Episode 12
Sarah Spencer lives in the National Forest in Derbyshire in the centre of the UK with her family, and loves growing vegetables, fruit and flowers. She manages a woodland that she designed and planted using permaculture design.
Sarah holds qualifications in permaculture and forest school. Sarah is the author of Think Like A Tree: The Natural Principles Guide to Life.
Welcome Sarah Spencer. Would you please tell us why you wrote this book?
It came out of my work with permaculture, which looks at the principles that nature has for designing gardens and landscapes. When I got my chronic illness diagnosis I used those same principles for my own life. I was able to bring my way back to be able to function at a reasonable level. So when I did that people started asking me “What did you do? What is your secret?” That is when I wrote the book and started the courses. Basically my message is that nature’s principles are not only good for us as individuals but good for the living world. That is kind of the root of the living world today – that we have become so disconnected from nature.
May I ask you about your chronic illness?
Yes I was probably undiagnosed for about 30 years. It is called Mast Cell Activation Syndrome. It is when part of your immune system is faulty. So instead of reacting to normal threats, my immune system reacts to almost everything. So I am basically allergic to everything: foods, smells, chemicals, things on my skin..all sorts of things. It is quite challenging to live with. I had a year 2015-2016 when I was basically in bed for a year with it. It has other systems associated with it: heart, skin, migraines … and everybody who has it is different. But what I realized was that when I was outside, I was an awful lot healthier.
I think you mention it in your book, Take Back Your Outside Mindset, when you are inside, you can feel particularly bad. And when you go outside you always feel better – so that is what I have tried to do. I also have thyroid condition and was tested for Lupus because there were so many overlapping symptoms with Lupus.
Fatigue is such a prominent feature of all these autoimmune diseases. I think that is one barrier that you have to get over.
In your book Think like a Tree you look at the underlying principles of nature’s secrets of success one by one, and show us how we can apply them to our own lives, in this practical personal development guide. Would you please tell us more about that Sarah?
Yes, it takes as its starting point that Nature has been getting it right for 3.8 billion years. Nature has done a lot of research on what works and what doesn’t. Things that don’t work are extinct and those that do work are still alive.
So if we dial back to what we have in common with trees and other living beings, then we are getting back to the fundamental success stories of life. I feel that we have been getting this wrong recently at the level of our own health, and at the community and planetary level as well. We see biodiversity lost and climate change.
When we think what can we learn from trees, well they have been around for a couple of hundred thousand years. Re the principles: I start with Observation. Trees are looking around themselves all the time. Some people think it is a bit whacky to say that trees can see, but trees have enormous super- powers in terms of perceiving their world around them. We need to do the same. Sometimes are outside but we are not really looking at what is there. We are thinking about what we are going to cook for tea or what is going at work. So this is observing what is going on around us and inside us, as well. So with for example when I was ill, I spent a good deal of time figuring out what was good for me and what wasn’t in terms of the signs and symptoms of my disease. I think whether you have a chronic illness or not, that is always a good idea. Look at your energy levels during the day. See patterns. We have the same type of cycle in us as the rest of the living world. We are regulated by the sun, the tides, and all sorts of things. So if we get more in tune with that. For example before we started we started you said you are an early bird and I am not. So if we get to know our natural patterns and more in tune with the seasons, we get to know ourselves.
The second group of principles are all about Purpose. So trees have a strong purpose. Purpose has shown to be a good indicator of longevity. So what you can do with these principles is go out and see them in nature, and then read the studies of what works for humans – there is a big correlation. So purpose and resilience examples work in nature and in humans.
The 5th group of principles is resilience, so what makes humans resilient are the same things that make a forest resilient. So things like having a supportive network around you – that applies to us, that applies to trees.
Being flexible and bending with the wind is another of the natural principles in the book. So we can see that there are all sorts of crossovers between humans and trees.
There are 42 principles in the book, case studies, and exercises. I wanted to make the book easy to read and use. When I do the courses, we look at each one of these principles and then we go much deeper into exercises surrounding them. So you can really change your life by going through this and this process is obviously proven as successful in nature. I used this for my chronic illness, but people are using this process for relationships, setting up new businesses and more.
Your principles include purpose, values, and ethics. Your chapter titles are: Observe and Interact, Be a Part of the Natural World, Follow Nature’s Patterns. Could you talk a little about tree roots?
Tree roots are about stability. Putting down strong roots are what we can learn to develop. This helps us to withstand shocks and set backs. So that if something comes up like a chronic illness for example, we have some resources to adjust. Roots are also about communication and connection. Trees developed in tandem with fungi. So if you scrape under a tree, you might find these white fungi. What they are doing is linking up with all the trees to allow the trees to have more nutrients and water, but they also allow trees to communicate. So there is incredible research now about how trees share resources among them, how they can keep old tree stumps alive, and nuture young trees. We were taught in school, all about nature and competition, survival of the fittest, whereas now the research shows us that there are amazing networks of support instead of competition. We just have to look at a bee in a flower to see how both benefit. So I think we need to look at these stronger networks of support – whether we ask for support (so often we are hesitant) or whether we are sharing our own surplus. So let’s look at how we use our resources – whether it be time, money, advice..
