May 13, 2025 • 45 mins
Award-winning nutritionist and radio show host, Nancy Addison talks with Maryann De Leo about forest bathing, nature, and its healing effects. Maryann expands on studies that show tremendous healing effects of absorbing the biomedical mixture in forests and natural environments. They talk about the ways terpenes, from “forest air” can boost the immune system. Maryann shares how being around nature can also help a person’s mental attitude and brain function. They also discuss organic gardening.
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Organic Healthy Lifestyle is broadcast live Tuesdays at 3PM ET Music on W4CY Radio (www.w4cy.com) part of Talk 4 Radio (www.talk4radio.com) on the Talk 4 Media Network (www.talk4media.com Organic Healthy Lifestyle is viewed on Talk 4 TV (www.talk4tv.com).
Organic Healthy Lifestyle Podcast is also available on Talk 4 Media (www.talk4media.com), Talk 4 Podcasting (www.talk4podcasting.com), iHeartRadio, Amazon Music, Pandora, Spotify, Audible, and over 100 other podcast outlets.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Any health related information on the following show provides general
information only. Content presented on any show by any host
or guest should not be substituted for a doctor's advice.
Always consult your physician before beginning any new diet, exercise,
or treatment program.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Welcome fabulous people to organic healthy Lifestyle. And I'm Nancy Addison,
your host, and I always like to start off my
show with kind of a prayer, and today I'm going
to start off reading First Corinthians fourteen thirty three, for
God is not a god of confusion, but of peace.
(00:58):
And since we're doing a show today that's about healing
and nature, I picked a Mohawk prayer to read. And
so this is an indigenous people that lives in North America,
the Mohawk people. So I ask you to join me
in whichever way you would like. But a great Spirit,
(01:20):
creator of all things, human beings, trees, grass berries, help
us be kind to us. Let us be happy on earth.
Let us lead our children to a good life into
old age. These are people. Give them good minds to
love one another. Oh, Great Spirit, be kind to us.
(01:44):
Give these people the favor to see green trees, green grass, flowers,
and berries this next spring, so we all meet again
a great spirit. We ask this in the highest good
of all concern for everyone listening now and everyone listening
in the future. Thank you, and so it is. So
(02:07):
today we're really blessed to have one of my very
dearest friends in the world on the show, Marian Deli. Oh,
and she is just a little bit about her. I
guess I've known Marian twenty twenty years. Mary Anne is
a native New Yorker and a documentary filmmaker, and she's
(02:31):
won numerous awards, including Metelli's, Too, Emmy's, and Academy Award.
But in more recent times she's become very much an
avid gardener and taken master gardening classes and embarking on
learning more and more about the healing parts of being
(02:53):
in nature. Welcome to the show, Mary Ian.
Speaker 3 (02:56):
Thank you, Nancy. Fabulous Nancy. I got prayer you read.
It was beautiful. It goes along with what I'm feeling
these days. I wanted to start out with talking about
my morning. I was feeling a little bit gleaning and
kind of impatience that a lot of my old self
(03:18):
doesn't want to die off and let me be green.
But I did three things and I felt so much
better and so hopeful. The first one was I don't
drink enough water. I know that can affect your health,
so I started drinking water. Then I now moving your body.
It's always good to get your body moving, get the
(03:38):
energy moving. So I took a class called Vitality and
Motions and it was fun and we laughed, so that's
always good. And the last is probably the best. I
got up and went to my little indoor garden and
saw that my partially see you had sprouted and the growing,
and I felt absolute joy. I kind of understood, which
(04:01):
is what I'm going to talk about, the healing power.
I did feel a certain kind of healing because nature
is constant and nothing stops it, and it just feels like,
no matter what's happening outside, there's nature which is all
around us and doesn't have anything to do with politics
and what's happening near us and in the country, but
(04:24):
it's universal and it just makes me feel good to
know that the universe is going to continue no matter
what we do, we crazy humans. So I got out
my paper from my project for the Master Gardeners and
Oliver Sack was a neurologist and an author wrote many books,
(04:49):
and the first thing I want to quote is he said,
in my forty years of practice, I have found only
two types of non pharmaceutical therapy to be important with
chronic neurological diseases, music and gardens. And he said that
he often would take his patients to that beautiful gardens,
(05:10):
and he said the effects on his patients was striking.
He mentions an elderly woman with Parkinson's disease who was
frozen in her body and could not really move around,
but in the gardens he could climb up and down
the rocks without any help, and that several people would
advanced dimension and Alzheimer's who don't have good orientation to
(05:36):
the surroundings. He said, put them in front of a
flower bed with some seedlings and they will know exactly
what to do. I have never seen such a patient
plant something upside down. And he said he doesn't cannot
say exactly how nature exerts its common and organizing effects
(05:57):
on our brains, but that he has witness to his
patients how restorative and how healing nature and gardens are
even those who are deeply disabled neurologically. And he believed
that gardens and nature are more powerful than any medication.
And I just want to add here that this could
(06:17):
be included in all kinds of medicine, in all kinds
of places. I know when I was a girl, when
I was seven, I was in the hospital for pneumonia
and my favorite place in the hospital was the sun room.
It was this beautiful spot, just filled Florida ceiling with
huge plants and flowers, and I always wanted to go there.
(06:40):
And now I realized, even in my young mind, I
kind of knew there was something to it to go there.
I think most people do feel that, especially children. So
after I read about al the Sachs, I called up
a horticultural therapist and he was telling about his work
(07:00):
with people who have epilepsy that having them plant seeds
and watching plants grow has a noticeable reduction there's stress levels.
And he also did a study to see if horticulture
therapy had an effect on cardiac patients and in the study,
patients had taken on tour of a greenhouse in gardens
(07:21):
and they would participate in a planting activity, and the
study concluded that the garden and plant therapy had a
significant effect on them. They had lower heart rates, cortisol levels,
and blood pressure. So he's concluded that garden therapy could
be part of cardiac rehand And then I read further
(07:42):
that even just looking at nature has an effect on health.
A study was done with patients who had gallbladder surgery.
Half the patients were given a view of nature greenery
and trees, and the other half had the view of
a wall. And those with the tree view tolerated pain better,
left better, and spent less time in the hospital. They
(08:04):
had substantially accelerated recovery when older. And you also they
also study when older patients were able to visit gardens,
they need a fewer pain killers and antidepressants. I don't
know about you, but I see a lot of older
people who are on a whole fleu of painkillers and antidepressants,
and they don't seem like they're living. It's like they're numb.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
I'll agree with you. And it really is amazing how
many people are on like multiple medications.
Speaker 3 (08:38):
Yeah. They also they said that nature has a psychological effect.
Being in nature. Nature says to you, you're good the
way you are. You can be who you are in nature.
We are just present a life form among other life forms,
and I think so often, so many people were all
comparing ourselves to other people, that we're not being who
(09:00):
we are, We're trying to be somebody else.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
Okay, So that's magazines and televisions have not helped there either.
Speaker 3 (09:11):
Yeah. I then started investigating forest bathing. That's a Japanese
methods for healing, and I read about Professor King Lee
from the Nipon Medical School, and he has studied that
and verified that nature, the forest atmosphere lowered stress hormones corsal,
(09:34):
and adrenaline, and after a day in the woods, adrenaline
levels dropped by thirty percent for men and fifty percent
from women. And what he found was that spending time
in the woods the monostly strengthens our immune system. Natural
killer cells increased, and he says the specific form of
white blood cells, and that there's a scientific reason. I
(09:56):
think we maybe in the world, especially in the West,
we need some science behind some of these things. So
here's what he found. Forest air contains anti cancer terpenes
and these are organic compounds that are produced by a
variety of plants, particularly conifers, and just by inhaling them,
(10:18):
it's like ingesting a healing potion. So I just want
to sort of say again that nature is healing, and
it's not just thinking about liking being with the trees
and in the forest, but it's these things that are
in the air, and just a single day in the
wooded area increases the number of our natural pillar cells
(10:40):
in the blood by almost forty percent. These went on
to say plants send out molecule bioactive substances. They release
these I don't know if I'm saying this right terpenes
into the air. We absorb them through the lungs and
the skin, and some of the terpenes interact with our
immune system. And thees come from tree leaves, pine needles,
(11:02):
tree trunks, bushes, shrubs, brushrooms, mosses, and ferns. And the
reason they help us heels that are white blood cells.
