Lindsay Branham is an environmental psychologist exploring how we build deeper, more reciprocal relationships with nature. Her work invites us to go beyond simply spending time outside and consider what it might look like to truly listen and even communicate with trees.
Lindsay Branham is an environmental psychologist exploring how we build deeper, more reciprocal relationships with nature. Her work invites us to go beyond simply spending time outside and consider what it might look like to truly listen and even communicate with trees.
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Shelby Stanger:
When we're out in nature walking through a forest, sinking our feet into sand, or splashing in a mountain lake, we have a chance to relax. Taking this space from our day-to-day lives gives us room to think, to wonder, to imagine. But Lindsay Branham believes we can go even deeper than that, building a reciprocal and even intimate relationship with the natural world. Lindsay is an author, an environmental psychologist, and when she told me she studies how people can talk to trees, I'll be honest, it sounded pretty wild to me.
Lindsay Branham:
When I say we can talk to trees, what I mean is that trees are always speaking. They are speaking in a language that is both audible and can be felt, and are waiting to share wisdom and love and messages with us if we would just listen.
Shelby Stanger:
Before she started studying trees and our ability to communicate with them, Lindsay Branham worked as an Emmy nominated documentary journalist. She covered international conflicts in places like the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and made award-winning films for outlets like CNN, the BBC, and The New York Times. But in 2020, Lindsay's life took an unexpected turn that forced her to slow down and look inward. During this time, she discovered a deep and healing connection with nature that she wrote about in her new book, Heartwood. I'm Shelby Stanger, and this is Wild Idea's Worth Living, an REI Co-op Studios production presented by Capital One and the REI Co-op Mastercard.
Lindsay Branham, welcome to Wild Ideas Worth Living.
Lindsay Branham:
Thank you for having me, I'm so excited to talk to you today.
Shelby Stanger:
Yeah, me too. I want to start with your wild idea because it's different. Talking to trees for healing, for advice. I mean, that's wild, I like it. When was the moment you felt convinced you could communicate with trees?
Lindsay Branham:
Well, okay, so let's just think about the fact that trees outnumber humans 422 to one. There are more of trees than there are of human beings. They share over 50% of our DNA. We are connected to trees, whether we realize it or not, and of course, they're converting carbon dioxide into oxygen for us.
So, I started getting really curious about what they could teach us or what they could teach me when I got really sick. I got a chronic sickness about six years ago, and I'd been a documentary filmmaker primarily in conflict zones for about 15, 18 years. And COVID happened, like all of us, the whole world stopped and I started getting all of these chronic health symptoms, which was so confusing. I didn't know what was going on. Really terrifying, really painful. And I don't think that this transformation in my life could have really happened at any other time or any other way instead of being forced into it, but I had to pause my PhD studies because my cognitive decline was so acute and I couldn't do the type of executive functioning required of intensive doctoral studies.
So, now I have all this time. I have a lot of confusion, now existential crisis on top of that, and so I started going on these long walks. And there was a particular forest in White River National Forest in Colorado that I started going to because my parents had moved there during COVID. So, I would spend a lot of time with the trees there. And there was this one group of three Aspen trees on an indiscriminate hill, deep in the forest. And one of these long walks, it was in the winter, so in the winter you're moving through snow. It's not easy to go on these long walks, but it feels satisfying. And all of a sudden, I felt really drawn to pause with these three trees. And all of a sudden, I started crying and I had that self-awareness of like, what's happening? What's happening? Why is this so powerful? And at the same time, just letting it happen to me. And I would say that was the start of a relationship with trees that really moved beyond appreciation of nature, into something relational.
And now, what I've learned is we can all talk to trees, we all speak tree language. And they're waiting for us to come and talk and listen and sit with them, and there's a world of wisdom that we can hear.
Shelby Stanger:
So much to unpack here. Would you have ever thought that you would say something like this 10 years ago?
Lindsay Branham:
No, no. So just to put it in context, I was doing investigative journalism in Democratic Republic of Congo, tracking children that had been abducted by different rebel groups, documenting their struggle to return home, writing reports on really complex international conflict over conflict minerals. My work was very serious, it was very weighty, it was very investigative. And then here I am saying things that sound really, maybe out there. I definitely wasn't talking to the trees in the Congo.
Shelby Stanger:
But to someone listening for the first time, they're probably like, "Shelby, who is this girl? This sounds insane." And other of our listeners are probably like, "No, this makes perfect sense." Did you talk out loud to them that first time? Was it out loud or in your head?
