Mark Coleman on Mindfulness in Nature

Great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have, quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think, ring true, and yet for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not

just about thinking our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent and create of effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Mark Coleman. He's an author and senior meditation teacher at Spirit Rock Meditation Center. Mark holds an m A and clinical psychology and draws on his extensive experience in working

with people as a therapist and coach. He's also an unabashed nature lover, and through his organization Awake in the Wild, he shares his passion for integrating meditation and nature. Mark leads wilderness and meditation retreats from Alaska to Peru, taking people on inner and outer adventures. Hi, Mark, welcome to the show. Thank you. Great to be here with you both. Yes, as you just alluded to, I am not here alone. I have Jenny with me for another one of our

interviews that we're doing together. Yes, I am really honored that you joined us. Marks, of course, you know, but I'll share with the listeners. You are my teacher. I'm in a mindfulness teacher training program that you and Martin Aylward are leading. So I just feel very honored to have you here. You have really touched my life and my heart, and so your work is so beautiful and I'm excited to share it with our listeners today. Wonderful, wonderful,

Thank you. We're going to spend a lot of time talking about your book, which is called Awake in the Wild Mindfulness in Nature as a path of self discovery. But before we do that, we always start with this parable. And I'll let you take it away, all right, here we go. Okay, So Mark, there is a grandparent talking with their grandchild, and the grandparents says, in life, there

are two wolves at battle inside of us. One is the good wolf that represents things like kindness and bray vary and love, and one is a bad wolf that represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops and thinks about it for a second and looks up at their grandparents and says, well, which one wins? And the grandparents said, the one you feed. And so I'd like to ask you how that parable applies to

you in your life and in the work that you do. Yeah, well, thank you for showing that so very beautiful parable, because it's very evocative, and I think about a lot of different things. One of my long trainings is I'm as I'm studied in the Buddhish tradition, and one of my favorite lines from the Buddha is this line, whatever the mind frequently dwells and ponders upon, that becomes the inclination

of the mind and the heart. Right, And so this parable is exactly speaking to that, you know, from to enough thousand years later or whenever this parable was was developed, and it really points to something I learned that very early in my practice, when it is started meditating the eighties, and it basically, I think about well being and happiness really partly is determined by what we focus on, what we pay attention to, what prioritize, what we preference, what

we see versus what we don't see, and so how that pertains to me, particularly in my life and my work. So I started meditating in the East End of London in the eighties, was very run down, depressed, gritty, urban, you know, rough, and I'm a nature lover and I was sort of feeling nature starved. I heard that phrase. It's like, oh okay, well let me tell my mind and attention to what is uplifting. And for me, mostly

what's uplifting is nature. So I look at the trees, I go to the park, I see the odd bird flying around. I'd look at the sunset and realized that, you know, I could focus on all the negativity, the crumbling buildings, the you know, the trash, the urban sort of you know ugliness, or I could look at beauty. I could choose to focus on that which was also here, not just the grim but also the uplifting and the

seas and the leaves and the colors. And so that's been a kind of a lifelong practice for me, and I teach that particularly during the pandemic. You know, the pandemic hit almost two years ago, and it hid in spring, in March, which is springtime here. I live in northern California, and you know, the pandemic was very hard and has been very difficult and painful on so many different levels.

And I would say to people, and I started this daily meditation teaching offering us still doing it this morning, called the Sunrise Meditation, and one of my teachings was to acknowledge that, yes, the pandemic is here, with all of its challenges and stresses, and look, it's springtime. It's beautiful. Blossoms are still blossoming, and even with the climate crisis, flowers are still flowering in the full moon still rises,

and birds are still migrating. And so I think, for me, and I think for our well being in general, it's essential that we notice what gladdens and uplifts us rather than just focus on all that's wrong and painful, even though we need to pay attention to what's wrong and what's painful, difficult, but to also include the beauty and the joy that's available in this earth. And I love that.

And you write about nature so beautifully. It just really evokes in one's own heart and mind, really a touch back to any memory that one has had in nature that felt particularly poignant and almost poetic. The way you write about nature, it's really your love of it is very apparent. And so we'll dive into that here in just a moment, but I want to just start with

a bit about your story. You write about how angry you were as a young man, and how in the gray concrete of London you were unaware of how significant spending time outdoors really was to your sense of well being. You write that during college you were at war with yourself and the world. So tell us about that young man and what has brought about the profound sense of

ease and calm and peace that you seem to have developed. Yeah, So going back that memory lane, which is a few years ago now, Yeah, I was like many young people, trying to just survive, trying to figure out who I was and what life's about. And I had a particularly i'd say political sensitivity to the injustice that I saw around me, to the exploitation, to the poverty, to the negativity, to the corruption. So a lot of my focus going back to the two wolves, and my focus was on

what was wrong, who was to blame? And I was angry, and I think I also was hurting inside. I didn't know what I was hurting from. It took me many years to kind of understand that I also had a tremendously intense inner critics. So I had a lot of self hatred, a lot of self judgment, and so there was a sort of cacophony of turmoil and confusion and

anger and struggle, and there wasn't all like that. I also had, you know, my moments of joy and fun and being crazy wild college student, punk rocker and all of that, but inside I felt unhappy. I look at my journals, it was full of you know, me feeling depressed and anxious as a negative. And then you know, I was lucky enough to stumble on a meditation center and I happened to learn the practice of mindfulness and meditation.

You know, when I was nineteen, and it was kind of radical, and I was busy blaming the world and the government and corporations and you know, all kinds of things out there, like they're the problem. If we fix that, then I'll be happy. And then I realized, oh, wait a minute, like there's so much suffering going on and here,

so much judgment and pain and anguish and negativity. And so meditation kind of pulled the carpet out, you know, pulled the rug out and made me look at the beginning to understand where does happiness arise from, and where does suffering begin? And so much happens within our own mind. And that became a radical shift in my life to understanding myself through meditation, through Buddhist practice, through cultivating the heart.