Natural killer cells increase when we inhale them. And these
are the white blood cells that remove viruses from our body,
prevent the formation of cancer cells cells, and fight against cancers.
We already have it, and the research has experimented that
(11:26):
it was not only in the forest, but in hotel
rooms where they sprayed the air with turkeenes from the woods.
And the number of killer cells increase, and the people
in hotel rooms too. And the biologist Clemson R. We wrote,
when I learned all this, my impression of the forest changed.
Now when I walk through the woods, I have the
feeling I'm diving into an enormous breathing organism that communicates
(11:50):
with me. I become part of it, and we breed
and communicate together. The science of how nature affects us
and helps Oh did you want to.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
Say, Oh, I'm sorry, I was just saying that was
so beautiful.
Speaker 3 (12:04):
Yeah. It makes me fear up because we're part of
the universe. But we've well, I would say, I don't
want to make an assumption, but a lot of people
help isolated themselves from nature, from being in the world.
They just they don't do it. Now there's a study
of how nature affects us and helps and helps us heal,
(12:26):
And they're designing cities with this in mind. And it's
it's a small trend, but it's growing, and they're building
cities where nature is the priority. And it has a name.
It's called biophilics design. Biophilia is the love of life,
of nature, of all living things and EO. Wilson, a
(12:46):
conservationists colling this word and he informs how he can plant,
design and manage our cities. And he's saying that a
biophilic city would put nature first, and it recognizes that
you would recognize the essential need for daily human contact
with nature as well as the many environmental and economic
(13:07):
values provided by nature and natural systems. In these cities,
residents spend time enjoying the biological magic and wonder around them.
Residents care about nature and work on this behalf locally
and globally. I think that's an important component that when
nature is part of your life, you don't want to
trash it, you want to take care of it.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
Yes, oh my goodness.
Speaker 3 (13:33):
The study the biophil design is starting to catch on incorporation.
The University of Michigan did a study and found that
employee productivity increased by twenty percent after their employees spent
an hour in nature, and that some of the big
ones Amazon, Google, and e FSI design their workplace to
(13:53):
incorporate nature in their buildings. There's some great photographs you
can see online. Singapore has emerged as a green city
using biophilic design. They went from calling Singapore a garden
in a city to a city in a garden, and
they've made nature the focus of the city. And it's
just beautiful. It's just it's integrated into the building. There's
(14:17):
nothing more beautiful than seeing plants and flowers and trees.
I think, well, I'm sorry, I will agree. The more
we understand we are a part of nature, not separate,
the more we will work with nature, improve our health,
be grateful for what nature does for us, and take
(14:37):
care of nature because now we are working together. And
Albert Einstein said, a human being is a part of
the hold called by us universe apart limited in time
and space. He experienced himself, his thoughts and feeling is
something separate from the rest. This delusion is a kind
of prison for us. Our task must be to free
(14:58):
ourselves from this prison, widening our circle of compassion and
embracing all living creatures and the whole of nature in
its beauty. And I think kind of go along to
what Joseph Sens says, there's no separation. Get into the field.
The field is everything. So now we have the science
(15:18):
to prove that nature can heal us. And I believe
that in the future nature plants have to play an
important role in treating all kinds of disease. So to
do a forest bath, find a suitable location in nature,
enter the forest, standstill and reorganize, recognize your body of space,
breed in the bat breed in the smells of the forest,
(15:42):
and proceed with the forest that by walking forward mindfully
refreshed out loud. I don't know exactly what that means.
You want to say thank you to the tree. I
don't know established.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
That is. I think that's what they do mean is
actually vocalizing how you're feeling.
Speaker 3 (16:03):
Supposed yeah, yeah, And they suggest to sit in one
location for at least twenty minutes. And so I believe
that this is all, and I believe that we can
all do it. I live in a city, so I
don't have access to a forest that readily, although I
just have gotten a book about forests in the city
(16:26):
and I'm going to start to go visit these forests.
And I think that the ways we can do it
without spending any money and to be good to ourselves
and to heal is something I do now. Is there's
one tree I like that's not far from It's a
big old tree not far from my apartment and I
(16:49):
go there morning afternoon, if there's people, if there's not people,
and I hug this tree and I really feel feel different.
I really feel I don't want to let it go
because it's just so comforting and it's solid and it's
so and so you can ground yourself that way. Or
in the summer, I also are in the spring too.
(17:12):
I go into this area and there's a lot of grass,
and I talk to the people who take care of it.
They do not spray with anything, they do not put
anything on except water, and they cut it. And if
you're gonna do that, find out because you don't want
to step in pest time. And it's very important to
(17:32):
ground yourself. I think Nancy knows all about this. And
the other thing you can do is I've started to
turn off my electricity in my bedroom at night, and
my wife, Nancy knows about this too, And you can
just sleep. My friend described it this way. She's a
current practice. She said, just give your nervous system a
(17:54):
rest from all that the ems coming in. Just just
sleep and don't have anything sort of irritating your nervous system.
So I don't know if people believe that, but I
do anyway, I feel like I'm sleeping better and it
just feels really good. So those are my two three
(18:15):
things you can do for yourself. And getting the sun
on your face, on your body as much of your
body as you can early in the morning, maybe not
in the heat of the day, but before like ten o'clock.
It's not going to harm you. It's going to do
great things for you. There's there's all kinds of research
on sun and healing, and the sun is amazing. One
(18:40):
three million earths fit into the sun.
Speaker 2 (18:47):
That was beautiful, Mary Ian, thank you. And yes, we've
definitely connected over nature over the years. Said something that
we both have in common, that felt love of outdoors,
of nature and God's what God gave us. And you know,
one of the things I love about visiting you in
(19:08):
New York because New York is very much a city
of cement and buildings, but you live across the street
from a garden, a community garden, and looking out at that.
And I've also had the great privilege of being taken
to your tree that you like to hug, and you know,
(19:31):
that's a beautiful area. And uh, and when we hug trees,
Doctor Ely Henry Eely who worked with doctor Brian Artists,
and they were doing a study on E MF and
how we get overloaded with this electricity in our body
and it's this chaotic energy and it's you know, from
(19:55):
the wife, it's from the cell phone, it's from the computer,
it's from selfhere at least different things. And they were
measuring different things with a meeter that read, you know,
the EMFs in that area, and they found that when
you literally as soon as you touch a tree, your
(20:16):
EMF load goes down to zero.
Speaker 3 (20:19):
Wow. I didn't know that.
Speaker 2 (20:21):
That's amazing, Really, it really is. It makes me think.
My daughter was living in Bosnia in an apartment during
the whole COVID thing and she didn't know anybody there.
She had just moved her her job and all this
craziness in the world started happening, and she wasn't used
(20:41):
to a lot of the things over there in Bosnia,
and she plunged something in one day and it almost
electrocuted her. And she called me and she's like, Mom,
you know, I almost electrocuted myself by accident with this
you know, electronic device, plugging it in and she goes,
(21:04):
what do I do? And I said, well, is there
any way you can get grounded? And she was like, oh,
you know what. She wentn't in Bosnia, she was in Jordan.
