Water and Wellbeing with Blue Mind Author Wallace J. Nichols

Monica (3s): Hi, I’m Monica Olson.

Jennifer (5s): And I’m Jennifer Walsh. 

Monica (7s): And you’re listening to the Biophilic Solutions podcast where every other week we sit down with experts and thought leaders across industries in order to explore the innate connection between humans and nature and why we need nature to thrive. 

Jennifer (18s): We truly believe that in order to tackle the global environmental problems we’re facing, we as humans must reconnect to the natural world and come to a better understanding of how we fit in and how we’re so interconnected. So in every episode, we’ll interview new guests to help us uncover and highlight nature based solutions to get us on a path to greater health, tackling climate change, and ultimately getting outside and connecting with nature. 

Monica (41s): So let’s get to today’s episode.

Monica (45s): Hi, Jennifer.

Jennifer (46s): Hi Monica.

Monica (48s): Tell us about our guest today. It's a really exciting one.

Jennifer (50s): I know it really is. Today we're speaking with Dr. Wallace J. Nichols, who goes by Jay, a Marine biologist and activist whose book Blue Mind: How Water Makes you Happier, More Connected, and Better at What You Do explores the incredible impact that water has on our overall wellbeing.

Monica (1m 6s): Our conversation with Jay was really fascinating to me because he really gets into the science behind things that we all innately understand. Most people can relate to the feeling of calm they get when they go to the beach, or even when they're dipping into a warm bath at the end of a tough day. So it's really interesting for him to explain the why.

Jennifer (1m 35s): Oh my gosh. Absolutely. We talk a lot about nature and specifically greenspaces in this podcast. So it was great to dive deeper, no pun intended, into the profound effect that water has on.

Monica (1m 38s): Yes, especially on the heels of our episode with Hannah Palmer, where we talked about lost waters, how we recover the creeks and rivers that have been forgotten as a result of urban sprawl and infrastructure.

Jennifer (1m 49s): So let's get to our interview with Wallace J Nichols.

Monica (1m 52s): J, it's so nice to see you. We are so happy to have you on the show.

Jay (2m): Been looking forward to this.

Monica (2m 5s): We were just saying that we had met you now over two years ago in the fall of 19 pre COVID at the Raise the Green Bar Summit, and sort of fell in love with your work. I think Jennifer had already had your book at that point, but just thrilled to have you on Biophilic Solutions. So welcome

Jay (2m 21s): My pleasure, it’s good to be here.

Jennifer (2m 22s): Speaking of the book, by the way, we'll get into all of that, but it's funny cause I, kind of demolished it a bit with so many highlights and so many, like I do that, the books I love Jay, so don't take offense to it, but I've kind of crushed your book and it's just full of scribbles and highlights and stars. And so I know you won't have enough time to talk about everything I want to talk about, but we're so happy just to dive right in to tell our listeners, how did you get into the work that you're actually in?

Jay (2m 44s): Well, I'm trained as a Marine biologist and I think I became a Marine biologist because of this feeling that you understand so well that I had as a kid, I was adopted and sort of trying to figure out what that meant. I stuttered. I was, now we would refer to me as an introvert. Although back then they just called kids like me shy. And it was not a compliment. And I just discovered that I’d rather be underwater than talking to people and because people don't talk to you underwater, so you don't stutter, you don't have to answer questions. You don't have to worry about being shy underwater. You can just be peaceful. And I gravitated towards all kinds of water, lakes, rivers, oceans, pools, tubs, frozen water, snow, frozen lakes, ice, fishing, you name it. That led me to choose a career that involved water, which, you have a few options. Uh, I chose to be a Marine biologist and, fast forward, working as a Marine biologist, I started thinking more about that. Like as a scientist, what was that, what is that? I don't think I'm alone, I think there's lots of us who feel that way. And I wanted to read more about our brains on water in particular, not just nature because more broadly we can talk about nature, but specifically about water.

And I, I couldn't find the book I wanted to read. And so I tried to convince some smart people that they should write it, and I was not successful at that. So the, the fault was right at myself. I pitched the idea to Dr. Oliver Sacks, who was one of my heroes, the late great neurologist and writer and lover of the world and powerful intellect. And he said, it's a fine idea. You do it. And that felt, it did not feel like a suggestion or a nudge. It felt like a command. And I took it that way. And then five years later, I wrote this book called Blue Mind and brought it to him. I didn’t quite lay it at his feet, but I brought it to New York, signed copy and said, thank you for the suggestion. And so that's the quick version. I still love sea turtles. I still work with sea turtles in lots of ways, but, the last 10 years has been, I would say more or less devoted to this other idea. the emotional health benefits of water in all forms. 

The seed of the idea was very personal and I think a lot of people can relate to that, especially right now, our conditions and circumstances. 

