Your Outside Mindset

Verla Fortier

Join retired nursing professor Verla Fortier as she shows you that going outside is not just a fun thing to do -- it can save your life. Verla shines the light on aging adults who may have chronic disease as she talks to green space scientists, forest bathing leaders, natural navigators, and all things in-between to get practical tips on how you can get the most out of your time spent close to trees, grass, and shrubs. If you want to live longer, prevent dementia, and control your chronic illness - you will love being a part of this conversation.

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Top 10 Your Outside Mindset Episodes

Goodpods has curated a list of the 10 best Your Outside Mindset episodes, ranked by the number of listens and likes each episode have garnered from our listeners. If you are listening to Your Outside Mindset for the first time, there's no better place to start than with one of these standout episodes. If you are a fan of the show, vote for your favorite Your Outside Mindset episode by adding your comments to the episode page.

What Surprised Me at My Son's Wedding This Summer

Your Outside Mindset

09/11/23 • 17 min

This podcast, Your Outside Mindset is now in the top 5% most popular shows out of 3.2 million podcasts globally. Thank you to each one of you in 56 countries for listening and sharing Your Outside Mindset podcast episodes.
For science- based information with easy to use tools, tips and practical advice on how to get the most of your time in green space see my website https://treesmendus.com and check out my books Take Back Your Outside Mindset: Live Longer, Stress Less, and Control Your Chronic Illness and Optimize Your Heart Rate: Balance Your Mind and Body With Green Space.

In this solo episode today, I want to share something that happened to me at my son Max’s wedding to Sarah - which took me by surprise and made me step back and revaluate who else needs to hear the message I am sharing in this podcast.
So let me take you to the big day. I was there mother of the groom and asked to do a big speech.I was nervous, practicing, second guessing whether this was the right thing to say-all the things that parents feel before making a momental speech.. I won’t read you the whole speech. So listeners here is part of my speech on that precious loved filled day:

When the kids were small we lived on Loughborough Lake near Kingston. One day I was rushing around tidying our house and saying, “I just want to get things back to normal.” Max who was in Grade 1 at the time said, “Mommy Where’s normal?” I replied “ I don’t know, where do you think it is? Max said “Out in the middle of the lake somewhere.”

And when Max was little he loved to lie on the ground and look up into the tree branches – for a very long time. So long that I finally decided to start lying down next to him. When I did, he said “look mommy angels” – he was referring to the light glancing through the tree branches.

I don’t know, but if I asked Max today “where is normal?” I am pretty sure he would say anywhere in the world – and mostly outside and always with Sarah.|”
At the end of the speech his friends shared with me the impact that my speech had on them - what it also showed that with their careers, technology and screens they have lost touch with the importance of making time for nature and green spaces in their busy lives.

So this is for you the 20-30 year olds at Max and Sarah’s wedding:

I get it. If I rewind my time back in my career and busy life in my 20s and 30s, I made time for the gym and workouts but that was it. Now you probably know that I have lupus today. I look back and think that if I had made time for more nature and green space daily in my busy career life – if I had

For peer reviewed research on how your time spent in green space can change your mindset, balance your nervous system and your heart rate please go to verlafortier.substack.com and check out my books Take Back Your Outside Mindset: Live Longer, Stress Less, and Control Your Chronic Illness and Optimize Your Heart Rate: Balance Your Mind and Body With Green Space

Dr. Patrycja Matusik, physician-radiologist: Heart Rate Variability (HRV) and Lupus

Your Outside Mindset

03/17/23 • 29 min

Full Podcast Transcript at treesmendus.com
Books written by podcast host Verla Fortier:
Optimize Your Heart Rate: Balance Your Mind and Body With Green Space
Take Back Your Outside Mindset: Live Longer, Stress Less, and Control Your Chronic Illness

Dr. Patrycja Matusik is a physician-radiologist at University Hospital, Kraków, Poland. She completed her medicine degree and PhD at Jagiellonian University in Kraków. In her work she focuses primarily on cardiovascular imaging, lung diseases and neuroimaging.

In her scientific work, one of the main directions is heart rate variability (HRV). She went to the Cardiovascular Division at the Department of Medicine at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Missouri, USA on two occasions. There she completed internships in the field of advanced methods of ECG analysis under the mentorship of Prof. Phyllis K. Stein in the Heart Rate Variability Laboratory.

