Once we see it and feel what it feels like to be authentically ourselves and to know that that makes a difference, it's like we can't go backwards. There's some part of us that says, well, if this is possible for me, that's what I'm after, and I'm not gonna slide back into a place where I'm small again. Welcome to Love's Everyday Radius, a podcast brought to you by the Hoffman Institute.
My name is Liz Severn. And on this podcast, we will explore graduates' journeys of self discovery and learn how the process transformed their internal and external worlds. Hope you enjoy. Hi. Today, I am so excited. We have Anna Switzer with us. Hi, Anna. Hi there. Anna, you are an incredible human, and I'm sure we're gonna learn so much more about that today. But you are a scientist, an educator, an adventurer, an author, an artist, and so much more.
But fill us in a little bit about kinda what those words mean to you and part of your story. Well, first of all, thanks for having me. I'm really excited to be here. And, yeah, it's interesting that you introduced me that way because those titles or words are sort of the chronology of my career. So I studied physics for my bachelor's degree, and I have a master's in oceanography. And in between there, I was a teacher, and I currently actually teach teachers. That's part of the work I do.
And parallel with all that academic work, I also would lead trips in the summertime, adventure trips for kids and adults. And I worked for Outward Bound as an instructor as well as other organizations. So I've sailed and canoed and biked and hiked, great distances sometimes with groups of people. And more recently, the author and artist parts are more recent. I wrote a book, just about 4 years ago and have also dabbled in watercolor work.
I think one thing that really caught me in as I'm hearing about, you know, your history and this love for science and nature, but you have this mission statement, and it was helping heal the human spirit and natural world through facilitation of mutually positive experiences between the 2. And when I read that, I was like full body, like, yes. You know, it's not only is it sort of I think what we at Hoffman strive to do, but just
really melding those two worlds. Right? The humanity in us and of us as well as this natural world. So talk me through how how that began in you. Yeah. It's interesting. I have felt a very strong connection myself to nature from a very young age. One of the first memories I have of myself is when I was about 4, and I was on a family trip, and I found myself kind of across the a field and behind a set of bushes, and there was this little creek or puddle maybe.
And I just remember feeling like I'm in a right place for myself by being here with just natural elements around me. And that sense of feeling at home in nature is just something I've always had, and it's always where I went when, say, my parents were fighting or, you know, there were difficulty other difficulties going on in my life. Nature was my, like, secure attachment plate.
And I think, especially now with so much technology in use in our everyday lives, I think it's very easy for us to feel separated from nature and somehow above it too. And I think a lot of what my work is about is trying to bring myself and other people back in right relationship with the natural world because we are a part of it, and we're equally a part of it, you know, with all the other critters that that are alive out there and all the other elements of nature.
Well, right. And that just describes to me the physics undergrad, the oceanography master's degree, and then this education PhD. So for that time period in your life, you were mainly working, you said, with children and kind of bringing them to the natural world? A lot of it. Yeah. You know, I spent months with people in the summer times, mostly kids leading trips. And I think a lot of it was just about helping them reflect on their own place
in the world. As I was also trying to understand my own place in the world, natural or built, I do my best teaching when in some ways what I'm teaching is what I also need to learn, and I'm learning at a deeper level as I'm teaching others about it. Beautiful. What, what is something that you think you learned from working with all of those kids in nature?
One of the things I loved about working with not just kids in nature, but adults too, is that when people get outside and they're asked to remove their watches and not have smartphones and, you know, all the things that keep us quote unquote connected, There's a wildness that settles in, or there's a wildness that gets invited in that we all have, and people become more authentic and silly. For example, their emotions flow more naturally.
There's an allowance for one another maybe because we can see directly what somebody might be struggling with. It's like our bare humanity, you know, kind of shines through, and our right relationship with nature is allowed as well. People, like, accept oh, it's raining and I can't do anything about it. Well, well, let's just keep hiking then. You know, there's nothing to do but keep going even when things get difficult. I love that. Yeah. And I I hear like an openness to receiving.
