September 24, 2025 • 44 mins
In this enlightening episode of the Dead America Podcast, host Ed Watters welcomes Tigrilla Gardenia—plant advocate, founder of the Naturally Conscious Community, and host of the Reconnect with Plants Wisdom Podcast. Together, they explore the healing power of plants and the profound connection between humans and nature.
Tigrilla shares her transformational journey, including a life-changing encounter with a musical plant that awakened her to nature’s frequency. She explains how grounding, pausing, and tuning into the rhythms of the natural world can lead to emotional clarity, spiritual growth, and personal transformation. Her insights reveal how plants communicate, heal, and guide us toward deeper self-awareness.
This episode dives into the importance of trusting oneself, embracing stillness, and cultivating community support as essential tools for growth. Tigrilla’s work as a world ambassador for plant consciousness offers a refreshing perspective on how nature can be a partner in healing—not just a backdrop to our lives.
Whether you're curious about plant intelligence, seeking spiritual alignment, or simply looking for ways to reconnect with the earth, this conversation offers practical wisdom and soulful inspiration. Discover how nature’s subtle messages can help you live more consciously, compassionately, and in tune with your true self.
00:00 Introduction and Guest Overview
00:54 Meet Tigrilla Gardenia
02:07 Discovering Plant Music
04:50 Connecting with Nature
19:02 The Importance of Grounding
27:10 Balancing Life and Nature
29:20 Podcast Insights and Reflections
40:43 Final Thoughts and Contact Information
Website
https://tigrillagardenia.com
Social media links
https://facebook.com/tigrillagardenia
https://instagram.com/tigrillagardenia
https://youtube.com/@tigrillagardenia
https://linkedin.com/in/tigrillagardenia
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
We're, we're so deep into itthat we don't think about it.
You know, you, you usually feel likeyou're supposed to come on a podcast
to talk about like something you'veproduced, and what we end up talking a
lot about is who you've become and howyou experience the world because of that.
And how that naturalconnection, that connection
(00:54):
Today, we are speakingwith Tigrilla Gardenia.
She is the host of the Reconnect withPlants Wisdom Podcast and the founder
of the Naturally Conscious Community.
Tigrilla
could you please introduce yourself?
Let people know just a littlemore about you, please.
Well, I am so, so happy to be here.
(01:17):
So as, as, you said my name beautifully,beautifully, Tigrilla Gardenia.
And I am a nature inspired mentorand a certified life coach.
But I think what, what most peopleare curious about is that I am a
world ambassador for plant advocacy.
I work mainly with, um,multipotentialites, you know,
multi-passionate people, and, andneurodivergent people to create an
(01:39):
ecosystem, you know, a living ecosystemof life where you can really flourish
in your own way, in your own colors.
And I do this with the helpof the plant kin homes.
So working very, very closelywith plants as mentors, as
models, and as collaborators.
It's about, it's a mouthful, I know.
(01:59):
It takes a minute.
Yeah, I like that a lot.
And, no, that's all good.
Uh, you know, like after reading yourbio, I came across, you discovered
your calling through a life-changingencounter with a musical plant.
(02:22):
Could you please explain this to me?
It just baffles me.
And I've never heard of a musical plant.
Yeah.
so I live in a place calledDamanhur, it's one of the largest
spiritual communities in the world.
It's kind of this Hogwarts foradults type of situation, although I
always say that, for adults, 'causeI think I, I try to qualify it,
(02:43):
but we have tons of children here.
So I don't know why I even say it.
Um, but in, in here we have,you know, lots of different, um,
spiritual technologies and differentways that we interact with the,
the living world all around us.
And so one day I was walking downa hallway here and I heard this
music and I followed the music.
(03:04):
'cause I, so preface that my originaldegree was in music engineering
and electrical engineering.
I've done tons of stuff in themusic world, and the arts is
a big, big part of who I am.
You know, that, that whole creative,get out of the mold, sort of side
that comes when you allow yourself tojust dive into imagination and such.
(03:26):
And so this music intrigued me becauseit was like nothing I had ever heard.
So I followed it and I ended upat a box that was connected to a
speaker on one side and to a planton the other, and I was like, Huh?
And as I was, you know, kind of tryingto figure out what the heck was going on
here, I kept hearing this music and I keptlooking at the plant going, Is that you?
(03:46):
And it felt like in that moment, allof a sudden the plant was saying, Hi,
I'm so glad you can finally see me.
Let's have a conversation.
I really wanna talk to you about thisand that and you know, it's been so many
years that you have been ignoring me.
And so, and it was like, Oh my goodness,you are an actual living, like not
(04:06):
just alive, but like a living being.
And that was it, that wasenough to kind of open me up.
You know, that whole engineering side ofmyself, how the hell does this box work?
And the whole like, you know, part ofme that is about music and that really
feels connected and can understand peoplethrough their musical choices, the music
(04:27):
they create, the music they express.
Like all these different parts justmerge together to give a voice, to
a certain extent, to this plant.
To allow me, this plant to communicatewith me in something that I understood.
And yeah, I've been kindof hooked ever since.
I kind of fell down arabbit hole since then.
(04:49):
Yeah.
A lot of, uh, times on my monologuesI will tell people, You've
gotta get in tune with nature.
Wherever you are, there's nature there.
And through consuming some ofyour content, you talk a lot about
this being in tune with nature.
(05:11):
You know, grass growing through acrack in a parking lot is nature.
And you know, I, I say get close tothe grass because that's where you're
going to find very interesting things.
Lay down in the grass and feel it.
There's, there's this connection that wemiss because we're so busy in our life all
(05:36):
the time, we're running here and there.
And my wife and I, we got achance to purchase some property
out in the middle of no place.
And we're hooked now, we'regoing on thirteen years in.
And you know, we get deer, and birds,and different animals roaming around
(06:00):
our property and it's just verycalming to be in tune with nature.
Sometimes it's very difficult forpeople to even experience that.
How do we relate the feeling thatwe're feeling about connecting
(06:21):
with nature to someone that's souptight and running all the time?
You, you said it perfectly atthe beginning, which is, you
know, the, the, first of all, thedisconnection, what, what I tend
to think of as the original trauma.
Like people wanna talk about the originalsin, forget the original sin, man,
let's talk about the original trauma.
(06:42):
Whatever disconnected us fromour natural sense of being,
the fact that we are nature.
That we have forgotten that weare nature, that we approach the
world with, from that perspective.
And the fact that we tend to thinkof nature as you just described it.
You've had the benefit of being intothat and being, moving into that.
(07:05):
But for a lot of people, the ideaof going out there is scary as hell.
It's like, Oh my goodness, Ihave to like, what, what if
something's gonna bite me or eat me?
Or you know, if I don't know how tofind food, or if my car breaks down,
and I don't know, some bear is gonnacome along and like, I don't know,
people make up all kinds of stuff.
Because when you grow up in a city,
(07:25):
you're almost told that you'renot, that there is no nature.
You're almost, you're, you'redisconnected from your body, you're
told to separate out from your senses.
You're given like, alarm clocksstart at this time, breakfast is at
this hour, lunch is at this hour,dinner is at this time, like you
no longer have any natural rhythms.
You don't have natural rhythms of lightbecause the light is coming from, you
(07:47):
know, some flip the switch type of thing.
Like all these different piecesthat constantly from birth reinforce
your disconnection from thisfundamental part of who you are.
And so you can't just dump 'eminto the middle of nowhere because
most people will just freak out.
So you gotta go, Okay.
Little, little steps at a time.
(08:09):
And it's amazing.
If you think now, um, especiallyafter COVID, was the giant
kind of houseplant craze.
Now the houseplant craze has gone alittle too far in the perspective of,
oh my God, I'm gonna control, 'causewe've extended that control thing.
But that's a really great place to startjust the same as the blade of grass that
you mentioned is a great place to start.
(08:29):
Which is, Okay for a second, I'mgonna stop thinking about this
as a thing I have to control.
And instead, what happens whenI just spend time with you?
Like literally, now if you ask anybodywho has a house full of plants,
they will tell you all the benefits.
You know, they won't talk about how muchtime they spend watering or whatever.
They'll just say, Oh, I love beingin the room with my cup of coffee.
(08:53):
It feels so good.
Like they already know it, but theyjust haven't intellectualized it yet.
Which is kind of a goodthing to a certain extent.
But then you have to, just take that alittle step further, which is sit there.
