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Dr. J

by Jim Cross, ND, LAc

Wilderness Healing

One of the themes for this month’s Townsend Letter is travel health/wilderness medicine. I would like to slightly alter this concept to “wilderness healing.” Many of my patients, friends, and students will remark at how strong my energetic being is. There are multiple factors that contribute to this energy. One is that my parents gave me great genes (thanks, Mother and Dad!), to which I have overall been a good steward for the vast majority of my life. Another is that I eat about 98% photon-rich food. In other words, I consume food that still has qi/life force contained within it. I eat almost entirely fresh fruit, veggies, yogurt, and meat from my local farmers market that still has that feeling and taste of freshness. I have also found that the act of buying food from the farmers market is also energizing because the vendors there have such positive energy about their products. Finally, I expose myself to the earth’s energy every day. This is easy to do because two of my neighbors are national forests. The wild animals (bears, mountain lions, coyotes, bucks, etc.) come onto my property on a fairly regular basis. My daily hikes involve direct exposure with this magical energy. My interactions with wild beings, the thousands of trees in my vicinity, and the rocks/minerals in the soil feed and nourish my core being in a way that is recognizable by the people above in this paragraph.

In the US, this exposure to nature has been called Earthing. In Japan, they know it by Shinrin-yoku, or forest-bathing. Basically, you are bathing in the atmosphere of the forest. Now what is this atmosphere of the forest? I found a new word: phytoncides! We apparently are not responding to a particular tree or flower or organism per se in nature, but are undergoing an active interaction with these phytoncides that are aromatically given off by plants. These phytoncides are antimicrobial, alleochemic, volatile organic compounds that plants use to ward off attacks by bacteria, viruses, fungi, and insects. We not only drink or eat our phytochemicals but also breathe them directly into our lungs, absorbing them through our skin. Taken together, the lungs and skin have a phenomenally large surface area available for absorption of these lovely phytoncides!

In addition, there is an interesting study from the underread Journal of Immunopharmacology and Immunotoxicology titled “Phytoncides (wood essential oils) Induce Human Killer Cell Activity.”¹ The authors found that wood essential oils emitted into the air not only significantly increased natural killer cell activity but also increased surface markers in the complement cascade. This study shows that the wilderness can aromatically have positive physiological effects on our bodies.

Where else can we find information on physiological effects of the earth on humans? One place is the Schumann resonances. At any given moment, about 2000 thunderstorms roll over the earth and produce about 50 flashes of lightning per second. These lightning bursts create waves of low-frequency electromagnetic energy that circle the earth between its surface and about 60 miles up in the lower edge of the ionosphere. This space between the surface of the earth and the conductive ionosphere becomes a resonant cavity for this low-frequency electromagnetic energy. Schumann resonances are the principal background electromagnetic energy in this space, beginning at 3 Hz and extending to 60 Hz, and appear as distinct peaks at extremely low frequencies around 7.83 (fundamental), 14.3, 20.8, 27.3 and 33.8 Hz.²

Our ancestors, of course, intuitively understood what was happening around them and documented this in their rituals and on artifacts. Or perhaps they just trusted the universe rather than needed to understand it.

Magnetic waves are carriers of information which influence all living systems on this earth. Basically, every cell of each living organism on earth is bathed in this external, fluctuating, invisible electromagnetic force. Most unfortunately, we are also being bathed in a human-made series of electromagnetic frequencies that are not entrained with our various organ systems and which are raising havoc in our bodies at this very instant. For as long as humans have been on earth, our physiological rhythms have been synchronized with these naturally occurring electromagnetic forces that are being exerted on us. It would make sense then that unnatural fluctuations in these fields might have pathological effects on the various systems of our bodies. From the other side, it would also make perfect sense that exposure to these natural fields would have a positive effect on our organ systems which has been shown to be true.