In the notes section of your book you cite a wide range of books including The Hidden Life of Trees, Joanna Macy’s Coming Back To Life: Practices to Reconnect Our Lives, Rachel Carslon’s Silent Spring, and UN conference on trade and development and Rodale institute (2014) Regenerative Organic Agriculture and Climate Change.
Yes I tried to go wide and bring these ideas into the mainstream. I am not an expert, but see that as an advantage. There are so many solutions out there, I can’t understand why there is not a daily TV show about all the solutions out there. Regenerative agriculture is a really interesting one. There is wholistic grazing is where the soil absorbs the carbon out of the air – using animals and crop rotations for example. So here’s a solution yet we are carrying on with the same out processes of agriculture – huge polluters of our land, rivers, lakes, and air. So there is a small chapter in the book called Replicate and Build on Strategies That Work. Because this is what nature does. It is a process of evolution, so in nature the ones that work live on. So this is what we need to be doing – what works, let’s build on it, let’s do the research. Let’s get these solutions out into the mainstream.
You talk about your woodland, would you give us a little picture of your life there?
So we bought 9 acres of field really with a farm house. The farm house that we live in is about 500 years old. When we bought it, the field had been over grazed by horses. So over the last 17 years we have developed the land using permaculture. So we planted a woodland – that ‘s about 10 years old now – and an orchard, a vegetable garden. In the past we have had chickens, turkeys, doves, sheep, but at the moment they are taking a back seat because of illness and energy levels. There is a forest garden as well. The forest garden is effectively the edge of a woodland. The amazing thing about planting a woodland is that it is a lot of work to start out, but then you sit back and watch the trees grow and all the plants in the ecosystem grow in on their own. Then this attracts wildlife. Lots of birds have come in where nothing was there before. But this is what permaculture tries to do, and what nature does — a lot of effort initially, and then you try and create this self sustaining system. The main woodland is British native plants. The nice thing about native trees here is that you can cut them right down to a stump and they re grow stronger. It sounds quite brutal but it is based on the idea of using the timber on the land – and that is a sustainable way of doing it. What we are trying to do, and this is what permaculture does, is tread that balance between using what we grow and have the diversity and natural habitat for other living things. So it is not just about hands off and leaving alone. There are a lot of places around here and in the National Forest that are hands off and that is wonderful.
So would you have your courses there?
So after the success we had here, I set up a community woodland which is walking distance from my house. It is 10 acres as well and on that land is a beautiful straw bale round house and that is where we hold the courses. So you’ve got organic plants around and this beautiful structure made from straw and cedar. It is a wonderful place to hold the courses. Sadly of course this year we are trying to o the courses through zoom. We are trying to build in breaks and ways to get people outdoors so they are not sitting in front of a computer. The nice thing about it is that we are welcoming people from around the world in the course – people that would only have access.
Your case studies, I could relate to, one was from a woman who had recently divorced, another was a person starting a small business.. would you take us through your process for applying nature’s principles to this?
One of the things you can do regarding resilience is learning to heal yourself. Again it starts with self awareness, and being proactive. I think with any trauma you need a time just to be. That is my experience and what I have observed in other people. So you don’t need to jump in too quickly, but I think at some point you have to be proactive. You know I get that impression from reading your book, you really have to try to take control. That is what I did. Mine came as on my birthday in 2016. I went out in a wheelchair feeling absolutely terrible an just said right, I have had enough now. That is when I started to use this design process to work my way back to health. But the same thing applies to any kind of shock or trauma. You have to look at all the things that are going to help you. And then think about what is going to limit your recovery. Limits are not always bad. Limits are just something you set yourself. So this is the limit of what I want to do. And I think when you start shifting your mindset – and this was a really big thing for me – you start to think about all the things you can do – rather than focusing on all the things you can’t donor can no longer do. So I had been doing a lot of design work, community activities, and teaching children forest activities – and all that had to go… and I mourned that for quite a while. But then of course, I ended up writing a book and doing these courses. One of the principles is one of my favourite principles is called “Use Your Edge.” In a woodland the most exciting, creative, and biodiverse spaces are at the edge of where the woodland meets the grassland for example. You have got the light coming in from the grassland, and you’ve got the protection and shelter from the woodland. And you have this amazing diversity. So we talk about creating edge. I see our edge as creating our own comfort zone. We have to push ourselves outside of that comfort zone and that is where we can be more creative, where we can shift our perspective and try new things that are perhaps more appropriate to who we are and what our circumstances are.
So readers look for Sara Spencer’s book Think Like a Tree: The Natural Principles Guide to Life. And do as Sarah suggests: feed your roots, don’t stop growing, learn by doing, seek and offer support, waste nothing, follow nature’s patterns, learn from what has gone on before, observe, interact, and be a part of the natural world. Sarah’s Think Like A Tree website is here.
So listeners, thank you for listening to the end. Please check our my book and workbook Take Back Your Outside Mindset: lLive Longer, Prevent Dementia, and Control Your Chronic Illness. And go to my website Treesmendus.com for more free resources.
Please subscribe, rate and review this podcast and remember when you are outside noticing new things you are problem solving, building resilience, and investing in your well-being. And this is a good thing because if you ask me, we all need a little more of Your Outside Mindset.