Now move that into a conscious thinglike, Hello Aloe, or Hello, you know,
succulent that I found at Ikea fortwo dollars, probably almost dead.
(09:15):
Like, let me just sit withyou here for a second.
And I am just gonna sit in, you know,to a certain extent, silence and just
whatever, let me know whatever youwanna let me know, type of thing.
And just start to open that.
And start to then also see that inyour city, in the littlest things,
(09:35):
it doesn't have to be big, like,like you said, the blade of
grass coming out of the crack.
The, the abandoned parking lot where,you know, plantains and dandelions have
taken over the corner or that crack pipewhere there's like some mossy, licheny
thing that's growing out of it that youdon't know how to name and you don't know
how to identify, or the street trees.
(09:56):
I mean, come on, almost all citieshave street trees somewhere.
Just stopping for a second andlike being there can be incredibly
rewarding, like our nervous system.
And when immersed in nature, likeour cortisol levels drop by like
(10:17):
fifty percent in twenty minutes.
We have, uh, sensations, of peoplewho live near abandoned, uh, parking
lots that have now been taken over bylike wild grasses and stuff start to
experience lower levels of depression.
Like it's not, doesn't take that much.
Don't, don't try to say, Oh,but I don't have time for a
(10:40):
hike or to blah, blah, blah.
No, just five minutes sitting inyour house with your cup of coffee
or your tea and just looking atthe plant and saying, I see you.
I'm here.
That's enough.
That's enough to start the process.
Yeah.
It really can be a cleansing, you know?
(11:01):
No, no matter where you are, there's apossibility of finding something new.
And you know, it's interesting.
We often think about ants andthings that are noticeable, but
when you get deeper into it, youfind things, it's an ecosystem.
(11:26):
And it all works together.
And we, we tend to miss outif we don't tune ourselves in.
You said you're into music earlierand, you know, I feel that life
is a resonance itself and we canalter our frequency levels just by
(11:51):
being emotionally and physicallyin tune with what we are around.
And if, if we're awareof that, we can actually
physically change what we are byremoving ourself or immersing ourselves
(12:13):
even deeper into the experience.
And it all starts with that tuning into the frequency that you're desiring.
What's your thoughts on that?
Yeah, I, I couldn't agree more.
So I often try to explain that wethink of language, for example, or of
(12:34):
other things as a music, as, um, uh,like we think of music as a language,
but it's actually the opposite.
Which is very close to what yousaid, which is, you know, it is,
music is the origin, it is that, likeyou said, resonance, uh, frequency.
So in reality, everything is amusicality because all resonance is
(12:54):
vibration and all vibration is music.
And so everything has that musicalityrunning through, which is why the
music of the plants, for example, thisdevice that in the end, my community
has been working on since the 1970sand is now, is publicly available.
That's the reason why the music ofthe plants is so powerful because it
gives, it's a musical instrument forplants that allows the plants to,
(13:18):
um, use a sense that we haven't shutdown, which is a sense of hearing.
Because other senses that are stillvibration, that are still resonance, as
you were just mentioning, we've shut down.
So we don't, we don't feel the earth'svibration as we could, the geomagnetic.
We don't sense, you know, theelectrical impulses that are coming
through our environment, we don'tsense any of those consciously.
(13:40):
I still believe that they're dormant toa certain extent and that we're, they're
there and I actually teach about, youknow, how to reawaken these lost senses.
But the point being is likeeverything vibrates, everything
resonates, and we can tune into it.
We're, we're just this giant antennathat we can develop and slowly attenuate
(14:05):
that antenna until we lock into what,what is good for us and what is moving
us in the direction that we wanna do.
And this is a big part of whatstarts to come online when you
reconnect with the natural world.
When you give yourself that, that moment,like I was saying, of I'm not even
gonna do anything, like I could give youother exercises, which I have kind of
(14:27):
on my Insight timer or in my NaturallyConscious Community that you can try.
But let's just even try the basics.
If I sit there and I consciouslyopen myself and say to the plant,
I'm here, then some part of mysenses is going to start to feel
what that plant is resonating andwhat that plant is sending to me.
(14:51):
And so that starts a chain of eventsthat allows me to continuously,
in a safe way, open my senses.
Because I think we're, um, so disconnectedand life is so loud in non harmonious
ways that we think that openingour senses is gonna make it worse.
(15:12):
When in reality, as you said, when youopen your senses like a sensor, like
a being of nature, the attenuationpart becomes natural as well.
And so you're much better at tuning in.
If you think about it from theperspective of just straight up
biology, plants are sessile, right?
Rooted into the ground, cannot runaway from their problems like we do.
(15:36):
So what happens?
They have to be hypervigilant, theyhave to know everything, they can't just
close their eyes or, you know, theirphotoreceptors and say, I don't wanna
see what's coming from this direction.
Or, I don't wanna sense that thing,or, No, no, no, don't tell me.
Because that's death, right?
They have to be the opposite, which is,I'm gonna open everything, I'm gonna know,
(15:57):
I'm gonna use all my twenty senses, andI'm constantly going to be filtering this.
And then to not get overwhelmed, Ichoose which ones to focus in on.
So we evolved from plants, right?
We are an evolution thatcomes later in the chain.
That means that those capabilities thatalso you see in, you know, the fungi
world, that you see in bacteria, thatyou see also even in animals, right?
(16:20):
This ability for them to usehyper senses that are, senses
that are hyper, uh, sensitive tocertain things that we have lost.
But we're animals too, which means, how isit that we're the last on the food chain
with the most reduced amount of things?
It's because our culture has reduced them,not because our biology reduces them.
(16:42):
And so once you start to walkinto that experience and you
start to open again and say, Oh.
Truly being able to choose meansseeing everything, and experiencing
everything, and then from there,making an informed choice.
Which of course, I start tobecome better at doing it a
little bit more automatically,
it's not like I'm constantlythinking about it.
(17:04):
But the point is that it's just,it is a natural part of who we are.
If we didn't, you know, abdicate ourresponsibilities, if we didn't give away
our power to societies and cultures andnorms and values and all these different
things, but instead, we absorbed allthat in and then made the choices that
(17:25):
were best for our bodies, for our, ourway of living, for the things that we
want to accomplish for the environmentin which we're in, and that's that
living ecosystem I'm talking about.
You know, when I do coaching withpeople, it's never about, like let's,
that's the reason I say it's lifecoaching, I never look at just like
this one problem in a vacuum becausethat reductionist thinking doesn't work.
(17:47):
It's more of, let's lookat everything around you,
let's open up to all theweird ways your mind works.
'Cause I love that, likewhatever you think is odd.
Like I process this because I hearthe sound, I go over here and I start
to paint, and I go over here and I'mreally good at numbers, and over here,
instead, I jump up and down becausemy body feels, and blah, blah, blah.
(18:09):
Throw it all into the pot, man.
Let's look at it all and thenlet's see which of those sensors
is attuned to which signaler.
And so boom, boom.
And then we start to like weavethese through so that you start to
master the way that you truly are.
Yeah.
(18:29):
You know, I go back to my youngerdays when my mother, she was a plant
freak, and we would always see herhumming, and, you know, watering her
plants, and talking to the plants.
(18:50):
And we never could figure out, well,why does her plants grow so well?
And it's that connectionthat she had with the plants.
And another thing I, I'm reallyinterested about is grounding.
You know, we're often times notwilling to take our shoes and socks
(19:14):
off and connect with the earth andbe part of nature in its true form.
That's because usually we're isolatedbecause of the soles of our shoes and
we, we don't understand that connectioncan bring a completeness and it makes
(19:38):
you feel good inside and about yourselfwhen you actually experience it.
A lot of people can connect becausethey go to the beach and that's when
they'll take their shoes off andthey'll run in the warm sand, and that
really brings them that joy feeling.
(20:00):
You're connected, you're, youknow, grounding to the earth.
What's your thoughts on grounding?
It's funny that you say this 'cause,um, as, as I've been talking to more
and more and more people, I'm realizingthat as I hear the things that each one
of them shares, it, it, it connects meto elements, and times, and moments,
(20:22):
and things that I've changed in my life.
Again, naturally, organically,let's say it that way, where
it's just naturally happened.
Now I was a, I love the concept,I love the concept of shoes.
Like in the sense that when I was, Idid some acting for, for several years,
and when I was an actor, I alwaysfound my character through shoes.
Like it was, like once I putthe shoes on, I could feel it.