Lindsay Branham:
Probably in my head. And sometimes I do say things out loud, but more often than not, I'm just standing really still, getting really quiet and listening from within, like meditation practice or mindfulness where you get really receptive and slow. And the natural world is always speaking, whether it's in the ways we are used to, like bird song or the sound of leaves rustling or the crash of the ocean. There's a voice, you could say, and we hear through the ears, let's say, of our inner body, and that's called interoception.
Shelby Stanger:
Is that like where you have a gut feeling or you can-
Lindsay Branham:
Yeah, yeah. Gut feeling, intuition, sensing our own heartbeat, temperature changes from within, or tightness, looseness. And so when we're with a tree, what I'm trying to do is open up that eighth sense.
Shelby Stanger:
In order to communicate with nature, Lindsay had to learn to sense the signals she was receiving from the trees. She wanted to figure out what exactly was happening on a scientific level, so the forest became her laboratory. There, she began exploring interoception, or the body's ability to sense its own internal state. Things like hunger, a racing heart, or even a sense of belonging or peace. What Lindsay felt in the forest was both an innate knowing and an exchange with the natural world. The experience was so profound that she decided to study the relationship between humans and nature at the University of Cambridge, where she was already pursuing a PhD.
At what point did you decide to actually go study this in school? Because I know you went and got your doctorate at University of Cambridge and you studied environmental psychology, which by the way, I didn't even know that was a thing.
Lindsay Branham:
Yeah. It's essentially like, what is the relationship between humans and the natural world, the psychology of our environment? And I think maybe six months or eight months after that initial encounter, I started wondering, oh, is there something here I could do a PhD on? But I didn't feel better yet until enough time had passed. I was just living in that liminal underworld or something is what it felt like to be sick like that. And anyone who's had chronic sickness can relate, it's like every day is just a struggle to get through it. So there wasn't a lot of, "What do I want to do my PhD on?" I'm just like, "Am I going to be okay today and what about tomorrow?"
But then eventually, I got excited about looking at this as a scientist. And there's a lot of research out there about the benefits of nature connection, which you're probably already very familiar with and your listeners probably would be. It's like, what are the human health benefits to spending time in nature? We know that nature is good for us at some level, but then the other side of that of, well, are we good for nature? The reciprocal side. And I wanted to understand not just how's nature good for us, but what is really going on in this relationship? Is it spiritual? Is it emotional? Is it embodied?
So I started by doing a set of research with environmental activists and I just focused on, what is your relationship like with nature? What does that look like? And what kept rising to the surface was this very deep, personal, intimate type of bond where they would talk to the redwood, they would talk to the ocean, they would ask the stones for wisdom. And I just started, my mind was just getting really blown. I feel like I'd really missed the plot in my relationship to nature for a long time and didn't realize there was all of this possibility and adventure and discovery and wisdom.
Shelby Stanger:
I'm curious, just what did you learn specifically about nature and the human connection? And scientifically, I'm still really curious since these wild ideas really we're focusing on talking to trees, how did you prove that?
Lindsay Branham:
Yeah. So I went about looking at this eighth sense called interoception. So when I say speaking to trees, I'm talking about the language of our bodies, and specifically, this eighth sense of interoception. I designed a set of experiments where I was able to prove that interoception, this eighth skill, predicts closeness to nature, how close we feel through this attachment lens, and that how close you feel to nature predicts if you'll protect nature.
Shelby Stanger:
Has anybody told you something just crazy that a tree has told them, or really wild, or really telling, or really poignant?
Lindsay Branham:
Yeah. I mean, for them, yes. Someone in my PhD research, she told me that a redwood tree gave her a message about what to do with the next 10 years of her life, and she did it. That's what she has committed herself to. She said that the information came through, the message came through, felt so true to her that she just started crying and felt inspired. It felt like a divine, I don't know, almost like this gift. She was like, "This is a gift. Oh my gosh." And so, that every person I interviewed for my PhD, I asked them this question, "Have you ever gotten a powerful message from nature?" And every single one was like, "Yep, yep, yep. This is what it was. This is what it meant to me. This is how it changed my life." So, I'm thinking of us out here, yeah, people now talking to chatbots all day long, trying to ask, "What do I do with my life or what do I do with my boyfriend?" And yet, we have the living world out here that we could talk to.