There was a great relief for for a confused and often angry young man to find some somebody's figured this out out, somebody has a pass, somebody has practices and tools that can really help you in a practical way how to live with some ease and with some peace.

How were you able to make the switch? And it's not it's not even a switch, actually, I think it's a let's call it an evolution from You were very angry, and the things you were angry about are still things that I'm certain concern you today and that you don't like to see in the world. Right, So that hasn't changed your view on like, hey, corruption, no good, poverty,

no good, right, those things are still there. How did the switch happen though, that allowed you to sort of move beyond being only in that place or consumed by that, to be able to work with it in perhaps a more skillful way. That's a great question, and I'm not sure exactly how to answer that. I think it was very clear. Like I go to a lot of protests. I was part of the anarchist movement and the squatting movement, and would demonstrate, would have these stock the cities kind

of the movement. Back in the eighties, there was a lot of demonstrations against Thatcher and that kind of was a very austere and you know, felt like a war against the working class. And so I felt very passionate

about that. And I also saw as I began to learn about meditation Buddhist principles, I began to see that the very demonstrations and actions and reactions to what was wrong or corrupt and injustice felt like the same mind state of negativity and blame and judgment and division and hatred, and there was as much anger and hatred towards that

as we were saying was coming towards us. And it was very clear that that we were just perpetuating a kind of negativity reactive cycle when we look back at history, you know, when we've used violence and hatred and negativity and anger to use up and transform systems that then we're just still strengthening the hatred and the negativity and the divisiveness and reactivity. So it doesn't actually lead to a net gain, it's just a different version of the

same problem. And so I think, you know, wisdom teaching Buddhism and otherwise asking us how do we engage with injustice and with the problems in the world, but not perpetuating the same reactive mind states, because then we're just perpetuating the same problem, I think. So that was a big shift for me and seeing that had to be other ways rather than using anger and hatred, which just also made me feel toxic. So I can't help but ask, because I'm a music fan, what are we talking here?

Two in London I got there in yeah, eight two, and there was about ten years there was the height of the the sort the flowering of the punk and the post punk and the new romantic. Yeah, what were some of the bands you were really into then? Back then it was Stranglers, Stiff, Little Fingers, Jam Using the Banshees, Ramons Um, something Death called Joy Division. Um, yeah, many many great bands. There was such a live time. I

had white, I had a white mohawk. I made my own clothes and big earrings and nice, nice, Well you just listed our editor Chris's uh, you just about listed some of his uh, his greatest hits list, although some of that for me to Joy Division and and uh, I was really into the sex Pistols, although later I came a few years later than you, sort of as punk and hardcore was kind of taking off the d I y thing in in the US, and so that was kind of my adolescence. But well, and you had

a band, didn't you? I did. I formed a band called the Walking and feed a means our first drummer didn't None of us knew how to do any We had a good guitar player who love to play a C D C and I only wanted to do sex pistols and Dead Kennedy songs. And our first drummer we stole trash cans and put him in the garage and that was his drum kit. We we were terrible. We were terrible. That's it reminds me of my brother had a punk band because he was always into punk the

same time. And then that that band lasted about three months because halfway through a set they just destroyed all our instruments. Yeah, yeah, I love it. So I'm fascinated by how people grow involve and how you went from like this punk, angry kid to this stage mifulness teacher you know, um, and specifically how you really fell in love with nature. So do you have some memories that feel like some of those first moments of really falling in love or being captivated by nature described some of

that for us? Yeah, definitely. So one of my for me, it feels the most iconic memory is I was I grew up in Northumberland, up in Newcastle, which is north eastern England and on the close to the border Scotland, kind of hardy and wild and cold, and we lived on the edge of farm fields and so me and my mates and brother would go out and we are kind of refuge was to like lose ourselves in the farm land, and we'd create these little tunnels and would go out into the middle of a big wheat or

barley field and just create these little cocoons and so we couldn't be seeing. We're lying down. And I was out there one day on my own, lying down on my back and just looking at swaying these golden stands of wheat and the blue sky, little whispy clouds, and I felt incredibly peaceful, like incredibly held and just this sense of peace. And you know what I'd called love now, but I didn't call it that then, and I didn't even make too much of it then. It was just like, oh,

that's my happy place. That's my sort of place of refuge, get away from the chaos of home and school life and being bullied and all the other stuff that was going on. You know. It's probably about eight or ten, and I think that really informed me. And I spent a lot of time along the coastline along streams and the woods, playing and rummaging and just getting into trouble, but was mostly in nature, and I think that you know, when kids have contact with the natural world in that way,

it lives in us. And so when we grow up, when we go out and even if like I did, I moved to the city, and I love London is a great city, but every weekend I would then go out to a park. I would jump on a train and go to the coast or just get out into the woodland forests. So I think that those early formative years of just feeling that just the joy and the peacefulness and the love and safety and beauty, that just

being a theme through my life. And even when I was in London and I was a punk and you know, I take this, you know, white mohawk, and I got into the country probably scared the living daylights of people. When I started meditating, then the combination of meditation and

nature they felt very similar. Like what I felt in meditation, which was more calm, more present, more ease, more relaxation, was really the same qualities I was just feeling in nature, And that's sort of been a lifelong learning for me of how much of the experience we have in nature is very similar to what we can experience through meditation.

And it's it's also what meditation teachings are pointing to meditation teachings whatever tradition, pointing to being present, to being aware, to being connected, to being open, to being receptive, to listening. So for me, at some point, meditation and nature just became fused. And the only place that I wanted to meditate was outside, because why wouldn't you want to meditate under a tree or by a pond, or you know, watching the ocean or listening to bird song in the morning.