But it's really funny, I spendthe, now, the majority of my life,
(20:49):
either if it's warm, which I live ina climate that, um, I live in a place
which, it's Northern Italy, we do have aperiod of summer, in the summer, I will be
basically with flip flops because as soonas I sit somewhere, I take my shoes off.
Like, it's like always, always, always.
And then for the rest of the year whereI have to wear shoes, I've basically
switched all my shoes to barefoot shoes.
(21:10):
To like, really, reallythin soled barefoot shoes.
Even my hiking boots, and that wasa humongous shift in the way that
I experience the deep, immersive,natural environment, because I
would wear, you know, hiking boots.
I'm, I'm not from a place I have to,just so people know, I was a city girl.
(21:32):
When I tell my mother about someof the things that I do now, she's
like, she just looks at me andshe's like, I don't understand,
we're city people.
I'm like, Look, we're from an island.
And, but she's like, Yeah, butI'm from the city of an island.
And I was just like, All right.
Whatever.
But I get it.
Like, you know, we are city folks.
So don't, don't pretend, I'm notlike some, you know, I didn't grow up
running through barefoot, you know?
(21:52):
But I have, but Icompletely agree with you.
I've always had this streak ofme that likes to be, as a matter
of fact, I'm barefoot right now.
And, um, and I have marble floors, which Iadore, uh, for lots of different reasons.
But, um, but my, when I switched tomy hiking boots, I would, um, felt
very unstable when I would hikewearing, you know, normal hiking boots.
(22:15):
And I just thought it was me,
I just thought I wasn't used to it, Ididn't really understand, I just, you
know, I had, I, I'm kind of new to it.
I live in the middle of, I live atthe foothills of the Alps, so there's
lots of mountains around here.
And I have a really good friendof mine who's a Woods Guide and
I absolutely adore going on hishikes because it feels very safe.
'Cause I'm kind of like still,when it comes to that kind
(22:36):
of immersive environment, um,I'm more of a meadow girl.
I like, I have a beautiful meadow infront of my house, there's gorgeous
cows who have been having way toomuch sex in the last few days, and
then a, a river that's flowing down.
And so it's, it's wonderful.
But I do, I do love, like, learning andgetting comfortable with the mountain.
I thought it was just me.
(22:56):
And then I bought a pairof barefoot hiking boots.
Oh my gosh, It changes everything.
My feet feel the shape of the rocks, andof the stones, and of the little gravel,
and whatever it is that I'm walking on.
I feel it through my feet.
And while yes, there is still a solebecause you know, it has a little bit
(23:18):
of a sole, but you're, you're absolutelyright, that connection is so much more.
And so I have a pair of like, youknow, barefoot ballerinas that I
pretty much wear most of the year.
My flip flops, which I try tobuy the ones that are as flat
and as like soleless as possible.
Uh, I'll slowly be adding morefrom, there's this one company
(23:40):
in, uh, Portland that I adore.
Soft Star Shoes, Soft StarShoes, which I absolutely adore.
So whenever I'm in the US I liketry to get a pair, that's where
my, um, hiking boots are from.
And, and, and I just really feelthat difference where it's like,
okay, if I have to wear shoes, Iprefer to wear these that really let
(24:04):
me feel the contours of the earth.
That really allow me, and oftentimes Ican easily slip out of them because if
I'm just about anywhere where I can, Iwill slip out of my shoes immediately.
So I am, I am in a complete agreementwith you, which is that connection to,
(24:24):
it's our stability, right?
Like we as human beings stabilized byputting our two feet flat on the ground
and our entire body dynamics are built,are predicated on how well I stand.
And I think that that's another one ofthose preconditioned elements, which is
when I switched to barefoot shoes or,and, and even when I started to just
(24:47):
embrace the idea that, okay, during thesummer I'm just gonna wear like really
flat flip flops, very, and I stopped.
Um, I try very hard to buy almost,even when I buy, like, I don't know,
I don't really use tennis shoes, Ihave a few pairs of Chuck Tees, right?
Converse Chuck Tees,because they're flat inside.
And I wanted to feel again what myfeet are supposed to be shaped like in
(25:13):
order to prevent back injury and pain.
So as I would feel things in my body,because again, that connection that
naturally goes, I'd start to playwith, okay, is it, is it the way
that I'm shaping, you know, my back?
Is it, am I supposed to tuck in?
Am I supposed to tuck out?
And where are my feet standing?
And you can't do that if you're wearingshoes with like a massive arch, and
(25:35):
with all these, like we don't evenrealize that all these pains and aches
and things that we have are comingfrom our inability to explore the most
basic parts of our body's anatomy.
Which is posture, right?
And I'm not by no meansan expert on anybody else.
(25:56):
I can just tell you that I have spent
probably the last few years becauseI had a back injury that happened
a few years ago, and after thatI was like, Okay, I don't wanna
have to deal with this anymore.
And so I'm gonna literally explorebarefoot shoes so that my body, wide
stance, so my toes are now wider out.
(26:17):
Because that's the way our feetwere meant to be, wider, not narrow.
And then where, how amI supposed to stand?
Do I lean a little forward?
Do I lean a little back?
Does my butt come out?
Did my butt come in?
Is it my stomach muscles?
Is it my back muscles?
Like, and that connection, which also isthanks to this little plant that's sitting
(26:39):
over my shoulder, uh, you know, namedDracaena as I, as I lovingly call Key
because it doesn't wanna give me a name.
Because it's all about embodimentof, of that, that physical body.
So yeah, we're, we're completelyin agreement with that, which
is that grounding is, goeven beyond just connection.
It's connection to self and, andit's connection to self through
(27:03):
everything that Mother Earth givesus, you know, everything that the
earth provides for us in that method.
Uh, I'll, I'll tell you,it, it's interesting.
You know, if you do immerse yourselfinto nature and get in tune with
not only it, but what it needs.
(27:24):
Because all of my plants that we'veplanted around here, we have berry bushes,
we have grapes, we have plum trees, uh,you know, uh, all of these bushes, and
trees, and fruits, and things that weplant, we have to maintain and water.
(27:48):
And it's like a renewing every yearbecause you have to cut out the
old and then the new flourishes.
And I have this little analogy thatI use, Life is like a muddy shoe.
(28:13):
We are the muddy shoe and life is themuddy trail and the people, places,
and things are the mud on the trail.
If you've ever walked in boots,you know how heavy mud can get.
It's clay, it sticks, it gets heavy,you have to wipe that mud off.
(28:38):
Those people, places, and things.
And then you've got the reallythin liquidy mud, the good
mud that just soaks into yourthreads and it's not leaving you.
So you really have to thinkabout what you're hauling around.
And do you need to wipe the mud off?
(28:59):
Living in a place like you live and thestyle of life that you live, what, what
balance techniques do you use to createthat harmonious balance in your life?
(29:20):
Ooh, my podcast is eclectic.
I had, uh, I just did an interview thismorning with someone who I wasn't really
sure what direction we would take, and itwas so, I was, like crying in a good way.
I was so emotional of the thingsthat we were talking about.
He was, we, we, I ended up calling it,uh, um, Path to, Path of a Mystic, of
(29:41):
a Modern Mystic because he's somebodywho spent nine months in silence.
And we were talking about thatdeep connection to the mystery.
Yeah, nine months in silence.
Can you imagine that?
And he was, you know, somebody who hasreally explored that deep connection of
mysticism, which is my inner presence inthe presence of the natural world, right?
(30:05):
Where I, I am in nature as nature andI sit in that presence and silence.
And he did it through silence,
silence.
I do it through movement, goingback to the whole music thing.
I get there, I get to that equivalentsilence through, through movement,
through the way that my body moves.
(30:26):
Um, so I have people like him.
Um, I, I have a, a person who wrote ascience fiction, um, type book around,
a series of books for teens connectedto really helping people understand
the natural world and connect intothe natural world through fantasy.
(30:49):
Um, I've had all kinds of different,uh, authors, and artists, and people.
One person who's more of anesoteric person who was talking
about her work with plants to,um, embody, again, consciousness.
And so my podcast really has a widerange of people that are all working
(31:13):
very closely with and co-creating with,
one of the things I do when I do mypre-interviews is, I, I always give
them the same little spiel and Ialways say, Please do not get insulted,
but I am not looking, there's lotsof really great podcasts out there
that talk about working, um, usingplants, I don't, I'm not one of them.