She was in Jordan. Jordan. They had told everybody if
they went outside, they would like be arrested, and so
(21:24):
she was paid to even go outside. And she wasn't
fluent in Arabic yet and she didn't really familiar with
the customs. She had literally just moved over there the
month before the whole COVID thing started happening. Anyway, she
just took it upout herself and she went downstairs and
(21:46):
just ran outside and hugged a tree and ran back
in her apartment. And she said it made her feel
so much better. And even though it was kind of
scary to go out, you know, with the threat of
being arrested, but she felt so much better. And it's
(22:06):
amazing what branding to the Earth's frequency and getting at
harmonic frequency and your body can do. And I think,
you know, people don't may not realize that these invisible
waves of frequency that come humorous on a data base
are very harmful to us, and they do build up
(22:28):
in the body and they disrupt our harmonic calming frequency
that is what our healthy frequency would be, and we
resonate with the with the Earth's frequency, which is a
human residence, which is just so so beautiful. And if
anybody's ever been barefoot outside or at the beach, then
(22:53):
you know you always feel better when your places like that,
or in a forest or city, in a you know,
a park on the ground. But like you said, you
want to ask and make sure they're not putting, like
round up ready herbicides on that.
Speaker 3 (23:12):
I was so happy to hear them say that they
don't put And the guy kind of knew what I
was talking about because at first I was just walking
grounding myself. He said, oh yeah, my brother does that.
So it's happening. People are coming becoming more aware. I
want to say that I do the walking there for
(23:32):
walking to grab myself, but I think the tree is
more powerful. I don't I can't explain it, but it's
some putting your body onto the tree. It's it's like
your grandmother. Sounds weird, but it feels really good.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
Yes it does, and I'm with you. And I've been
a tree hugger from way back. Mary.
Speaker 3 (23:55):
Yeah, yeah, I did it before, but not the way
now I'm doing it like every day. Yeah, and I
understand more about why it's good. That's what I was
saying about science. We kind of need the science to
get us over the hump of displace. And then when
we hear the science like okay, that makes sense, not
(24:18):
just doing this to be you know, hippy tippy.
Speaker 2 (24:23):
Well, you know, it's interesting you look back centuries. I mean,
there were lots of places where you went to heal,
and it was at hot springs, and it was where
you would go get in the rich water and get
connected with the earth, and you were probably more likely
to be in nature at one of these places. And
(24:46):
they had hilariums and hospitals in the eighteenth hundreds where
they literally prescribed sunshine and going outside you for your
wellness program.
Speaker 3 (25:01):
Yeah, we took a wrong turn somewhere, and we could
get into all that another time. But I think people
are starting to.
Speaker 2 (25:09):
Wake up, so I'll agree. And it's it's amazing how
many people of all types, and it doesn't matter what
education level you are, or what ethenticity or wherever. I
think most of the people in this earth are very savvy, smart, connected,
(25:30):
and are becoming wiser wiser simply as all the insanity
that has been brought up on us in the last
five years, and and kind of you know, if we
were just coasting along, it sure woke us up.
Speaker 3 (25:48):
Yeah, it definitely did. I think the great thing to
know is to believe in your body and to believe
in its healing power, and that there's so many things
of the for free, like sunlight and trees and water,
although some of the water, you know, we have to
filter our water, but there's so many things available to us.
(26:12):
And I think to have a grateful heart is maybe
the first step in taking care of yourself because we
just have so much.
Speaker 2 (26:20):
Yes, we do, and that's, you know, is such a
good point. And I was I was just listening to
doctor Tom Cowell and you was speaking about, you know,
improving your health and and he's written a book on
the cosmic heart, and is it totally different an idea
(26:42):
of how the heart works and what you know, you've
been taught throughout your life. But you know, one of
the things that he was saying is that he gets outside,
he gets exercise, you know, get fresh air. He's not
eating things that weren't eaten over one hundred years ago.
That's part of his program here things that were available
(27:06):
like one hundred hundred and fifty years ago. That's kind
of his protocol. The same with lights, like, you know
what the lighting do you have been your house? Is
that natural light er? Is it some of this new
high frequency light that puts off like mercury baper, you
know whatever it is? And you know so y'all said.
(27:30):
One of the things that Marianne and I have done
over the years is we wrote a book called A
Life in Cooking, an Easy Guide to help for you
and your parents. And this was a real endeavor of love,
and I actually think it's a really good book and
it's half cookbook, but Marianne and I in that book
(27:54):
actually had a chapter on how having fresh plants and
flowers around. So you have an elderly parent or somebody
that's you know, nursing home or a hospital or apartment
or something, and if you put plants around them or flowers,
it lifts your spirits, It lifts your mood, and you
(28:17):
know the plant will actually make your oxygen, your breathing healthier.
Speaker 3 (28:23):
Yeah, yeah, you know Zach Bush I saw him talk
about a study done for your plants. Know when you're
coming home, when you're nearby.
Speaker 2 (28:37):
The Secret Life of Plants. That is one of the
best books ever read. It rocks my world.
Speaker 3 (28:43):
Yeah, I have to read that again or I don't know,
I have to read. Yeah. We just like they don't
have intelligence. We think we're the smartest, we're so arrogant,
but we're not. I just saw a clips talk about
intelligence of a bird who is drinking water from a
(29:05):
bottle and when he drank enough, the water got low
lower so he couldn't reach it. So he went and
got stones. So that's the water level, right, brilliant that
a bird. You can figure that out.
Speaker 2 (29:22):
Isn't that so great? Yes? I mean, I really do
think that creatures have way more intelligence than people give
him credit for. So we have a CRUs We have
a question from our audience, and they're asking, is it
hard to be a vegetarian after reading that book? Well, actually,
(29:47):
that book, A Life in Cooking, is not a vegetarian book,
even though I was a vegetarian and Marian's not a vegetarian.
We put it.
Speaker 3 (30:00):
I was a vegetarian for years and I started eating
meat again. Actually I feel good. I eat clean grass,
bed grass finished. I go to a farm and you know,
I don't eat it all the time. I go through
periods where I kind of crave it and then I
don't anymore. So I kind of let my body tell me.
(30:21):
I mean, I try not to eat foods that I
know aren't good for me. But if I have a
craving for something, like yesterday, I wanted strawberries, and I
know they have the most pesticized, but I bought organic
strawberries and I rinse them. I let them sit in
vinegar and baking soda. Anyway, So I try and do that,
and I try not and be too strict about I
(30:44):
can't eat fist, I can't eat that. I don't think
that works, Ei, though, at least for me it doesn't.
Speaker 2 (30:49):
Well, I love that that you're listening to your body,
because I feel like when we have cravings, our bodies
telling us it needs something. You know, maybe your body
was really win c or something new that door. But
so I was just going to expand on this question
a little bit more. Since I was a vegetarian and
(31:11):
marian was Italian descent, and we both had really old
family recipes. We lolled and I'm kind of textan Southern
and Mariane's kind of Italian New York version. We kind
of hit every base in that book. We hit North,
southeastst Italian, Southern, vegetarian, and mean eater.
Speaker 3 (31:37):
We did, we did.
Speaker 2 (31:39):
We put a lot of recipes in there as well.
And your father was it was a big part of
that with her class for us and that Mannicott that
she taught us that is in there. It's that you know,
you wouldn't call that vegetarian recipe right because it's heat
(32:03):
in it.
Speaker 3 (32:04):
M hmm. Yeah. So I think we have a lot
to be grateful for and a lot to experiment with.
I consider my life now it's an experiment. I don't
think people need to do what I do, but I
try things as an experiment, and if it works, it works,
and if it doesn't, well I tried it. I mean,
not crazy things, but you know, things that I think
(32:27):
might help my body. And I think everybody should do
what they think is right for them and not listen
to everybody who tells them to. You know, well, I'm
saying that, but I've been wiping banana peel on my
face for a couple of days because I thought maybe
there's something good about that efforts.
Speaker 2 (32:46):
Anyway, I also have a lot of nutrient value in them.
And in some of my recipes, I have people clean
their bananas and then you know, cut off the hard
ends and then cut them into chunkston actually add it
to their smoothie with this on.
Speaker 3 (33:05):
With the peel and yeah, yeah, there you go.
Speaker 2 (33:09):
And it really doesn't change the flavor. It might make
it a little more banana because you have more banana,
but it actually increases the nutrient value of that smoothie enormous.
Speaker 3 (33:23):
Yeah, I'm jumping around here, but I'm also wondering. I
My neighbor has a lilac push outside her building, so
I've been going by there every morning and I stop
and just take in the fragments of the lilacs. It's
really beautiful. So I'm thinking that's probably something healing in
that too.