And so those two loves nature meditation sort of fused, and that's become really the rest of my life that is really beautiful. And as you're talking, I'm thinking, you know, you know, in nature, so many of those qualities just seems so available to us, more so than in the buzziness of our day to day life, you know. And in fact, you lead people now in nature retreats, and I want to hear more about that as we talk.

But as I was reading your book, it came to me that maybe a way to orient our conversation could be, you know that modern life tends to cause us some imbalances, um tends to create some states within us that can be very distressing. You know, we'll talk about some of those, but that nature truly being time and nature time connecting with nature can be a powerful antidote to those modern afflictions.

If we can say that so to regain balance from this modern culture, nature can really help us with things like we can start off, for example, with isolation and feelings of isolation. You write that by looking beyond the surface of things, we can begin to see that every rock, every grass blade, every drop of water is related to every other thing. When we realize how connected we are and always have been, our painful sense of alienation can dissipate,

leaving in its wake a loving embrace of life. And I wonder how you've seen that to be true. Can you say some more about that? Yeah, yeah, so it's true that we, especially with the pandemic, there's a lot more sense of being isolated, being separate, being stuck in

your home, not being able to friends and family. And so I think that that sense of alienation is much stronger, you know, being indoors, being on our screens, and then when we step outside, whether it's into a garden or on the street, or in a park, or if you're lucky, a woodland or hills or beach or mountains. We come into an environment that our body evolutionarily speaking, knows, right. We've we've grown up in the forest. We were lived as a species for hundreds of thousands of years outdoors.

It very very very recently we've become an indoor species and an urban species, and so we have sally a memory literally that knows place and knows forest. Like, our brains are much less stressed in nature because our brains are designed to know that environment and not designed to

know an urban environment. And so we naturally start feeling more ease, more relaxed, and literally there's there's some great research being done about how being outside engages our attention but doesn't stress it, whereas being in the urban environment taxes it and draining. Yes, so we go outside, and especially if we're present, and that's why I teach mindfulness in nature. When we're present, When we're mindful, we start to feel the sensory impressions of life around us. Right,

We feel the air maybe touching our skin. We might feel the breeze blowing our hair. We might feel the sunlight, you know, warming us. We might hear the sounds of birds or crickets or something so our senses wake up, and our senses are always connecting us to life around us.

That that they're the portals of how we know the world, and unlike indoors and I could say, well, that's happening indoors, but I'm being connected to something that's quite static, like a wall or a lamp shade or a table, and they will find things and useful things, but they're not alive. They're not living in the same way that when I go outside and I'm feeling the breeze blow or the moisture in the air, or the smells from spring flowers or the sound of birds, like, I'm immediately connected to

whole swathe of life around me. And there's an intimacy to that, and there's curiosity in that. So that's why I'm always advocating people like, if you don't do anything but go outside, do that. Go outside and just be present. See what you notice, See what you hear, what you smell, what you taste, what you touched, what you sense. Notice the spaciousness that comes just by not having a you know, eight ft or six ft roof. You've got you know, mile high sky um, you've got vista to too. Relaxed

the eyes. You've got infinite variety of color and smell and sound, and you know, it's very enlivening, it's engaging, and we start to come alive, we start to come feel more more connected, as you were asking about. So that's one one simple way that that stuff to happen. We realized that we're actually part of this system. We're not just looking at it, but we're actually you know, we're of the earth. We're an animal, and we're part of this living, beautiful ecosystem, not just an observer in it.

Isn't that true? And I think about I mean, if you spend a day indoors at home, I mean, if you don't have let's say houseplants, you could be inside without another living thing or animals, you know, without another living thing in your immediate environment. But you step outside and then all of a sudden you're one among many living things, just life teeming all around you. Yeah, yeh innumerable. Yeah. I mean even you know, like most of us, I live in a sort of urban there's a lot of nature,

but it's a sort of small town. But there's lots of trees and golden and shrubs and flowers, and birds and clouds, and you don't have to go to Yosemite or to the Grand Canyon to have that experience. You just noticed a tree or you opened the window and it's like, oh, there's a whole massive life happening. And and from meditation point of view, brings us into the present, you know, brings us out of our head, out of our stories, out of our thoughts, worries, plans, fears, and oh,

what's happening now? The birds are singing, now, the gael is howling, all the rains coming, or it's freezing and I'm feeling winschill from living in Wisconsin or whatever or Ohio, it's been cold. Yeah. I interviewed a woman just yesterday. I don't know when the episodes will come out, but her name is Florence Williams, and she wrote a book called The Nature Fix. Yes, I quote, I interviewed her

on her newest book about heartbreak. But we did one on The Nature Fix, and there's so much great research about, as you say, how healing nature is. And even in this newest book of hers, where she's sort of chronicling a journey back from heartbreak and what heartbreak is and

all that. You know, nature is still a huge component of it, right, And we were talking about connecting with people, but she went back multiple times to Yes, connection with people is good and important, and you can also just connect with nature too, because there is a deep connection there.

You're not alone when you're there in nature. And I think that's such a beautiful idea if we can really sort of start to internalize it that we are not alone, you know, there's all these other living things that we are connected with. It to this point really helps with isolation. And as you were talking, it made me think a little bit about I've had this experience multiple times where I'm walking outdoors in the woods and I just have this feeling like, you know what, whatever happens, I'm gonna

be okay. As long as I can get to a place like this, you know, as long as I can occasion really get this sort of being around something beautiful, whatever else happens, okay, I can handle, agreed. One thing it's interesting that I like to invite people to pay attention to is when you go outside, say that like the woods that you're talking about, there is the experience of us knowing something like seeing the trees and hearing

the birds, but we're also being known. We are in relationship, right, The birds are very aware of us, that the snakes and the gophers feeling our vibration walking and no, no, that we're there. The bugs very much know that there because they come feed on you. And there's even now research about how plants and trees also can register the presence of people another species, and so we are actually

literally entering into relationship. We tend to have this one way street like I'm going for walk in the woods, I'm going to see the ocean. I'm going to look at the deer and actually, no, the deer is listening and tracking us right in the cougar hiding in the woods that will never ever see is there. And the skunk kids smelling you. And so just to open that ups oh yeah, right, I am in relationship always. So I just got chills and he said that, Yeah, yeah,