(31:35):
Like my podcast is about the width,the, the co-creation, the, the
partnership, the, the deep lessonsthat come from that immersion,
like you were mentioning, you know,thirteen years, you're living in this
environment and it changes you becauseyou now don't feel that separation.
(31:56):
You don't feel like Nature isthis thing outside of me, it's me.
And I sometimes am in it, I sometimesam it, I sometimes participate
in it, I sometimes observe.
But it's still all different facets ofme, and that's what I love to explore.
(32:17):
Yeah, I like that a lot.
You, you know, so much of life is achallenge and when we learn to pause,
it, it is a life changing game.
You know, my, my wife now is learningto do that and I've witnessed a
change in her over the last few monthsthat, uh, I never thought I'd see.
(32:43):
It's remarkable.
And just learning to pause, think aboutwhat you're thinking, and then react.
That pause is very important, I like it.
So where, go ahead.
It's a really interesting question becauseas I was, I was, as I was thinking about,
(33:06):
you know, the guest of my podcast and,and as you were talking about, you know,
your own experiences, I was realizing thatone of the most beautiful things that I
love to capture is how, because, becausemost of us don't really, we're, we're so
deep into it that we don't think about it.
You know, you, you usually feel likeyou're supposed to come on a podcast to
(33:27):
talk about like something you've produced.
And what we end up talking a lotabout is who you've become and how you
experience the world because of that.
And how that natural connection, thatconnection back to my true nature has
allowed me, or, without even realizing it,a lot of, like if I go back and I look at
(33:50):
my, I don't know, my journals from twentyyears ago or even, even just fifteen years
ago when I arrived at Damanhur, and I goand I look at my journals and I see all
the things I was quote unquote working onabout me, my personal development, so many
of those that I tried so hard with so manytechniques, with so many classes, with so
(34:12):
many things, are, are so beautiful today.
And yeah, I mean, I am a personwho kept it there, kept it present.
But I, it, it, it's, it is what thenatural world kind of soaks into you.
Like you said, that, that liquidymud that gets into all of your
(34:33):
tissues, and all of the threads,and all of the parts of who you are.
That then
it's like no matter how differenteach thread is or each piece of
clothing, there's a commonality thatcomes into it and a, and a uniform
part of it that just is there.
And, and that's been what thenatural world has done for me.
(34:54):
And it's what I hear in the guests as wellas even a lot of, believe it or not, a lot
of the podcasts that I've been on, likewhere I've been interviewed, I discover
as we're talking, this exact thing.
Like what we're talkingabout right now, right?
Like, like, oh my goodness, you know,we're, we're, we're so much more
than our kind of mental chatter is.
(35:16):
If we were just to recognizehow fricking amazing we are.
So thinking about it from thatperspective, I realized that my kind
of, a lot of my techniques are, I mean,I use, I use a lot of different things,
but so much of it is just stopping, and
(35:37):
recognizing, and resting.
Like I would say that probably my biggest,one of the biggest lessons that I have
learned for myself or that I've embodied,I don't even think about it as learned
anymore because that implies just thinkingabout it, but more of like what I've
embodied is, and I, and I just testedthis maybe about ten days ago without
realizing it was the ability to trust inmyself so much that I could just stop.
(36:04):
And so I had this like looming deadlineI was working on, I had been asked to
do something at the very last momentand if you were to look at the amount
of stuff on my plate, you would thinkthat I would wake up like every morning
at four o'clock in the morning andgo to bed every day at three o'clock,
at three o'clock in the morning, you know?
It's like kind of crazyfor the amount of output.
But in the other, on the other side, Ispend a lot of time sitting like where
(36:28):
I am right now, staring out at Gary, thesilver fern, which is this beautiful,
you know, whatever, I don't even knowhow tall, I've tried, I should try
to figure that out, I think he's likesixty, seventy feet tall plant that's
like, tree that's outside of my window.
And all these plants here, and I spenda lot of time just staring and being.
And when I had a looming deadlineand my head just, my, like, mind,
(36:54):
brain, mind could not figurethings out, I was like, Screw it.
I'm just gonna sit backand I'm gonna rest.
Because that's what Noelle, theChristmas cactus told me to do.
And, um, very insistently.
And was like, you justneed to rest, just rest.
And don't, and I was like, No,but I have to get this done by
tomorrow, like, by tomorrow morning.
(37:15):
It's like, I don't have time to rest.
It was like, just rest, you'll see.
And I woke up on like Mondaymorning and in three hours the
whole thing was done because Ilistened to the cycles of my body.
And the time that I was trying to createit, was not a cycle that worked for me.
And so I would say that my kind ofquote unquote kind of balance or, or
(37:36):
reconnection type piece is literally stop.
Just stop.
Yeah.
Yeah, so that, that is a good thing to do.
Pause, reflect, you know,feel, I, I like that.
And then we can actually, andit happens like that usually.
(37:59):
When, when we're in thatreactive state, we wanna jump.
And learning to do that takes a long timefor a lot of people, but it's possible.
And when we do learn to just releasethat energy, because that's really what
that is, that emotion is an energy, andif we can learn to control the energy
(38:25):
and put the energy where it shouldbe put, instead of just letting it go
everywhere, there's a more productive,
uh, feeling that we receive afterwe learn that technique to put
the energy where it needs to go.
(38:46):
Yes, you're mad and I, I understandthat you're mad, but why are you mad?
And can we do anything to preventyou from getting there anymore?
That's where we need to focus,that negative thought and put
it into a positive thought.
And that's what we here at theDead America Podcast really
(39:09):
try to relate to people.
It's okay to be you, you'vegot to be who you are.
And then when you tune into thatnatural state, you can become whatever
you want to be, not what externalforces want you to be for them.
(39:31):
What's your thoughts?
And I would add one other, I'm justgonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna add one little
piece before we, we jump to the end.
Which is, you said it beautifully,it's like pause and think.
But in between there I would addfeel, because that disconnect.
So much of the answer is alreadyinside of your body, so much
(39:52):
of the answer is already there.
And you're trying to bubble it up sothat you could process it and put it into
some form, like your mind needs to thinkabout it in the sense of how do I get it
out of me to give it to somebody else?
But the actual answer is already inthere in, it's come in through something
(40:14):
you smelled, connected with somethingthat like some little hormone that moved
around here, and with something that yousaw seven years ago and some memory that
got lodged in your, it's all in there.
And it's just a matter of letting yourbody bubble it from, you know, all your
other kind of brain-like mind piecesand to the brain that then processes
(40:38):
it and says, Oh, output, type of thing.
Tigrilla, I could speak withyou for hours on this subject.
Because, you know, when you get trulyinto a conversation, it, it just flies by.
Uh, do you wanna add anything else toour conversation today before we wrap up?
(41:03):
Yeah, I would.
I would add one piece, which is, um,so much, we know that in the natural
world, we evolve faster together.
Like mutualisms and mutuallybeneficial partnerships are the
ones that, that evolve the fastest.
All the other types, whether you'retalking about predation, or parasitism,
(41:23):
or competition, or all these otherthings, are kind of temporary.
They last for small periods of timebecause they can be really useful.
Um, nothing is, is bad, it's,just has to find its use.
And so my kind of piece to everybody is,you know, go and find the support you
need to reconnect back into yourself.
(41:45):
I know it might seem like, sure, theytalk about the mystic, that sort of, if
you can do nine, nine months of silence,then sure you can do it alone maybe.
But even in those nine nights of,nine months of silence that I was
talking to this mystic this morning,you know, he, when he came out,
he went to the indigenous world.
Like he, he has spent most of his life nowliving amongst indigenous peoples, which
(42:09):
is all about community and it's all about,you know, those, those relationships
that can sometimes be really frustrating.
'Cause I live in a community.
Trust me, when you're thatclose to people, it can be hard.
But it's so rewardingto help us understand.
So find support, youknow, find a community.
You know, don't be afraid to say, I needhelp with this, or, I need to be held.
(42:34):
Maybe I just need to be heldwhile I explore this and allow
somebody else to come and hold you.
Whether that's, you know, apartner, or a friend, or, uh,
somebody who is a professionalwho can hold you in that space.
But just, you don'thave to go at it alone.
I like what you've said.
It's been a very interestingconversation and it, it is remarkable
(42:59):
how you just let the conversation go.
Could you let people know howto reach out to you, get ahold
of you and find your work?
Yeah, luckily I'm pretty easy 'causeeverything is based off my name.
