Chakras and Shotguns

E111: Why You Should Hug A Tree - The Physical and Spiritual Benefits

• Mik & Jenn • Episode 111

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In this episode of Chakras and Shotguns, join us as we dive deep into the world of trees. We explore the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual benefits of connecting with nature. Learn how trees can impact your well-being and why spending time in their presence is essential for your overall health and happiness. Don't forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel for the full visual experience!

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Mik:

You are now listening to

Jenn:

Chakras and Shotguns.

Mik:

Welcome to Chakras and Shotguns, the podcast that guides you on a journey of spiritual development and personal preparedness. I'm Mik, a marketer, energy healer, and prepper.

Jenn:

And I'm Jenn, a former lawyer, now yoga instructor and tarot card reader.

Mik:

So we're taught in school that trees are really important because they produce oxygen for us to breathe as well as consume CO2, which helps to regulate the temperature of the atmosphere.

Jenn:

And it's hot.

Mik:

Yes, it is. But really, that just covers the physical aspect of trees. Uh, in today's episode, we're going to dive into some additional aspects. How do trees affect us on a mental, emotional, and even spiritual level? We'll get into that and talk about why it's important for all of us to spend some time connecting with trees.

Jenn:

But before we get into that, if you're just listening, you know, on your commute and that's, you know, what we used to do, that's fine or whatever, but you can also watch us and watch the episode. I'm dressed like a highlighter today. Pink. You wouldn't know that unless you subscribe to our YouTube channel.

Mik:

Yes, indeed.

Jenn:

So you can just search Chakras and Shotguns. We'll pop up. Now you can watch it with video if you would like. And yeah, it's been a lot of fun editing video and getting the lighting right. Working on my eyeshadow game. Getting the beat going. Go ahead and subscribe.

Mik:

All right. Well, let's begin as we always do with a breath work exercise to put us in a mindful place. All right. All right. I'll be leading today's breath work. If you can get into a comfortable seated position or even lay down, if you feel so inclined, just allow yourself to relax, close your eyes. You can place one hand on your heart and one hand on your belly if you like. And let's start by taking a couple of cleansing breaths. Let's take a deep inhale and exhale out of your mouth, allowing yourself to settle into your space. One more into your nose and out through the mouth. Now allow yourself to visualize a beautiful scene in nature, a lush forest, and fill this forest with various trees in your mind's eye. And if you're building an imaginary world, I want you to bring forth an image of a tree that really just draws you in. If you're familiar with the different species of trees, this could be your favorite tree. Or if you don't even know the exact name for the tree, just find one that has characteristics that speak to you. It could be more of a Christmas tree, coniferous type of tree with more needle leaves. Or a tree that has large, expansive leaves like a maple or oak. Just find the tree that speaks to you and resonates with your energy. Examine the tree, how tall is it, what is the bark like, what are the leaves like, is there new growth? Bring all of this to mind. Now imagine the wind is rustling around this tree, what does that sound like? Imagine yourself touching this tree. What does the bark feel like? What is the energy you feel as you touch this tree? If you listen closely, does the tree speak to you at all? Take a moment to give the trees you're touching and all the trees that you've built in this mental forest, give them gratitude for their energy For the role on this earth. For all that they do and provide. And remembering that you can always come back to this forest, always come back to this tree. Whenever you close your eyes and come back to the space. Say goodbye for now. And once again give gratitude. Let's take a couple more deep breaths. In through the nose. And out through the mouth. One more. In through the nose. And out through the mouth. Give your hands and feet a little wiggle. And

Jenn:

Thank you, Mick. Always a special treat when you do the breath work visualization exercise. Um, a couple of things you threw coniferous in there, you know how I feel when, you know, how it makes me feel when you use big words, you know, we're working, we're working right now. So, um, keep that smut to yourself. Also, you said, uh, also you said wiggle your toes and my toes pop. So hopefully we, um, cut that out in post. All right. So let's get into some tree hugging and this. It's so funny because it made me think of a couple of things. Of course it made me think about like hippies and like, they're like, Oh, you're a tree hugger. But also it made me think about, um, I can talk about this. She's not going to listen.

Mik:

Okay. Oh yes. I know where you're going.