Speaker 2 (33:43):
Oh, I'm sure it is. And think about it. It's
like an essential oil. You know, that fragrance is healing.
And I mean I can smell it. When you were
talking about it, it just it sounded lovely. And you know,
I've got a jasmine bush on my front porch that
(34:07):
oh my goodness. When it's I mean, it just fills
the whole area with that beautiful fragrance. And so one
of the things I wanted to mention to everybody is
if you're planting a garden, and I think it's really
important to plant plants that help the pollinators because they're
really struggling right now. It's actually hummingbird season, and hummingbirds
(34:33):
usually come through here in droves, and I am not
I'm not getting drove this year, and I'm very I
think it's very, very important that we plant plants that
actually have nectar in them and that have a fragrance.
If you've ever been to a flower shop and you
(34:55):
look at all the beautiful flowers, try to find one
with a very fragrance, and you may not find one
because they're all hybridized and genetically modified now, and that
means there's no nectar in that flower. And learned about
I don't know, it's been forty years since I learned this,
(35:18):
so this may be a little bit outdated and worse,
but I learned forty years ago that because of the
genetic modification of all these plants, most of most all
these plants that had flowers, they have no nectar. So
the polypiers were all starving to death and forty years
(35:42):
ago and there were only four of the very large
back bumblebees that were extinct because of that. And so
I think, you know, if we're planting a garden bescher
and plant airlom varieties that are native that have a
rich nectar that will support like the pollinators, you know,
(36:06):
the dandelion, which is probably one of the most beneficial
plants on the planet. You know, it's just it's mind
blowing to find out that, you know, the leading herb
beside they used today was really put out there to
just annihilate that plant, which is the basic planet for
(36:27):
you know, healing your kidneys. It can, it can. It's
a major food source for most pollinators or especially for
different butterflies. And just how unconscious whoever decided to do
that was unconscious to how the web of life works
(36:50):
or the way that you know, a healthy planet should exist.
So few my suggestions would be that you know, plant
some things like dandelions. And I will tell you, dandylions,
you can make tea out of the leaves, you can
(37:10):
dry them, you can put them not dried. You can
take dandelion leaves and put them in your salad. And
oh you can't.
Speaker 3 (37:19):
Dandelion greens all the time. It's delicious.
Speaker 2 (37:24):
You could probably harvest those and sell them because they
are so healthy. I just avoid having any kind of
beside on your or you know, avoid round up ready
for sure, because it is so toxic.
Speaker 3 (37:37):
But yeah, I decided dandelions were weeds. It's the craziest thing.
We had them on our lawn as kids, and we
just thought, oh, you have to get rid of those wines.
Speaker 2 (37:49):
I loved them, and I always loved the words and no,
it's no, it's kind of an upside down world. It's
like everything good for US corporations, you know, tell you that,
just the opposite, you know, for the during media or
whoever it is. But one of the things I did
(38:12):
this year, and we were having a little bit of
a drought at the moment down where I'm living in Texas,
and thankfully we got a really good rain last night,
and I was so thankful. But I've been planting things
like sunflowers, which come in a lot of varieties, but
they are rich in nectar and they can also help
(38:34):
pull toxins from the soil. So if you have a
like some some soil that you want to make less toxic,
or you want to see if you can pull out,
you know, things that maybe you moved there and you
didn't know what they put on that ground. Because things
like ground up they say is in the soil for
(38:55):
anywhere from forty to sixty years. And so if you
you can plant things like sunflowers or even mushrooms, they
can help pull the toxins out as soil and make
that as well healthier.
Speaker 3 (39:10):
But they want to make mentioned this. But there's a
documentary on it's going to be on and you can
get us for free on Amazon Prime. So I think
for the next two day. It's called Grounded. It's all
about the soil. Oh I love that.
Speaker 2 (39:26):
Yes, yes, that's an excellent one. Thank you for sharing
that with us. And do you think they can watch
it worldwide?
Speaker 3 (39:36):
Yes, I'm pretty sure. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (39:38):
Great, So you just put in like documentary documentary grounded.
Speaker 3 (39:43):
I don't have Amazon print. I don't know if I'm
not sure, but you can go put in rounded and
you can see the trailer and then you can probably
figure out how to get it on Amazon Rounded. That's
what it's the title.
Speaker 2 (39:57):
That sounds wonderful, that sounds great.
Speaker 3 (40:00):
I watched the trailer. I would like to see the mova.
I might have to go to a friend's house. I
don't get on.
Speaker 2 (40:08):
Well. If you are putting out plants for like pollinators
or to attract pollinators to your gardeners, support the web
of life, you know, try doing a butterfly bush or
butterfly weed, or He's of Heaven which is a bright,
(40:28):
brilliant kind of scarlet red plant that attracts butterflies and hummingbirds,
or joke By weed, which is a really large plant
with nectar rich pink flowers. But make sure you're getting
heirloom varieties or organic Friday set have not, you know,
had any kind of neo nicked tinoid poison built into
(40:50):
them or anything. Asters, dragonflowers, xenias, things like that are
all excellent. And then also herbs. And I love that
you're growing parsally, Maryanne. I you know, I just here
you are in your New York City apartment and you're
growing parsonally.
Speaker 3 (41:10):
Yeah, from a seed. It's really And talking about craving partially,
it's one of the things I crave. I don't know why,
but so I eat a lot of it. So I
wanted to grow it.
Speaker 2 (41:24):
Well, I just think food out of your own garden
or out of your own little gardening pot. I mean,
for some reason, I always find it tastes better than
anything else.
Speaker 3 (41:37):
Absolutely.
Speaker 2 (41:39):
So I took an old window frame, a wood window
frame that they removed from the house when they replaced
the windows, and I put it out in my yard
and filled it full organic soil, and it made it
just a wonderful raised bed.
Speaker 3 (41:57):
Oh I should have done that. I saw windowsill out
on the street and I thought I should take that,
but it was too heavy. I couldn't list it.
Speaker 2 (42:07):
Well, Mary, and that would be great on your place
at at ever State, New York. But I'm not sure
how you would use it in your apartment.
Speaker 3 (42:15):
Yeah, yeah, I was thinking of putting it on the
fire escape.
Speaker 2 (42:19):
Oh well, that's an interesting idea. You know. Something that
you might consider, Marian for your fire escape would be
like a potato bag. Have you ever seen those. I've
got three of them and they're fabulous, and I've filled
them with organic soil and they have a flap where
you can pull it up and see what, you know,
(42:39):
the roots and things look like you may need to,
you know, put it on something if you brought it
in the house. But it's like a big bag and
things great in it. I'm growing mint in one of them.
Because you can't grow mint in the ground because it
will take over your garden. You need to put that
(43:00):
into container. But yeah, that's a very doable thing, Mary Ann.
We've only got like Capefully, the time went so fast.
You shared so much brilliant information with us today, but
we only have about three minutes left, and I just
want to thank you so much for joining me today
and sharing all that beautiful, brilliant information about forrest bathing
(43:24):
with us.
Speaker 3 (43:25):
Thank you. I'd love to share this kind of information.
We all have to share these things that we find out.
Speaker 2 (43:31):
I agree, and I always appreciate having you on the
show because you always look at things in such a
fresh way and always have kind of a different spin
on it than some of the other people I listened to.
But as we come to the show, I'd love for
you to just share, you know, a brief parting thought
(43:54):
with everyone that maybe they could implement in their lives
to be healthier today.
Speaker 3 (44:00):
Well reiterate, I definitely recommend go out either into a
park or if you live in the country, go to
find a favorite tree and wrap your arms around that
tree and just breathe, and just stand there and let
yourself be supported by the tree, and just hang out there,
(44:22):
close your eyes if you like, and just thank the
tree for being a line. When my friend, a chiropractor,
came to visit me, she looked at my window, I
saw the park across the street. She saw this big,
beautiful tree, and she said, that tree has been healing
for you more than anything else. So I think that's
(44:44):
my parting word. Lets the tree heal you. Trees heal you.