So, uh, my website istigrillagardenia.com and my Facebook,
my LinkedIn, my Instagram, myYouTube, it's all @tigrillagardenia.
(43:24):
And then, so those are the easiest ways.
And if you're looking for me, you canfind from there how to like, you know,
book on a call and we can talk, or you canjoin the Naturally Conscious Community,
which is my online, like online communityfor deep human plant interactions.
It's been a joy discussingthese things with you today.
(43:45):
Thank you for sharing with us, Tigrilla.
Thank you so much, this hasbeen absolutely wonderful.
Thank you for joining us today.
If you found this podcast enlightening,entertaining, educational in any way,
please share, like, subscribe, and joinus right back here next week for another
(44:10):
great episode of the Dead America Podcast.
I'm Ed Watters, your host, enjoyyour afternoon wherever you might be.
We're, we're so deep into itthat we don't think about it.
You know, you, you usually feel likeyou're supposed to come on a podcast
to talk about like something you'veproduced, and what we end up talking a
lot about is who you've become and howyou experience the world because of that.
And how that naturalconnection, that connection
(00:54):
Today, we are speakingwith Tigrilla Gardenia.
She is the host of the Reconnect withPlants Wisdom Podcast and the founder
of the Naturally Conscious Community.
Tigrilla
could you please introduce yourself?
Let people know just a littlemore about you, please.
Well, I am so, so happy to be here.
(01:17):
So as, as, you said my name beautifully,beautifully, Tigrilla Gardenia.
And I am a nature inspired mentorand a certified life coach.
But I think what, what most peopleare curious about is that I am a
world ambassador for plant advocacy.
I work mainly with, um,multipotentialites, you know,
multi-passionate people, and, andneurodivergent people to create an
(01:39):
ecosystem, you know, a living ecosystemof life where you can really flourish
in your own way, in your own colors.
And I do this with the helpof the plant kin homes.
So working very, very closelywith plants as mentors, as
models, and as collaborators.
It's about, it's a mouthful, I know.
(01:59):
It takes a minute.
Yeah, I like that a lot.
And, no, that's all good.
Uh, you know, like after reading yourbio, I came across, you discovered
your calling through a life-changingencounter with a musical plant.
(02:22):
Could you please explain this to me?
It just baffles me.
And I've never heard of a musical plant.
Yeah.
so I live in a place calledDamanhur, it's one of the largest
spiritual communities in the world.
It's kind of this Hogwarts foradults type of situation, although I
always say that, for adults, 'causeI think I, I try to qualify it,
(02:43):
but we have tons of children here.
So I don't know why I even say it.
Um, but in, in here we have,you know, lots of different, um,
spiritual technologies and differentways that we interact with the,
the living world all around us.
And so one day I was walking downa hallway here and I heard this
music and I followed the music.
(03:04):
'cause I, so preface that my originaldegree was in music engineering
and electrical engineering.
I've done tons of stuff in themusic world, and the arts is
a big, big part of who I am.
You know, that, that whole creative,get out of the mold, sort of side
that comes when you allow yourself tojust dive into imagination and such.
(03:26):
And so this music intrigued me becauseit was like nothing I had ever heard.
So I followed it and I ended upat a box that was connected to a
speaker on one side and to a planton the other, and I was like, Huh?
And as I was, you know, kind of tryingto figure out what the heck was going on
here, I kept hearing this music and I keptlooking at the plant going, Is that you?
(03:46):
And it felt like in that moment, allof a sudden the plant was saying, Hi,
I'm so glad you can finally see me.
Let's have a conversation.
I really wanna talk to you about thisand that and you know, it's been so many
years that you have been ignoring me.
And so, and it was like, Oh my goodness,you are an actual living, like not
(04:06):
just alive, but like a living being.
And that was it, that wasenough to kind of open me up.
You know, that whole engineering side ofmyself, how the hell does this box work?
And the whole like, you know, part ofme that is about music and that really
feels connected and can understand peoplethrough their musical choices, the music
(04:27):
they create, the music they express.
Like all these different parts justmerge together to give a voice, to
a certain extent, to this plant.
To allow me, this plant to communicatewith me in something that I understood.
And yeah, I've been kindof hooked ever since.
I kind of fell down arabbit hole since then.
(04:49):
Yeah.
A lot of, uh, times on my monologuesI will tell people, You've
gotta get in tune with nature.
Wherever you are, there's nature there.
And through consuming some ofyour content, you talk a lot about
this being in tune with nature.
(05:11):
You know, grass growing through acrack in a parking lot is nature.
And you know, I, I say get close tothe grass because that's where you're
going to find very interesting things.
Lay down in the grass and feel it.
There's, there's this connection that wemiss because we're so busy in our life all
(05:36):
the time, we're running here and there.
And my wife and I, we got achance to purchase some property
out in the middle of no place.
And we're hooked now, we'regoing on thirteen years in.
And you know, we get deer, and birds,and different animals roaming around
(06:00):
our property and it's just verycalming to be in tune with nature.
Sometimes it's very difficult forpeople to even experience that.
How do we relate the feeling thatwe're feeling about connecting
(06:21):
with nature to someone that's souptight and running all the time?
You, you said it perfectly atthe beginning, which is, you
know, the, the, first of all, thedisconnection, what, what I tend
to think of as the original trauma.
Like people wanna talk about the originalsin, forget the original sin, man,
let's talk about the original trauma.
(06:42):
Whatever disconnected us fromour natural sense of being,
the fact that we are nature.
That we have forgotten that weare nature, that we approach the
world with, from that perspective.
And the fact that we tend to thinkof nature as you just described it.
You've had the benefit of being intothat and being, moving into that.
(07:05):
But for a lot of people, the ideaof going out there is scary as hell.
It's like, Oh my goodness, Ihave to like, what, what if
something's gonna bite me or eat me?
Or you know, if I don't know how tofind food, or if my car breaks down,
and I don't know, some bear is gonnacome along and like, I don't know,
people make up all kinds of stuff.
Because when you grow up in a city,
(07:25):
you're almost told that you'renot, that there is no nature.
You're almost, you're, you'redisconnected from your body, you're
told to separate out from your senses.
You're given like, alarm clocksstart at this time, breakfast is at
this hour, lunch is at this hour,dinner is at this time, like you
no longer have any natural rhythms.
You don't have natural rhythms of lightbecause the light is coming from, you
(07:47):
know, some flip the switch type of thing.
Like all these different piecesthat constantly from birth reinforce
your disconnection from thisfundamental part of who you are.
And so you can't just dump 'eminto the middle of nowhere because
most people will just freak out.
So you gotta go, Okay.
Little, little steps at a time.
(08:09):
And it's amazing.
If you think now, um, especiallyafter COVID, was the giant
kind of houseplant craze.
Now the houseplant craze has gone alittle too far in the perspective of,
oh my God, I'm gonna control, 'causewe've extended that control thing.
But that's a really great place to startjust the same as the blade of grass that
you mentioned is a great place to start.
(08:29):
Which is, Okay for a second, I'mgonna stop thinking about this
as a thing I have to control.
And instead, what happens whenI just spend time with you?
Like literally, now if you ask anybodywho has a house full of plants,
they will tell you all the benefits.
You know, they won't talk about how muchtime they spend watering or whatever.
They'll just say, Oh, I love beingin the room with my cup of coffee.
(08:53):
It feels so good.
Like they already know it, but theyjust haven't intellectualized it yet.
Which is kind of a goodthing to a certain extent.
But then you have to, just take that alittle step further, which is sit there.
Now move that into a conscious thinglike, Hello Aloe, or Hello, you know,
succulent that I found at Ikea fortwo dollars, probably almost dead.
(09:15):
Like, let me just sit withyou here for a second.
And I am just gonna sit in, you know,to a certain extent, silence and just
whatever, let me know whatever youwanna let me know, type of thing.
And just start to open that.
And start to then also see that inyour city, in the littlest things,
(09:35):
it doesn't have to be big, like,like you said, the blade of
grass coming out of the crack.
The, the abandoned parking lot where,you know, plantains and dandelions have
taken over the corner or that crack pipewhere there's like some mossy, licheny
thing that's growing out of it that youdon't know how to name and you don't know
how to identify, or the street trees.
(09:56):
I mean, come on, almost all citieshave street trees somewhere.
Just stopping for a second andlike being there can be incredibly
rewarding, like our nervous system.
