying that a plant can also provide the beginnings of a connection that can lead to the healing world that you want.
I'm going to backtrack even further. I love the forest, and I live in the forest, and I've really bonded and I think there is something special about being in a forest, for sure, but nature therapy will work with any type of nature, whether it's a desert, a prairie, a mountain. Water. They've done studies and a lot of the health effects like lower blood pressure and lower cortisol and increased well being happen in blue spaces, oceans, lakes, rivers, waterfalls.
A lot of people know about the ions and waterfalls and how that's ceiling. So I don't think there's any wild natural environment that doesn't that we can't bond with and become more intimate and alter our consciousness and be healed from. So that's why I think that people need to find what speaks to them close to home, because then we can go over and over again. And when people get a chance, going to an unspoiled forest is an amazing experience.
Yeah, you mentioned that visit the spot once or twice a month, and so in those visits, what are we doing to connect and why are how are we developing the relationship that becomes the healing tool or the intuitive connection.
Okay, so the most important thing, bar none, besides going and getting your body there, is to unplug from all your electronic devices.
Oh right, yeah, no phone, No phones.
Don't wear headphones with music because you want to hear the sounds of the environment you're in and they have an effect on state of mind and conciousness. Music's powerful, it's wonderful, but that's not what this is about. The second thing is either go alone if you like to go places alone, so that you can be more engaged with the environment than with another person. We humans love each other, so when we're together, we're going to talk and find out all about what's going on with each other.
If you're going in a group or with people, then after you know a short amount of connecting and talking and setting up the plan for the day, practice silence and scatter. Find, you know, go twenty ten, twenty yards apart and find each person can find where they're drawn to sit and have a spot. I don't think people need to sit per se for two hours. I've been doing that after I walk, but I think the immersion,
the being there should be two to three hours. That's actually what the Japanese have discovered with shin Rin Yoko is forest beating really requires a two to three hour minimum commitment to receive the full benefits and that's of just being peaceful and really being there. The next part of the protocol would be to tune in to our bodies. Our bodies are nature, I mean, that's what our bodies are.
We're part of the earth, and so tune in to the smells, the sensations physically, the sights, the sounds, what the whole environment is. And the more present we become with our senses, like Mary Oliver talks about our soft animal bodies, that's what we want to come into, our soft animal bodies. We want to do that. Dropping down, getting out of our heads so much that alone is
really healing and putting our hands on our hearts. The Institute of heart Mouth is doing a great tree interconnectivity study right now, and they discovered that when people send loving thoughts and feelings and words to I think they used a maple to a tree, the tree expanded its ambient bioelectric field. So this really is a scientifically proven We're having relationships, and like any other relationship, we want
to take time. We want to pay attention and every being, whether even rocks, I think, but all beings, certainly all living beings love attention. And you can experiment with that in your house. People have when we focus loving attention on our plants, they grow better, just our house plants. This is known, and they have. There's an ancient book. Do you remember that book, The Secret Life of Plants?
I think it was Peter Tompkin.
Yeah, and remember how when somebody went towards the plant, just with the thought that they were going to cut the plant, it electronically sent out a screen.
Yeah. Yeah. They hooked up the plants to different electrodes and they discovered that they have they have feelings.
Yeah, you know, so this isn't a live somehow post industrial revolution culture, modernity, we reified everything. We turned it all into dead matter. Maybe it was that whole Newtonian thing, but we've made the world into objects. That's not the reality, and the physicists are figuring this out too. The reality is energy, and everything is alive and vibrating, and so we want to connect back to them because that is the world of life, and life is a miracle. It's
magical and we're magical. And this is the elf talking. I could feel that little elsiness there. They're perking right up.
So it's not wrong to do forest bathing by walking, But I think what you're suggesting in your book is to sit quietly with a specific tree or plant or bush or whatever and do some work, not just you know, absorb the energy, but intend on something more.
Yes, and but the work is to soften, to open, to receive the more. It's not, it's not. It's like a state of soft fascination where we it's not the focused intent that we're used to, where we're directing our thoughts. We're opening but with.
Like I was thinking when you were talking about going locally and finding a place. I'm close to some reservoirs and there's some parks that they've built that have very old trees. Do you want to find Do you go there looking for someone to say, hey, come sit with me? Or is it just the overall experience and don't think about a specific connection.