Speaker 2 (44:50):
That's beautiful and I love that. And I have to
admit when I was there in the Freezings winter storm
in January looking at it, that tree was very comforting
to me, and it was always beautiful to you. Thank
you so much for joining us, thank you for sharing
all of that great information with us, and for everyone
(45:13):
listening here. Mary Anne and I send you our best.
We wish you a beautiful life and perfect health, and
and I will talk to you all next week
Any health related information on the following show provides general
information only. Content presented on any show by any host
or guest should not be substituted for a doctor's advice.
Always consult your physician before beginning any new diet, exercise,
or treatment program.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Welcome fabulous people to organic healthy Lifestyle. And I'm Nancy Addison,
your host, and I always like to start off my
show with kind of a prayer, and today I'm going
to start off reading First Corinthians fourteen thirty three, for
God is not a god of confusion, but of peace.
(00:58):
And since we're doing a show today that's about healing
and nature, I picked a Mohawk prayer to read. And
so this is an indigenous people that lives in North America,
the Mohawk people. So I ask you to join me
in whichever way you would like. But a great Spirit,
(01:20):
creator of all things, human beings, trees, grass berries, help
us be kind to us. Let us be happy on earth.
Let us lead our children to a good life into
old age. These are people. Give them good minds to
love one another. Oh, Great Spirit, be kind to us.
(01:44):
Give these people the favor to see green trees, green grass, flowers,
and berries this next spring, so we all meet again
a great spirit. We ask this in the highest good
of all concern for everyone listening now and everyone listening
in the future. Thank you, and so it is. So
(02:07):
today we're really blessed to have one of my very
dearest friends in the world on the show, Marian Deli. Oh,
and she is just a little bit about her. I
guess I've known Marian twenty twenty years. Mary Anne is
a native New Yorker and a documentary filmmaker, and she's
(02:31):
won numerous awards, including Metelli's, Too, Emmy's, and Academy Award.
But in more recent times she's become very much an
avid gardener and taken master gardening classes and embarking on
learning more and more about the healing parts of being
(02:53):
in nature. Welcome to the show, Mary Ian.
Speaker 3 (02:56):
Thank you, Nancy. Fabulous Nancy. I got prayer you read.
It was beautiful. It goes along with what I'm feeling
these days. I wanted to start out with talking about
my morning. I was feeling a little bit gleaning and
kind of impatience that a lot of my old self
(03:18):
doesn't want to die off and let me be green.
But I did three things and I felt so much
better and so hopeful. The first one was I don't
drink enough water. I know that can affect your health,
so I started drinking water. Then I now moving your body.
It's always good to get your body moving, get the
(03:38):
energy moving. So I took a class called Vitality and
Motions and it was fun and we laughed, so that's
always good. And the last is probably the best. I
got up and went to my little indoor garden and
saw that my partially see you had sprouted and the growing,
and I felt absolute joy. I kind of understood, which
(04:01):
is what I'm going to talk about, the healing power.
I did feel a certain kind of healing because nature
is constant and nothing stops it, and it just feels like,
no matter what's happening outside, there's nature which is all
around us and doesn't have anything to do with politics
and what's happening near us and in the country, but
(04:24):
it's universal and it just makes me feel good to
know that the universe is going to continue no matter
what we do, we crazy humans. So I got out
my paper from my project for the Master Gardeners and
Oliver Sack was a neurologist and an author wrote many books,
(04:49):
and the first thing I want to quote is he said,
in my forty years of practice, I have found only
two types of non pharmaceutical therapy to be important with
chronic neurological diseases, music and gardens. And he said that
he often would take his patients to that beautiful gardens,
(05:10):
and he said the effects on his patients was striking.
He mentions an elderly woman with Parkinson's disease who was
frozen in her body and could not really move around,
but in the gardens he could climb up and down
the rocks without any help, and that several people would
advanced dimension and Alzheimer's who don't have good orientation to
(05:36):
the surroundings. He said, put them in front of a
flower bed with some seedlings and they will know exactly
what to do. I have never seen such a patient
plant something upside down. And he said he doesn't cannot
say exactly how nature exerts its common and organizing effects
(05:57):
on our brains, but that he has witness to his
patients how restorative and how healing nature and gardens are
even those who are deeply disabled neurologically. And he believed
that gardens and nature are more powerful than any medication.
And I just want to add here that this could
(06:17):
be included in all kinds of medicine, in all kinds
of places. I know when I was a girl, when
I was seven, I was in the hospital for pneumonia
and my favorite place in the hospital was the sun room.
It was this beautiful spot, just filled Florida ceiling with
huge plants and flowers, and I always wanted to go there.
(06:40):
And now I realized, even in my young mind, I
kind of knew there was something to it to go there.
I think most people do feel that, especially children. So
after I read about al the Sachs, I called up
a horticultural therapist and he was telling about his work
(07:00):
with people who have epilepsy that having them plant seeds
and watching plants grow has a noticeable reduction there's stress levels.
And he also did a study to see if horticulture
therapy had an effect on cardiac patients and in the study,
patients had taken on tour of a greenhouse in gardens
(07:21):
and they would participate in a planting activity, and the
study concluded that the garden and plant therapy had a
significant effect on them. They had lower heart rates, cortisol levels,
and blood pressure. So he's concluded that garden therapy could
be part of cardiac rehand And then I read further
(07:42):
that even just looking at nature has an effect on health.
A study was done with patients who had gallbladder surgery.
Half the patients were given a view of nature greenery
and trees, and the other half had the view of
a wall. And those with the tree view tolerated pain better,
left better, and spent less time in the hospital. They
(08:04):
had substantially accelerated recovery when older. And you also they
also study when older patients were able to visit gardens,
they need a fewer pain killers and antidepressants. I don't
know about you, but I see a lot of older
people who are on a whole fleu of painkillers and antidepressants,
and they don't seem like they're living. It's like they're numb.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
I'll agree with you. And it really is amazing how
many people are on like multiple medications.
Speaker 3 (08:38):
Yeah. They also they said that nature has a psychological effect.
Being in nature. Nature says to you, you're good the
way you are. You can be who you are in nature.
We are just present a life form among other life forms,
and I think so often, so many people were all
comparing ourselves to other people, that we're not being who
(09:00):
we are, We're trying to be somebody else.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
Okay, So that's magazines and televisions have not helped there either.
Speaker 3 (09:11):
Yeah. I then started investigating forest bathing. That's a Japanese
methods for healing, and I read about Professor King Lee
from the Nipon Medical School, and he has studied that
and verified that nature, the forest atmosphere lowered stress hormones corsal,
(09:34):
and adrenaline, and after a day in the woods, adrenaline
levels dropped by thirty percent for men and fifty percent
from women. And what he found was that spending time
in the woods the monostly strengthens our immune system. Natural
killer cells increased, and he says the specific form of
white blood cells, and that there's a scientific reason. I
(09:56):
think we maybe in the world, especially in the West,
we need some science behind some of these things. So
here's what he found. Forest air contains anti cancer terpenes
and these are organic compounds that are produced by a
variety of plants, particularly conifers, and just by inhaling them,
(10:18):
it's like ingesting a healing potion. So I just want
to sort of say again that nature is healing, and
it's not just thinking about liking being with the trees
and in the forest, but it's these things that are
in the air, and just a single day in the
wooded area increases the number of our natural pillar cells
(10:40):
in the blood by almost forty percent. These went on
to say plants send out molecule bioactive substances. They release
these I don't know if I'm saying this right terpenes
into the air. We absorb them through the lungs and
the skin, and some of the terpenes interact with our
immune system. And thees come from tree leaves, pine needles,
(11:02):
tree trunks, bushes, shrubs, brushrooms, mosses, and ferns. And the
reason they help us heels that are white blood cells.
Natural killer cells increase when we inhale them. And these
are the white blood cells that remove viruses from our body,
prevent the formation of cancer cells cells, and fight against cancers.