And when immersed in nature, likeour cortisol levels drop by like
(10:17):
fifty percent in twenty minutes.
We have, uh, sensations, of peoplewho live near abandoned, uh, parking
lots that have now been taken over bylike wild grasses and stuff start to
experience lower levels of depression.
Like it's not, doesn't take that much.
Don't, don't try to say, Oh,but I don't have time for a
(10:40):
hike or to blah, blah, blah.
No, just five minutes sitting inyour house with your cup of coffee
or your tea and just looking atthe plant and saying, I see you.
I'm here.
That's enough.
That's enough to start the process.
Yeah.
It really can be a cleansing, you know?
(11:01):
No, no matter where you are, there's apossibility of finding something new.
And you know, it's interesting.
We often think about ants andthings that are noticeable, but
when you get deeper into it, youfind things, it's an ecosystem.
(11:26):
And it all works together.
And we, we tend to miss outif we don't tune ourselves in.
You said you're into music earlierand, you know, I feel that life
is a resonance itself and we canalter our frequency levels just by
(11:51):
being emotionally and physicallyin tune with what we are around.
And if, if we're awareof that, we can actually
physically change what we are byremoving ourself or immersing ourselves
(12:13):
even deeper into the experience.
And it all starts with that tuning into the frequency that you're desiring.
What's your thoughts on that?
Yeah, I, I couldn't agree more.
So I often try to explain that wethink of language, for example, or of
(12:34):
other things as a music, as, um, uh,like we think of music as a language,
but it's actually the opposite.
Which is very close to what yousaid, which is, you know, it is,
music is the origin, it is that, likeyou said, resonance, uh, frequency.
So in reality, everything is amusicality because all resonance is
(12:54):
vibration and all vibration is music.
And so everything has that musicalityrunning through, which is why the
music of the plants, for example, thisdevice that in the end, my community
has been working on since the 1970sand is now, is publicly available.
That's the reason why the music ofthe plants is so powerful because it
gives, it's a musical instrument forplants that allows the plants to,
(13:18):
um, use a sense that we haven't shutdown, which is a sense of hearing.
Because other senses that are stillvibration, that are still resonance, as
you were just mentioning, we've shut down.
So we don't, we don't feel the earth'svibration as we could, the geomagnetic.
We don't sense, you know, theelectrical impulses that are coming
through our environment, we don'tsense any of those consciously.
(13:40):
I still believe that they're dormant toa certain extent and that we're, they're
there and I actually teach about, youknow, how to reawaken these lost senses.
But the point being is likeeverything vibrates, everything
resonates, and we can tune into it.
We're, we're just this giant antennathat we can develop and slowly attenuate
(14:05):
that antenna until we lock into what,what is good for us and what is moving
us in the direction that we wanna do.
And this is a big part of whatstarts to come online when you
reconnect with the natural world.
When you give yourself that, that moment,like I was saying, of I'm not even
gonna do anything, like I could give youother exercises, which I have kind of
(14:27):
on my Insight timer or in my NaturallyConscious Community that you can try.
But let's just even try the basics.
If I sit there and I consciouslyopen myself and say to the plant,
I'm here, then some part of mysenses is going to start to feel
what that plant is resonating andwhat that plant is sending to me.
(14:51):
And so that starts a chain of eventsthat allows me to continuously,
in a safe way, open my senses.
Because I think we're, um, so disconnectedand life is so loud in non harmonious
ways that we think that openingour senses is gonna make it worse.
(15:12):
When in reality, as you said, when youopen your senses like a sensor, like
a being of nature, the attenuationpart becomes natural as well.
And so you're much better at tuning in.
If you think about it from theperspective of just straight up
biology, plants are sessile, right?
Rooted into the ground, cannot runaway from their problems like we do.
(15:36):
So what happens?
They have to be hypervigilant, theyhave to know everything, they can't just
close their eyes or, you know, theirphotoreceptors and say, I don't wanna
see what's coming from this direction.
Or, I don't wanna sense that thing,or, No, no, no, don't tell me.
Because that's death, right?
They have to be the opposite, which is,I'm gonna open everything, I'm gonna know,
(15:57):
I'm gonna use all my twenty senses, andI'm constantly going to be filtering this.
And then to not get overwhelmed, Ichoose which ones to focus in on.
So we evolved from plants, right?
We are an evolution thatcomes later in the chain.
That means that those capabilities thatalso you see in, you know, the fungi
world, that you see in bacteria, thatyou see also even in animals, right?
(16:20):
This ability for them to usehyper senses that are, senses
that are hyper, uh, sensitive tocertain things that we have lost.
But we're animals too, which means, how isit that we're the last on the food chain
with the most reduced amount of things?
It's because our culture has reduced them,not because our biology reduces them.
(16:42):
And so once you start to walkinto that experience and you
start to open again and say, Oh.
Truly being able to choose meansseeing everything, and experiencing
everything, and then from there,making an informed choice.
Which of course, I start tobecome better at doing it a
little bit more automatically,
it's not like I'm constantlythinking about it.
(17:04):
But the point is that it's just,it is a natural part of who we are.
If we didn't, you know, abdicate ourresponsibilities, if we didn't give away
our power to societies and cultures andnorms and values and all these different
things, but instead, we absorbed allthat in and then made the choices that
(17:25):
were best for our bodies, for our, ourway of living, for the things that we
want to accomplish for the environmentin which we're in, and that's that
living ecosystem I'm talking about.
You know, when I do coaching withpeople, it's never about, like let's,
that's the reason I say it's lifecoaching, I never look at just like
this one problem in a vacuum becausethat reductionist thinking doesn't work.
(17:47):
It's more of, let's lookat everything around you,
let's open up to all theweird ways your mind works.
'Cause I love that, likewhatever you think is odd.
Like I process this because I hearthe sound, I go over here and I start
to paint, and I go over here and I'mreally good at numbers, and over here,
instead, I jump up and down becausemy body feels, and blah, blah, blah.
(18:09):
Throw it all into the pot, man.
Let's look at it all and thenlet's see which of those sensors
is attuned to which signaler.
And so boom, boom.
And then we start to like weavethese through so that you start to
master the way that you truly are.
Yeah.
(18:29):
You know, I go back to my youngerdays when my mother, she was a plant
freak, and we would always see herhumming, and, you know, watering her
plants, and talking to the plants.
(18:50):
And we never could figure out, well,why does her plants grow so well?
And it's that connectionthat she had with the plants.
And another thing I, I'm reallyinterested about is grounding.
You know, we're often times notwilling to take our shoes and socks
(19:14):
off and connect with the earth andbe part of nature in its true form.
That's because usually we're isolatedbecause of the soles of our shoes and
we, we don't understand that connectioncan bring a completeness and it makes
(19:38):
you feel good inside and about yourselfwhen you actually experience it.
A lot of people can connect becausethey go to the beach and that's when
they'll take their shoes off andthey'll run in the warm sand, and that
really brings them that joy feeling.
(20:00):
You're connected, you're, youknow, grounding to the earth.
What's your thoughts on grounding?
It's funny that you say this 'cause,um, as, as I've been talking to more
and more and more people, I'm realizingthat as I hear the things that each one
of them shares, it, it, it connects meto elements, and times, and moments,
(20:22):
and things that I've changed in my life.
Again, naturally, organically,let's say it that way, where
it's just naturally happened.
Now I was a, I love the concept,I love the concept of shoes.
Like in the sense that when I was, Idid some acting for, for several years,
and when I was an actor, I alwaysfound my character through shoes.
Like it was, like once I putthe shoes on, I could feel it.
But it's really funny, I spendthe, now, the majority of my life,
(20:49):
either if it's warm, which I live ina climate that, um, I live in a place
which, it's Northern Italy, we do have aperiod of summer, in the summer, I will be
basically with flip flops because as soonas I sit somewhere, I take my shoes off.
Like, it's like always, always, always.
And then for the rest of the year whereI have to wear shoes, I've basically
switched all my shoes to barefoot shoes.
(21:10):
To like, really, reallythin soled barefoot shoes.
Even my hiking boots, and that wasa humongous shift in the way that
I experience the deep, immersive,natural environment, because I
would wear, you know, hiking boots.
I'm, I'm not from a place I have to,just so people know, I was a city girl.
(21:32):
When I tell my mother about someof the things that I do now, she's
like, she just looks at me andshe's like, I don't understand,
we're city people.