I love that idea. I love sort of trying to sort of recognize that, like there's this two way interaction, like there is an interaction that is happening with with nature. You know, it's not just me. It does speak to that sort of deep connectedness, right, right, what I like about it. Also is this sort of humbling in that, you know, we tend to think of ourselves as the center of the universe, and when we go out into natures,

like clearly, we're not clearly with just one. You know, I'd like to say, you know, we're part of the Earth's moving surface. We were all unique and have our own unique expression, but we're part of the us moving surface in relationship with each other. Right. And then this other theme I like to explore with interconnectedness is again we think of ourselves as a skin bound body, and that's who I am. And but when we think about

what what makes it this body? Well, like when I drink this glass of water, right, this water is ocean, it's rain. It's literally snow melt from the Sierras that comes down the pipes through to this house. Because I'm warm right now, it's because the Sun ninety three million miles away has been warming the planet. And I'm digesting food, releasing energy that the plants happen to metabolize. And the

food that I'm eating it comes from the earth. That's my bones and my flesh and muscles, and and it's you know, it sounds like a nice idea, but it's also very real. We are just these elements, just like the trees and the rocks and grasses and beaver and elk and whatever else. And so so again, it's like knowing that we're part of is very helpful for our psyches that can feel often so separate and alienated. Indeed, indeed, so you also write about how nature can be an

antidote to the dizziness of modern culture. We certainly all, at times, if not more often than not, move at a pace that quite frantic or quite hurried, with an agenda,

with ideas of how things need to go. And you write quite a bit about that, about how stepping outdoors away from this frenetic pace, we may begin to question if all this hurry brings us the peace of mind and satisfaction for which we so deeply long say more about that, Yeah, I think, like echoing Eric's earlier point, Yeah, when we're around people and the workpace that we live at, and that's just the pace of life, and that sort

of seems normal, it's what everyone's doing. And then we go outside, say into a forest or a park or a garden, you know, there's definitely things moving fast the scrolls are dotting, and the birds are moving quickly. And it's not like things don't move quickly, but there's a certain kind of peacefulness or balance or steadiness, like Jesus talked about the peacefulness of birds, because they're not busy worrying about tomorrow. They live for today only, for example.

And you know, we come into the into a forest and we and we kind into different sense of time, right, we live on linear time clock time, minutes, second hours.

And then you around, you go outside, maybe up to the hills and the mountains that have been there for millions of years, you get a different sense of time or even like where I leve the red woods that have been around for a thousand or two thousand years, and suddenly it's like, oh, there's other ways to be right, Not that we can just live like a tree, because we can't, but something of nature's pace rubs off on us,

you know, because we're so connected. The stillness of stone or the steadiness of trees, or the immensity of the ocean. There's something about that that reminds us. Oh, yeah, the world that we live in. The stories like oh, I've got to do this, and I've got to finish my to do Listen, they've got to get all up created. And that's just mentally driven activity that's not necessarily always

either healthy, useful, or truth. And so again, I think when we go outside we tap into our biological evolutionary heritage. There wasn't busy running around with to do lists and iPhones and tracking the stock market or whatever it is that we do slower, more in tune with rhythms of the sunrise and the sunset and seasons. And we can reinvoke that if we spend time outside, because I think most of us are outside. That we go to the beach, you know, that weekend say, or we go to a park,

and then we start feeling relaxed. We start feeling the influence of nature on us and the danger that I see, all right, we're becoming an indoor species, and the average American spends time indoors. That the less we have contact with nature, the more we stay in this very frenzied

urban you know, techno driven life. And so the more we can go outside, the more it can relax the nervous system, calm the mind, open the body, and we can come back into a little more balanced there's physicians now in Scotland and South Korea and other places that are prescribing nature literally not written in or in antidepressants, but actually go out in nature one hour a week or five hours a month, because that's actually going to

do more for your nervous system than medication sometimes can't. Yees. So I think it behooves all of us to go outside, even if it's just ten minute break. You take your cup of tea or whatever, and you just sit on your doorstep your porch, and I go. I have a little backyard, is tiny, and I just you know, take my lunch out there and just look at the trees and look at the flowers and feel like, all right, there's busy freneticness that I might feel from doing email

all morning. Suddenly it's like, who cares. You know, it's important. You got to do emails. It's just part of life. But going outside I think puts us in touch with with a deeper thing that what's really important. What's amazing about nature too, is that it helps put in perspective, you know, where we are in the scheme of things and in the scheme of life. And it does so

in a way. I mean we get very out of balance easily with thinking that we are the center of the world, you know, and we operate with a lot of the ego driving the car. But then when we go into nature, whether it's the size and scale of mountains that if we live near a mountain range, or the trees, or just the vastness of a sunrise or sunset, we start to become humbled, but then also simultaneously know

that life and our life is still sacred. Right. It both puts it into perspective so that we can see it in proportion to things, but without causing us despair, because you know that it is somehow utterly insignificant that we have some sense of the sacredness of our own

life as well as the life around us. Right, Yeah, Ideally, you know, we go outside with some presents, we feel the positive influence of that, and then when we go back into whether it's our home office, we we enter with a little more presence, just like we might do if we've done our meditation or yoga practice or whatever it is that we do that helps us bring some balance. Then we come back and I noticed this. I come back from ten minutes sitting outside having a cup of tea,

and then there's just more presence. I'm more balanced, I'm a little more calm, and all the stuff that was like annoying me or frustrating me, it's just like, okay, well let's just you know, and there's this more calm, there's more there's more capacity to meet whatever, you know, whether it's parenting or emails or meeting or teaching or something. So yeah, so we want to draw on that. And as you mentioned, like I can see a beautiful orchard plant here? Can you see that? A little? A little?