She is the co-author of several scientific papers published in peer-reviewed international journals, including the European Heart Journal.

1. Please tell us a little more about your personal - why you are interested in lupus erythematosus.

First, I want to say thank you for inviting me to your podcast.

As you said I’m a physician radiologist from Poland. Privately, I’m a mother of 3-year-old Julia. My husband, Paweł Matusik, is also a doctor – a cardiologist, and together we combine our passion for scientific research.

I was inspired by lupus for the first time on my internship at the Heart Rate Variability Laboratory led by Prof. Phyllis K. Stein at Washington University in St. Louis. During the course of lupus, involvement of multiple organ systems, including the cardiovascular and autonomic nervous system, occurs. Therefore, we decided to bring together and summarize current knowledge about the scientific findings and potential clinical utility of heart rate variability measures in patients with systemic lupus erythematosus.

2. Please tell us what lupus erythematosus is and what can happen during the disease process as it relates to your publication “ Heart Rate Variability in patients with systemic lupus erythematosus: a systematic review and methodological considerations.”

Systemic lupus eryt

Dr. Bing Zhao: "Short term exposure (3 days or less) to air pollution increases risk of sudden cardiac arrest -- men and women over 65 yrs more susceptible."

Your Outside Mindset

05/29/22 • 18 min

Dr. Bing Zhao is a geriatric doctor in the first university of science and technology of China. This hospital is in Hefei, a city located in the east China with a population of more than 9 million. She completed her medicine degree in China and PhD in University of Tasmania in Australia. Then she went to Duke University in the US as a research scholar.
Her PhD research interest is air pollution and cardiovascular diseases. She is recognized for her presentations at the youth section of annual congress of the European Society of Cardiology, the largest cardiology congress in the world. She has published several papers and one of them was published in the Lancet planetary health.
Please go to my website for the link to her paper. In my new book Optimize Your Heart Rate I tell the story of my close friend Leslie, aged 64 and apparently healthy with no diagnosis of heart disease, who died of sudden cardiac arrest after 2 days on a road trip.
Time line of my interview with Dr. Bing Zhao
3:29 Breathing polluted air threatens our hearts
4:19 The consequences of PM2.5 particulate matter is dramatic
5:03 PM 2.5 is a mix of solid and liquid - very thin- less than the size of a strand hair -goes right to lungs and heart
7:22 Study in Japan nation wide - Out of hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) - compared # of OHCA with air pollution over 3 days.
7:58 1/4 million cases over 2 years - 65 years of age increased incidence
8:30 Japan has air quality stations all over the world
9:01 Cardiac arrest occurs when the heart suddenly stops pumping = major medical emergency
9:42 Study finding: Short term exposure to PM2.5 up to 3 days associated with increased risk of OHCA -- men and women over 65 more susceptible
10:24 Gases in traffic emissions - nitrogen dioxide, sulphur dioxide, carbon monoxide
11:02 What surprised Dr Zhao the most? People assume that air quality is safe at levels at levels below WHO levels. There are no safe levels of PM 2.5 air pollution for our hearts.
11:35 Current air pollution policy has to be changed
12:28 We need new health care responses to air pollution
Chose public transportation over cars, use air purifiers indoors, and access green space in day to day activity.
14:49 Acute exposure to air pollution increases risk of sudden cardiac arrest in less than 3 days.
18:43 Time line and more info on my website https://treesmendus.com
For the story of my life long friend Leslie who died of a sudden cardiac arrest at the age of 63 on day 3 of her road trip see my new book Optimize Your Heart Rate: B

Personal Update: Breast Cancer Diagnosis and What My New Book Is About

Your Outside Mindset

11/30/21 • 12 min

I was thrown for a loop this summer by a diagnosis of breast cancer. Here is my story: I felt a lump in my breast, it was surgically removed. When we got the pathology report back it showed that I had a form of cancer called Ductal Carcioma In Situ (DCIS) which means the cancer is contained in ducts in the breast. Just the word cancer scares everyone. And in a split second, I had to make the decision about starting radiation therapy immediately. When my mind started to spin, I knew from my past lupus diagnosis experience with green space – that I needed the help of nature to ease the ruminations of “what if” and “if only.” My boys said “read your book mom.” Since I know that time in green space goes right to our physiology, mentally and physically, I knew I was not only helping myself to think clearly, but I was putting my entire body into a less stressed state. Green space not only calmed the landscape in my mind, but allowed me to reach out to others immediately who helped me feel comfortable with my treatment decision. I opted not to have radiation at this time and instead use “active surveillance” option to see if the cancer was spreading. In November 2021, my mammogram was all clear of cancer. Relief for me and my loved ones, but I became doubly aware of the profound impact of a cancer diagnosis on the person, their loved ones, and their community.