I'm like, Look, we're from an island.
And, but she's like, Yeah, butI'm from the city of an island.
And I was just like, All right.
Whatever.
But I get it.
Like, you know, we are city folks.
So don't, don't pretend, I'm notlike some, you know, I didn't grow up
running through barefoot, you know?
(21:52):
But I have, but Icompletely agree with you.
I've always had this streak ofme that likes to be, as a matter
of fact, I'm barefoot right now.
And, um, and I have marble floors, which Iadore, uh, for lots of different reasons.
But, um, but my, when I switched tomy hiking boots, I would, um, felt
very unstable when I would hikewearing, you know, normal hiking boots.
(22:15):
And I just thought it was me,
I just thought I wasn't used to it, Ididn't really understand, I just, you
know, I had, I, I'm kind of new to it.
I live in the middle of, I live atthe foothills of the Alps, so there's
lots of mountains around here.
And I have a really good friendof mine who's a Woods Guide and
I absolutely adore going on hishikes because it feels very safe.
'Cause I'm kind of like still,when it comes to that kind
(22:36):
of immersive environment, um,I'm more of a meadow girl.
I like, I have a beautiful meadow infront of my house, there's gorgeous
cows who have been having way toomuch sex in the last few days, and
then a, a river that's flowing down.
And so it's, it's wonderful.
But I do, I do love, like, learning andgetting comfortable with the mountain.
I thought it was just me.
(22:56):
And then I bought a pairof barefoot hiking boots.
Oh my gosh, It changes everything.
My feet feel the shape of the rocks, andof the stones, and of the little gravel,
and whatever it is that I'm walking on.
I feel it through my feet.
And while yes, there is still a solebecause you know, it has a little bit
(23:18):
of a sole, but you're, you're absolutelyright, that connection is so much more.
And so I have a pair of like, youknow, barefoot ballerinas that I
pretty much wear most of the year.
My flip flops, which I try tobuy the ones that are as flat
and as like soleless as possible.
Uh, I'll slowly be adding morefrom, there's this one company
(23:40):
in, uh, Portland that I adore.
Soft Star Shoes, Soft StarShoes, which I absolutely adore.
So whenever I'm in the US I liketry to get a pair, that's where
my, um, hiking boots are from.
And, and, and I just really feelthat difference where it's like,
okay, if I have to wear shoes, Iprefer to wear these that really let
(24:04):
me feel the contours of the earth.
That really allow me, and oftentimes Ican easily slip out of them because if
I'm just about anywhere where I can, Iwill slip out of my shoes immediately.
So I am, I am in a complete agreementwith you, which is that connection to,
(24:24):
it's our stability, right?
Like we as human beings stabilized byputting our two feet flat on the ground
and our entire body dynamics are built,are predicated on how well I stand.
And I think that that's another one ofthose preconditioned elements, which is
when I switched to barefoot shoes or,and, and even when I started to just
(24:47):
embrace the idea that, okay, during thesummer I'm just gonna wear like really
flat flip flops, very, and I stopped.
Um, I try very hard to buy almost,even when I buy, like, I don't know,
I don't really use tennis shoes, Ihave a few pairs of Chuck Tees, right?
Converse Chuck Tees,because they're flat inside.
And I wanted to feel again what myfeet are supposed to be shaped like in
(25:13):
order to prevent back injury and pain.
So as I would feel things in my body,because again, that connection that
naturally goes, I'd start to playwith, okay, is it, is it the way
that I'm shaping, you know, my back?
Is it, am I supposed to tuck in?
Am I supposed to tuck out?
And where are my feet standing?
And you can't do that if you're wearingshoes with like a massive arch, and
(25:35):
with all these, like we don't evenrealize that all these pains and aches
and things that we have are comingfrom our inability to explore the most
basic parts of our body's anatomy.
Which is posture, right?
And I'm not by no meansan expert on anybody else.
(25:56):
I can just tell you that I have spent
probably the last few years becauseI had a back injury that happened
a few years ago, and after thatI was like, Okay, I don't wanna
have to deal with this anymore.
And so I'm gonna literally explorebarefoot shoes so that my body, wide
stance, so my toes are now wider out.
(26:17):
Because that's the way our feetwere meant to be, wider, not narrow.
And then where, how amI supposed to stand?
Do I lean a little forward?
Do I lean a little back?
Does my butt come out?
Did my butt come in?
Is it my stomach muscles?
Is it my back muscles?
Like, and that connection, which also isthanks to this little plant that's sitting
(26:39):
over my shoulder, uh, you know, namedDracaena as I, as I lovingly call Key
because it doesn't wanna give me a name.
Because it's all about embodimentof, of that, that physical body.
So yeah, we're, we're completelyin agreement with that, which
is that grounding is, goeven beyond just connection.
It's connection to self and, andit's connection to self through
(27:03):
everything that Mother Earth givesus, you know, everything that the
earth provides for us in that method.
Uh, I'll, I'll tell you,it, it's interesting.
You know, if you do immerse yourselfinto nature and get in tune with
not only it, but what it needs.
(27:24):
Because all of my plants that we'veplanted around here, we have berry bushes,
we have grapes, we have plum trees, uh,you know, uh, all of these bushes, and
trees, and fruits, and things that weplant, we have to maintain and water.
(27:48):
And it's like a renewing every yearbecause you have to cut out the
old and then the new flourishes.
And I have this little analogy thatI use, Life is like a muddy shoe.
(28:13):
We are the muddy shoe and life is themuddy trail and the people, places,
and things are the mud on the trail.
If you've ever walked in boots,you know how heavy mud can get.
It's clay, it sticks, it gets heavy,you have to wipe that mud off.
(28:38):
Those people, places, and things.
And then you've got the reallythin liquidy mud, the good
mud that just soaks into yourthreads and it's not leaving you.
So you really have to thinkabout what you're hauling around.
And do you need to wipe the mud off?
(28:59):
Living in a place like you live and thestyle of life that you live, what, what
balance techniques do you use to createthat harmonious balance in your life?
(29:20):
Ooh, my podcast is eclectic.
I had, uh, I just did an interview thismorning with someone who I wasn't really
sure what direction we would take, and itwas so, I was, like crying in a good way.
I was so emotional of the thingsthat we were talking about.
He was, we, we, I ended up calling it,uh, um, Path to, Path of a Mystic, of
(29:41):
a Modern Mystic because he's somebodywho spent nine months in silence.
And we were talking about thatdeep connection to the mystery.
Yeah, nine months in silence.
Can you imagine that?
And he was, you know, somebody who hasreally explored that deep connection of
mysticism, which is my inner presence inthe presence of the natural world, right?
(30:05):
Where I, I am in nature as nature andI sit in that presence and silence.
And he did it through silence,
silence.
I do it through movement, goingback to the whole music thing.
I get there, I get to that equivalentsilence through, through movement,
through the way that my body moves.
(30:26):
Um, so I have people like him.
Um, I, I have a, a person who wrote ascience fiction, um, type book around,
a series of books for teens connectedto really helping people understand
the natural world and connect intothe natural world through fantasy.
(30:49):
Um, I've had all kinds of different,uh, authors, and artists, and people.
One person who's more of anesoteric person who was talking
about her work with plants to,um, embody, again, consciousness.
And so my podcast really has a widerange of people that are all working
(31:13):
very closely with and co-creating with,
one of the things I do when I do mypre-interviews is, I, I always give
them the same little spiel and Ialways say, Please do not get insulted,
but I am not looking, there's lotsof really great podcasts out there
that talk about working, um, usingplants, I don't, I'm not one of them.
(31:35):
Like my podcast is about the width,the, the co-creation, the, the
partnership, the, the deep lessonsthat come from that immersion,
like you were mentioning, you know,thirteen years, you're living in this
environment and it changes you becauseyou now don't feel that separation.
(31:56):
You don't feel like Nature isthis thing outside of me, it's me.
And I sometimes am in it, I sometimesam it, I sometimes participate
in it, I sometimes observe.
But it's still all different facets ofme, and that's what I love to explore.
(32:17):
Yeah, I like that a lot.
You, you know, so much of life is achallenge and when we learn to pause,
it, it is a life changing game.
You know, my, my wife now is learningto do that and I've witnessed a
change in her over the last few monthsthat, uh, I never thought I'd see.
(32:43):
It's remarkable.
And just learning to pause, think aboutwhat you're thinking, and then react.
That pause is very important, I like it.
