Written by: Silke Hable, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
During a hike in Germany’s Odenwald region, where I live and work, I recently discovered the stump of a spruce that had been felled many years ago. But unlike what I would have expected, the stump was not rotten and weathered. It was - rather: it is - completely covered with bark. It‘s alive. The stump is supplied with water and nutrients by the neighbouring trees. They still keep the felled spruce alive and take care of it.
"In nature, the fittest always wins." That's what I once learned at school: If you're not strong enough, fast enough, smart enough, healthy enough – well, you die. What’s not efficient, has to go.
Does this somehow remind you of our “human world”? If you can't keep up in today’s fast-paced life, you're often deemed weak or even a loser. If you don't perform well enough, you’re of no benefit for the company. What’s not efficient, has to go?
The question is: What do we make of this? Do we get our elbows out, boxing away who- and whatever stands in our path? Making sure to put ourselves in the best possible light? Always trying to appear that tiny bit better, faster, more efficient than our colleagues in front of the boss?
Let’s return to the forest and the tree stump. Biological research has long proven time and again that in nature, it is not necessarily the stronger, fitter or faster individual that survives. It is by no means necessarily the one who clears his path most recklessly who in the end prevails.
Instead, nature and especially the forest rely on networking. On cooperation. On mutual support and best possible cooperation. Why? Because everyone, even the tiniest creature, is important for the ecosystem as a whole - for the wellbeing of the entire community.
We could learn from this as humans, don’t you think?
Think about it: Other trees are keeping the stump of a long-felled neighbouring tree alive, and have done so for many years. They share valuable nutrients and precious water to keep the stump from dying. Why do they do this?
Biologists suspect that trees like the felled spruce were particularly well connected, since every tree in a forest is directly or indirectly connected to every other tree by both coarse and fine roots and a widely ramified network of mycorrhiza (a fungal network in the soil).
The trees are using this "wood wide web" to communicate. They exchange information and nutrients or warn each other of vermin infestations: They often help each other when a tree receives too few nutrients at its location or has too little water available. The more intact the soil and thus the interconnectedness of the individual trees is, the better they can communicate and give each other what they need. This strengthens the entire forest - and everyone living in this complex ecosystem benefits.
This applies not just to trees and forests. In nature, most various and complex cooperations (symbioses) are known in literally every habitat. And whoever cooperates in nature with another of his kind or with another species, usually benefits from this cooperation directly or indirectly.
Now let’s apply this to our human world. How much more could we achieve as a team or even as a society if we put an emphasis on cooperation and on each individual’s strengths – and on how those can complement each other and contribute to the benefit of all?
Now, don’t get me wrong: Not everything in nature is based on cooperation and connection. By far not everything is peaceful and friendly. Even in nature there is a certain amount of rivalry and competition. However, in an intact and working ecosystem, in a healthy and balanced amount. From which, overall, once again the ecosystem benefits as a whole.
In my work as a coach, I like to take my clients out into the forest. For good reason: The forest is a powerful healing space for both body and soul. Because the forest also communicates with us as humans. First of all, the uncounted shades of green combine to a natural form of “color therapy”: Green is known to have a balancing, soothing, harmonizing effect on us.
A group of scientists around medical researcher Roger Ulrich made an interesting find in the early 1980’s: After surgery, their patients needed fewer painkillers if through the windows of their hospital room they looked at lush green trees – while looking at the wall of a house was associated with a higher rate of complications.
Yoshifumi Miyazaki of Chiba University (Japan) and a group of fellow scientists have shown in 2018 that the mere sight of a real forest can lower stress hormone levels in the blood by an average of 13.4 percent.
The most well-known pioneer of forest medicine probably is Prof. Qing Li of Nippon Medical School in Tokyo, Japan: He was able to show that breathing in terpenes – substances that trees emit for communication – lowers blood pressure, the level of stress hormones in the blood as well as blood sugar levels. And these are just a few of the positive effects we can experience by regular, ideally prolonged visits to a forest.
Surprising, isn’t it?
Well, not necessarily: For thousands of years, nature literally was our living room. We fully depended on nature: Food, wood for fire and shelter, medicine – nature provided it all. Our entire body was tuned in to nature. And it still is: Although we are becoming increasingly alienated from nature in our everyday lives, our brain has remained virtually unchanged for the last 10,000 years. It still operates largely as it did in the days of saber-toothed tigers and cave bears. As does our autonomic nervous system, which also controls our stress responses. Nature is still talking to us – and our nervous system is listening.
Connection with others has been vital for our stone-age ancestors: It guaranteed safety, well-being and sustenance. Connection with other human beings is still vital for us: We are just now beginning to see the negative effects of social distancing during the pandemic – resulting, for example, in higher rates of mental illness.
In today’s fast-paced, highly individualized world, connection with others and cooperation for the benefit of us all seem more important for our mental (and physical) health than it probably has been in a very long time.
Nature is supporting us and teaching us – if we let her. Why not take the tree stump as an example?
Let me invite you to an experiment: The next time you are out in the woods or in nature, look for tree stumps that are being kept alive by their neighbours. Or look for other examples of cooperation. What do you discover – and how could you learn from it for your own life?
Silke Hable, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Silke Hable became a Resilience Coach not because that's "what she had always felt called to do": After her daughter had been born extremely premature, a clinic psychologist attested to her "extraordinary psychological stability and reflectiveness" and suggested she should share this with others. So Hable got trained as a coach and took trainings in Germany as well as in the US, where her second home are the Appalachian foothills of Georgia. Now she combines her skills as a Coach with her education in Positive Psychology and Mindfulness, along with her experience as a Ranger and Nature Guide: Silke Hable very much appreciates the forest as a healing space for both body and soul and integrates preventive forest therapy into her coaching whenever useful and desired. She is chairwoman of Mensch & Wald e.V., an organization promoting forest therapy in Germany. Hable also got trained in applying the Safe & Sound Protocol (SSP), a non-invasive application based on decades of research and developed by Dr. Stephen Porges and is one of only few providers yet in Germany.
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