Monica (5m 27s): In the book it talks about blue mind and I'd love you to detail a little bit about, because you sort of coined that or defined that, but you also talk about, I think a red mind and a gray mind. Will you sort of elaborate on that for us?

Jay (5m 43s): Before I talk about blue mind, the best way to understand that really is to start with red mind, as you point out. Red mind is our new normal. It is a very useful state. It's the fight or flight mode. It is how we get things done. It's how we save our butts when we need to. It's our motivated, stimulated, but increasingly distracted, frazzled, anxious, stressed mode that defines the new normal. So, the scenario is you wake up in the morning. The first thing you do is look at a screen before you open your other eye before you get out of bed. And then the last thing you do after a day full of just cranking and grinding, which is considered a virtue.

You look at your phone again, as you fall asleep, maybe you fall asleep in front of a screen, and that's normal. That is in fact encouraged. major industries have devoted themselves to convincing you that that's a good thing. That's red mind, we're distracted or anxious. and before the pandemic, it was already at record levels. if you stay in red mind mode, that productive fight or flight mode, you burn out. A hundred percent of the people, a hundred percent of the time will eventually burn out. Even the superheroes. That's gray mind. That's the you're languishing. You're disconnected. Your body is breaking down. You're emotionally breaking down, that's not a useful mind-state. Red mind is really useful, super useful. It's powerful. Gray mind, not so much, unless you make a living writing like emo songs, then gray mind is dipping in the gray mind’s pretty useful, you know, like heavy, heavy, gray poet poetry.

If that's your thing, but for most of us, gray mind is something we want to, it's your body saying yep, I'm outta here. This is like the shutoff valve. So blue mind is this restorative place, where we find more creativity, we find calmness, we find connection, we find curiosity, we find compassion, all these great, C words turns out without even trying they're all C words, and add your own. And you can't live in blue mind all the time either. That's like Jeff Spicoli from Fast Times at Ridgemont high, like tasty waves. That's not great either. I mean, it's funny, but it's, so it's that bouncing, toggling between red and blue mind that is productive and healthy. I hesitate to say balanced because it doesn't always feel balanced. It feels like creative disequilibrium. but you don't burn out and you're able to be all you. And you're able to, if you're a nurse, you're able to be a great nurse. If you're a teacher, able to be a great teacher, you’re able to grind when you need to grind, but get in the bath and chill maybe daily. So back to blue mind, it's just a phrase that refers to a familiar experience that we've all hopefully had, which is when we think about water. When we go to the water, when we get in the water, when we sit in the water, when we walk by the water in all of its forms, solid, liquid or vapor, so it could be, clouds could be a frozen lake, could be snow, it could be a pond, we feel better. We feel sort of refreshed. we feel a little reset, and we're ready to kind of come back and have a productive day. The thing about blue mind, that's interesting is it helps everyone, but the people who need it most, it helps the most. And that's my passion really is finding the people who, yeah. Who need it the most.

Jennifer (9m 27s): There was something interesting that you think you wrote in the book that I really didn't even think about people that people say they're feeling blue or down, like they're feeling blue or sad, that Picasso period, that was blue period. I think you wrote it in the book, so when people associate a color to that mood, it's actually gray. So it's interesting that you say that the red, gray, blue and people like, oh, I'm feeling blue. They're actually, they're visualizing gray. I had no idea. I never thought about that. That was really interesting to me.

Jay (9m 57s): Yeah. Gray is really the color of depression and blue is really the color of calm. And so, people have used colors in lots of different ways. And I don't ever mean to vilify the color red, I think it's a great color. Your sweater is beautiful.

Jennifer (10m 10s): Thank you very much. There’s still blue in it, the snowflake.

Jay (10m 17s): Yeah, so they're symbols, of course, but they're also useful. People have such a hard time and I don't want to stereotype, but especially dudes have such a hard time talking about their emotional health. A lot of people will do, but I've found guys, especially, if you can give them a little cartoon, like, you know, here we've got flashcards, there are three colors. How are you feeling rather than talk about the clinical stuff? Like depression and burnout and anxiety, people will get a little nervous about that and having anything on their record, but if you can talk about red and gray and blue and help people stay out of the gray and toggle between the red and the blue. Well, great, and if it doesn't feel threatening to use that cartoon basically of very complex, emotional health is more complex than those three colors. I've found it to be really useful for people. 

Monica (11m 12s): No, I like that. It reminds me of like, when my kids were little and you'd go to the doctor and it'd be like, the little smiley faces, like 1 to 10, how bad is the pain? You know, they had to do the faces. Speaking about that connection, the mind, body connection, you did a ton of research with neuroscientists, you mentioned Oliver Sacks, but tell us a little bit about that because there is science tied into this, this isn't just anecdotal evidence or your experience, or because you love Marine biology. Tell us a little bit about that and do you know that you wanted to include that in the book? Did you know that that needed to be incorporated? Tell us about the neuroscience side. 