Shelby Stanger:
Partway through her PhD in environmental psychology, Lindsay Branham began bringing her research on communicating with trees to a wider audience. She started running workshops, inviting all kinds of people to participate, not just nature lovers or activists. That's the beauty of the great outdoors. It doesn't care if you're a recent acquaintance or an old friend. It doesn't care about your politics, your gender, your sexuality. Nature is truly for everyone.
I want to talk about talking to trees, or just talk a little bit more about it. Because when you and I spoke and when you wrote to us, you said, "We've taught other people to do this, and other people do, from kids to businessmen." Do you have any examples or stories of this?
Lindsay Branham:
Yeah. So first of all, kids usually know how to do this already. So, you don't have to teach them too much but just give them permission. How many kids in your life do you know who have a special tree or rock or talk to the wind or the ocean? It's just natural.
But I've taught some workshops at an environmental education center in Aspen, and they're more of a naturalist, environmental protection place. They're amazing, but anyway, I proposed to them to do a talking to trees workshop and they were open to it. So, I didn't know who would come and I had a mix of people in the room, people who were more like coming from the naturalist world and then some business people, and then some just lovers of nature, really the whole gamut. And I was like, okay, I wonder how this is going to go, especially with the businessmen. I'm going to ask him to probably do something that he hasn't done before or maybe isn't as familiar.
So I had them go outside, and it was brief, it was only 20 minutes, but find a tree, first of all. Then introduce themselves, and then listen back for the tree to introduce themselves to them. That was the exercise. Seemed simple. So I'd let them go, they went out, it was beautiful night, stars everywhere, winter night. And I've learned over time to really trust nature because nature will just do things and you don't have to meddle with it too much. And so, everyone came back and they shared and this one man in particular just said that he really felt like the tree talked to him and he was like, "What happened? I don't really understand it, but I really felt like I felt something." And his eyes were wide and really animated, filled with wonder. It was like looking at a child. It's like someone who has discovered something that they want to have again, right? So it's like, "Oh, that's great," and left, and it was nice.
And then two years later, this just happened just a couple months ago, I was on Aspen Mountains having pancakes with some people and this couple was sitting there and we're going around and talking and talking a little about my book and he was like, "I think I was at your tree workshop." And I was like, "Really?" He's like, "Yeah, two years ago I was at your tree workshop. And I have to tell you that I have been talking to the tree in my yard ever since." And I was like, "Really? What's happened?" And he's like, "It just completely opened me up to this relationship. It means so much to me and I feel like I get so much peace and relaxation and connection." And he was just filled with all this joy about it, it was just so touching to me.
Shelby Stanger:
What have people learned from trees and what did you learn from a tree?
Lindsay Branham:
I mean, I think there's some pretty universal things that come up. You know? It can be personal to me, but universal. I learn that time is long. When I'm sitting with a tree and standing with a tree, I feel like my understanding of time really changes and I get out of the rush of the modern frenzy and I feel this deep peace and sense of relaxation of like, I'm part of a very long evolutionary trajectory and I can trust time. There's, I love this phrase, "Tree time." So I feel like I go into tree time, and tree time is not concerned with a lot of things that the modern world is concerned with. And trees grow really slow, but yet big changes are happening, they're just happening so slow we don't see them. Right? So that fills me with curiosity and wonder about how the world works.
I learned that sharing and connection and community is everything when I'm sitting in front of a tree and I really think about the forest they're connected to and how they're sharing sugars all the time and there's no ownership in tree forest. You know? There's no king of the forest. All the trees are loved and nourished and they share, and I find that really touching. I think feeling like we're connected to all of nature is so good for our anxiety, for people with depression. It's like a salve, it's like a healing balm to feel like we're not alone.
Shelby Stanger:
So, Indigenous cultures have known this, it seems like since the beginning of time. Did you study that at all?
Lindsay Branham:
Yeah.
Shelby Stanger:
Because I feel like talk to me a little bit about that because I don't want to like gloss over that. We've had a lot of Indigenous activists and I've spent a lot of time with Hawaiians and a few people who are Native Americans, and even just when I lived in New Zealand, they had a connection to land and nature that was unmatched than my buddies here. Just different.