As I planned I did spend the summer with my loved ones outside swimming, walking, cycling, golfing, and gardening – and we enjoyed the black bears that passed through and sometimes stayed for days in my back yard in Pine Falls, Manitoba. It was a wonderful summer in spite of the cancer uncertainty.
I am so excited to share with you a synopsis of my up coming book. It has been part of my life for a long time – 3 years now. It is about my friend who I love, who died suddenly. Their were a lot of challenges in writing this book: I struggled with the fact that the love of Leslie’s life Bill would be reading it, that her family and friends who also loved her, all live in our small town of Pine Falls, Manitoba.I worried that Leslie was hiding something from us – maybe she knew something we didn’t about her heart and her health? I had no access to Leslie’s medical records, but I did know all I had to know: Leslie was on no heart medication, (so no heart dx) and was not referred out to a heart specialist (so nothing wrong with her heart that would warrant a specialist referral). So in writing this I had to get the balance right between the love of my friend and the peer reviewed science of heart and environment. I am so proud of getting it done, especially in light of these challenges. The book is close to finished and will be out in the New Year.
For transcript please visit https://treesmendus.com
Book: Take Back Your Outside Mindset

Paula Frizzell: Nature, Photography, Mindfulness and Gratitude

Your Outside Mindset

03/19/21 • 44 min

Paula Frizzell IG and Facebook: paulacfrizzell
We met on IG when you tagged me on your beautiful IG post of a bird saying you’d read my book. I was delighted. Please tell us your story.

Well my story is a long one but a positive one about what trees, nature, and mindfulness can do in our lives. Your book, Take Back Your Outside Mindset spoke to me and I devoured it, then ordered more to share with those who I love that are suffering. And I am getting lots of great feedback from them. They tease me about going forest bathing with their husbands.

So this gets my mind away from things and you never know what you might see if you are noticing. So taking the photo relaxes me.

This morning I was doing that. My husband brought me some daffodils, narcissus and I shot deep into the flower. That was my meditation time to look deep into the flower to see what I could see. I use a macro setting to get deeper and deeper into the flower.

That is where the gratitude comes in. To see if through the lens of a camera, upload those photos to a computer or ipad, to see the infinite detail and creation inside that bulb is amazing.

It is like a dove sitting outside here in my courtyard, it has purple and pink – it has so many colors. If you are just driving by, you will see a mourning dove as just a grey bird. But they are not grey at all. Their eye is black but it is ringed with turquoise. So that is where I am grateful for that extra eye -- that extra vision of all that is out here.

For the spring and winter I focus on birds. For the summer and fall I focus on plants, bugs, and butterflies. I do waterfowl in the winter time because that is when the ducks and the other water birds are out and about in our area.
For a complete transcript of our conversation please visit: treesmendus.com
Thank you to our podcast listeners in now 26 countries and 309 cities around the world. I would love hear your comments on this episode and others – just go to my website treesmendus.com. (all one word) Please check out my book and workbook Take Back Your Outside Mindset: Live Longer, Prevent Dementia, and Control Your Chronic Illness.

Listeners if you like, think ab

Nicole Christina: Psychotherapist & Zestful Aging Podcast Host

Your Outside Mindset

10/16/20 • 37 min

Episode 15
In this episode psychotherapist and Zestful Aging Podcast Host talks about her reasons for getting outside and how she helps her clients to take an "aesthetic walk" outside. Nicole says by taking outside breaks you are respecting and resting your brain -- so you can feel better mentally and physically.
Nicole Christina is the host of Zestful Aging Podcast, an interview show heard in 92 countries. She’s also a psychotherapist of 30 years, specializing in eating disorders.

Find out more at ZestfulAging.com.