Jay (13m 41s): Yeah. the anecdotes are powerful, the stories, the human history, the spiritual traditions, the poetry, it's all really great. And it's all in alignment. But if you want people to take you seriously in these conversations, you kind of want to add this other piece, which is the clinical research. And when I started looking into this concept of blue mind, there was a lot of dot connecting. So, you mentioned Oliver Sacks. He wrote this great book about your brain on music called Musicophilia. That is relevant to this conversation because water makes sound. Sometimes it's rhythmic. Sometimes it's musical, even lyrical. Sometimes it sounds like we call it a babbling brook, cause it sounds like somebody's babbling or singing. So pulling the existing research. So it wasn’t on the nose necessarily, but it was close and connecting those dots. So the science of happiness, the science of stress, the science, music, neuro-plasticity B greenspace There was a lot more when I started working on bloom, I knew there was a lot more work on the green parts of nature and a lot less on the blue parts. So sometimes people say, well, why do you focus so much on water?

What about the green green mind? And the answer is, well, when I started this, there was nobody working on the water. Everybody was looking at the green rather than the blue. And so maybe I've overcompensated for that perhaps, but that was part of it connecting the dots on the existing research that wasn't on the nose that wasn't on topic, but close in the vicinity.

And then asking the questions that we wanted answers to that were specific to water. And so when we look at the green space research, your brain on nature in general, you find that it's very similar to blue space. And in many of the green space studies, like way down in the discussion section, you'd find some reference to water, like green is good when you add blue, it's even better. And it was kind of a side note, but a seed for the next step in the research. In writing the book, I would do these things called blue mind summits, which essentially we bring together the best neuroscientists and the best water people throw together on a stage and ask them questions that nobody nobody's ever asked before.

And then wrestle with the answers, and in that process there'll be brilliance. And I just like sit in the front row and write everything down. And there would be questions. And so in the preface to blue mind, I really set that out and say, we're going to probably generate more questions and answers, but those are going to be some sweet questions that will be doctoral dissertations and master's theses, and the work of many in the future.

And that really is what I always set out to do is ask great questions, try to answer them with the existing research and then kind of advance the conversation. Your question was really more about what does the science say? Well, the science says that blue space and green space are really good for your body and your mind. They change your neurophysiology. They make your body healthier when you're exercising in nature. Water other adds this extra element, which I think is more about what it takes away. So it takes away even more of the stimulation. So walking through a forest, you're going to encounter hopefully many, many species of plant, a lot of biodiversity, many birds, some of that will draw your attention and require some amount of processing and some amount of stimulation, which is great.

It's really super healthy and really good. When you’re in the water, there's a lot less information than when you're on land and when you're walking on a trail through a park, you can still surf the internet, turns out. You might probably be seen it. We've all, maybe even done it. You're in nature, but you're checking a message or you're on the phone.

Jennifer (17m 58s): That's such a good point 

Jay (17m 59s): When you're in the water, water and your phone are not good friends, you know, the park in your phone, maybe, but you really don't want to bring technology underwater very much. And there are cases you can buy that will help you with that. But for the most part, water is still a place that's low tech, no tech and affords a kind of privacy and solitude that you may not get in the air on land. And so it's extra special this is not a competition between the mountains and the oceans and the green and the blue. I'm all for all of it. But water used to be left out almost entirely. So I'll give you an example. Richard Louv wrote a great book, several great books. One of which was Last Child in the Woods.

Richard is a water lover. He loves the water, but you wouldn't know it from that book. I've noticed that through my entire education, the environmental science textbooks, you got to the last skinny little chapter about water and they, it was almost an afterthought. So we water people in the sciences have fought for better, more accurate representation of water, in the textbooks, in the policy work, in the philanthropy realm, such a tiny, tiny percentage of environmental philanthropy goes to parts of the world that are aquatic, which is remarkable given that most of the planet is covered with water. Most of the biodiversity is in water. Most of us are made of water. All life comes from the water, but our bias is heavily towards the green.

And so, that is changing, we're balancing it out. There's a lot more attention on oceans now than when I was a student, remarkably, exponentially more, you have rockstars and Kings and Queens celebrating the ocean now and billionaires exploring them, that wasn't the case 20 years ago. So yeah, slight tangent there. 

Jennifer (20m 5s): No, it's so interesting. I like what you said, because when we're in it, we feel a sense of calm, and also, I think you said something before in your book, or we've talked about before, previously that it's hard to replicate, you know, we always want the science behind everything, but also at the same extent, like you can't put the F MRI, I think they're called that you can't, you know, you go into an F F MRI machine, it's a machine, but when you're in the ocean and you don't get the same kind of, I'm sure. feelings of, okay, well, I'm gonna, I'm gonna test my brain on how I feel after I go to the beach or the ocean or a pool, or what have you, but it's just such a different experience than doing one versus the other to get the actual, what's happening to your brain.

