I’m at a point in my life where I’m giving more credence to my feelings, rather than only trusting my brain and dismissing my feelings as invalid. It really bums me out that little kids learn to do that in our society.

This long transformation has felt more like a shattering at times, but it is born out of a realization that I must “return” to myself if I want to feel alright.

One pervasive feeling in my life the past few years is that being connected to nature is absolutely essential for me to live an embodied, healthy life.

I have a lot of thoughts about that feeling.

The most persistent thought is that an affinity to the outdoors and nature is contradictory of my educational and professional background.

I got an MBA. Aka consumerism-central. My education wants me to focus on dollars, so why am I drawn to something that can’t (and likely shouldn’t) translate into dollars? And can I make these things make sense?

Am I just on the backswing from the MBA? Naturally swinging the opposite way before correcting somewhere in the middle? Or maybe it’s some kind of personal rebellion against capitalism. But I’m not even at an extreme level of climate-activism, or consumerism, or anything really… I’m somewhere in between, but my mind spins between the extremes.

Regardless, I’m following my feelings like never before. That’s why I moved into the van. It’s why I centered climbing in my life. It’s why I stay in rural places.

My work

My career, at least lately, has been focused on doing “good” or at least less worse. I’ve been working in climate tech, teaching yoga, taking photos, and instructing rock climbing.

And I have been spending more time on “non-productive” activities, such as learning to feel. And working to understand who I am (beyond a nervously tweaky cog in an economy).

This all feels aligned, but I have thoughts about efficiency and optimizing which feel icky in this context. So I’ve tried to sort out how this all fits/makes sense.

Once in undergrad, a friend referred to me as a “hilarious contradiction” (an interesting one to translate from Chinese, during my study abroad). And I felt seen.

As a Systems Engineer, I was trained to understand complex relationships, which worked well because I spent a lifetime studying that in the interpersonal context. So now I’m spending a lot of time thinking about how this hilarious contradiction I call life actually makes total Katie-sense.

Validity

Intellectually, I know that doing activities that don’t earn money have value. But it certainly feels like they don’t, at least not to other people. And I really do want to have value in the eyes of other people.

If I prioritize non-traditional, less lucrative, personal and professional activities, can I live a public life, be valued, belong? If it doesn’t earn me money, does it still have value? Intellectually, the answer is of course.

But as someone with an ingrained sense that dollar value is an indication of worth…. it feels like those activities are somehow unworthy.

Maybe I’m just still shedding some old conditioning about working in a proper j-o-b to be valued in society.

Ultimately, I’m trying to accept that my feelings and my thoughts are both valid. And I’m trying to allow myself to spend life energy on things my brain says are unworthy, but my heart says are essential. To me, this apparent contradiction is not just worth untangling, it’s required.

The untangling

So how does all this disparate focus “make sense”? Maybe I have too many tabs open and it doesn’t make sense. Or maybe I’ll only really know a decade or two from now, looking back at it in hindsight.

So far though, the through lines I have found are: 1) the mind-body connection and 2) the human-nature connection.

I think there is an under-explored triad there: the mind-body-nature connection. Is this something I can commercialize? Probably not. But I’m trying to internalize it instead.

I’d categorize this study of the mind-body-nature triad under eco-psychology. I have become something of an amaetur eco-psychologist.

Human-nature connection

The human-nature connection is the relationship between people and the natural world. It’s spiritual and soulful, rather than intellectual.

Recovering from my own dysfunction has led me away from a computer, outside over and over again, feet in the dirt. But no matter how “right” it feels, there is the pull of a computer… the magnetism of doing something others deem worthwhile. And historically for me that has involved a computer.

But it’s not just a me thing. Numerous studies highlight the importance of the human-nature connection.

• Walking in a forest barefoot increases serotonin, decreases inflammation (source)
• Spending 20+ minutes in a natural environment produces measurable reduction in cortisol (source)

The list goes on. But the defragmentation that occurs outdoors is real in my lived experience.

This isn’t a particularly radical idea. Humans evolved in relationship with the natural world, and a growing body of research suggests that time in nature improves mood, reduces stress, and supports wellbeing. What surprises me is not that nature helps, but how quickly I notice its absence.

Mind-body connection

The mind-body connection is the recognition that our thoughts, emotions, and physical experiences are deeply intertwined. Yoga was my first real introduction to this idea. Before then, if I couldn’t logically justify an emotion, I tried to treat it as irrelevant.

Over time, I’ve learned that the body often knows things before the mind catches up. Stress shows up in muscles, breath, digestion, sleep, and energy levels. Joy, grief, anxiety, and peace all have physical signatures. The more attention I pay to those signals, the more information I have about what I actually need.

And research backs it up, from ancient yoga claims being validated to finding gut-brain connections previously ignored:

• yogic breathing (pranayama) produces beneficial neurocognitive, psychophysiological, respiratory, biochemical and metabolic changes (source)
• yoga asana (movement) produces a significant increase in mental wellbeing (source)
• gut microbiota directly affects behavior and mental health (source)

Also see The Body Keeps the Score by Dr. Bessel van der Kolk.

The mind-body-nature connection

What interests me most isn’t the human-nature connection or the mind-body connection in isolation. It’s the intersection between them.

And I think it’s obviously all connected: the mind, the physical body, and connection to nature (whether by spending time there, or eating food directly from the earth).

The closer I am to nature, the easier it becomes to notice what I’m feeling beneath the thinking and the noise of productivity, achievement, and distraction.

Maybe that’s why so many of the activities that feel essential to me, yoga, climbing, hiking, photography, even living in a van – sit at this intersection.

They are practices that bring me into relationship with both my internal landscape and the landscape around me. The more I explore that triad of mind, body, and nature, the more it feels less like a hobby and more like a framework for understanding what it means to live well.