I can see a pedal? Thank you word for it? So you know, it could just be something as simple as a plant on your desk, right, doesn't have to be like you know, you know a two thousand year redwood trail over there, if you can, that's nice, but it's amazing how just you know, like watching a bird land on the window sill, or watching the rain. I love watching rain and padded down the window pane or

snow where you are before it turns brown and slushing. Um. You know that this it many simple things we can do to a tune to nature with mindful presence and allow it to influence us in a way that being out in a beautiful landscape can. So I have a question about sensitivity to nature. So you're describing for you, you've got sounds like a fairly well tuned sensitivity to nature. Right, you go out in your backyard and it acts somewhat

profoundly upon you. Do you think that for some people we are desensitized to the point that it takes a certain amount of exposure. Because what I often see with meditation or going into nature, or lots of other things that we're told are good for us, is we go and we do them once or twice and they don't have a profound effect. You're describing like it's this profound,

sacred thing, right, it's this beautiful thing. But I think a lot of people when they start with nature or meditation again, they go out and that's not their experience. And do you find that this is the sort of thing that the more often you go to nature, the more rewarding it's going to be, And it's the sort of thing that rewards additional exposure and patience with It's a great question, and I think a few things about that.

One is, I think it is important to monitor your expectation, like I'm going to go outside and this great you know, life changing, mysticulous things. Now you can go outside and see what happens, you know, and you know, often for me it's not mystical, it's ordinary. But the key difference is what's the quality of my attention. If I'm really paying attention, if I'm really present, mindful, and I just look at something like right now, it's blossoms and blossoming everywhere.

It's ridiculous, it's January, but here we are in it's February in California. Or I look at a cloud, you know for some minutes, or I listened to the sound of a bird. It's the quality of presents that will allow that experience to be impactful. You normally will We'll be walking along the street and we'll see a beautiful

flower or cool tree. Girl, it's cool, and then we go back to our phone and we go back to chatting, we go back to thinking about our problems versus Like, you know, we see something, he's like, okay, stop and give yourself a minute, Like you pass a few months where you are going to be trees and blossom and it's gorgeous, you know, And we go that's cool, but like stop, like take a minute, like, okay, well what's

cool about Let me actually just look at it? See it all the colors, the light, the texture, smell it, feel it. So I think often I think we've lost the art of how to pay attention because we're so stimulated with screens and intensity. And if you're at a cinemax, right, you're watching mad Max Cinemax. Right, it's a leaf on a tree is not going to hold water to that, right unless you love trees and leaving it. And it does.

But so it's almost like we have to kind of like slow down enough to meet the slowness and the subtlety of nature and then not not to have an expectation. But you know, and again it can be quite ordinary. And even if it doesn't feel great, there's something's happening that's healthy. It's healthy for your eyes, just to give your eyes a break from the screen, healthy for your brain, to give your brain arrest. I also want to say,

your nature isn't everybody's cup of tea. Friends who you know love New York City and you know think the beaches, like a good friend of mine is a wonderful and well known dormat teacher and she was with a friend and they were staying on this hotel the beach, and he said, you want to go for a walk on the beach, she said, She said, now, that's too much sand,

you know. And so it's definitely not for everybody, But I think everybody can probably appreciate something like a beautiful sunset or watching waves crash against the cliffs or something. So you know, not to expect that it should be great or you should love it. You know, it's really

you know, each to their own. But I think if we learn how to cultivate mindfulness, some kind of meditative presence, attention, then we're more likely to be touched by things, whether it's people, the beauty of an urban landscape, the beauty of the park in the city. Yeah, and it can

be quite ordinary. In ordinary is okay too. It's interesting you say that because I found myself as I was reading your book, sort of secretly thinking, like, there are plenty of times that I don't feel like going out in nature, although I feel like I really should be this animal nature like just craving its environment of the natural world, But sometimes I just do not feel that way.

And then I read the passage that said, you know, even for those of us who long to feel more a part of nature, our fear of discomfort can hold us back. And I thought, oh aha, you know, that's interesting, because I do think that part of any kind of reticence I have to spending time in nature and at one moment or another, is that there's a level of

discomfort inherent and being in nature. And I found that a very interesting way to sort of reorient around that and then become curious about my relationship to discomfort, And so I wonder if maybe I'm not alone in that, and you could you could speak to that a little more.

Definitely good point, for sure. For many people, much of the time or some of the time, you know, it's uncomfortable, you know, like where you are it's freezing right now in winter and buffalo, or it's hot and muggy, or it's buggy, or it's just uncomfortable nowhere to sit and this flies this who knows what, or this fear of predators or the dark. I love that dimension of being outside as a meditation teacher because I'm also helping people learn how to be with life, and life's not just

all roses. It's also challenging, difficult, lots of adversity, and so being a niche is a great teacher because it teaches us how do we be open to life? Like just a weather like whether it's you know, changes all

day and it's hot, cold, rainy. I mean I've I've done meditation retreats where we've literally been meditating and in ten minutes there's an inch of hailstones at our feet, you know, just like beautiful sunny day in New Mexico, and then they winter, there's summer storms come in and it was hail or I've done river rafting trips and it's been raining the whole time because it was the monsoon and I didn't know about monsoons. Or it's buggy,

you know, I teach in Mexico. These little little flies they don't bite, but they just love to crawl into your eyes and your nostrils, you know, and it's like who wants to be with it? I don't want to be with that, you know, but here we are. It's part of being outside and you know, you do what you can. Like I tell people am saying, goes, there's

no bad weather, just the wrong clothing right. So like when I meditate outside watching the sunrise, you know, I'll often have like three layers of wool and two down jackets and a hat and gloves and a scoff because I like to be outside, but I don't like to be called, you know, And we'll so smart about it.