Jay (20m 50s): From the science perspective, to study things, we pull them apart into their components to understand each component. And then you got to put it back together and assimilate or re assimilate. And that's what I tried to do the book is pull it apart into all of the senses and let's break it down. But the reality is that's not the way it works. The way it works is all at the time. All of your senses, in concert and you bring your experience, you're bringing your culture, you bring your biology, and all of your senses are working at the same time. I mean, that's actually the lived experience, but as scientists, we break things apart into these little boxes and little components to understand them. And, we have controls and a person floating in a laboratory, which is very different than floating under a night sky and some more emotion, but you can understand a piece of it, but it's important then bring it all back together into like the lived experienced. So hopefully I achieve that in the writing of the book.

Monica (21m 57s): Yeah. And I think there's a, I don't know if it was a New York Times article. And I wrote a quote down that, saying, that by surrounding ourselves with water in any form, lake, ocean, snow, it sets us into a state of so-called soft fascination, which I thought was sort of an interesting term. And then it reinforces it a low intensity stimulus that holds attention wrapped while requiring little of the body's resources in order to provide a restorative equilibrium, which you then call the blue mind. And I really liked that from a, thinking about how you were saying from the red to the blue is like a flow state or this mindfulness or this focus that you can get probably in a float tank, right, in the lab, if you will, or you have these, wellness centers that are now doing float tank in the dark, or on a surf board or sitting, just staring at a body of water, especially if it has waves and you have that repetitive motion, is very meditative and it is, you just can get lost, or I'll speak personally, I can get lost in that. And that's really magical. and so thinking about how we, if we can relate it back to sort of something that people are doing today, whether that's mindfulness or slow, you know, the word, which I think, I feel like you use for the coasts that you live on, you're out in California, right. And so I thought that that was a fun, I'd never heard, thinking about a beach or a coastline as a slow living, if you will.

Jay (23m 23s): Well, that phrase soft fascination is also one of my favorite phrases. That you pulled that out and that concept basically is that, if we sat in a room painted blue and listened to white noise, you’d go nuts. You go freaking crazy. You'd be like, no, this is not helpful. Like one or two minutes into it, you'd start to lose it. But water isn't like that water holds you in that place. It's fascinating, but it doesn't overstimulate you. It doesn't require a lot of analysis and processing; there aren't voices and faces and words as you find in the built environment. And you take away the screens and you take away people asking you questions but you can, like you said, you could sit all day and look at the water and not get bored, or at least some people can, and some people will do it for an entire week and call it a vacation and come back really refreshed.

And that's soft fascination and water does that. Water's not the only thing that does that, you know, watching the wind blow through, tree tops or watching clouds go by and watching a meadow or a flock of birds. but water does it extremely well. And that's, I think a really important concept is to find sources of that soft fascination, give your brain a break.

It doesn't turn your brain off. You don't go quiet. The brain shifts into this thing we call blue moon. Which again is really good for creativity, really good for building your compassion, your self compassion, your connection to yourself and the people around you and the world and just making it a product in your to do list every day.

Jennifer (25m 6s): I so feel that well, I was reading your book, on a personal level, I was reading your book in the summer of 2020, and I was living at my beach tent full-time because it was summer 2020. So I could so remember just reading your book and you gave me this opportunity to feel okay being present in it and just enjoying it and not saying, you know, I feel like I should be somewhere else because I felt guilty for enjoying the moment where in it, it was like such a gift to be living at the tent for three months. And I was two blocks off the ocean. So every morning I would try and rise with the sun and float. And because of your book, I just gave myself permission to say, embrace this. Like, this is such a beautiful experience. It's almost a spiritualness of rising with the sun and floating, and there's this overarching sense of calm and stillness and beauty and just the presence of what a blue mind does for you.

And I was able to start every morning at the beach and then end every day at the beach, like I called the happy hours , every afternoon I would bring your book down and, you know, read another chapter or like read another few pages while at the beach and then go back. Yeah. And so I would swim off and on all day, but just your book gave me that permission to feel like it's not only good for you, but it gives you that sense of calm and that restorative that's such a gift to all of us.

Jay (26m 25s): Well, and you knew you knew that already didn't need a book to tell you, but I think what you're saying is that extra nudge to say and to think, maybe think about it, to float in the water and think about it slightly differently, or just stand in the shower when the water's beating on the back of your neck and just close eyes for 15 seconds. This would be like the homework for anybody listening. Next time you're in the shower, do that for 15 seconds, just close your eyes and feel the water on your neck in a way that you've never felt it before and hear it. And really, really, really let yourself go into that experience just for 15 seconds.

Like nobody is going to know. It's just totally private, quiet little thing. And I think that it sort of adds value. To those and then when we add value to them, we prioritize them. And when we prioritize them, we practice that better and more. And then you start to see the shift in policy, in lifestyle, in our institutions, in our education.