Nicole Christina practices in Syracuse, NY, in the Syracuse University area. She specializes in food and body issues, mindfulness, and positive aging.

I love her Podcast Zesful Aging, so much so that I asked Nicole if I could be on her podcast before I started mine. There we learned how much we both loved and needed nature. I will link to that podcast on my website Treesmendus.com

Nicole Christina in addition to being a podcaster, you are a psychotherapist. How does nature and your outside mindset figure into the way you treat clients?

I have an example of a client I had yesterday. He was struggling like many people are these days, feeling very isolated. They were not able to do the things he normally does well – getting together with people, doing the hobbies that they normally do.
Our lives are all up ended now. I asked him what has he been doing in terms of getting outside. I am not talking about a fitbit, 10,000 step walk, I talking about what I call “an aesthetic walk” which is just walking around for the value of being outside.
And a lot of the value I learned from your book, but a lot of the value I don’t think we truly understand. But we know that we are outdoor creatures, that we evolved to be outside, and that not getting sunlight, not getting near trees, grasses... and just being in your apartment is going to cause trouble. It is going to make feeling bad even worse.

So one of the prescriptions I gave him, and this is just a first session - and this is a guy who is pretty athletic - “I just want you to go on an aesthetic walk, you are not trying to increase your cardiovascular level, the whole point is to go outside to feel good: your body, your spirit, and of course we know it helps mood, anxiety, and emotional regulation.
So that is sort of a basic prescription that I use for people who come to me and say “ I feel terrible; I am anxious.”

It is not to say a walk around the block is going to cure everything. It is not going to cure Covid, worry about starting college, being scared, or solve the economic crisis, but it sure helps. And it is free, and we know it works. So that is something that is a go-to for me when I am evaluating someone, one of the questions I ask them is "how often do you get outside?"

That is a long winded answer, but some of these things are basic. And I have been

The Treeline With Author Ben Rawlence

Your Outside Mindset

03/25/22 • 38 min

Ben Rawlence The Treeline
Ben Rawlence City of Thorns
Ben Rawlence Radio Congo
Ben Rawlence on Twitter
Black Mountains College website
Black Mountains College on Twitter
Verla Fortier Optimize Your Heart Rate: Balance Your Mind and Body With Green Space
Verla Fortier Take Back Your Outside Mindset
Verla Fortier Take Back Your Outside Mindset Workbook

Interview with Ben Rawlence: Recording Time Stamps
5:00 Radical hope and clear eyed awareness.
2 degrees means awful things but also opportunity to reconsider our ways, and embrace our roles as guardians of nature - re- entangle with nature.
8:12 New ways of looking and seeing. Ancient and some modern with huge datasets re future impacts. Biochemical research on trees, we have characterized so few.
9:15 See forest as a garden and laboratory, change in perspective, "timber is the least valuable thing in the forest."
Travel writing, Adventures with Characters.
Seven Chapters, Seven Species, Seven Stops Around the World in the Boreal
10:15 Wales The Yew Tree in Ben's back yard. Simple questions: Why is that tree in that place?
How long has it been here?
Ice Age, reminders of the patterns vegetation on earth and time scale of 2000 or 8000 years. Long time scales.
13:43 Scotland story here is deforestation. Treeless landscape. Aventure to find small patch of old pines.
15:34 Norway - Finmark, top of Europe. Different story of "afforestation." Birch used to be in the valleys, now it is zooming up into the tundra. Lapland nomads way of life hu

Natural Navigator Tristan Gooley: Develop Your Tree Reading Skills

Your Outside Mindset

09/09/24 • 29 min

Tristan Gooley is a New York Times best selling author of How to Read Water, How To Read Nature, The Natural Navigator, The Lost Art of |Reading Nature’s signs, and The Secret World of Weather. Today we are going to talk to Tristan about his latest book How to Read a Tree.
Tristan Gooley is a leading expert on natural navigation, and his passion for the subject stems from his hands on experience. He has led expeditions in 5 continents, climbed mountains in Europe, Africa, and Asia: sailed boats across oceans; piloted small aircrafts across Africa and the Artic. He is the only living person to both fly and sail single-handedly across the Atlantic, and he is a Fellow of the Royal Institute of Navigation and The Royal Geographical Society.
2:47: In my 20s I went on big adventures finding my own way with bits of kit. After that I decided that instead of doing thousand mile expeditions , I would do very small journeys just using nature to find my way.