Jenn:

So my mom and I, And I have, you know, as I've been exploring, you know, on my spiritual journey, et cetera, et cetera, you know, my mom's a good Christian lady. I say that all the time. She happened to be sitting next to some lady on a plane. And that lady started talking to her about how she threw Catholicism in the trash and now she worships trees. And my mom called me very accusatory and was like, are you a tree worshiper now? Because of some lady on a random American flight told her that she don't believe in the priest no more. And now she's a tree hugger. And I was like, well, girl, I do hug trees though. I do love a tree. I love taking myself to a place where I can feel the spirits of trees, meditating in trees. We love a botanical garden, honey. But I was like, I mean, I'm not a member. Like I don't. Go to the church of

Mik:

the trees, of the trees.

Jenn:

But yes, so I just feel like tree hugging, like growing up. Yeah. Like our parents who grew up in the sixties and the seventies and then had us, and then like the language, like the, it was really propaganda, really like the language around tree huggers. Mm-Hmm. was very. So nasty, so rude, so mean. So it had this like interesting connotation to it.

Mik:

Yeah. It's, it's very interesting to me how tree hugger became something that as a society or like a mainstream society, I should say we like denigrated, like it was like a negative thing that we did. Terms on you're a tree hugger, you know what I mean? But I think in a lot of ways, and I don't know if this is historically accurate or not, but I, I remember hearing stories of activists who were trying to stop deforestation. They would chain themselves to trees and they would prevent or try to prevent. These loggers from cutting down trees. And so it was an act of environmental resistance, right? And we got the message from capitalism, from the capitalists that, um, It was bad to try to stop that from happening. Right. Trying to stop industry from destroying forests. So you were a tree hugger cause you're in my way. Like it's kind of,

Jenn:

yeah, you're in my way of destruction.

Mik:

Exactly. So I don't, again, I don't know if that's historically accurate, but that's like, as you were talking, kind of what popped into my head. Anyway, for this episode, what I want to talk about is how tree hugging actually didn't start with the hippies and didn't start with these environmental activists. There's actually a long history of tree reverence. Throughout history. And so. A couple of societies that I wanted to point out, uh, Celtic and Druid or Druidic traditions, they honored trees. They believe that each tree was inhabited by spirits who were willing to share their healing powers with us. Uh, the Celts, they actually organize trees into a tree calendar. So each, each month, um, had a specific tree associated with it in a certain medicine that was, um, Attributed to that specific tree. And so there's a book that I read called the healing power of trees by Charlene or Charlene, maybe Hidalgo that goes into a lot of detail about this. So if you're interested, check it out, we'll add that to the reading list. I don't know if it's already on the reading list or not.

Jenn:

I don't think so. We might need to do for update.

Mik:

Yeah, we can add that. But yeah, we'll talk a little bit more about some of the tree energies a little bit later in this episode. I also wanted to call out another, uh, community. So this is in line with kind of what we were talking about, what I was just talking about with like kind of stopping deforestation. But there was this Bishnoi community in India. Uh, and about Uh, in 1730, 363 members of that community, they hugged trees to prevent them from being cut down for a palace project that was being built. Um, so, you know, kind of similar vibes that we saw with the hippie movement where they were trying to

Jenn:

reach. Mm hmm.

Mik:

So, yeah, they're, they're kind of sacrifice that they did that led to a royal decree that protected the trees and their villages, um, which really was kind of like the, you know, Early forms of environmental protection. Um, so yeah, that's, that's some of the early things. And as we already talked about, there's obviously that environmental movement that's continued on, that's kind of started in like the fifties and sixties that we continue to see today.

Jenn:

One, I love to see a protest gone right. And people being like, okay, my bad. We'll protect the trees because do we really need another palace? Yeah, no. Yeah. Uh, second in the spirit of deconditioning, you know, um, The propaganda around environmental activists was crazy growing up. I don't think it was, I was well into adulthood where it was like, climate change started becoming a real conversation and it was like, no, y'all like we about to be burnt up to a crisp if we don't like stop pollution and all of these things. I remember growing up, they were like, Oh, those environmentalists environmentalists. Like, I feel like in certain. Movies and stuff, they would make them the bad guy.