And that's where we're trying to take this whole conversation is to codify it in some way, but not get in the way of the magic and the intuitive and the discovery of it. Maybe is where there's a little bit of tension like you. Celine Cousteau wrote the forward to my book and she said it so well. She didn't want the science to explain away the mystery and the magic. But what I discovered is that the science grows the mystery and the magic, and makes, the island of knowledge bigger, which means there's more beach to explore. And the greatest compliment that I can imagine is she said that if her grandfather were still alive, Jacques Cousteau, he'd be so into this. This would be his, jam he’d be into the science cause he was such a pioneer, always in so many ways that he would be all over the neuroscience and, exploring it. So yeah.

How long from kind of shifting from let's just say red mind to blue mind mode to tent life beach life, and getting over the voices in your head or the people who are like, what are you doing? And just settling into like how many days or weeks or hours do you feel like it takes for you to kind of go, I'm in this new groove.

Jennifer: That's a great question. Because I think 2020 was a very different situation because I was a child living here in the city and going from like living here to going and not even thinking I was going to stay there. I was just kind of setting it up for the summer for my parents who actually lived there most of the summer.

So I just thought, oh, I'm just going to go for a few days. And then I was like, well, maybe I'll just stay longer. I don't have to go back to the city anyway. And then the longer term two to three weeks, and that was, I want to go home and get more clothes, but usually when I get there, it's very, almost immediate because it's such like I don't wear shoes.

Shoes come off. I can walk around my day and just not even wear shoes until I go out to dinner at night. It's a very different way to. We're cooking meals for one another, you know, Dan Newton always talks about the sanctity of like your neighbors when you're cooked together or you feed each other and like, it's just such a different way to exist. So I kind of fall very quickly into that, peace of mind, and then just wearing a bathing suit for like hours on end to go for my swim, then dry off and then swim again later. It's really quite lovely.

Jay (29m 54s): So you’re pretty well-practiced at like the shifting into that state of mind.

Jennifer (30m): It's taken a while. I think, I think the 2020 summer really helped me understand, like, it's just, it's the gift. That's such a good cause I've been doing it for 30 years. But the 30 years I would just go on the weekends when my parents were there and I would just go on the weekends. I just want to, but sometimes to be honest, between all of you, I would get there on a Saturday morning. And the first thing I would do is fall asleep because I was so exhausted. From New York City life and just being so stimulated all the time and running around too in front of everything that the minute I'll get there and it's Saturday morning at 9:30 in the morning, I would go to sleep. Cause I was just all of a sudden relaxed.

Jay (30m 38s): And not to mention like your New York city life, if there's your accomplishments and the things you've done and been involved as like consuming an epic and pretty, legendary kind of like a lot of, a lot of, a lot, like, so there's like a serious contrast, in terms of like, the different kinds of projects and even being in media and being like just the technology of media and cameras on like on camera, like just that in itself, in addition to all the other layers, the contrast, notable right.

Monica (31m 12s): Well, and we, Jennifer and I talk a lot that, again, back to society and culture, puts a value on something when we can put either a dollar sign on it, unfortunately, or we can quantify it in some ways. So these metrics, whether it's a financial or a scientific metric, it somehow makes it real, which is fine.

And I think, just like you did with the book, you're like, okay, well, I know I need to do, I need to bring it out of the anecdotal, in order for people, some people to take it seriously, because it does then say, oh, it's real. We've quantified it. but I do think the magic is, the woo woo, if you will, is really the wonder of it. And in the science, is there a difference, I love the sort of like, you know, tip or trick, like, just sit in the shower and feel the water. Is there a difference that you've found being near it or being submerged in it or having an aquarium in your house or a water feature versus the pool, like, is more better or is anything?

Jay (32m 15s): I'm pretty ecumenical, I'm a fan of all of it. We can talk about averages, but nobody is an average human. I mean, nobody is a, nobody is really the sum of the global average, we're also unique. So, what I usually do is have people go through a quick inventory look and say, what's the wild water that you'd love to go to. And can you get to it today? Can you get to it this weekend? Can you get to it once a year? And then what is your domestic water that you can get to, your bath, your shower, if you're lucky and you have a hot tub or something, or access to a swimming pool, or maybe you can jump in your neighbor's pool or go to the public pool or go to a club pool. So that domestic water, what about the urban water in your town? Is there a great fountain that you love to sit by? Is there an urban waterfront? So there's the urban water. So you've got the wild, the domestic urban. But then, add to that list the virtual, so virtual water is the art, the poetry, the books about water, the photography, the films.

Not talking about VR headsets, but if you're in that cool, but all the different depictions of water, great songs about water that transport you to the seaside, whether it's Jimmy Buffett or Jack Johnson or whoever you love, who sings about water is influenced by the ocean. And then there's the imaginary. And the imaginary is when you close your eyes and you think of the water that you love the most, and you think of being in it and floating in it or swimming in it or sailing on it, or just looking at it and you have access to something always. Whether you can get in the bathtub in the middle of the day or not, or you can take a walk down two blocks away to the edge of the water or not. You can always close your eyes and go there in this powerful imagination that you possess. That becomes a very personal list. I don't have the answers to your list and you don't have them from my list, but when you have that list, it's probably pretty big. then the next thing is, okay, prioritize, practicing blue mind in some way, whenever you need it.