Like I don't choose to do meditation retreats in a swamp, you know, on the East coast in black fly season, or in Arizona in the summer where it's baking hot, like you know, I choose places that are moderately comfortable, knowing that there's always going to be something. There's always something that's going to teach it, whether the end crawling up our leg or the mosquito that wants to say hello, or it's unexpectedly cold or hot or something. Then you know,

part of mindfulness practice is learning training. How do we be present with anything? We were trying to find some balance and steadiness with it, right, just like we have to be present with our neighbors, noise, and things we don't like about our partner or the political system. You know, there's many, many things we have to deal with. So

nature is a great teacher. It's like Okay, So I'm sitting here in this little bug going it's not body, so it's not gonna harm me or anything, but it's annoying or it's particularly how do I just stay present and not get all in the tizzy about it? Or I put my mosquito head net on and then it doesn't bother me, and then it can buzz all around because it's not going to get into my nose, you know. So there's also I'm not into masochism, right. You know, if it's cold, wrap up. If it's hot, you know,

find the shade. And then when you can't do anything about it, then you have to find that ease in your own mind. And it's a great training for life. Indeed, maybe that makes me think about your backpacking trip when it rained so hard. Just described the experience that you had a little bit. Well, first, I want to birth a new idea for Mark, which is Mark Coleman's crocodile concentration experience. You'll be very focused if you're like, there could be a crocodile speaking up on me, so in

the swamp. In the swamp, there you go. Perfect. Was it was this year I decided I was going to go backpacking. I've never been actual backpacking, you know. I've been camping, but not backpacking, and uh, that's a whole different thing. Yeah. We got completely drenched, like just real lentless rain. You know. I learned that like waterproof boots or waterproof up to a point exactly, nothing's fully waterproof. And make sure to close the rain flap on your tents.

Oh yes. We we set up camp and it was nice and I was like, okay, and everybody I was with was like, I think the rain is over. And I was like, well, in that case, I'll leave the rain flap open and try and let this thing draw out a little bit. It was indeed not. It was not.

It was not done. So yeah, so it happens. One of the things that mindfulness has had the most profound healing effect on for me is just the ability to be with difficult emotions and to be able to be with them, and to be with them in such a way that feels grounded and steady and open and strong. You know that there's some equanimity there um and compassion, but nature can bring up some intense experiences emotionally. You've talked about some experiences you've had in the teacher training

class that I've been a part of. But you know, grief is one of those intense emotions that can actually, as Eric was mentioning earlier, can really be processed out of nature. You know that nature actually can show us a lot about our immense ability to heal, no matter how great the damage inflicted is. You know that life itself, nature shows us has an innate momentum towards wholeness, growth and healing you right, which I think is truly beautiful.

And I wanted to explore that. And then the next piece I thought we could touch on is talking about fear. But have you had some experience or even in the retreats that you have led, with nature being able to really heal profound grief. Yeah, definitely, definitely. I think going outdoors is a beautiful, powerful, healing place to be when your heart's broken, when your heart's hurting, when you're grieving

the loss of someone or something. And it's often true when people come to my retreat and nature retreats and they are dealing with loss of a loved one, of an animal, of a stage of life or health, or you know, many many things to grieve in this life or grieving the ecological crisis, which is something that I grieve a lot, you know, And people will ask me, well, how do I deal with that? And I say, well, give it to the earth. You know. The earth can receive,

it can hold all of your tears. That trees can hold all of your tears. The this landscape, this river can hold your sadness. And so I think sometimes when we go outside, especially alone, and we feel safe enough, we can feel like, you know, nature often feels like it's inviting, like it's welcoming. It's not judging. It makes space for whatever is happening, whatever weather, including whatever weather in you. And so I think it's just guided a lot of people just to you know, let nature hold

the immensity of the grief. You lean up against a tree or lie down on the earth and sob your tears into the ground. And people have done that, you know, And there's something about releasing it into the earth, releasing it into the ground, into trees, like and there's a way that nature can hold it. Sometimes other people can't hold or handle our grief, can't deal with it too much. It's what they can't deal with their owns. They they can't deal with yours and natures are like, it's just

kind of there. It's just as unconditional presence, and sometimes not for everybody, but we can feel that and something in us releases and we just become more present with

ourselves and the tenderness. And you know, what we learned is that any emotion, especially grief, I think is a great example of it, it's wave like, it's not monolithic, you know, it comes, it bursts through, it feels like it's a tidal wave, and then it passes, and then we find ourselves walking or feet are in the stream or relying in the sun, and suddenly me feel peace.

And then we get hungry and we have a snack bar and then another wave comes because our partner that we lost love snack bars and another wave and then we feel that and then that passes, and then we notice a bird come by or squirrel comes next to you, and you feel this tender love and it's making space. And particularly for grief, grief needs space. It needs space, and it needs a very spacious holding environment, and nature is in the quintessential spacious holding presence. H H. I

love that idea grief needs space. Yeah, that is so true. It needs space to unfold in the way that it will unfold, and it needs the space for whatever emotion comes up. You're right, it's very difficult to do with other people. So yeah, I think that it's a beautiful way of saying it. I just want to touch on

a bit about your work on the Inner Critic. I just have to read this one passage that you wrote, because it just really struck me talking about just having you know there'd be an immense amount of space in this world and now in this universe. You're talking about deepening into the silence. You say, the Earth rests in the vast darkness of space, in a universe that is

inherently silent. And despite the chatter of birds, the rustle of leaves in the wind, and the roaring of ocean waves, a quality of silence always pervades the natural world, away from the sounds of words, conversation, and human activity. It's possible to since the stillness amid all nature's movements, all sounds arise from and return to this eternal silence. And I know on some of your retreats you practice what's