Transcript [email protected]
natural navigator.com. IG thenaturalnavigator.

Anna Cooper Reed on Canada's Nature Prescription Program

Your Outside Mindset

12/29/21 • 36 min

Anna Cooper Reid tells us that PaRx is breaking ground as Canada's first national, evidence-based nature prescription program. Two hours a week is all it takes.
The following notes the minute mark for points in our conversation:
6 minute mark:
PaRx program what it is. Evidence based and national (Canada)
9 minute mark:
How evidence will help further research: unique provider code & prescription pad compatible with electronic patient record in that province.
12 minute mark:
Will be able to evaluate how well it works
14 minute mark:
What prescription looks like is up to the patient (a meaningful connection with nature is individual).
Time required in green space: 2 hours/week at 20 minute intervals
20 minute mark:
climate/covid. People who are connected to nature are more likely to protect it. We can thank the planet when we get out in nature.
23 minute mark: the future is exciting, providers are excited, patients are involved, PaRx will launch in other provinces, and will be available for use in licensed health care providers (nurses, social work, pharmacy, physicians, occupational therapy, and physiotherapy) undergraduate course content.
28 minute mark:
one thing listeners can take away, have a conversation with your health care provider. If you want to iand my website nform your provider go to the website: www.parkprescriptions.ca
Here you will find a tab for patients and a tab for prescribers.
Also organized according to older and younger age groups, heart health, respiratory heath.
Graphics and easy to understand.
31 minute mark:
Everything on the website is linked to research. All the evidence in there. You can explore the studies. If you want to reach out to Anna or ask questions you can do on the website (ask for Anna).
33 minute mark:
Wrap up with Verla. Please check out my book and workbook Take Back Your Outside Mindset: Live Longer, Stress Less, and Control Your Chronic Illness and my website treesmendus.com for more practical tips, information and resources. As we know getting outside does not require a trip to the pharmacy, but to your local green space where you can soak in the positive and overlapping benefits of green space.

Dr Norman Farb Wants You to Test Drive Your Senses by "Sense Foraging"

Your Outside Mindset

11/19/24 • 57 min

This is Verla Fortier of your Outside Mindset show. This podcast is about taking back your outside mindset by exploring and practicing new ways of noticing when you are outside close to nature whether you live in the city or country.

Two podcast episodes ago I did a solo podcast on a great book “Better In Every Sense: How the New Science of Sensation Can Help You Reclaim Your Life.” This is the link to that podcast episode is titled Get Intentional About Using Your Senses.

Today I have the author of this book with me. This is his bio.

Norman Farb, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Toronto Mississauga, where he directs the Regulatory and Affective Dynamics laboratory. He studies the cognitive neuroscience of well-being, focusing on mental habits, such as how we think about ourselves and interpret our emotions. Together with Prof. Zindel Segal, he wrote Better in Every Sense, a book that describes the surprising role of sensation in mental health. His current research explores online interventions to support wellbeing, and neuroimaging of interoception, our sense of the body's internal state.
Tanscript of interview is on [email protected]

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FAQ

How many episodes does Your Outside Mindset have?

Your Outside Mindset currently has 52 episodes available.

What topics does Your Outside Mindset cover?

The podcast is about Health & Fitness, Mental Health, Medicine, Aging, Podcasts and Health.

What is the most popular episode on Your Outside Mindset?

The episode title 'Susan Allison-Dean, RN, MS Nature Nurse on "the connection piece with nature"' is the most popular.

What is the average episode length on Your Outside Mindset?

The average episode length on Your Outside Mindset is 36 minutes.

How often are episodes of Your Outside Mindset released?

Episodes of Your Outside Mindset are typically released every 20 days, 19 hours.

When was the first episode of Your Outside Mindset?

The first episode of Your Outside Mindset was released on May 9, 2020.

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Your Outside Mindset

Verla Fortier

Top 10 Your Outside Mindset Episodes

FAQ

How many episodes does Your Outside Mindset have?

What topics does Your Outside Mindset cover?

What is the most popular episode on Your Outside Mindset?

What is the average episode length on Your Outside Mindset?

How often are episodes of Your Outside Mindset released?

When was the first episode of Your Outside Mindset?

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