And that could be every day. That could be every hour. It could be a couple of times a week, depending on what you're going through and what kind of year we're having. I think it's really a personal thing and you might live down the street from a little Creek and you love that little Creek and it's right in a busy area, but you can sneak down under the bridge and just sit down there and look at the crayfish or you might be lucky. I live two blocks down the road and it's the Pacific ocean and I can sometimes hear it at night when I'm falling asleep. So it's very individual. It's very personal. You may think surfing is great. That may scare the heck out of you, my mom doesn't like to swim.

She doesn't like water touching her face, but she likes to sit on the second floor balcony with a margarita and watch the sunset over the water. So I don't push her to go free diving. Of course, that would be red mind. Somebody would get hurt if I tried to do that. So I think that's the key is really, a simple framework that everybody can find their list of blue minded activities. And, a lot of those activities involve green mind as well. So walking in a park by a creek around a pond around the lake, by a river, riding your bike, there's green and blue. That's the best when you can get both of those.

Jennifer (35m 38s): What do you think about speaking of that? Because not everyone can get outside or get close to water. I'm lucky enough to live on the island of Manhattan, where I get to be, both sides of the island or in the middle of Central Park, there's a beautiful pond, but I also love the sound machine. I would love your thoughts around if I could at night, I love to play different sounds and it could be rain on a tin roof or waterfall. Would you get the same kind of sensation or brain imagery, do you think, or is one better than another? Or what are your thoughts around that?

Jay (36m 8s): Yeah, well, I say it's a continuum, so you've got experiences that would be, let's call it an extreme blue mind. Those would be, let's just say, you're in your favorite body of water. It's really warm. You're really comfortable and safe and you're floating on your back. And it's a beautiful night sky and there's a meteor shower and maybe bioluminescence in the water and you're with someone you love an awful lot and you just feel hugged by the water. You're holding their hand and it's just pure calm bliss. You feel very secure. That's extreme blue mind. You can't do that every single day. Most people can't on the other end is I’m more mild blue mind, which might be, you look at a painting on the wall of water and it just makes you feel a moment of good, of calm, nostalgia. And then everything is kind of on that continuum.

And I think sound is so powerful there are so many apps that use water sounds. So, the famous app called Calm some of their top modes involve water. If you go to YouTube, you can find 11 hours of ocean sound because you press play and you can play it all night. But my favorite is it's really easy to do. We all have these little voice memo things on our phones, but not of us, but a lot of phones have them record the sound of the water that you love when you're there, make a, 15 minute, recording of it and then loop it then share the sound of the water, your love with someone you love and ask them to do the same and then listen to their water and they listen to your water and it's wonderful. And it's personal. It's connecting, it's not an app. Some of the apps use digitally enhanced or digitally generated water sound. Do I find much less appealing, actual sound of rain that your friend recorded beats everything. I mean, it's like, there's, it's like infused with love and what a great gift to give.

Jennifer (38m 13s): Yeah I love that. I recorded the water I love for you. Really, what a great gift.

Jay (38m 22s): Yeah you know it like gives you chills, and guess how much that costs, cost you 15 minutes of your time, right? The carbon footprint is very small. 

Monica (38m 30s): All right, Jennifer, we got to go out. I got to go to the Creek this week. I feel like it's a new mixtape tape. Give your girlfriend, give your boyfriend.

Jennifer (38m 44s): Are you kidding, this is my favorite idea ever. 

Monica (38m 46s): I see a social post in your future Jennifer. 

Jay (38m 47s): Here's another tip. I have another little tip unrelated, random, but get the soap crayons, preferably blue, and put them in your shower because when you close your eyes and you feel the water, your brain moves into this other place. And you're probably going to have some kind of great idea. The trouble is you probably forget it before you get out of the shower. The workaround is don't bring your phone in to write it down, bring your soap, crayon, keep it in the shower and write it on the wall. Just jot, even if it's an acronym, just note to self, like the brilliant idea that's going to change the world that I don't want to forget. You can write it on the wall. Dr. Oliver sacks used to get his best ideas while swimming, and he would jump out of the pool or jump out of the lake and scribble them on a yellow, legal pad. And his assistant who helped him write his books would be charged with deciphering the wet drippy legal pad writing and sometimes it was very difficult. So another Simple little tip is, bring a soap crayon, and just keep it in your shower. So you probably had that idea, like you're in the shower. Like I just thought of a great idea for something. And then you all remember that and then you towel off and you’re like, it’s gone. 

