Stefan Van Norden
Welcome to Nature Revisited, the podcast. My name is Stefan Van Norden, and on this episode we are pleased to have Wallace J Nichols, the author of the bestselling book Blue Mind and the founder of Ocean Revolution. Wallace joins us to talk about the importance of all things water.
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Stefan Van Norden
Wallace, Welcome to Nature Revisited. As your national bestselling book Blue Mind approaches its 10th anniversary. I would like to thank you for joining me to talk about all things blue mind, all things water. It's a pleasure to have you here.
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Wallace J Nichols
It's my honor. This is a great occasion to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the publication of Blue Mind and talk about that with you.
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Stefan Van Norden
Can we start by you sharing some of your early memories that shaped your deep relationship with water?
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Wallace J Nichols
I think like a lot of kids, I just loved being in the water, Whether it was a pool or a lake or an ocean. When I was a kid, I was adopted. And so I had big questions about everything. And I was a bit of an introvert and stuttered. And so that combination, the result of that was that I just felt better in the water.
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Wallace J Nichols
I felt it was quieter. I felt like I was home. And some of those those big questions faded and I didn't stutter because people don't talk to you underwater. So the more time I spent underwater, the better I felt. But that led directly to two things. One, I became a marine biologist and I dove deeply into this idea of blew my mind, which did not have a name for, you know, in the early days.
00;02;40;24 - 00;03;08;28
Wallace J Nichols
I just felt better near the water, in the water, under the water, and got curious about why. And that's led to this inquiry into blue mind. The water is the source of life and biodiversity covers most of the planet, regulates our climate. But that's not why I love it. Really. Why I love water so much is because it makes me feel good.
00;03;08;28 - 00;03;25;03
Wallace J Nichols
It makes me feel alive. It boosts my creativity. It connects me to the people I love, where I celebrate. It's actually where I go to grieve and mourn. That really is why I love water.
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Stefan Van Norden
So before we talk more about that personal relationship that we all can have with water. Talk a little bit about that other side, its physical importance.
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Wallace J Nichols
The reality of the physical importance of water as the water is the matrix of life on earth and it's unique in the universe. I mean, we're NASA's scientists are searching the universe for more earth like planets and water is the signal. GW Find the water. Follow the water is their mantra. You know, here on Earth, the original blue planet.
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Wallace J Nichols
From our perspective, it is the source of all life. If you're walking through a forest, that forest is up to 90% water. So water is the source of life. It keeps us alive. We are water based beings. We all spent the first 9.21 months of our lives underwater, in the dark, in our own private oceans called mom. And that is true for all of our fellow mammals.
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Wallace J Nichols
This connection to water is no surprise.
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Stefan Van Norden
You published Blue Mind almost ten years ago. How is the water?
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Wallace J Nichols
That's a huge question. As you know, results vary tremendously. We've got places where over the past decade, people have been hard at work. They have, in fact, protected and restored waterways. The water quality is improving, the biodiversity is increasing, the pollution is decreasing. We've also got places that are quite the opposite where things perhaps have gotten worse. So it's a it's a mixed bag.
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Wallace J Nichols
I think as this idea that water is is valuable economically and ecologically, but also emotionally, as this idea continues to grow and expand, it will lead to these regenerative feedback loops where we protect and restore more lakes and more rivers and more parts of the ocean and take better care of the water we drink. And years after publishing gloom, I have seen it in action.
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Wallace J Nichols
What We have seen more people getting in the water. The value of being by the water goes up. Communities are transformed when a river goes from being toxic to even moderately healthy as blue mind idea. It approaches the environmental crisis, but it also approaches the public health crisis that we have, especially the mental health crisis. And when you bring bring back your water and your community, you get this ecological boom.
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Wallace J Nichols
You get also an economic boom and you get an emotional wellbeing boom where that occurs. That's what we see.
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Stefan Van Norden
So what was the factor that played in your writing the book and how long did it take to write it?
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Wallace J Nichols
The factors name it. Dr. Oliver Sacks I hoped that he would write a book about neuroscience, Neuropsychology in water, and I pitched the idea to him and he was an intellectual powerhouse. One of the most interesting humans I have known. Brilliant writer, brilliant neurologist, water lover, music lover. I'm curious about everything and I dream that he would write this book that I wanted to read about our brain on water.