Mik:

Yeah, exactly. That

Jenn:

they were trying to save the earth. Yeah. I mean, I think Poison Ivy kind of

Mik:

was an

Jenn:

environmentalist, right? Yeah, and

Mik:

then you had the billionaire dressing up in a suit, stopping her.

Jenn:

Mm, women in tech. You see what I'm saying? Are you picking up what I'm putting down? I don't know. A woman's trying to save some shit and a billionaire vigilante who could be using his money, like he could actually be funding, I don't know, let's work on the school to prison pipeline or, you know, making sure people can eat so they don't have to steal.

Mik:

Climate change. Or

Jenn:

climate change. He's a freaking billionaire and he's like, you know what? I want to fight crime myself. Stupid, silly, goofy, very Republican coded. Yeah, but that's neither here nor there.

Mik:

Would Bruce Wayne have spoke at the RNC?

Jenn:

Probably. Cause he needed the tax cuts. So he'd get a new Batmobile because how else are we going? Like Joker needed mental health care. Like that's his mental, like he needed health and wellness. Okay.

Mik:

Arkham was overcrowded. Anyway. You

Jenn:

need an EMDR therapy, okay? We needed resources.

Mik:

On a more serious note, I wanted to speak on something. So I went to this, um, I guess conference, it's not really a conference, it's more like a gathering. Okay. Um, called Anua. You know about this, right? And so they, they brought in, uh, Um, over 50 indigenous elders to Big Bear, which is a few hours outside of L. A. And I got to attend this and basically it was three days of programming where individual elders would hold section hold hold sessions on different topics. Um, and one of the commonalities that I noticed is that regardless of the culture Whether it was the samurai culture, whether it was Hawaiian, um, culture, whether it was, um, indigenous folks in South America or Mexico, uh, or even here in North America, uh, or here in us, uh, cause I guess Mexico is part of North America, but all across those cultures, there was a belief in kind of spirits all around us. Right. And so this animism of like, even Trees or rocks or mountains or whatever, having spirits. Um, and so the fact that that idea was kind of all around the world and, you know, I, I'm called out the Celts and the Druids here, but I wanted to also just note that, you know, there were so many different cultures who also had this same idea and it was prevalent when I was at this, uh, at this gathering. So they talked a lot about trees and, and pretty much everything and how important it is to honor the spirits that inhabit all of these, as we talk about tree hugging. I want to provide that additional context.

Jenn:

Yeah. And we have this conversation all the time and we were having this conversation this morning where I've started to say, like, we've talked about the book of water in the spirit a million times. I was telling Mick, um, a couple of stories about other things that I had seen online. And This, I call it like 5D goggles or like 5D glasses of just, um, there's these indigenous cultures that are always indigenous traditions, right? For the most part, you also see it in Haiti a lot of like, they're, they somehow perceive other layers to this. tangible world that we're in, that we're not seeing, you know, where they're, they're seeing the spirits that are living in these trees, like they're tapped in, like they have the glasses on. And so it's just this connection with nature that is so fascinating to me. And almost, I get a little melancholy about it, about it sometime about how far removed we've, we've come from, where we're just, it's a, it's a resource. It's something to be trampled on. It's something to be, to move. Move past like being in nature is a hobby. That's oh, you like to camp? Like yeah, that's a hobby versus coming back to Like factory settings. Yeah, right.

Mik:

I'm trying to remember the name of the book. We've talked about it before but even from a Looking at the bible, right? There's this book that talks about how The 5D goggles were prevalent at the time that the biblical text was being written. And so there's like so much in the context of the text that we don't quite understand because we're missing that perspective that people who were alive then had with regard to supernatural, you know, 5D things that we call now in new age 5D, whatever, but like these supernatural instances, whether it's It's contact with beings like angels, right? That was more readily accepted and a more prevalent part of society than it is now. Yeah. And so we are unable to kind of fully understand the Bible because we don't have that same lens.

Jenn:

Open your third eye, fam.

Mik:

Exactly. Exactly.

Jenn:

Okay. Let's get back to these trees.

Mik:

Yeah.