Right? It's like people are open to receiving from themselves, but also from nature. Mhmm. And from one another as well. And this idea of, like, persevering. Right? Discomfort, I know from personally many hikes I've been on in in that similar situation. Right? You're several miles in, starts raining and it's like, well, I can't turn around because I I wouldn't make it out. So we're gonna just keep going to our destination and there it's such a beautiful reminder of, like, the perseverance and
just allowing it. This is what it is. And now the next thing is, how do I, how do I take a step forward? How do I move through this? Exactly. Yeah. And I think taking us back a step and then forward 1, 2 maybe is this idea of discomfort is something that I've gotten really interested in because one of the things that I saw with kids and adults out in, you know, these wilderness settings is that people have very different relationships with being uncomfortable.
My view of discomfort grew over time, and I started thinking about that discomfort is something we can have a relationship with. We don't have to just try to get out of it as fast as we can. We can actually stay in it and learn from it and learn through it, which is actually what my first book is about. My first book is called licensed to learn, elevating discomfort in service of lifelong learning.
So through working with lots of people in lots of different settings, I just started to develop some models and some ideas about how we can build the muscle that's required to deal with discomfort. What would you say is, like, one of the first steps in in that process? There's so many steps. One of them in some ways has to do with
accepting that discomfort is part of life. And I think my own personal theory is that the consumption that we're all involved with out here in the non natural world is driven by people and organizations telling us that we shouldn't have to be uncomfortable. That being uncomfortable is it's bad maybe in some in some ways, but it's also just unnecessary.
I actually take the opposite stance that discomfort is actually necessary for growth and for learning and becoming a fuller expression of who you are as a person and for even going further and bringing your gifts into the world, because I think we all come with a gift that we're meant to give. It's not always super obvious. Some people I think have a luck where like at age 4 they become a virtuoso pianist or something and let's like bingo, wow, that person found their gift right away.
I actually feel like I'm a kind of a later bloomer, so to speak, in that it's taken a lot of miles and a lot of reflection and a lot of trying different things. I mean, that might be the flip side of my story is that, like, I had to try a lot of different things to find what my gift is. What a amazing question. Just how do we relate to discomfort. Right? It got me thinking, like, what was I what was I modeled or taught about discomfort? And and it really was what you were saying. Like, get out
of it. You shouldn't have to be uncomfortable, move away from it. But then over the years, right, in my own learning, it's been that similar thing that discomfort arises when I'm on the edge of my comfort zone. And that's where just as you're saying, I have found my deepest learning. This idea of developing a relationship with discomfort and not immediately recoiling from it or wanting to get away from it is everything.
Yeah. So maybe the answer to your question a few minutes ago is not to recoil. When you feel discomfort to linger for a minute or a week or years, you know, in that discomfort of not knowing and trusting that you're learning something that's really important for you to learn through that discomfort. Yeah. Well, thanks for that. Walk us through now, Anna Hoffman, because you're all these things and you're also Hoffman grad. Right. And so talk us through a little bit about when you did the process
and what that was like for you. Because I know it was you were well into your career when you when you found the process, but talk us through that experience. Yes. So I think I did the process in 2010 or 2011. So it's been a number of years ago. I think I was early forties when I came. Yeah. And medical doctor actually recommended that I give it a try. And based on, I think, my stress levels, my stress hormones, cortisol, and stuff like that, she was like, have you ever thought of
doing some emotional work? And so, you know, several months later, I found myself at Hoffman, and I love the camaraderie of our group that was there together. There were just some big, wonderful personalities and some anchor moments, you know, that we held on to together, like, even after the Hoffman.
Of course, the teachers are all just amazing humans and able to hold that space, you know, the skills that are required to be able to hold that kind of space for people, I think, is tremendous and so needed in our world today. And one of the things that I remember that stuck with me the longest after the Hoffman process was this idea of recycling. And I think being a scientist and being an educator, you know, I think about how the brain works a lot even and I don't have a
degree in neuroscience. I'm not a brain scientist in any way, shape, or form, but there was something about the recycling process that I found super interesting and helpful. And I think it's just this idea that throughout our lives, we can change our brains, you know, and not just, like, accidentally by reading a book or something, but by intentionally looking at habitual ways of thinking and then essentially inserting an option when you start to go down that habitual
pathway. You can insert this detour that then over time, the more you practice it, the detour that's more intentional and perhaps more helpful can become the norm. What it makes me think of, you know, when I'm talking or teaching recycling, I often give the example of being out in nature on a trail. Right? And the trail that's been worn so many times. Right? There's no grass growing or, you know, the flowers have been stomped down or whatnot.