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Wallace J Nichols
And I thought he could write this book and I could feed him some research. And when I pitched the idea to him, he said, It's a fine idea. You do it. I did not take that as a suggestion or a nudge. I took it as a command and five years later I brought him, blew my mind. But I would say very explicitly that I wanted to read Blue Mind.
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Wallace J Nichols
I did not want to write it. I wanted him to write it. And that didn't happen. Fortunately, I wrote it and he read it. So that's how it happened. It did take those five years. I'll take it back to Dr. Oliver Sacks, who said, You do it.
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Stefan Van Norden
So. So what does the brain on water look like?
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Wallace J Nichols
Best way to approach that question is to start with what I call red mode. And red mind is our new normal. It is our response to the built environment separate from nature that are increasingly full of screens and information and technology. We're busy, we're distracted, we're falling behind. With the increase of technology and the ease of all of the information that comes to us.
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Wallace J Nichols
You press the button and get food delivered. You press the button, the car picks you up. It's harder and harder to shut that off. So that red mind mode produces the high level of stress. That level of stress and anxiety will will break you down at the cellular level. We know that. And when that happens, you go into gray mind.
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Wallace J Nichols
Gray mind, as is your body and your mind saying, we're done. You've you've you've burned the midnight candle too many times. Can't handle it anymore. And a lot of people are there. Blue mind is a way for us to calm and reconnect and reset and restore and water is the shortcut. You feel more one with yourself, one with each other, the people you care about, people you work with, and what with our environment, With our planet.
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Wallace J Nichols
The goal here is to make blue mind this concept common knowledge and common practice, because it does have these public health benefits for our physical, mental and our emotional well-being. Yeah.
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Stefan Van Norden
So talk a little bit about how there may have been a time when the spirit of the water, which was so important to a lot of indigenous cultures. What we can learn from from those cultures.
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Wallace J Nichols
Yeah, it's a brilliant question because nothing that we're talking about with regard to Blue Mind is new. What's new is there's some modern science that says, Hell yeah, that's right. Every culture, every spiritual tradition, and every sacred text on earth since the beginning of recorded history talks about blue might not use that terminology, but the idea that water has a spiritual role in our lives that is critical really is nothing new.
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Wallace J Nichols
To be really clear to your point, there is not a new idea by any means. That kind of sentiment is echoed throughout all sacred texts, throughout all human history, throughout all cultures.
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Stefan Van Norden
Share some of the incredible ways that water can serve as healer, such as surfing and other activities.
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Wallace J Nichols
Yeah, let me give you I'll give you a story that depicts that. It's a guy named Bobby Layne who's become a friend. He is a veteran Marine, served in Afghanistan, and he returned with some traumatic brain injury. I would say the poster guy for post-traumatic stress. He was medicating with pharmaceuticals, but also self-medicating with drugs, alcohol. And in fact, he was feeling like he didn't really want to live any longer as he was mentally not well.
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Wallace J Nichols
The course of treatment was not fixing much and was ready to check out. He got involved in a program offered by Operation Surf Surf Therapy Program cut his third wave, stood up on his board, and really felt different. And he felt like he wanted to live. Not only did he want to live, the thoughts on that wave went so far to convince him that he not only wanted to live, but you wanted to share this feeling with his fellow veterans.
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Wallace J Nichols
And he is just one example of how the mind can be put into action. I don't want to overstate any of this post-traumatic stress, anxiety, burnout, or serious, quite heavy. Not to be messed around with. I'm not suggesting drop all your treatment and jump in the ocean and grab a surfboard. But if you do, it will help and it will be a powerful supplement to the other things that may also be working for you.
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Wallace J Nichols
So we see it working clinically. Research is has been unfolding and being published. Float therapy, surf therapy, aquatic therapy of all kinds. Free diving, Scuba diving. Walking by the water, paddling, sailing. All these different modalities are being used therapeutically.
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Stefan Van Norden
Can you share with us some of the ways that you personally have become more connected with water over the years?
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Wallace J Nichols
Know, suffice it to say, we've all had a challenging handful of years. During the pandemic, my mom succumbed to dementia. She passed after a long, long decline and we lost our home in a wildfire right in the middle of the pandemic. So I think we all can relate to those extra stressors on top of the background stress of a global pandemic.
