May 20, 2021
Lyanda Lynn Haupt is a naturalist, writer, educator, and the author of six books, including Mozart's Starling, an account of the composer's relationship with a unique bird who sang a version of his Piano Concerto No. 17 in G major. In her latest work, Rooted: Life at the Crossroads of Science, Nature, and Spirit, Haupt writes about how science, poetry, mysticism, and the traditions of earth-based cultures all point to the truth that we are interconnected and pose the “essential question of how to live on our broken, imperiled, beloved earth.”
In this episode, Rabbi Rami and Haupt discuss the scientific reason that being in the natural world is so therapeutic to humans, the “industry” of forest therapy, solitude, and the innate human connection with nature.
“For millennia mystics and poets and earth-based indigenous cultures and children have known that we are at our healthiest, our wisest, our most creative, in our most embodied sense of wellness when we are in the natural world.”
They also explore the idea of “shedding” otherness, separateness, elevation, pretense, and comfort in order to become in deeper relationship with the earth and gain an understanding that “we are standing on holy ground.”
Haupt and Rabbi Rami close out their conversation with the notion of “fruitful darkness” and why Haupt doesn’t equate darkness to being bad or negative, but rather, a part of the life-bringing cycle.