There also is a similarity between the frequencies, to which we are being exposed from the earth, to the brain waves and to the heart rhythms of human beings. Changes in the earth’s magnetic field have been shown to affect human heart/brain rhythms and have been associated with the following: positive changes in athletic performance, memory and other tasks, synthesis of nutrients in plants and algae, the number of reported traffic violations and accidents, mortality from heart attacks and strokes, and incidence of depression and suicide.³

Nature then contains an incredibly complex exchange of energy. Just as it is impossible to separate individual nutrients in a whole food or herb, it is basically impossible to know the total amount of exchanges taking place between us and them, them being the entirety of the natural environment. It’s the classic “forest for the trees Lars” comment. We see nature all of the time, but how many of us really experience nature and really understand what this experience nourishes inside of us? We miss the obviously larger picture of inclusiveness that exists between all living beings on earth and with the earth itself. A lovely example of this exchange taking place is the Peace Garden Project, which has a lovely video that succinctly gives the most beautiful environmentally inclusive message in about 90 seconds.⁴ It’s all about just getting along with each other and with the earth; so easy to say and so many distractions and desires that prevent us from doing so.

Finally, I would like to leave you with a real-life example of this possible energetic interchange. Twenty-four years ago, I was driving home to Quincy (California) from Chico, the nearest city. It was a very cold February night around 12 a.m.; there was a full moon. In my favorite TV show of all time, Northern Exposure, Dr. Joel Fleischmann describes the location of Cicely, Alaska, when queried by a tourist one day: “ It lies somewhere between the end of the line and the middle of nowhere.” This describes Quincy also. You must drive 50 miles up the North Fork of the Feather River canyon to get there. I was only a few miles above the bottom of the canyon when I drove around a 45 mph right-hand turn. As I did so, I saw an incredible sight in the middle of my lane. A male and female mountain lion had just taken a deer. I wondered, should I ask for a three-way on the liver? I decided to move into the other lane and just keep on going. As I approached this truly cinematic event, going as slow as I could, the male jumped up to stand guard over the female lion who was finishing off the deer as I could still see it futilely struggling. As I passed, I looked to the right and the male leapt parallel to me. For about a second, our eyes met and our gazes locked. I saw in those eyes an energy force that was so powerful and intimate that I can still feel it to this day. This was the real deal.

It took about two years for me to have the sudden realization that this encounter had actually been a wonderful gift to me in that moment. (Of course this light bulb went on in my brain as I was walking in the woods!) The male lion had given me a bit of his core strength. Along with my positive lifestyle choices, this has allowed me to presently be 64 and still have an energetic presence that allows me to work from dawn to dusk. This example of mine is an extreme one. If any of you are lucky enough to have experienced something along these lines, good for you! The point which I want to really make here is that our mundane, daily choices really determine how successfully we and our patients age. If you can make simple, positive daily choices (photon-rich food, monitor your stress levels, move your body, spend an hour in real nature every day), you will be writing your own extremely successful anti-aging guidelines. What is tough for our patients and for us is to be consistent on a daily basis. As Peter Tosh so wonderfully sings on his powerful album Equal Rights: “Everybody wants to go to heaven but nobody wants to die.” We all want to feel physically/mentally/emotionally/spiritually great. Are we willing, though, to put forth the daily effort to achieve this lofty goal?

Finally, just remember to remind yourself and your patients that true contact with the earth and the physiological benefits that come with it are all about location, location, location!

Notes

1. Li Q, Nakadai A, Matsushima H, Miyazaki Y, Krensky AM, Kawada T, Morimoto K. Phytoncides (wood essential oils) induce human natural killer cell activity. Immunopharmacol Immunotoxicol. 2006;28(2):319–333.

2. 2. Dickenson IP. The discovery of Schumann resonance [online article]. Earthbreathing. http://www.earthbreathing.co.uk/sr.htm.

3. Global coherence research [online article]. HeartMath Institute. https://www.heartmath.org/research/global-coherence.

4. Listen to the wombat – “All is one” [online video]. Peace Garden Project. Feb. 18, 2009. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqJUeRltxs8.