Jenn:

So, are there any benefits from spending time with trees? Just like, just being around a tree. We found two studies. One is in the Journal of Environmental Psychology. That's cool. And one in the Journal of Preventive Medicine. And they both looked at forest bathing, which is basically spending time among trees. Do you have to be naked to forest bathe? I think you just keep it up. Yeah. Yeah. She a fan, she a fan, she a fan. You trying to be a bitch? She like, is it required? Is it optional? I'm just kidding. So anyways, let's get back to the task at hand. And stop being freaky. Both studies showed that spending time in the forest for a significant period of time, which is three days in one of the studies, so, you know. You know, just popping out to like the local park for 20 minutes. It resulted in significantly lower blood pressure and an increase in immune response, which gosh, I'm so fascinated with like the immune response and like its impact on survival. And that if we're over triggering it, what are the other things that we're, you know what I mean? Like all the things that we're basically messing up in our body, because. We're in fight or flight and then our immune response goes down and now we're getting sick all the time or we're not sleeping well. Yeah. So just being, going camping, I guess, being amongst some trees for three days, that's a long weekend. Yeah.

Mik:

And look, how many of us got a big mama that's on birth control medication?

Jenn:

Birth control?

Mik:

Sorry, blood pressure medication.

Jenn:

If my big mama's on birth control, we got a problem.

Mik:

Damn, I said that wrong. There might be a big mama on birth control.

Jenn:

Well, the grandmama is the baby, you know.

Mik:

Forgive me, y'all. All we gotta do is take her out to the forest, it sound like. Yes. Take her on a little camping trip, get into some trees. My mama don't like being outside. We need to fix that.

Jenn:

Yeah.

Mik:

Get out here into some trees.

Jenn:

Over here, get swap out that hypertension medication.

Mik:

I also want to note that the participants in that study also showed that they had increased mood and lower anxiety. And I know a lot of folks, especially in our generation are suffering from high anxiety. Maybe

Jenn:

it's anxious time.

Mik:

We are, we tired of living in unprecedented times.

Jenn:

Get off the internet and get touch grass. People are like, Oh, that's so offensive. When you tell people to touch grass, touch grass, it's going to help with your anxiety.

Mik:

That's like scientifically back studies. There are more than just those two that we highlighted, so feel free to kind of let your, you know, your Google fingers fly if you need to. Uh, I want to talk a little bit about some of the, the energy of trees. So there's, uh, different cultures, like I mentioned already, the, the Celtics, the Norse, uh, Native Hawaiians. And Hindus to name a few that have concepts around kind of specific trees and their spiritual energy. So some of the examples, the oak tree, right? Big, strong oak tree. They are considered to have the energy of strength. Stability and wisdom. We had that big Oak tree in our front yard in Dallas. I kind of felt that energy every time I would interact with that tree. It's also the willow tree. Uh, and that has the energy of healing and sorrow. So like weeping willow, you ever heard that, right? With the, the mosque kind of hanging from it. Uh, the birch tree has the energy of protection and new beginnings. The Cypress tree. Mourning and grief, the, the elder tree guidance, the redwood tree also is another one that is considered one for, for strength and kind of growth because of how, how tall they are.

Jenn:

Uh,

Mik:

and then the Cedar tree, uh, is also another one that I've heard of referred to as being, uh, strong, uh, as well, you know, having a good Cedar wood furniture, at least my dad would talk about that. It's a good Cedar. Just over there, you know.

Jenn:

Okay, speaking of, because I was about to pop quiz. Yeah. And sometimes you got to pop out. Do you, I don't know if you know this or not, but do you think that in rituals, incorporating the wood of those certain trees, like, is that a thing?

Mik:

Yeah. So, um, I'll add to that. So. There are certain cultures that will smudge with specific woods for that reason, right? So in one of the sessions that I attended at the Aniwa, uh, she worked with, I think it was cedar actually. That was one of the woods that she would use to smudge for clearing energy. So yes, for which role purposes you can work with certain woods and burn them. For their properties.