And part of restoring nature or part of even allowing new things to grow is you have to be willing to take a different path. Right? So if maybe you go a little bit longer to let that old path grow back or have new life form take over. And so it's this idea of like, oh, if I walk this other way, you know, I'm leaving that old path and I'm forging a new one. It's unfamiliar. Doesn't have the same level of worn or
or whatnot to it. But that idea of consciously saying no to the old pathway that's not, as you said, skillfully being used and choosing a new neural pathway. I love that metaphor. Yeah. That's really beautiful. So recycling, is it something that you still kind of use today in your life? I think I do, but not necessarily in the same form that it came in Hoffman. Yeah. I think I do a lot of journaling. And through my journaling, I process old stuff
over time. I think when my mind has kind of been over and over that same pathway like you were talking about, and it feels sort of dead and nothing's growing there anymore, I can think to myself, well, what's what do I want to believe? What do I want to think? What experiences would I like to have? And then I can start to dream a bit or, create this other way of thinking or being or doing that hopefully my mind or myself consciously chooses to be in that, you know, slightly different reality
over time. So I would say it is recycling, but it's become more of a longer process. What I love hearing in that is it's the exact same steps. It is saying, hey. This this is the old pathway. This isn't working for me. What do I wanna consciously choose or dream or step into? So 100% is recycling. It's just sort of in a more intimate journaling way. So I think that's amazing. Thank you.
I also just keep thinking about you and this connection to nature and the process because I did the process at White Sulphur Springs, which you did as well. And I teach at the other sites, and so I hear it all the time from students just how important and integral nature is to their process.
I wanna kind of talk a little bit more about that with you because I think you have so much knowledge in, several of your books and then your nature intelligence toolkit that really dives into how we can be sort of work with nature in our own healing. I think it's so cool that Hoffman has these different sites, and these sites are, you know, nestled into their own natural setting, of course, and that Hoffman is smart enough to take advantage of the fact that these settings are available.
I remember at White Sulphur Springs, that creek bed that goes through there, and I remember myself a couple different mornings hiking up above where the buildings are and climbing down into the creek bed and just having that be one of my sort of anchor points. I think there's something you know, the holding that I was talking about in terms of the Hoffman teachers being able to hold space. I think nature by nature,
does that for us as well. There's there's something inherent in us as living beings that feels held and supported by nature. And I fully recognize that there are people in the world who have had really hard and difficult experiences in the natural world, and so they don't necessarily have that same sense of it that I'm talking about.
But I also in my upcoming book, I'm hoping to help all people, those who've had positive and those who've had negative experience with nature, sort of move themselves forward along the spectrum of feeling connected to nature because I think nature is a space holder as well and becomes, an important part of the process simply because our brains are wired to connect.
I've never really thought of it in that way, but just that nature is sort of the ultimate safety container and speaking to the process, but also just to so many other things that when we can allow ourselves to feel that connection or to feel held by nature, be in tune with nature, so much unfolds from there.
Yeah. And, you know, one of the ways I've been thinking about describing the natural intelligence toolkit, which you brought up, So the the natural intelligence toolkit has 8 different exercises in it that help people make contact with nature, make connection with nature, and then receive guidance from nature. So those are sort of three levels that I'm currently thinking about in terms of that connection that we have with nature.
And the contact part just happens kind of whether we like it or not. Like, when we're outside breathing air that's been moved through the cycle of a tree and it's just it's been cleaned and there's cycles of nitrogen getting released after a thunderstorm. That's why it smells so fresh. So all of that stuff is just naturally happening.
And then I think about nature connection as a more intentional meeting between a person and whatever environment they're in, and that environment doesn't have to be like a big huge forest or wild place. It can be a tree down the block or a backyard or an urban park. The reason I've started going down this road is this train of thought is this guidance, getting guidance from nature.
I think of you know, there's so many times when I've been out in nature just wandering or walking on, you know, on a path, and I'll have an about something that I didn't even know was kind of running in the back of my brain. And, you know, a problem I'm trying to solve or, you know, a conversation I wanna have with somebody, I'll have that moment and there's an activity. The final activity in the natural intelligence toolkit is called wander with a question.