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Wallace J Nichols
And I remember after the fire, you know, people were kind of like, okay, blue Maine guys, let's see if your theory works. All the extra stress that that caused that in our our household and our our family and my kids, our relationships really, really put it to the test for me. I leaned more heavily on this blue mind idea than ever in my life.
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Wallace J Nichols
Made it really a priority to be in the water daily in some way, whether it was a creek or a cold plunge or ideally an ocean. And it became clear to me that my emotional health was challenged and I was struggling with the reality of my own life. Sure, I had written a book about one of the ways that the power through that thing to heal yourself.
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Wallace J Nichols
I took it up a notch. I've always been a water lover and water person and a practitioner by in the face of these new circumstances and heartbreak, I had to really dig into it. Here I am talking to you. I used to mind virtually daily, whenever I need an extra boost in my water time to accommodate it.
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Stefan Van Norden
And your book blew, mind you quote, the beginning of Moby Dick. What are some of the other ways that Melville exemplifies the glory and the mystery of the watery part of the planet?
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Wallace J Nichols
You know that that book is the original blue book and page one. And what he writes is when he's healing November in his soul, which to me is gray mind. We're coming up on November here. And, you know, the days get shorter. The leaves of all fallen in certain parts of the world might be a little cloudier, a little rainier, a little cooler.
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Wallace J Nichols
And so he says, I feel November in my soul, rather than becoming depressed, becoming an angry person, it's high time to go to see Penguin. He's feeling that gray mind, too much stress, maybe burnt out, some gloom November in his soul. It's high time to get on a boat and go to sea. But not everybody can hop on a boat in November when they're feeling that way.
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Wallace J Nichols
But everybody can practice Blue Mind daily, no matter where you are. He says a lot more about Blue Mind in that epic book. He refers to that idea of the sea as a healer of our emotional well-being. Repeatedly, poetically, we see this idea encoded in literature. Melville's Moby Dick. In poetry, in music and works of art, photography and film.
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Wallace J Nichols
Paintings have made Blue Mind Portable reminded us that this this feeling is real. The science backs it up, but so does the art. When you can't get to the actual water, you can still practice blue mind by bringing up the poetry and the prose and the photography and the art and the music.
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Stefan Van Norden
How can people who may not have easy access to rivers, streams or oceans become more connected to water? How can they find a pocket full of ocean so.
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Wallace J Nichols
Let's start with the wild water from wherever you're sitting right now. It may be easy or it may be moderately difficult or maybe extremely effortful to get from where you're sitting to the water. So lucky you. If it's easy, you should do that as often as possible. It may be that you're wild water is in bad shape, that it needs help, that it needs some water.
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Wallace J Nichols
Warriors. Be one of those because it's worth the effort to bring a lake, a river, or a part of the ocean back to life. Make the effort to get to the water that you love that's nearby as often as possible. But sometimes you can't. Sometimes too far. Or to frozen. And the case may be in. In those cases you can lean on your domestic water.
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Wallace J Nichols
Any water that's sort of held in a tube or a tank. Then there's another category. That's the urban water. So in your town, there may be a fountain that you can visit. So it's not quite the wild water. It's not the Niagara Falls. It's not the raging river or the big ocean, but it still holds that power of blue mind just sitting by a fountain or walking along an urban waterfront.
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Wallace J Nichols
This is lovely and therapeutic. Next category that we mentioned earlier is virtual water, and that's any depiction of water where water is in fact not present. So art, literature, poetry, music, photography, film or recording of water, the last category is imaginary water, and that's the water that you see and hear and taste and smell when you close your eyes and maybe your favorite water, maybe the water of your childhood and maybe some place you visited yesterday that made an impression, maybe from a recent vacation or a trip.
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Wallace J Nichols
We can always rely on or our imagination and our memories, which emphasizes the importance of making those memories. When you have the opportunity, when you're at the water, you love that you've traveled to pay close attention and attention to the way it sounds, in the way it looks at the weather, light bounces and what's living in it and the way it tastes and smells.
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Wallace J Nichols
So those are the five forms wild, domestic, urban, virtual and imaginary. The five forms of water that we can utilize and actively mind every day. I suggest that you try to do that every day in some form. This is not an insignificant suggestion. We are water based beings on a water based planet with a whole bunch of red mind and gray mind seeping in.