Monica (40m 17s): I see partnership with blue mind and the crayon people in the next book. You've got to package it all together.

Jay (40m 29s): Yeah. You get a bag of marbles. You get a crayon. I love it. I love it.

Monica (40m 30s): Before we wrap up, I wanted to touch on, a concept. A lot of the work that you're doing is education. I know that you have been living in the Monterey area. There's ton of amazing resources there. The aquarium, Middlebury, you know, and I think you've been involved with both. Where does conservation come in and have you seen an uptick in interest since the book came out? Like, do you feel like you are making that connection into the policy and activism sphere?

Jay (41m 4s): Yeah. Great question. that's kind of I come from, my motivation is helping the fix what's broken in the waters of the world and studying sea turtles and plastic pollution. And work on Marine protected areas and fishing and, all the problems and what I would say very broadly, so thousand foot view is that we've told them, an incomplete story, about why we should save the oceans and the lakes and the rivers and what they're good for. We've told a story that basically goes, 70 something percent of the planet is covered with water. The oceans give us more than half the oxygen they feed billions of people, employ billions of people, dictate climate and weather, and are the home of biodiversity.

And by the time you've rattled that off. And, it's almost the preamble for every exhibit, documentary, textbook, UN campaign. You've bored the heck out of people. It's really boring and it's really hard to make the ocean boring and it's inappropriate to make the ocean boring. But we keep the same stats story about ecosystem services. and we leave out the vast cognitive, emotional, psychological, social, spiritual, creative, wellness benefits, such as, so I would tell the story this way. I would start with, did you know, lakes, rivers and oceans are the greatest source of romance that our planet has and peace and a sense of freedom and creativity, and calm when you need it.

And they're the best place to grieve when you need to grieve when you've experienced loss. Oh, and by the way, they also give us oxygen, food, jobs, you front load stuff that is very universally human. And I say, that strongly it's all spiritual and cultural traditions for all history have embraced these ideas.

They're encoded in every spiritual text. These are not new ideas, but we've dialed it out for some reason, because we got scared of emotion and it's time to bring it back and not just bring it back and put it as number 10 on the list. But put it as number one on the list. So your question is about conservation.

What does that have to do with conservation? What we build a bigger, stronger, more diverse blue movement when we involve more people, we get better support, meaning maybe funding, maybe collaboration. We get people thinking about the role of the waters that they live with in a different way. We start to engage with public health. We start to engage with the design community. We start to engage with travel and leisure. We start to engage more with real estate and planning in ways that conservationists dream of being relevant in that way. So it creates a relevance. I guess specifically, I would say what I've seen this past two years is that when we talk about how oceans lakes and rivers help our first responders, I have a snoring dog next to me in case that is coming through sorry, his name’s George. But when you tell that story and you say that the people who are serving us every day, who are on the frontline, in healthcare, first responders, educators, they're burning out left and right. And if a healthy ocean or healthy lakes and rivers in our communities can help them, those who serve us, help them stay well. that starts changing the policy conversation a lot. You know, it's a really cool way to approach conservation, I'd say. Who is going to say, yeah, nah, I don't really want to help the nurses and the teachers who are going out there and working for us and our kids. 

So that's just a really simple kind of example of how you take the blue mind conversation, which, can sound optional I guess, and make it super non-optional and really relevant too. I was just listening to NPR yesterday and there was an educator in Chicago, had written an op-ed. And basically the upshot is that teachers are not okay. They’re just not okay right now. And I can say the same for nurses, doctors, first responders, and maybe everybody. we're all not okay. In some new way, we've all experienced some kind of loss and blue mind is one tool for your toolbox that is right in front of you and available. It just needs us to explain that a little bit.

And then, you don't need a prescription. It's not expensive and so, I'm not a policy person, but I like when people who are grab onto the science and practice of blue mind and then convert it into words and codify it and turn it into policy, put it in their reports, like at the center for the blue economy here in Monterrey, the economist say, so what should we do?

And the answer is stop leaving it out. But start with that, at least put a sentence about it in there. Don't bury it. It's real. if you leave it out, it's conspicuously absent at this point. Get over the nineties, 1990s talking points and we're in the 2020s now, right? I would just add yesterday I found a video that Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan put out, educating their staff about blue mind. Wow. I had nothing to do with it. There's no attribution. Which is exactly in line with my personal goals is to create blue mind, common knowledge, which just means it's out there. People are putting it to good use.

They don't know why they know it or how they know it, and it just becomes something we all understand about ourselves and about the water. shout out to Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, and then they discovered blue mind and are propagating the idea. Yeah. Yeah.

Jennifer (47m 18s): I feel like we could talk for hours, hours more.

Jay (47m 13s): We’ll have to put it on the calendar 

Jennifer (47m 18s): To do it again, but how can we support you? Because I think this is the perfect way to kind of end the conversation unless Monica you want to add, but I'd love to know how can we support you? What are you doing next? Or what can we share with the audience about how to support you in some way?