And I've more recently been able to think about that activity as a way to actually build the skills so that you can sort of craft these moments rather than them just feeling like they came out of the blue or they were a one off. There's actually a series of steps that one can take to create the conditions for an moment to occur, and I just think that's really cool.
Well, and I even love the way you set it up in the in the three ways, you know, contact with nature, connection with nature, and guidance. And even just for some people, opening their minds and their awareness to just the contact that they have.
So I I love that as a framework, right, to just be aware of the of the contact, the sun on your skin or the rain on your skin, the air that we're breathing, you know, whatever whatever form of nature you can see wherever you are and and starting there and building then to connection to guidance. Yes. Exactly. In the past, we've had many conversations just about asking permission from nature. And I just think that is a beautiful
and powerful concept to hold. And it's something that we often do a land acknowledgement and really encourage students wherever we are, whatever site we are to just get out and interact with nature, but also to ask permission from nature. And it's so fascinating to, to hear the insights that come back from students being in nature that way. But talk to us a little bit more about this permission from nature.
Yeah. So about 10 years ago, I got certified actually as a nature connection life coach, and it was a process that took about a year and a half. The bulk of it, of course, was out on the land. That's where I picked up this idea of asking permission at different times for having specific interactions with an element in nature. And the first exercise we did, we each had to find a tree and stand kind of away from it so that the whole tree was in our our field of vision.
And we were asked to think a negative thought about the tree or about anything and then try to approach the tree and see what happened. And what? Like my first experience of holding a negative thought and then trying to approach the tree, like literally as I approached the tree, a limb got caught in my hair. You know, it kind of scraped my forehead. I could like, I didn't wanna keep moving because I would drag this branch across my head. So I backed up. Your natural response is
to back up. So we stepped away from the tree, and then we were asked to think about a positive thought about the tree or in general or something. And it's like this completely different sense of my relationship with the tree emerged, and I asked it if I could approach. And I got sort of a yes signal viscerally, and I was able to approach the tree without getting, a branch in my head, for example.
The more I've practiced that idea of asking permission to approach, like, an individual element in nature, a tree, or what have you, I wrote about it to provide an analogy that if you were walking down the street and you walked by a friend's house, you wouldn't just barge into their house and say I'm here. You would stop and you would knock on the door. Would find out if they're home and if they are home, are they busy or are they open to having guests right then?
So I think of the equivalent in nature that like trees are, they might be busy, you know, doing other things, and there might not be a great time to visit with them. So I just think finding a way to respect other elements of nature that we might not always think about needing our respect is a step forward in that connection with nature, both for us as individuals and, you know, I could blow that out and make big grand statements about our collective relationship with nature.
Well, yeah, that's where my mind goes. I've just, yes, permission on this individual basis to interact and lean into the natural intelligence that's there. And then, yeah, my mind blows it up and is like, wow. Where would we be if we were all more conscious, more aware, and asking permission from nature and all of the resources is yeah. Yeah. And I think this kind of attitude that I'm talking about isn't new necessarily.
I'm writing about it today, and it feels new and exciting to me and hopefully new and exciting to other people, but it's likely that it's a very ancient way of thinking about the natural world that has been forgotten or discarded. Well, there's, a quote that you've got by Kurt Hahn, and it's open for interpretation. Right? I know we're talking about nature, but the quote is,
there's more to us than we know. If we can be made to see it, perhaps for the rest of our lives, we will be unwilling to settle for less. And so what in that speaks to you? Yeah. I think there's a way that modern life life has a way of beating me up, us up, making us feel small. I think if people can find a mentor or have an experience where they see their gifts come alive and see that their gifts can make a difference, I think that gets at the, you know, there's more to us than we know
part of the quote. Like, we have so much potential in us just innately, and it's not out always kind of welcome to shine in the world because of the larger systems and structures that are alive in this world. And I think once we, like I said, either have a mentor and that mentor could be nature itself. It could be an actual human being. It could be a book.