Lindsay Branham:
Totally, totally, yeah. So the research that I did at Cambridge started with a set of interviews with black Indigenous people of color, environmental activists. And so really, the theory that developed out of that is from them, is really from them and their wisdom and their way of relating to nature. Indigenous people protect over 80% of the world's biodiversity. They are living these values out every day at great threat to their lives. Indigenous people are arrested more frequently for defending land than anyone else. And so yeah, this notion of, nature is alive, nature has spirit, we could talk to trees, the tree could be my ancestor, is very much echoing and resonant with Indigenous worldview.
Where it gets tricky and where we get into a cultural appropriation is when starting to take their perspectives of their own proprietary knowledge of plants and the wisdom of trees and their language and claim it as our own or steal it. Right? We always have to be so careful of that.
Shelby Stanger:
In many ways, Lindsay's research is an effort to center Indigenous knowledge and tradition and understand it through a Western lens. The people she interviewed for her PhD, whether Indigenous people, environmental activists, or simply recreationalists, had all felt this deep connection to nature that starts in the body. Each of them described the same thing Lindsay had experienced, moments of genuine, personal guidance from the natural world.
So I'm going to go to Sequoia. What can I do? How can listeners, how can I talk to trees? And I probably don't even have to do this in Sequoia, I'm sure there's a tree outside my house.
Lindsay Branham:
But yeah, I mean, Sequoia, what an amazing place.
Shelby Stanger:
These are the biggest trees and the oldest trees, the most badass trees. Yeah, I'm excited.
Lindsay Branham:
Yeah. To be with giants, basically. I mean, I would really start with that first exercise I talked about, which is, let yourself find a tree or be drawn by a tree. I like to be thinking of it that way. We're really used to moving through the world with, what do I like? What do I want? But I really like people switching that frame of, what tree is actually drawing me? What tree is attracting me? What tree is inviting me? You will feel it, actually. You will. Everyone can feel that. It's subtle, right? It doesn't have to be so serious. It's not like you have to use your brain a lot. Just play with it. You can't do right, you can't do wrong, right? But see if a tree in particular draws you, and then at least give it 20 minutes for that first time, but just sitting or standing and then introducing yourself, however that makes sense. Maybe you say your name out loud, maybe you just stand there and invite them to witness you, whatever that means to you.
And then listening, inviting them to introduce themselves to you and just making space, see what happens. And then you might want to put your hand on the tree or put your hands on the tree and even just as simple as like, "I'm here, I want to get to know you. I don't really know what I'm doing, but I want to have some kind of relationship." And then just again, leaving some space to see what happens, what comes through. You'll probably get some sensations certainly in your body. You might have things come pop into your mind and you might be like, wait, am I making this up or is this tree really saying this? And it doesn't really matter. You know?
And if this was a retreat or something, then I would be like, okay, go back to that particular tree every morning or every day for however number of days, because I think it can be hard for us to try to do this with all the trees, but if it's one that we were slowly getting to know and even see the particularities of, I think it can feel more possible.
And then ask whatever you want. There's this practice in my book called a wisdom or a medicine walk, I think, where you ask a big life question you're holding. We all have them, right? Like, "What do I do with this career question or this lover or this issue my child's going through?" And just ask that question and then go on this walk with the intention to really listen to the trees for an answer or for wisdom. And again, that might seem like really weird, but you'd be surprised what, again, comes through by just giving yourself that open time to be with nature in a receptive way.
Shelby Stanger:
I know that being outside helps me think through problems, come up with new ideas, or even process grief. After talking to Lindsay, Johnny and I went to Sequoia and we actually tried talking to trees. I know it sounds crazy, but it was actually really fun and really cathartic. My team often talks about turning to nature to refresh their sense of creativity and recover from burnout. It's nice to know that there's evidence for what we're feeling. I encourage you all to go outside and try this type of mindfulness. You can even sit under a specific tree, introduce yourself, and see if you hear anything back.
You can follow Lindsay on Instagram at Lindsay Laurenne. That's L-I-N-D-S-A-Y L-A-U-R-E-N-N-E. You can also buy her book, Heartwood, anywhere books are sold.
Wild Ideas Worth Living is part of the REI Podcast Network. It's hosted by me, Shelby Stanger, produced by Annie Fassler, Sylvia Thomas, and Sam Pierce-Nitzberg of Puddle Creative. Our Senior Producer is Jenny Barber, our Executive Producers are Paolo Mottola and Joe Crosby. Thank you again to our partner, Capital One and the REI Co-op Mastercard. As always, we love it when you follow the show, take time to rate it, and write a review wherever you listen. And remember, some of the best adventures happen when you follow your wildest ideas.