Jenn:

Okay. Yeah. So if you don't remember these specific trees, Sean, you were like mixed reading this list, that's cute or whatever. You don't know how to identify them. You didn't do the ninth grade leaf identifying project. Like I did just start with what's around you and Google's your friend. They got all kinds of apps. Yeah. I have an

Mik:

app that helps me. Of course you do. Yeah. It's been weird. Like, I think since the spiritual awakening, I like started down this path of like being able to identify trees and even birds in some, in some ways we talked about the birds a little bit before, but like, I didn't have this knowledge, like growing up, like this wasn't something I learned like as a teenager in high school. And they're like, it's just been like a, I got this new encyclopedia in my head where I could just like,

Jenn:

I thought you were getting your associates or something while I was asleep. I was like, why does he know all these birds? Birder. It's a birder.

Mik:

Oh, man.

Jenn:

But just, yeah, just start with what's around you. Use an app or whatever. Uh, we had a tree in our backyard, our old, in our home in Dallas. You

Mik:

didn't even know what it was. It was an elm. Oh,

Jenn:

okay. We had elms on both

Mik:

sides. We had elms, it was elms on both sides of the house and in the backyard and then an oak in the front yard. I remember

Jenn:

the oak in the front, thank you. What's the elm for?

Mik:

You know, I don't actually remember what the energy of the elm was, but

Jenn:

oh, you didn't have the encyclopedia.

Mik:

Well, I don't have the spiritual meanings of every tree associated with the tree, but I can identify the tree. I don't know. My bad, you know.

Jenn:

We'll look it up later. But yeah, we just felt this connection to this tree, especially like as we were on our spiritual journey. I think even before that, when we bought the house, I was just like, these trees are so beautiful. And never owning a house before. We didn't know that these trees are so expensive to maintain.

Mik:

Yeah. If you want to maintain them the right way, especially in a place like Dallas, where we get tornadoes and storms and trees will fall over, like you kind of have to like, make sure you're getting them trimmed properly and it would be.

Jenn:

Yeah.

Mik:

We would spend like over a thousand to like. Take care of all the trees around us and it's like it's

Jenn:

about that time. We got to get the trees cut back. Oh, God.

Mik:

They was on my, on my ass too. It's time to get your trees trimmed. I'm like, I ain't got it right now.

Jenn:

Yeah. So we felt connections to the trees that we had, you know, we had also paid a lot of money. So we had financial connection, spiritual connection, emotional, but we were going on a spiritual journey. It's COVID we're inside. You know, or not around people, at least our only child at the time was a toddler. So we would take her outside a lot and like touch the tree and talk to the tree and hug the tree and tell the tree it's beautiful. And I am a tree hugger. Well, she also was like, I think she came over one day and, and our oldest was like, let's go outside and touch the tree. And my mom was like, Does she know the Lord's prayer? That was,

Mik:

um, there was this specific elm that she's talking about is one that I really connected with strongly. Like, as I was kind of going down this path of shamanism, uh, and I could almost, in a lot of ways, I mean, I could hear and communicate with it. I remember we were doing some work on like our driveway, which kind of curved around through our backyard. And I was like, worried that it was going to somehow disturb the roots. And I was like, you know, Talking to the tree, like, you know, telling it what was happening, you know what I mean? Because I just felt like this emotional connection to it that went beyond just like, Oh, I care for this tree was like something deeper, something spiritual.

Jenn:

Yeah.

Mik:

And so yeah, it's just been interesting.

Jenn:

Yeah. I did walk a lot to that when we were, when I was in labor with our oldest, I forgot about that. I was walking around in the backyard. Yeah. And I remember walking like back and forth to that tree. Yeah. Which is very interesting. Cause that was pre spiritual awakening kind of, but that that tree was there for that.

Mik:

Absolutely.

Jenn:

Also, I talked about botanical gardens earlier and this made me think about the last, well, no, that was not the last, the last time us as a family were at a botanical garden was in Santa Barbara. We took a little trip to Santa Barbara like last fall and, you know, This was not what we expected, but it was what we needed. It felt more like, just like you paying at a gate and popping into a forest. It's kind of really what it felt like.

Mik:

Massive botanical garden.