We already have it, and the research has experimented that
(11:26):
it was not only in the forest, but in hotel
rooms where they sprayed the air with turkeenes from the woods.
And the number of killer cells increase, and the people
in hotel rooms too. And the biologist Clemson R. We wrote,
when I learned all this, my impression of the forest changed.
Now when I walk through the woods, I have the
feeling I'm diving into an enormous breathing organism that communicates
(11:50):
with me. I become part of it, and we breed
and communicate together. The science of how nature affects us
and helps Oh did you want to.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
Say, Oh, I'm sorry, I was just saying that was
so beautiful.
Speaker 3 (12:04):
Yeah. It makes me fear up because we're part of
the universe. But we've well, I would say, I don't
want to make an assumption, but a lot of people
help isolated themselves from nature, from being in the world.
They just they don't do it. Now there's a study
of how nature affects us and helps and helps us heal,
(12:26):
And they're designing cities with this in mind. And it's
it's a small trend, but it's growing, and they're building
cities where nature is the priority. And it has a name.
It's called biophilics design. Biophilia is the love of life,
of nature, of all living things and EO. Wilson, a
(12:46):
conservationists colling this word and he informs how he can plant,
design and manage our cities. And he's saying that a
biophilic city would put nature first, and it recognizes that
you would recognize the essential need for daily human contact
with nature as well as the many environmental and economic
(13:07):
values provided by nature and natural systems. In these cities,
residents spend time enjoying the biological magic and wonder around them.
Residents care about nature and work on this behalf locally
and globally. I think that's an important component that when
nature is part of your life, you don't want to
trash it, you want to take care of it.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
Yes, oh my goodness.
Speaker 3 (13:33):
The study the biophil design is starting to catch on incorporation.
The University of Michigan did a study and found that
employee productivity increased by twenty percent after their employees spent
an hour in nature, and that some of the big
ones Amazon, Google, and e FSI design their workplace to
(13:53):
incorporate nature in their buildings. There's some great photographs you
can see online. Singapore has emerged as a green city
using biophilic design. They went from calling Singapore a garden
in a city to a city in a garden, and
they've made nature the focus of the city. And it's
just beautiful. It's just it's integrated into the building. There's
(14:17):
nothing more beautiful than seeing plants and flowers and trees.
I think, well, I'm sorry, I will agree. The more
we understand we are a part of nature, not separate,
the more we will work with nature, improve our health,
be grateful for what nature does for us, and take
(14:37):
care of nature because now we are working together. And
Albert Einstein said, a human being is a part of
the hold called by us universe apart limited in time
and space. He experienced himself, his thoughts and feeling is
something separate from the rest. This delusion is a kind
of prison for us. Our task must be to free
(14:58):
ourselves from this prison, widening our circle of compassion and
embracing all living creatures and the whole of nature in
its beauty. And I think kind of go along to
what Joseph Sens says, there's no separation. Get into the field.
The field is everything. So now we have the science
(15:18):
to prove that nature can heal us. And I believe
that in the future nature plants have to play an
important role in treating all kinds of disease. So to
do a forest bath, find a suitable location in nature,
enter the forest, standstill and reorganize, recognize your body of space,
breed in the bat breed in the smells of the forest,
(15:42):
and proceed with the forest that by walking forward mindfully
refreshed out loud. I don't know exactly what that means.
You want to say thank you to the tree. I
don't know established.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
That is. I think that's what they do mean is
actually vocalizing how you're feeling.
Speaker 3 (16:03):
Supposed yeah, yeah, And they suggest to sit in one
location for at least twenty minutes. And so I believe
that this is all, and I believe that we can
all do it. I live in a city, so I
don't have access to a forest that readily, although I
just have gotten a book about forests in the city
(16:26):
and I'm going to start to go visit these forests.
And I think that the ways we can do it
without spending any money and to be good to ourselves
and to heal is something I do now. Is there's
one tree I like that's not far from It's a
big old tree not far from my apartment and I
(16:49):
go there morning afternoon, if there's people, if there's not people,
and I hug this tree and I really feel feel different.
I really feel I don't want to let it go
because it's just so comforting and it's solid and it's
so and so you can ground yourself that way. Or
in the summer, I also are in the spring too.
(17:12):
I go into this area and there's a lot of grass,
and I talk to the people who take care of it.
They do not spray with anything, they do not put
anything on except water, and they cut it. And if
you're gonna do that, find out because you don't want
to step in pest time. And it's very important to
(17:32):
ground yourself. I think Nancy knows all about this. And
the other thing you can do is I've started to
turn off my electricity in my bedroom at night, and
my wife, Nancy knows about this too, And you can
just sleep. My friend described it this way. She's a
current practice. She said, just give your nervous system a
(17:54):
rest from all that the ems coming in. Just just
sleep and don't have anything sort of irritating your nervous system.
So I don't know if people believe that, but I
do anyway, I feel like I'm sleeping better and it
just feels really good. So those are my two three
(18:15):
things you can do for yourself. And getting the sun
on your face, on your body as much of your
body as you can early in the morning, maybe not
in the heat of the day, but before like ten o'clock.
It's not going to harm you. It's going to do
great things for you. There's there's all kinds of research
on sun and healing, and the sun is amazing. One
(18:40):
three million earths fit into the sun.
Speaker 2 (18:47):
That was beautiful, Mary Ian, thank you. And yes, we've
definitely connected over nature over the years. Said something that
we both have in common, that felt love of outdoors,
of nature and God's what God gave us. And you know,
one of the things I love about visiting you in
(19:08):
New York because New York is very much a city
of cement and buildings, but you live across the street
from a garden, a community garden, and looking out at that.
And I've also had the great privilege of being taken
to your tree that you like to hug, and you know,
(19:31):
that's a beautiful area. And uh, and when we hug trees,
Doctor Ely Henry Eely who worked with doctor Brian Artists,
and they were doing a study on E MF and
how we get overloaded with this electricity in our body
and it's this chaotic energy and it's you know, from
(19:55):
the wife, it's from the cell phone, it's from the computer,
it's from selfhere at least different things. And they were
measuring different things with a meeter that read, you know,
the EMFs in that area, and they found that when
you literally as soon as you touch a tree, your
(20:16):
EMF load goes down to zero.
Speaker 3 (20:19):
Wow. I didn't know that.
Speaker 2 (20:21):
That's amazing, Really, it really is. It makes me think.
My daughter was living in Bosnia in an apartment during
the whole COVID thing and she didn't know anybody there.
She had just moved her her job and all this
craziness in the world started happening, and she wasn't used
(20:41):
to a lot of the things over there in Bosnia,
and she plunged something in one day and it almost
electrocuted her. And she called me and she's like, Mom,
you know, I almost electrocuted myself by accident with this
you know, electronic device, plugging it in and she goes,
(21:04):
what do I do? And I said, well, is there
any way you can get grounded? And she was like, oh,
you know what. She wentn't in Bosnia, she was in Jordan.
She was in Jordan. Jordan. They had told everybody if
they went outside, they would like be arrested, and so
(21:24):
she was paid to even go outside. And she wasn't
fluent in Arabic yet and she didn't really familiar with
the customs. She had literally just moved over there the
month before the whole COVID thing started happening. Anyway, she
just took it upout herself and she went downstairs and
(21:46):
just ran outside and hugged a tree and ran back
in her apartment. And she said it made her feel
so much better. And even though it was kind of
scary to go out, you know, with the threat of
being arrested, but she felt so much better. And it's
(22:06):
amazing what branding to the Earth's frequency and getting at
harmonic frequency and your body can do. And I think,
you know, people don't may not realize that these invisible
waves of frequency that come humorous on a data base
are very harmful to us, and they do build up
(22:28):
in the body and they disrupt our harmonic calming frequency
that is what our healthy frequency would be, and we
resonate with the with the Earth's frequency, which is a
human residence, which is just so so beautiful. And if
anybody's ever been barefoot outside or at the beach, then
(22:53):
you know you always feel better when your places like that,
or in a forest or city, in a you know,
a park on the ground. But like you said, you
want to ask and make sure they're not putting, like
round up ready herbicides on that.