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Stefan Van Norden
So how do you see the future of water, both environmentally and culturally?
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Wallace J Nichols
I think there is a massive opportunity right now to take these ideas that we've been discussing and make them common knowledge and common practice for a billion people. I think when we start teaching Blue Mind in our schools to school kids, high schools and colleges to grad students, when we start teaching Blue Maine to nursing students, health professionals and educators, we'll start to see really interesting changes to that value equation around water will shift the movement to protect and restore and value.
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Wallace J Nichols
Water will grow. What we're seeing already is that when water is properly valued for all its benefits, there's a higher priority. Communities invest more in the protection and restoration of the water, and then the benefits flow. Economically, ecologically and emotionally. There's a bigger movement to take care of water quality and aquatic ecology. When people recognize the full, the full benefits.
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Wallace J Nichols
And then there's a there's sort of a policy political shift that I think can occur when we say the people who serve us daily, the first responders, the people on the frontline, the nurses, the teachers, the EMT, the police, the firefighters who live incredibly stressful, stressful lives because they run towards danger on our behalf and they show up early for us.
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Wallace J Nichols
If those people are avoiding burnout by practicing blue mode, that's it. That's a shift. That's a really interesting story. And I think that's that's kind of that really is fascinating to me to see how the storytelling can shift and that can lead to stronger policies, better protections, restoration of both ourselves and our water and nature and healthier communities.
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Wallace J Nichols
In my lifetime, there's never been a moment when we needed it more.
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Stefan Van Norden
So finally, share with us a million blue marbles.
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Wallace J Nichols
If I could put a million blue marbles right into your hands right now, you become completely overwhelmed. That's a lot of marbles. But we have we have shared over a million blue marbles around the world. They're glass, marbles. They're recycled glass. They're cobalt blue. If you look through them, they're some they're translucent. That simple object is a gesture of gratitude.
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Wallace J Nichols
Let me share them. But when you hold it out at arm's length that it looks like what we look like as a planet from a million miles away. So basically, it's a way to say, let's all be astronauts for a minute. And then every astronaut that has looked back on earth has had something called the overview effect, which is a wave of humility, of awe and wonder that shifts them.
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Wallace J Nichols
Every astronaut describes it differently. But the takeaway is when you get to see us, our home from that place, it's a spiritual experience that doesn't go away. So we share these blue marbles kind of as a gesture, a recognition of the overview effect. Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot that marble is a reminder that we live on a finite water based planet where everything we do matters.
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Wallace J Nichols
And we ask people if they've received a marble to reflect on that, but then to carry it and pass it on to someone and to share some version of this story with the person that they pass it to that they want to express gratitude to. Next week I'll be at the University of Rhode Island giving a keynote, and they'll be 800th marbles given to the faculty and students.
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Wallace J Nichols
And we'll have this conversation. And then those people will take their marbles and carry them until they pass them on The blue marble, it's kind of become the symbol for this, this blue mind conversation. And and as you said, the last chapter describes describes what I've just said in more detail. If this conversation is resonating and you're thinking, yeah, I get it, and water is important to me and you're practicing Blue Mind, that's great.
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Wallace J Nichols
And I would encourage you to take someone with you that needs it. I'd be someone, you know, peripherally or could be a close loved one. Get them, grab them, jump in the water with them. That would be my next level of this message. Understanding good mind, practicing it and then sharing it with those who need it most. A lot of people who need it.
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Wallace J Nichols
And so let's let's all be the person who brings it to those who need it most.
00;27;18;23 - 00;27;58;24
Stefan Van Norden
I hope you enjoyed this episode of Nature Revisited with the Wallace J. Nichols, and if you haven't already read Blue Mind that you take the time to do so. If you enjoyed this episode, please share with family, friends and colleagues. You can follow Nature Revisited on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, or our website NoordenProductions.com. The Music for Nature Revisited is Buzzin' Fly by Tim Buckley.
00;27;58;27 - 00;28;16;28
Stefan Van Norden
Nature Revisited is produced by Stephane Van Norden and Charles Geoghegan, and I hope you'll join me for the next edition of Nature Revisited. And in the meantime, please remember we are nature.