Jenn:

Yeah. And I was, I've been like, so enamored, fascinated by Redwoods since we've moved here and they had Redwood trees there. And there's also a lesson in here because. You know, we have the kids with us or whatever. And I was just getting caught up in like the spirits of these trees and not like I was about to get swept away or whatever, become Fern Gully. But if you know, you know, but more so like, I just really wanted to spend time with these trees. Like it was just, they were so majestic. And the lesson in that is I would like rush back and, and Mick will be like, I got the kids, like have your experience. And I think the lesson of. Having 5d goggles or being more connected with nature or being more tapped into your spiritualities that you can't rush it. And what that looks like is, you know, do your five minute meditation. If you just need to get your meditation in for the day, but sometimes you need to just sit in silence for a very long period of time or bathe in the forest for three days, or, you know, you really have to set aside time to really find That type of experience. And so I appreciate you for not rushing me, but I was still rushing myself cause I wanted to have lunch, but that's

Mik:

yeah, I thought, I thought it was really cool. Just watching you. I kind of stood back a little bit and kind of watched you as you kind of. Just were kind of gliding amongst the trees and kind of touching them. And like, I could tell you were really connecting with them in a way I hadn't seen you before. So that was really cool. Um, it kind of reminds me though of an experience that I had. So there was a plant medicine ceremony that I was helping to facilitate. Uh, in my role as a shaman and I, I took like a micro dose, um, which sometimes I will do to kind of help put me on that same frequency as well. And we were in this like backyard and there was this massive magnolia tree in the backyard. And as I was kind of laying, laying there, I looked over at the tree and I just felt like this call, like it was like wanting to tell me something, you know? And, and so I went over to it and kind of just sat with it for a while. And the message that I got was that it was, it was lonely essentially. And because of how the backyard was set up, it was kind of sitting in kind of like one of those, like a planter. Like it's like there, there are bricks that are kind of around it. And that kind of cover up the roots. And so it's not really like any exposed soil around the tree. It's it's, it looks great, right? Like it's like a decorative thing. So you have more of a deck and, and whatnot, but what that prevented the tree from doing is dropping its seeds into the soil, which would allow it to then have. offspring that would grow near it, right? Cause there's no exposed soil. There's nowhere for, for these, these, um, saplings to, to kind of come up out of the ground. And so, yeah, it was, it was talking about just, it was lonely. It wanted to procreate, wanted to move, wanted to like experience that movement. And so I told the, the owners of the home about that. And it's funny, they're actually planning to move. And so they were like, Oh, we can take You know, a seed or a sapling. And there's actually one little sapling that was growing out of a crack in the, in the sidewalk. And we can take that with us and like allow this tree to kind of experience. Through its offspring moving and being in different locations. So yeah, that was a really cool conversation that I had with the magnolia tree.

Jenn:

Was the sapling there when you were there or did they tell you later about the new sapling? No, I showed it to them. Oh, okay. Yeah. And they weren't aware of it.

Mik:

Yeah, they weren't aware of it. So yeah.

Jenn:

Trees, they're just like us. They want to have kids. Yeah. They want to see the sites. They do. They want to book flights, not catch feelings. You know what I'm saying?

Mik:

As you say that, like, it reminds me of in this book, uh, Braiding Sweetgrass, which is really popular right now, and we'll link it in the show notes if you haven't heard of it, but this book, it essentially follows the author is, um, from an indigenous tribe. And she talks about a lot of the lessons that she learned from various elders in her tribe. And. And the language that they use, they actually refer to trees as he or she, as opposed to how in English we use the word it. And she talked about what that does in terms of how we as English speakers perceive trees. Like when you, label it in it, it loses the ability to kind of have its own persona. But when you have those pronouns of he, she, for trees and plants, it reminds us of the shared kind of spirit energy that we. Have right like they're inhabited by a spirit the same as we are right? Yeah, and so Yeah, I think I have tried to subconsciously change my language to like kind of incorporate like when I talk about a tree like He or she like when I'm talking about my plant babies right here Like oh, she needs water as opposed to it needs to be watered right? Like yeah, you know, I think that helps to Yeah, just kind of change the mindset when it comes to How we view trees

Jenn:

and we're talking about everything living, right? Everything living that's non human. Yes. Cause you know, some people be talking to their cars and they mean, come on girl. And I'd be like, you know, if you do that, you know, that's, that's your ministry. You know, I, you know, I'm, I'm very like, if you're not hurting yourself or others, do what you want to do. Well, I was just, I just,

Mik:

well, wouldn't a car have a spirit too though?