Once we see it and feel what it feels like to be authentically ourselves and to know that that makes a difference, it's like we can't go backwards. There's some part of us that says, well, if this is possible for me, that's what I'm after, and I'm not gonna slide back into a place where I'm small again. Yeah. When I read that quote and even just hearing you talk, what it brings up for me is just the power of a felt experience. Just the embodying
qualities, embodying an experience. And, yeah, whether that's in nature or in the presence of someone else, but once you know it to be true in your body, there is no going back. Yeah. I love that you brought that up because you're exactly right. Part of the power of discomfort, for example, going backwards a little bit in our talk, is that it's a visceral experience. Like, we can physically feel the discomfort of a situation.
And on the other end of the spectrum, we can physically feel this connection to nature and what it's like to be a part of something larger than ourselves When it's something that we experience personally, it lands in a different way than if we just read about somebody else's story. The bodily experience of something just is the number one goal of any program or goal around change.
And if we think to the natural intelligence toolkit, kind of where you you described, you know, you've got a lot of hands on experiential learning of interacting with nature. What's an activity or something where people could sort of start to invite this mindset or this idea of embracing the natural intelligence in?
So one of the activities that I can talk about is called feel the pull that gets at this experiential piece that you're naming really directly, and it's also part of the activity I alluded to earlier called wander with a question. So I think of feel the pull as an experience in and of itself, but it's also a building block. To feel the pull, what you do is you go outside, ideally. You don't have to do it outside, but outside is best. Turn off your phone, you know, kind of get centered.
Sometimes I'll go and actually sit in a park and write in my journal a little bit before I'm going to do this activity just to, you know, kind of land in that place with my mind and my body, maybe my whole quadrinity. And then I'll stand up and close my eyes and just very, very slowly turn my feet one direction or the other and kind of step inch by inch around in a circle. So I'm not moving forward in any direction. I'm just literally turning my body in one spot around in a circle.
And as I'm doing that turning, and again, my eyes are closed, I just start to turn my attention to my gut area and notice if there's sort of a sensation that arises in my gut when I face a certain direction. Sometimes I might turn almost the whole 360 degrees before I'll feel the pull. Sometimes I'll have to go past 360 degrees and do a second turn before I feel it. What the pull to me feels like is like I'm literally sort of being invited in
that direction. My body wants to move in that direction. So once I kind of get a sense of the direction my body wants to go essentially through that feel the pull, then I just start walking in that direction and not, like, at a great clip or anything, but just very slowly. And I just look around at what I'm seeing. I listen. I smell and see if there's something as I move that calls to me. So it might be a leaf on a branch. It might be a piece of litter
in the grass. It might be a nest, you know, up high and branch some branches. And I'll just kind of linger with that thing for a while. And sometimes there'll be like a connection between that thing that I'm noticing that I'm attending to and whatever I was writing about in my journal or some other thing that wasn't even front of mind at the moment, but I'm like, oh, this is so cool. There's a connection being made here.
So feel the pull is just a way to practice getting inside of your body and letting your mind body system interact with nature. And like I said, it's a it's a building block skill, but I think it's fun in and of itself to just do that. Yeah. Absolutely. And just bringing you to presence and being really in tune with that. Well, Anna, I wanna really just take a moment to thank you for all of the work that
you have done. You have we didn't even skim the surface of all of the work that you've done with educators and school systems and just all of the work that you're doing now in writing your second book to really bring decision making and nature and all of this
forward. And I just I really wanna thank you for for being out there and really sharing this knowledge and your enthusiasm and your experience with it with us today, but also just with the world, really addressing your life to this natural intelligence and how we can use it to heal. Thank you, Liz. I appreciate all that. That's very kind and you're welcome. I mean, it's it feels like a calling of sorts. You know, it feels like what I'm meant to be doing. Well, right. We well, you spoke
about gifts. Right? And this idea of, yeah, it's, you feel it's taken you some time and some learning and some experiences in life, but I definitely can, can see that and feel that. And I'm sure you have touched so many people over your life's work and I am excited to see the new book and what comes from from all of that so thank you. You're welcome. Thanks for for having me. Oh it was a blast. Thanks for being here. Thank you for listening to our podcast. My
name is Liza Ingrassi. I'm the CEO and president of Hoffman Institute Foundation. And I'm Rassie Grassi, Hoffman teacher and founder of the Hoffman Institute Foundation. Our mission is to provide people greater access to the wisdom and power of love. In themselves, in each other, and in the world. To find out more, please go to hompaninstitute.org.