called noble silence in Buddhism. So just briefly, can you talk a bit about engaging with the silence and the power that that can have. Yeah, silence is definitely huge part of my life and my practice and my my teaching. So all of my meditation retreats and programs are in silence. I loved the silence, and my love about it is we can be alone together. If we're chatting, we're all together if we're but if we're in silence, we can you know, I've lad groups of a hundred people are

out in the field. If we're all in silence, we have our own experience, but we're together, so it's shared. Just that is a beautiful experience because it's so rare, like we have such a loud, busy culture that there's rarely any silence. And I mean at the beginning that can feel intimidating, like, oh, I you know, I don't know if I can handle that, and you to talk to somebody, and very quickly most people come to love

silence because it's like taking an outbreath. We don't feel a social pression have to chit chat, and then of course as we close our mouth and stop talking, then our conversations and thoughts can settle on mine gets quieter, our body gets more settled, and then in the outer silence, then we can hear life. We can hear the world around us. We can listen to the sound of the breeze and silence and crickets and bird song, and we

can also hear ourselves more clearly. And so for me, silence is a doorway into presence, into deep connection, into mystery, you know, all of the mystical traditions, and silence is very important in all those traditions for opening to the sacred,

to the divine, with whatever word you call it. And when we're silent in nature, then we can tune into this many other rich dimensions that are not present when we say, go for a hike with a friend and we're chatting the whole way, and then we wonder why we didn't see any wildlife because they heard you from

a mile away and they all scattered. Who wants to be around it too, loud humans and so, But when we just sit quietly in a meadow or in a forest store in our garden, and you know, birds, critters, flies, you know, squirrels, whatever will come to us. So I really invite people to not just spend time out in nature, but also to you know, to find time to be quiet and even with a friend or a loved one.

Just often know we're hiking with friends, and I know we're going to be hiking through beautiful woodland or along a gorgeous creek or great view, and so how about we just quiet for the next twenty minutes or ten minutes or five minutes, and just so we can enjoy it without chatting about, you know, what's happening in the super Bowl or whatever, which totally takes us out of that experience, and then we can just enjoy it together. It's a beautiful thing. How can people learn more about

your retreats that you're leading this coming year. So my main website my name Mark Coleman, but it's dot org. It's Mark Coleman dot org that has my retreat listings and has lots of resources meditations and talks and other things you might find useful. And then I also have another website called a Wait in the Wild dot com and that's the name of my work away in the wild and that's where I also host the Sunrise the Morning meditations and having information about my nature meditation teacher

trainings and other things. So those are the two place mark common dot organ Awake in the wild dot com. All right, we'll link to those also in the show notes for listeners to explore that more deeply. Before we wrap up with you, I couldn't let you go without at least touching on working with the inner critic. You have a book that I'm actually currently reading and highlighting the dickens out of about working with the inner critic.

It's really the beginning of a deep dive that I'm going to take on this topic because what I have recently come to realize, and it was really sitting at your feet is my teacher, which is how my inner critics shows up. And I was really unaware of that for so long. And what I've going to really see is that it is actually possible to live without the tyranny of the inner critic running the show, and I

long for that. So what I discuss or listening to you was really that my inner critics certainly at times shows up with critical words about me and what I'm doing or what I can't do or this, that and the other, but that it also often shows up as this atmosphere, as you called it this inner atmosphere that doesn't initially have words, that just feels heavy and sick and very dank and dark and gloomy. And so I

guess I'm not the only one. And you say that that can happen, and I'd love free to expand on that or any aspect of the inner critic that you find particularly helpful. Yeah. Well, it's a big topic, as you know, and that's why I wrote a book about it. It's such a painful thing and afflicts most people. It rubs us of a sense of well being, in a sense of goodness and peace for ourselves. And certainly I was deeply afflicted by the critic from a young age, so I had to work with it, and that's why

I wrote the book. As you know, a lot of experience with it. And as you say that the critic can come in different ways that we often hear it as words, as judgments, as as shaming statements, as criticisms, as you know, we're not good enough, we're not smart enough, we're not not enough in whatever way, we're not perfect. All those messages, all those ways of thinking and talking to ourselves negatively. The net effected that it leads to a sense of shame, a sense of unworthiness or unlovable,

nous or hopelessness. Like it really you're saying this atmosphere of kind of heaviness, of not being enough, of not being fundamentally okay or fundamentally good, or not being worthy to be here wherever you are, and it's very, very painful, and it's like molasses. It's quite hard to even see. Sometimes you wake up in the morning sometimes you's like, oh, I just feel, you know, kind of blah. I feel

like everything is useless or it's pointless. And I look at my writing that I did yesterday's like, well, that's just you know, who's going to read that? And it's like putting a lens like like dark, you know, like glasses, that everything appears gloomy, and I feel like seemed terrible and that the painful result of the critic is it leads to a sense of shame and a sense of just feeling bad in ourselves. What's sad about it is

it's very common, but it's it's also inaccurate. Right, Those judgments and criticisms and shamings and put downs and evaluations about yourself are rarely, rarely, really true, or the implication that therefore you're not a good person, you're not likable, you're not lovable, you're not going to get your life together.