Jenn:

I'm not there yet. I'm on the journey. I'm just hugging the tree. I'm just. I'm just hugging the tree. Okay. All right. So we're at the portion of the episode. It's not like a real segment or anything. I just realized that we're about to talk about how chronically online we are. And so I have a video that I want to talk about, about trees. And I know you have a video you want to talk about, about trees. So the video that I saw was this woman, and I think multiple people were doing it. We're kind of doing this experiment where you stand under a tree and the tree had to have Uh, a branch, basically it couldn't be a tree. They like the branch couldn't reach down, but the branch couldn't already be touching you. And so this woman was standing under this tree and she was like, you know, I think she might've had her hand on it, but she was like, hi, like, can you say hello? And you watch this branch, like come and like touch her on her shoulder. And of course people could be like, this is a hoax, this is fake news, whatever. But like, Isn't it cool that you could connect to something like that? And it's like, thank you for acknowledging me. Like, yeah, that's really cool. I'm alive.

Mik:

Yeah. Yeah. So the video I saw and I'll find the creator and I will tag her in the show notes. I don't have it. But she basically talks about her connection with trees and how she communicates with them. And what I thought was really interesting was that she talks about what happens when trees die. And she said they either will leave, their spirit will leave either through the roots or out through the leaves. And so she was suggesting that like if you need to cut down a tree or you know disturb, disturb it in some way that would potentially kill it, you should let the tree know a few days in advance so that it can kind of decide where it wants to go. If it wants to go up through the leaves or down through the roots. And I was like, she sound real crazy. But then I was like, Oh, but I'll be talking to trees too. So. Am I just crazy too? But then I was like, I don't know. She, she, she like goes and talks to him every day. I'm more like a pen pal with mine. So that made me feel a little bit better.

Jenn:

I got a plan for when I die. Well, that's fair. And I want to be a tree. I, I thought that, um, And so I heard about this a long time ago and I was like, Oh, that sounds really cool. And then the more I was on my spiritual journey, I was like, no, that's exactly what I want to do. However, I was misinformed as to what it looked like. So I was under the impression that they take your dead body and they put you in this biodegradable pod and like, as your body decomposes and they plant it and as your body decomposes, it like stimulates the pod or everything, all the gobbledygook, gobbledygook. Yeah. And it becomes a tree. Now that's crazy in hindsight, that like I'm curled up like, I'm curled up in the fetal position with hopefully my old ass. So what they really do is they, you're cremated and then they put you in like a little pod and together you do grow into a tree. And so I think that's really beautiful. I find caskets to be a really weird. Like, especially like they're all shiny and shit. And we're like burying it in a, in a graveyard and all of that's like decomposing. I just feel like that's, I don't need to be in some like plush box. I would much prefer, and it feels very useful and, and, and very cyclical. Right. For me, like of death and rebirth. And then like my. Kids and grandkids and great grandkids can come visit me as this tree. Yeah, hopefully I have a tree boo next to me. I mean, I'm trying to be next to you.

Mik:

I'm trying, I already told you that, you know what I mean? I want to be an oak though. Put the oak tree seed in my joint.

Jenn:

But I need people to be, uh, protective of where I am. Because if they cut me down to make paper for people to write some bullshit on. What if they cut me down and made toilet paper out of my tree?

Mik:

Now that, that would be wild.

Jenn:

Wow. Wow. Think about that. When you're using toilet paper, is that somebody's grandma?

Mik:

I think it's time for us to wrap this episode up.

Jenn:

Trees have energy. Um, they can help you physically be healthier. Help you with anxiety. There's a lot of energy and a lot of magic in trees. So, you know, just think about it. Just think about that next time you're at the park or you're just sitting outside under your favorite tree, maybe try and connect, maybe try and tap in.

Mik:

All right, guys, that's the show friendly reminder. Go ahead and subscribe to our YouTube channel so you can see us in living color and get the full effects of the show.

Jenn:

All right. And if you're loving the show, please subscribe and give us five stars wherever you listen or watch.

Mik:

Namaste.