It's really a good practice, I think, to open up to our kind of gut knowing and our intuition and feel, feel from your belly, feel from your gut. Where am I pulled? What? What? What tree has magnetism for me? You know? Who? Do I want to get to know more? We can go by our own desire. Our desire is a gift to show no different than with a person.
You might be at a party and you're just drawn to this one person and they're drawn to you, and then you start having a great conversation like this, I'm having fun now, so you know, so it's no different. It's just that we're opening up to where in nature are we drawn and if we're working with trees, which tree? And I wanted to backtrack a little bit too. There are a lot of people, because I wrote this book and I've been meeting more people that are really into
tree communication. There are people that will ask trees specific questions and intuitively receive answers. Some people do it by drawing and painting and answers, and some people will get it verbally or even in movement. Some people are even doing it over long distance. Well, there's the listening field is talking to ancient olive trees without actually going there. Because we're all energy. I feel like we've got a pretty disembodied culture already. So I'm an advocate for bringing your body.
But you know this force bathing, there's one element we didn't even talk about, which is and you call it deep breathing, and I don't think we breathe enough, and so how do we integrate the breath into our forest bathing? Talk about that, would you?
I'm so glad you remember to bring that up. I think the breathing's the most important part, because on this planet, we literally breathe with the trees. We're inhaling their oxygen, exhaling the carbon dioxide that they're inhaling. We have a very symbiotic relationship with trees and plants in that way. So when we go to a forest and consciously breathe with the trees, it's sort of ecstatic, and it's a way to slow ourselves down and calm that vague nerve.
So I do different types of forest breathing. Some is when I'm sitting and I might be if I'm really wound up in my mind and I can't settle too fast. I literally might breathe in for account of four or five, hold for one or two, and then breathe out for the same count and do that until I've come into a calmer rhythm. Okay, see Yeah, But there's all kinds of different breathing techniques, and it's basically finding one that works for each individual person.
Should we be conscious of our breath when we're ours first connecting or is it just just take some deeper breath so that you're I think what you're suggesting is by breathing, you're seeking up with the tree.
Yeah, and we need to slow down. You know. It's interesting. I think the trees actually vibrate higher than we do, at least the old redwoods. But in order for us to connect and and our vibration will organically rise in their presence, in order for that to happen, we have to slow down. So it's a paradox in a way.
But I think you said something very very important, which is the connection begins with the breath, because you're you're you want to be in harmony with this, with this sentient being, and by breathing in a certain manner, after a while, you probably know that you're connecting in some way. Maybe you feel it, or maybe you're like, oh, I'm much more relaxed, which is also a message that the
tree is linking up with you in some way. Talk about your experience, I d I mean you must go up to the big girl summer tree and have a way to link with her.
Yeah. Well, first of all, for me, I'm a pretty active person, so I like it that I have to walk a few miles to get there, because just walking, the rhythm of that and seeing the various beautiful things I see along the way already has calmed me down a little bit. And then sometimes I do yoga in the clearing for a little bit and that will also help me center. But sometimes I just sit. It depends on my mood. And then when I sit, I I try and pay attention to my breath. Sometimes I'll do
a technique like I just said. Sometimes I'll just observe my breath. But as I calm myself down with the breathing and the presence, then I will start feeling. Usually for me, I first can feel the connection with the trees through the back of my heart chakra. It's almost like little tendrils and roots growing into me, and there is a transfusion of energy and it's palpable. I can feel it like little tingling currents, and so it's almost like I become it feels like I'm becoming part of the tree.
Wow, that's pretty amazing.
Yeah, and that's not science yet, but it probably will be, because none of this was science when I started out, and my husband thought I was crazy, but now half of it is science.
So I think these things are ancient wisdoms that are coming back to We're remembering them. The books called Sacred Force Bathing the Healing Power of Ancient Trees and wild Places. In my guest today's been Ellen D. Davidson. As we conclude, uh, the what would you like to leave us with in terms of the importance of this forest bathing? What? What? What are some of the final thoughts.