Speaker 3 (23:12):
I was so happy to hear them say that they
don't put And the guy kind of knew what I
was talking about because at first I was just walking
grounding myself. He said, oh yeah, my brother does that.
So it's happening. People are coming becoming more aware. I
want to say that I do the walking there for
(23:32):
walking to grab myself, but I think the tree is
more powerful. I don't I can't explain it, but it's
some putting your body onto the tree. It's it's like
your grandmother. Sounds weird, but it feels really good.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
Yes it does, and I'm with you. And I've been
a tree hugger from way back. Mary.
Speaker 3 (23:55):
Yeah, yeah, I did it before, but not the way
now I'm doing it like every day. Yeah, and I
understand more about why it's good. That's what I was
saying about science. We kind of need the science to
get us over the hump of displace. And then when
we hear the science like okay, that makes sense, not
(24:18):
just doing this to be you know, hippy tippy.
Speaker 2 (24:23):
Well, you know, it's interesting you look back centuries. I mean,
there were lots of places where you went to heal,
and it was at hot springs, and it was where
you would go get in the rich water and get
connected with the earth, and you were probably more likely
to be in nature at one of these places. And
(24:46):
they had hilariums and hospitals in the eighteenth hundreds where
they literally prescribed sunshine and going outside you for your
wellness program.
Speaker 3 (25:01):
Yeah, we took a wrong turn somewhere, and we could
get into all that another time. But I think people
are starting to.
Speaker 2 (25:09):
Wake up, so I'll agree. And it's it's amazing how
many people of all types, and it doesn't matter what
education level you are, or what ethenticity or wherever. I
think most of the people in this earth are very savvy, smart, connected,
(25:30):
and are becoming wiser wiser simply as all the insanity
that has been brought up on us in the last
five years, and and kind of you know, if we
were just coasting along, it sure woke us up.
Speaker 3 (25:48):
Yeah, it definitely did. I think the great thing to
know is to believe in your body and to believe
in its healing power, and that there's so many things
of the for free, like sunlight and trees and water,
although some of the water, you know, we have to
filter our water, but there's so many things available to us.
(26:12):
And I think to have a grateful heart is maybe
the first step in taking care of yourself because we
just have so much.
Speaker 2 (26:20):
Yes, we do, and that's, you know, is such a
good point. And I was I was just listening to
doctor Tom Cowell and you was speaking about, you know,
improving your health and and he's written a book on
the cosmic heart, and is it totally different an idea
(26:42):
of how the heart works and what you know, you've
been taught throughout your life. But you know, one of
the things that he was saying is that he gets outside,
he gets exercise, you know, get fresh air. He's not
eating things that weren't eaten over one hundred years ago.
That's part of his program here things that were available
(27:06):
like one hundred hundred and fifty years ago. That's kind
of his protocol. The same with lights, like, you know
what the lighting do you have been your house? Is
that natural light er? Is it some of this new
high frequency light that puts off like mercury baper, you
know whatever it is? And you know so y'all said.
(27:30):
One of the things that Marianne and I have done
over the years is we wrote a book called A
Life in Cooking, an Easy Guide to help for you
and your parents. And this was a real endeavor of love,
and I actually think it's a really good book and
it's half cookbook, but Marianne and I in that book
(27:54):
actually had a chapter on how having fresh plants and
flowers around. So you have an elderly parent or somebody
that's you know, nursing home or a hospital or apartment
or something, and if you put plants around them or flowers,
it lifts your spirits, It lifts your mood, and you
(28:17):
know the plant will actually make your oxygen, your breathing healthier.
Speaker 3 (28:23):
Yeah, yeah, you know Zach Bush I saw him talk
about a study done for your plants. Know when you're
coming home, when you're nearby.
Speaker 2 (28:37):
The Secret Life of Plants. That is one of the
best books ever read. It rocks my world.
Speaker 3 (28:43):
Yeah, I have to read that again or I don't know,
I have to read. Yeah. We just like they don't
have intelligence. We think we're the smartest, we're so arrogant,
but we're not. I just saw a clips talk about
intelligence of a bird who is drinking water from a
(29:05):
bottle and when he drank enough, the water got low
lower so he couldn't reach it. So he went and
got stones. So that's the water level, right, brilliant that
a bird. You can figure that out.
Speaker 2 (29:22):
Isn't that so great? Yes? I mean, I really do
think that creatures have way more intelligence than people give
him credit for. So we have a CRUs We have
a question from our audience, and they're asking, is it
hard to be a vegetarian after reading that book? Well, actually,
(29:47):
that book, A Life in Cooking, is not a vegetarian book,
even though I was a vegetarian and Marian's not a vegetarian.
We put it.
Speaker 3 (30:00):
I was a vegetarian for years and I started eating
meat again. Actually I feel good. I eat clean grass,
bed grass finished. I go to a farm and you know,
I don't eat it all the time. I go through
periods where I kind of crave it and then I
don't anymore. So I kind of let my body tell me.
(30:21):
I mean, I try not to eat foods that I
know aren't good for me. But if I have a
craving for something, like yesterday, I wanted strawberries, and I
know they have the most pesticized, but I bought organic
strawberries and I rinse them. I let them sit in
vinegar and baking soda. Anyway, So I try and do that,
and I try not and be too strict about I
(30:44):
can't eat fist, I can't eat that. I don't think
that works, Ei, though, at least for me it doesn't.
Speaker 2 (30:49):
Well, I love that that you're listening to your body,
because I feel like when we have cravings, our bodies
telling us it needs something. You know, maybe your body
was really win c or something new that door. But
so I was just going to expand on this question
a little bit more. Since I was a vegetarian and
(31:11):
marian was Italian descent, and we both had really old
family recipes. We lolled and I'm kind of textan Southern
and Mariane's kind of Italian New York version. We kind
of hit every base in that book. We hit North,
southeastst Italian, Southern, vegetarian, and mean eater.
Speaker 3 (31:37):
We did, we did.
Speaker 2 (31:39):
We put a lot of recipes in there as well.
And your father was it was a big part of
that with her class for us and that Mannicott that
she taught us that is in there. It's that you know,
you wouldn't call that vegetarian recipe right because it's heat
(32:03):
in it.
Speaker 3 (32:04):
M hmm. Yeah. So I think we have a lot
to be grateful for and a lot to experiment with.
I consider my life now it's an experiment. I don't
think people need to do what I do, but I
try things as an experiment, and if it works, it works,
and if it doesn't, well I tried it. I mean,
not crazy things, but you know, things that I think
(32:27):
might help my body. And I think everybody should do
what they think is right for them and not listen
to everybody who tells them to. You know, well, I'm
saying that, but I've been wiping banana peel on my
face for a couple of days because I thought maybe
there's something good about that efforts.
Speaker 2 (32:46):
Anyway, I also have a lot of nutrient value in them.
And in some of my recipes, I have people clean
their bananas and then you know, cut off the hard
ends and then cut them into chunkston actually add it
to their smoothie with this on.
Speaker 3 (33:05):
With the peel and yeah, yeah, there you go.
Speaker 2 (33:09):
And it really doesn't change the flavor. It might make
it a little more banana because you have more banana,
but it actually increases the nutrient value of that smoothie enormous.
Speaker 3 (33:23):
Yeah, I'm jumping around here, but I'm also wondering. I
My neighbor has a lilac push outside her building, so
I've been going by there every morning and I stop
and just take in the fragments of the lilacs. It's
really beautiful. So I'm thinking that's probably something healing in
that too.
Speaker 2 (33:43):
Oh, I'm sure it is. And think about it. It's
like an essential oil. You know, that fragrance is healing.