Those implications are definitely not true. The book has a lot of different strategies how to work with those, whether it's the verbal judgments that you tell yourself that you believe, or just that net feeling of like I feel like, you know, like just not a good person, like a bad person. If you're lost in the atmosphere as you talk about it, you know, it's helpful just to ask yourself, well, what might my critic be saying about me right now? I can't hear the words, but I feel kind of

low and defeated. If I had to guess what my critic was on my case about, just say, oh, yeah, I was really mean to my mother yesterday and I'm just a terrible person. Or someone criticized my work yesterday and it shows I'm just a loser, And so just see if you can conjure up the words. Because once we've got some of the judgments to work with, it's a little easier to work with because then we can stop and you know, bring some analysis and you know,

inquire is this really true? Is that really Am I really a loser just because I didn't do a good presentation at work or I forgot my mother's birthday? Does that really mean I'm a failure or I'm not a good person? Like now, it just means I didn't something that I prefer not to have done, and I didn't. So it's really important. So that's why the subtitle that book, Make Peace with Your Mind, How mindfulness and compassion can help free you from the inner critic. It's essential thing

is we have to be mindful. We have to know, have to be mindful of our mind, mindful of our thoughts, just to know when we're judging, notice when when we're caught, noticing when we're believing these negative, usually inaccurate stories. And then to be compassionate, because it's the whole thing is so painful. To be kind with ourselves and to be loving with ourselves. That's all easier said than done. Please read the book Efforts of interest. I will be teaching

more about it because some workshops coming up. I think what you're saying there is really interesting. This is a topic that I think about a lot, which is there are times where we become aware of what's happening inside us. Let's say we recognize, okay, the inner critic is there. There seem to be times that the right approach to that is too. As you said, can I engage cognitively with these thoughts? Can I work with them? Can I see where they're not true? Can I say, hey enough

write one approach? Another approach that we hear a lot about is just step back, let it be. You know, it's the invite mara in for t Idea, It's the let it be. And I'm always really curious about for you, how do you recognize or no, which of those approaches might be right for the situation you're in, because they seem both to be valid approaches. Yeah, but sometimes one is more effective than the other. Do you have any thoughts on that? Yeah? I do. I mean again, it's

it's a complex topic. But I think for many people in the beginning of the work with working with those voices and views and judgments, it's important to actually kind of create space so you don't feel completely drowning in them. If you're drowning in them and you feel overwhelmed by them, or you're collapsing because you're believing them. If someone like a friend was with you who was saying those things and you were feeling collapsed around them, well, what's the

best thing to do. Will not be around that person, right, to try and create some space from those voices, because without space, there's no way to even begin to navigate. If you invite them and fatigue, you're just going to

keep kind of being more overwhelmed with feeling terrible. So I think in the beginning of that work, and not just in the beginning, but at times when you're feeling sort of well, just like stop like enough, like enough of this judgment, you know, and go outside, shift your attention, put on some music, talk to a friend, like try and change the channel so you're not just kind of inundated, right, you know, So for me, I go outside, like just

put my attention in the neighborhood, talk to a neighbor, and just like get up from in that sort of mess. And then other times, when you know you're feeling clearer, you're not feeling so collapse, you're feeling you know, brighter cognitively, and the judgment comes, you know, like you know, you're just never gonna make it in your work. You know, you just you know, you're just you're just an imposta. You know, who do you think you are? It's like, okay, well,

let's look at this thought. Let's look at huh. Well, I wonder why that thought came up right now? What is it actually saying? What it's saying, is it true? Is accurate? But more importantly, what's fueling that thought? Underneath that thought is I want to be successful in my work or I want to be loved for what I do in my work. When I put in a bad day at work, I do a bad podcast or whatever it is that our work is. And we're like her,

we're feeling kind of like collapsed. The critic comes in because we're vulnerable because we want to be liked, we want to be accepted, we want to you know, shine in our work, and when we don't, we feel vulnerable. And the critic comes in mistakenly trying to protect us from the vulnerability by shaming us and judging us and shooting us. It's trying to help, but it's just misguided.

So it's like, oh, right, I see I'm feeling vulnerable because I really blew it at that meeting yesterday my critics telling me what a pathetic performance that was, because that situation was vulnerable. If I blew a meeting in front of my boss, that's not gonna look good. I'm vulnerable. But that shaming, shoulting, judging is the very last thing that's going to help. What's going to happen is like thanking the critic. Okay, thank you for that opinion. Let's

look at what how but at this meaning? How can I blew it? Did I really blew it? Or you know, what can I learn? The critic occludes learning. That's one of the key things. If you're judging yourself, there's no way you can learn. Is this sort of view of I just keeping like telling myself, don't forget that thing you keep forgetting. That's not gonna make you forget. It's going to make the more stressed, intense and much more

likely to forget. So different strategies at different times. One of the things that I believe you said it was you were Martin, but that the critic that voice shows up as the truth. That's like it's default position, you know. And when I heard that, I thought it's one of those things that when brought into awareness now that just

doesn't have the power over me. It used to. Like I realized now that I had taken it as the truth, and it was almost like the secret truth that I can never let anybody know that's the worst of me, you know, which just breeds more secrecy and shame, and then secrecy and shame and it just is worse. And so once I realized, oh, it's like posing is the truth,

it's not the truth, that was really powerful. So I love in both of your books each chapter seems to have a teaching and then it concludes with a practice or a meditation or application. And I find your work incredibly accessible and helpful in that way. So Eric and I were talking with you before we we got started that we thought we would go ahead and wrap up this part of the show, but in the post show conversation that you might just take a few minutes to

lead listeners in a quick guided meditation. It's a meditation you offer in your book Awake in the Wild, and it's meditating on nature indoors. Because so much of our time is spent indoors, it's awful helpful to have a way to access that aspect of nature while we are inside so for those that can, we um invited to

stick around for that right right. If you'd like access to the post show conversation to add free episodes to a special episode we do each week called Teaching Song and a Poem and the joy of supporting something that you value, you can go to One you Feed, dot net slash Join. So, Mark, thank you so much. It's been such a such a deep pleasure to talk with you. I feel like we could have gone another two hours here. Totally, totally thank you. Also, I was really delightful to be

with you both. If what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a monthly donation to support the One You Feed podcast. When you join our membership community. With this monthly pledge, you get lots of exclusive members only benefits. It's our way of saying thank you for your support now. We are so grateful for the members of our community. We wouldn't be able to do what we do without their support, and we don't take a

single dollar for granted. To learn more, make a donation at any level and become a member of the one you Feed community. Go to When you Feed, dot net slash Join the new Feed podcast. Would like to sincerely thank our sponsors for supporting the show.