Jay (47m 35s): Yeah, I think the best thing is, if this conversation resonates, run it up your flagpole, whatever that means. If you know, people who need to hear about this, people who are stuck in gray mind or teetering on gray mind, let them know maybe you have an organization that you're part of or a business that you're a part of where these ideas could be immediately starting today put to good use, just do that.

I'm just me here with my laptop and my phone and I don't need much. So the support, I think really needs to be directed at people who are really hurting and need to know what we know. and so take care of yourself first and foremost, so that you can then turn and help those around you that, this may be useful idea for. And if you're curious about more, the best way to look for it, just type the phrase, blue mind in quotes into Google. An additional word, whatever the thing is, if you're interested in healthcare, if you're interested in design, if you're interested in surfing or free diving, just add that extra word.

And you will find the community of people who are putting blue mind into practice, in that arena, in that sector. The travel sector has embraced blue mind powerfully the boating sector, the pool, like people who make pools are really in the blue mine. It obviously helps them explain their product, but it also helps them explain the relevance of what they do more research on the thing that you're most interested in and how it intersects with water, and if I can be of use in any way, I'm easy to find, just reach out and drop a note.

Monica (49m 18s): And speaking of that, I did see that you have a book club that seems like it's a recurring schedule, but you're sort of in the early stages of it right now. I mean, we're recording this at the end of January. but it sounds like you, do you read it, do you read the book every day? How does it work? It looks like there's a Sunday meetup on Facebook live, but I think that's a great way for people to get further engaged, with the content.

Jay (49m 36s): Yeah. I'll get into that in at the risk of sounding completely ridiculous. It's the ninth year of this book club in which we get on Facebook live and we read the book together. I read it out loud to you. So you don't even need a book to participate in this book club because I read the book, this book here, I read it, a few pages every evening. We chat about it. And then Sunday we'd do a little more formal reader's guide and it's 5:30 PM Pacific time. It has, very low production quality, Facebook live, wherever I am, which could be sitting in a parking lot, could be one time that I did it from a Ferris wheel. And sometimes I go to the beach, which is my favorite way to do it. and I just read the book and then as we read sometimes, I update things. So if I read a sentence and I know that there's more to be said about it than there was back when I wrote it, then I'll add, embellish it a little bit, or sometimes, things come up and people in the chat share their insights and links to things.

It's just very organic and simple, but I haven't missed a reading in, we're now up to 578 episodes without missing a single one over the past nine years, which is the ridiculous part. I don't understand. I don't understand myself. It's amazing. It's kind of turned into like, it keeps going because it keeps going because nobody wants to blink and it's like a streak, right?

So. Anyhow. If you've written a book, I recommend that you try some version of that cause it's, such an easy way, fun way to engage with people who like the topic. Assuming you still like the topic that you've written about.

Jennifer (51m 30s): That’s a good point.

Monica (51m 37s): Well, we'll add a link in the show notes so people can join in.

Jay (51m 41s): Yeah. And if you miss it live, you can always go back and watch any episode. Or if there is a particular section. Yeah. They're all archived like forever. Yeah. 

Jennifer (51m 50s): Perfect

Monica (51m 51s): Well, Jay, this was a delight and I know as Jennifer said, we could talk to you for more and more hours and 

Jennifer (52m 3s): So many more questions to ask.

Monica (52m 3s): Well, maybe later do a follow up, we can get you and Richard Louv on, we can do a grand blue mind panel. Yeah. 

Jay (52m 14s): That would be so much fun.

Monica (52m 14s) Well, thank you so much.

Jay (52m 15s): Thank you. Let’s do it again. 

Jennifer (52m 21s): Oh my gosh. Me too. Okay. I'll say the thing that I really love about Jay's work is the way that he weaves in the spiritual and cultural connotations of water into his work. The foundation is hard science, but he's right when he says that as we become disconnected from these more instinctual things that connect us as a species to.

Monica (52m 47s): That also struck me, especially in the context of thinking about conservation, we do rely very heavily on science, which is great, but I think you and I agree, we also have to sort of make an emotional appeal to people to really share with them why water in nature is important. It's really a big part of the equation.

Jennifer (52m 59s): Yes, it's such a real and human way of looking at it. And I love the feedback he got at one point about how the science actually enhances the mystery and the magic. So at that point, I also loved the way the Jay contrasts the blue mind with the red mind and describes them both as useful. I mean, we need both to function for that to be at our best.

Monica (53m 22s): Exactly. And we need that red to stay motivated and productive yet if we live too long in that state without taking that time to relax, it can veer into gray mind, which really isn't helpful.

Jennifer (53m 40s): So check out our show notes to grab your copy of the book or some further reading and to join Jay for his weekly book clubs on Facebook live.

Monica (53m 37s): Until next time, Jennifer.

Jennifer (53m 41s): Talk to you in two weeks Monica.