As we as we reconnect and open up to nature, we're healing ourselves and also that will help heal our ecologies and our earth. And we can be guided too well know our next steps and they can be they can be in more grace and ease. We don't have to constantly fight against everything. We can work with the intelligence of nature and just have We could have such a good time on this beautiful planet.
Yeah, I think we're all some of us are really out of balance. I want to ask you, if someone has an illness like you had your illnesses, how do you approach that with forest bathing? Do you ask for healing or And you might have mentioned that when we first started, when you had your fible biologia and your other illnesses. But how did what would you suggest for somebody who has a chronic condition and how can they ask for healing and how do they go about it?
Well, that's a good question. First off, just being be it nature therapy is a real thing, and just being out there. As long as we unplug from our electronics and let ourselves really be present, there's an automatic amount of healing. I think our auras get cleaned and we just automatic have our energetic fields become cleaner and higher vibration. That's going to influence ourselves and so there is healing in that. I also just read Sophie Strand's The Body
is a Doorway. Not everyone with a chronic illness is going to heal on that level, but she so eloquently and beautifully makes the point about how in nature, even when we're dying or we're not going to heal, we're part of the whole, the healthy, beautiful whole, constantly creating new life out of the dissolution. So wherever we are in our lives and life is a series of ups and downs for I think everyone and we all go through things that are ard At times we can soften
around it and being outside with nature. It's bigger. Nature's bigger than we are, so we can be embraced in that and we can relax no matter what's going on. So there's an element of healing in just that level of relaxation, and then our own body intelligence can arrive at the highest level of homeostasis possible for us at that time. Okay, whatever we're dealing with, I think.
The first part of that, because you're just you're saying, just go out and be in nature. That's the that's healing right there, that's the start.
Yeah, I love it.
Yeah, the book just came out a few weeks ago, so you can get it on I think I saw it on Amazon and wherever you get your books. Let's see, let's give your web address. The web address is. Your name is Ellend Davidson dot com. You have a Facebook page, You have an Instagram page. What you got on your Instagram page? You got pictures of your trees, the summer tree on Instagram?
No, I should uh put a picture.
Everybody wants to see the trees.
I have some cheese here and there, and certainly on my website there's some and I do post them on Facebook. I tend to post a little bit more on Facebook than Instagram.
I thought you were going to say, well, I don't post these sacred trees like Summer Tree because I don't want anyone going out after them. But heck, it takes you a bit of time to get to them, so probably only the animals and you know where it is.
You know, No, I have posted pictures of it before, but I just haven't. Well it's not summer yet, I can't even get there yet, so I will post one. Stay tuned.
The real pleasure. Much success on this book. I think you got something and I really appreciate you writing the book.
Thank you for having me. It was really a joy to talk to you, so thank you.
That was a lot of fun for me. I had to tell you. When you live amongst the ancient Sequoia redwoods and these are you know, trees that are two hundred three hundred feet tall, They're monstrous, and you're in these groves, there's something very sacred about it, very calming, and they're exuding all types of energy. We're just beginning to understand what kind of energy they do exude, but we know it's very healing. As D was telling us, it's very healing to the body, and I've heard other people.
My ex wife lived in Willets, which is south of where d lives in northern California, and she was a chiropractor. She had a lot of stories about people who were kind of doing the forest bathing technique or communing with nature and recovering from all kinds of real chronic problems. I think the other thing is when you move to a smaller town, you do have less resources, but you're much more in nature, and this can be very, very beneficial.
So the book just came out, Sacred Forest Bathing The Healing Power of Ancient Trees and Wild Places came out a couple of weeks ago, and I enjoyed the book. It has some work that you can do after each chapters are very small. You can do a little work. The recommendation is you do a little work after each chapter to kind of review. But we went over the techniques for doing these interactions with the nature. But I really strongly suggest the book simply because it offers a
lot of benefits for connecting with nature. So Ellen D. Davidson, Sacred Forest Bathing, what an interesting term. Sacred forest bathing bathing Among the Vibrations. Hey, if you're enjoying Destiny Earth Ancients or or Earth Ancients Special Edition the Archives, please consider becoming a subscriber for as little as five dollars a month. You can support the work we do here on these podcasts. By becoming a subscriber, you can support
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everyone who makes this thing happen. You guys are rock all right. Take care of you well, and we will talk to you next time anything a