And I mean I can smell it. When you were
talking about it, it just it sounded lovely. And you know,
I've got a jasmine bush on my front porch that
(34:07):
oh my goodness. When it's I mean, it just fills
the whole area with that beautiful fragrance. And so one
of the things I wanted to mention to everybody is
if you're planting a garden, and I think it's really
important to plant plants that help the pollinators because they're
really struggling right now. It's actually hummingbird season, and hummingbirds
(34:33):
usually come through here in droves, and I am not
I'm not getting drove this year, and I'm very I
think it's very, very important that we plant plants that
actually have nectar in them and that have a fragrance.
If you've ever been to a flower shop and you
(34:55):
look at all the beautiful flowers, try to find one
with a very fragrance, and you may not find one
because they're all hybridized and genetically modified now, and that
means there's no nectar in that flower. And learned about
I don't know, it's been forty years since I learned this,
(35:18):
so this may be a little bit outdated and worse,
but I learned forty years ago that because of the
genetic modification of all these plants, most of most all
these plants that had flowers, they have no nectar. So
the polypiers were all starving to death and forty years
(35:42):
ago and there were only four of the very large
back bumblebees that were extinct because of that. And so
I think, you know, if we're planting a garden bescher
and plant airlom varieties that are native that have a
rich nectar that will support like the pollinators, you know,
(36:06):
the dandelion, which is probably one of the most beneficial
plants on the planet. You know, it's just it's mind
blowing to find out that, you know, the leading herb
beside they used today was really put out there to
just annihilate that plant, which is the basic planet for
(36:27):
you know, healing your kidneys. It can, it can. It's
a major food source for most pollinators or especially for
different butterflies. And just how unconscious whoever decided to do
that was unconscious to how the web of life works
(36:50):
or the way that you know, a healthy planet should exist.
So few my suggestions would be that you know, plant
some things like dandelions. And I will tell you, dandylions,
you can make tea out of the leaves, you can
(37:10):
dry them, you can put them not dried. You can
take dandelion leaves and put them in your salad. And
oh you can't.
Speaker 3 (37:19):
Dandelion greens all the time. It's delicious.
Speaker 2 (37:24):
You could probably harvest those and sell them because they
are so healthy. I just avoid having any kind of
beside on your or you know, avoid round up ready
for sure, because it is so toxic.
Speaker 3 (37:37):
But yeah, I decided dandelions were weeds. It's the craziest thing.
We had them on our lawn as kids, and we
just thought, oh, you have to get rid of those wines.
Speaker 2 (37:49):
I loved them, and I always loved the words and no,
it's no, it's kind of an upside down world. It's
like everything good for US corporations, you know, tell you that,
just the opposite, you know, for the during media or
whoever it is. But one of the things I did
(38:12):
this year, and we were having a little bit of
a drought at the moment down where I'm living in Texas,
and thankfully we got a really good rain last night,
and I was so thankful. But I've been planting things
like sunflowers, which come in a lot of varieties, but
they are rich in nectar and they can also help
(38:34):
pull toxins from the soil. So if you have a
like some some soil that you want to make less toxic,
or you want to see if you can pull out,
you know, things that maybe you moved there and you
didn't know what they put on that ground. Because things
like ground up they say is in the soil for
(38:55):
anywhere from forty to sixty years. And so if you
you can plant things like sunflowers or even mushrooms, they
can help pull the toxins out as soil and make
that as well healthier.
Speaker 3 (39:10):
But they want to make mentioned this. But there's a
documentary on it's going to be on and you can
get us for free on Amazon Prime. So I think
for the next two day. It's called Grounded. It's all
about the soil. Oh I love that.
Speaker 2 (39:26):
Yes, yes, that's an excellent one. Thank you for sharing
that with us. And do you think they can watch
it worldwide?
Speaker 3 (39:36):
Yes, I'm pretty sure. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (39:38):
Great, So you just put in like documentary documentary grounded.
Speaker 3 (39:43):
I don't have Amazon print. I don't know if I'm
not sure, but you can go put in rounded and
you can see the trailer and then you can probably
figure out how to get it on Amazon Rounded. That's
what it's the title.
Speaker 2 (39:57):
That sounds wonderful, that sounds great.
Speaker 3 (40:00):
I watched the trailer. I would like to see the mova.
I might have to go to a friend's house. I
don't get on.
Speaker 2 (40:08):
Well. If you are putting out plants for like pollinators
or to attract pollinators to your gardeners, support the web
of life, you know, try doing a butterfly bush or
butterfly weed, or He's of Heaven which is a bright,
(40:28):
brilliant kind of scarlet red plant that attracts butterflies and hummingbirds,
or joke By weed, which is a really large plant
with nectar rich pink flowers. But make sure you're getting
heirloom varieties or organic Friday set have not, you know,
had any kind of neo nicked tinoid poison built into
(40:50):
them or anything. Asters, dragonflowers, xenias, things like that are
all excellent. And then also herbs. And I love that
you're growing parsally, Maryanne. I you know, I just here
you are in your New York City apartment and you're
growing parsonally.
Speaker 3 (41:10):
Yeah, from a seed. It's really And talking about craving partially,
it's one of the things I crave. I don't know why,
but so I eat a lot of it. So I
wanted to grow it.
Speaker 2 (41:24):
Well, I just think food out of your own garden
or out of your own little gardening pot. I mean,
for some reason, I always find it tastes better than
anything else.
Speaker 3 (41:37):
Absolutely.
Speaker 2 (41:39):
So I took an old window frame, a wood window
frame that they removed from the house when they replaced
the windows, and I put it out in my yard
and filled it full organic soil, and it made it
just a wonderful raised bed.
Speaker 3 (41:57):
Oh I should have done that. I saw windowsill out
on the street and I thought I should take that,
but it was too heavy. I couldn't list it.
Speaker 2 (42:07):
Well, Mary, and that would be great on your place
at at ever State, New York. But I'm not sure
how you would use it in your apartment.
Speaker 3 (42:15):
Yeah, yeah, I was thinking of putting it on the
fire escape.
Speaker 2 (42:19):
Oh well, that's an interesting idea. You know. Something that
you might consider, Marian for your fire escape would be
like a potato bag. Have you ever seen those. I've
got three of them and they're fabulous, and I've filled
them with organic soil and they have a flap where
you can pull it up and see what, you know,
(42:39):
the roots and things look like you may need to,
you know, put it on something if you brought it
in the house. But it's like a big bag and
things great in it. I'm growing mint in one of them.
Because you can't grow mint in the ground because it
will take over your garden. You need to put that
(43:00):
into container. But yeah, that's a very doable thing, Mary Ann.
We've only got like Capefully, the time went so fast.
You shared so much brilliant information with us today, but
we only have about three minutes left, and I just
want to thank you so much for joining me today
and sharing all that beautiful, brilliant information about forrest bathing
(43:24):
with us.
Speaker 3 (43:25):
Thank you. I'd love to share this kind of information.
We all have to share these things that we find out.
Speaker 2 (43:31):
I agree, and I always appreciate having you on the
show because you always look at things in such a
fresh way and always have kind of a different spin
on it than some of the other people I listened to.
But as we come to the show, I'd love for
you to just share, you know, a brief parting thought
(43:54):
with everyone that maybe they could implement in their lives
to be healthier today.
Speaker 3 (44:00):
Well reiterate, I definitely recommend go out either into a
park or if you live in the country, go to
find a favorite tree and wrap your arms around that
tree and just breathe, and just stand there and let
yourself be supported by the tree, and just hang out there,
(44:22):
close your eyes if you like, and just thank the
tree for being a line. When my friend, a chiropractor,
came to visit me, she looked at my window, I
saw the park across the street. She saw this big,
beautiful tree, and she said, that tree has been healing
for you more than anything else. So I think that's
(44:44):
my parting word. Lets the tree heal you. Trees heal you.
Speaker 2 (44:50):
That's beautiful and I love that. And I have to
admit when I was there in the Freezings winter storm
in January looking at it, that tree was very comforting
to me, and it was always beautiful to you. Thank
you so much for joining us, thank you for sharing
all of that great information with us, and for everyone
(45:13):
listening here. Mary Anne and I send you our best.
We wish you a beautiful life and perfect health, and
and I will talk to you all next week
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