So where, go ahead.
It's a really interesting question becauseas I was, I was, as I was thinking about,
(33:06):
you know, the guest of my podcast and,and as you were talking about, you know,
your own experiences, I was realizing thatone of the most beautiful things that I
love to capture is how, because, becausemost of us don't really, we're, we're so
deep into it that we don't think about it.
You know, you, you usually feel likeyou're supposed to come on a podcast to
(33:27):
talk about like something you've produced.
And what we end up talking a lotabout is who you've become and how you
experience the world because of that.
And how that natural connection, thatconnection back to my true nature has
allowed me, or, without even realizing it,a lot of, like if I go back and I look at
(33:50):
my, I don't know, my journals from twentyyears ago or even, even just fifteen years
ago when I arrived at Damanhur, and I goand I look at my journals and I see all
the things I was quote unquote working onabout me, my personal development, so many
of those that I tried so hard with so manytechniques, with so many classes, with so
(34:12):
many things, are, are so beautiful today.
And yeah, I mean, I am a personwho kept it there, kept it present.
But I, it, it, it's, it is what thenatural world kind of soaks into you.
Like you said, that, that liquidymud that gets into all of your
(34:33):
tissues, and all of the threads,and all of the parts of who you are.
That then
it's like no matter how differenteach thread is or each piece of
clothing, there's a commonality thatcomes into it and a, and a uniform
part of it that just is there.
And, and that's been what thenatural world has done for me.
(34:54):
And it's what I hear in the guests as wellas even a lot of, believe it or not, a lot
of the podcasts that I've been on, likewhere I've been interviewed, I discover
as we're talking, this exact thing.
Like what we're talkingabout right now, right?
Like, like, oh my goodness, you know,we're, we're, we're so much more
than our kind of mental chatter is.
(35:16):
If we were just to recognizehow fricking amazing we are.
So thinking about it from thatperspective, I realized that my kind
of, a lot of my techniques are, I mean,I use, I use a lot of different things,
but so much of it is just stopping, and
(35:37):
recognizing, and resting.
Like I would say that probably my biggest,one of the biggest lessons that I have
learned for myself or that I've embodied,I don't even think about it as learned
anymore because that implies just thinkingabout it, but more of like what I've
embodied is, and I, and I just testedthis maybe about ten days ago without
realizing it was the ability to trust inmyself so much that I could just stop.
(36:04):
And so I had this like looming deadlineI was working on, I had been asked to
do something at the very last momentand if you were to look at the amount
of stuff on my plate, you would thinkthat I would wake up like every morning
at four o'clock in the morning andgo to bed every day at three o'clock,
at three o'clock in the morning, you know?
It's like kind of crazyfor the amount of output.
But in the other, on the other side, Ispend a lot of time sitting like where
(36:28):
I am right now, staring out at Gary, thesilver fern, which is this beautiful,
you know, whatever, I don't even knowhow tall, I've tried, I should try
to figure that out, I think he's likesixty, seventy feet tall plant that's
like, tree that's outside of my window.
And all these plants here, and I spenda lot of time just staring and being.
And when I had a looming deadlineand my head just, my, like, mind,
(36:54):
brain, mind could not figurethings out, I was like, Screw it.
I'm just gonna sit backand I'm gonna rest.
Because that's what Noelle, theChristmas cactus told me to do.
And, um, very insistently.
And was like, you justneed to rest, just rest.
And don't, and I was like, No,but I have to get this done by
tomorrow, like, by tomorrow morning.
(37:15):
It's like, I don't have time to rest.
It was like, just rest, you'll see.
And I woke up on like Mondaymorning and in three hours the
whole thing was done because Ilistened to the cycles of my body.
And the time that I was trying to createit, was not a cycle that worked for me.
And so I would say that my kind ofquote unquote kind of balance or, or
(37:36):
reconnection type piece is literally stop.
Just stop.
Yeah.
Yeah, so that, that is a good thing to do.
Pause, reflect, you know,feel, I, I like that.
And then we can actually, andit happens like that usually.
(37:59):
When, when we're in thatreactive state, we wanna jump.
And learning to do that takes a long timefor a lot of people, but it's possible.
And when we do learn to just releasethat energy, because that's really what
that is, that emotion is an energy, andif we can learn to control the energy
(38:25):
and put the energy where it shouldbe put, instead of just letting it go
everywhere, there's a more productive,
uh, feeling that we receive afterwe learn that technique to put
the energy where it needs to go.
(38:46):
Yes, you're mad and I, I understandthat you're mad, but why are you mad?
And can we do anything to preventyou from getting there anymore?
That's where we need to focus,that negative thought and put
it into a positive thought.
And that's what we here at theDead America Podcast really
(39:09):
try to relate to people.
It's okay to be you, you'vegot to be who you are.
And then when you tune into thatnatural state, you can become whatever
you want to be, not what externalforces want you to be for them.
(39:31):
What's your thoughts?
And I would add one other, I'm justgonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna add one little
piece before we, we jump to the end.
Which is, you said it beautifully,it's like pause and think.
But in between there I would addfeel, because that disconnect.
So much of the answer is alreadyinside of your body, so much
(39:52):
of the answer is already there.
And you're trying to bubble it up sothat you could process it and put it into
some form, like your mind needs to thinkabout it in the sense of how do I get it
out of me to give it to somebody else?
But the actual answer is already inthere in, it's come in through something
(40:14):
you smelled, connected with somethingthat like some little hormone that moved
around here, and with something that yousaw seven years ago and some memory that
got lodged in your, it's all in there.
And it's just a matter of letting yourbody bubble it from, you know, all your
other kind of brain-like mind piecesand to the brain that then processes
(40:38):
it and says, Oh, output, type of thing.
Tigrilla, I could speak withyou for hours on this subject.
Because, you know, when you get trulyinto a conversation, it, it just flies by.
Uh, do you wanna add anything else toour conversation today before we wrap up?
(41:03):
Yeah, I would.
I would add one piece, which is, um,so much, we know that in the natural
world, we evolve faster together.
Like mutualisms and mutuallybeneficial partnerships are the
ones that, that evolve the fastest.
All the other types, whether you'retalking about predation, or parasitism,
(41:23):
or competition, or all these otherthings, are kind of temporary.
They last for small periods of timebecause they can be really useful.
Um, nothing is, is bad, it's,just has to find its use.
And so my kind of piece to everybody is,you know, go and find the support you
need to reconnect back into yourself.
(41:45):
I know it might seem like, sure, theytalk about the mystic, that sort of, if
you can do nine, nine months of silence,then sure you can do it alone maybe.
But even in those nine nights of,nine months of silence that I was
talking to this mystic this morning,you know, he, when he came out,
he went to the indigenous world.
Like he, he has spent most of his life nowliving amongst indigenous peoples, which
(42:09):
is all about community and it's all about,you know, those, those relationships
that can sometimes be really frustrating.
'Cause I live in a community.
Trust me, when you're thatclose to people, it can be hard.
But it's so rewardingto help us understand.
So find support, youknow, find a community.
You know, don't be afraid to say, I needhelp with this, or, I need to be held.
(42:34):
Maybe I just need to be heldwhile I explore this and allow
somebody else to come and hold you.
Whether that's, you know, apartner, or a friend, or, uh,
somebody who is a professionalwho can hold you in that space.
But just, you don'thave to go at it alone.
I like what you've said.
It's been a very interestingconversation and it, it is remarkable
(42:59):
how you just let the conversation go.
Could you let people know howto reach out to you, get ahold
of you and find your work?
Yeah, luckily I'm pretty easy 'causeeverything is based off my name.
So, uh, my website istigrillagardenia.com and my Facebook,
my LinkedIn, my Instagram, myYouTube, it's all @tigrillagardenia.
(43:24):
And then, so those are the easiest ways.
And if you're looking for me, you canfind from there how to like, you know,
book on a call and we can talk, or you canjoin the Naturally Conscious Community,
which is my online, like online communityfor deep human plant interactions.
It's been a joy discussingthese things with you today.
(43:45):
Thank you for sharing with us, Tigrilla.
Thank you so much, this hasbeen absolutely wonderful.
Thank you for joining us today.
If you found this podcast enlightening,entertaining, educational in any way,
please share, like, subscribe, and joinus right back here next week for another
(44:10):
great episode of the Dead America Podcast.
I'm Ed Watters, your host, enjoyyour afternoon wherever you might be.
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