Nicole Christina: Psychotherapist & Zestful Aging Podcast Host

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

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

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.

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?

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

Previous Episode

Joan Maloof ED of Old Growth Forest Network

Podcast Episode #14

For complete transcript of this episode please visit my website Treesmendus.com
Visit Joanne Maloof at oldgrowthforest.net
Joan's book and my book.

Let’s talk about what an old growth forest is, and how this fits with the raging forest fires in Oregon and Washington as we speak.

Yes if you think of the planet earth, at least a third of it is covered in forest. With this forest certain places do well naturally with enough rainfall and enough soil – those forests don’t need to be managed in any way. In fact if you look at the forest with the biggest trees – I was just in Sequoia National Park – those are the forests that are not touched by humans. That would be what I am calling an old growth forest. Some people used to call them virgin forests, or primary forests, but they are just a wild forest. These forests have had no disturbance from humans. Now that does not mean that they have not had any disturbance. They could have tornadoes, ice storms, and fires coming through. But some of those forests that have escaped those things have existed for many hundreds of years or thousands of years, and that is an old growth forest. Or if one of these forests was disturbed even by humans, many hundreds of years ago, and has grown back naturally, we also call those old growth forests.

How that relates to the fires...is that the old growth forests tend to be very damp places, now this is a generalization but they tend to be much damper than a forest which has been cut. This is because you have many layers in the tree canopy, mosses, thick soils, and that moisture in the forest prevents those intense fires. Also the older trees have much thicker bark. So even if a fire does come through, the tree is more likely to survive it.

But what happens where we have cut those old growth forests, and have been planted or we let those trees grow back, those trees are a lot closer together. And naturally as a forest lives, those forests will thin themselves out, and some will die... then you have what we call “dog hair.” Those trees are so small and so close together, and those fires can burn very quickly and intensely. So when we think of the tree plantations, those commercially logged lands, that is where the forests get much hotter. Hotter fires can spread faster through the homes...So when we hear forest fires, some people imagine this fire and the whole forest burns down. That is not usually what happens. A fire moves through often starting on the ground, an

Next Episode

Ken Wu Helps Us To Protect Our Endangered Ecosystems

Episode 16
Today it is my pleasure to introduce to you Ken Wu. Ken is the executive director of the Endangered Ecosystems Alliance, a new national Canadian conservation organization advocating the science-based protection of native ecosystems, seeking to engage non-traditional allies of the environmental movement, and working to support Indigenous Protected Areas. He was previously the co-founder and executive director of the Ancient Forest Alliance and the executive director of the Wilderness Committee’s Victoria bureau.
So before we get into good news stories, what are some sad stories that you have seen?

Here ancient forests with trees that are 2000 years old .. These are some of the oldest and biggest trees that have existed in earth’s history. These trees on Vancouver Island can be as much as 20 feet wide.. as wide as a living room and as tall as a downtown sky scraper. But for all those that we have saved, we have lost 3x as many. This is because there is so much value in these trees. Western red cedar in these days is particularly valuable for cladding houses on the outside and for decks.

That is the green gold right now – propping up the old logging industry. The have already logged 99% of the Douglas Fir. There is only 1% of the old growth Douglas Fir left. The Sitka Spruce is less than 10% now. Cedar is probably around 15-20% of the old growth. So we are getting to end of the old growth forest. But there is some progress too.

So as much as we have lost a lot, I think it is important for people to stay engaged and keep pushing. There has been big progress last week...

Please tell us about that.

Finally the British Columbia government announced deferrals or moratorium on 9 major areas of old growth forest in BC. They started up a process to develop new policies to manage BC’s old growth forests. This was decades of pushing by citizens. But we are not there yet, we have to keep expanding awareness of these ecosystems.

The 9 deferral areas include Clayoquot Sound. I think a lot of your listeners at one time have been to Tofino, Ucluelet area of Vancouver Island...so just around Tofino is that spectacular set of islands and valleys ...that is now on a moratorium for logging. It is the biggest track of coastal old growth temperate rain forest on Vancouver Island. So some good things are happening.

Those huge trees draw in so much carbon.

Yes even more than the tropical rain forest tr