How Pollinators Help Connect To Nature with Dr. Alister Clay (031)

How Pollinators Help Connect To Nature with Dr. Alister Clay (031)

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Introduction: Welcome to 2 Million Blossoms - The Podcast with host Dr. Kirsten Traynor. 2 Million Blossomsis dedicated to protecting all pollinators, from the solitary being to colorful butterflies to feisty hummingbirds, and of course, the honeybee. We bring you informative guests to awaken your understanding of the vast diversity of pollinating insects and animals worldwide. Because the more we know about pollinators, the better we can provide their habitats and protect them from disappearing forever. Sit back and listen as Kirsten and her guest share in the passion they feel for all pollinators.

Dr. Kirsten Traynor: Today I have the pleasure of speaking with Dr. Alister Clay, an engineer at Bosch who became fascinated with the workings of the human mind. He's now pursuing his master's degree in psychology at the University of Derby in the UK. For his thesis, he is investigating how architect connection to nature can shape our mental wellbeing. We've teamed up to see if interventions that introduce individuals to the fascinating world of wild bees and the complexity of a honeybee superorganism can influence their perception of nature. Alister, welcome to the show.

Dr. Alister Clay: Hi, Kirsten. Thank you very much. Pleasure to be here.

Kirsten: It's a pleasure having you on the show. You're currently an engineer at Bosch and you're focused on understanding and improving heat pump systems. What made you decide to pursue an additional degree in psychology?

Alister: Oh, yes. It's a bit of a strange jump, isn't it? I often get asked this, why it's so different, how can you do that, and at your age, and so on? I think to answer that properly, it's better to ask the question why I became an engineer, and to pedal back a little bit. In 2021, I was diagnosed with depression, and actually, it was something that I had managed my whole life to just take care of. It got to the point then where the idea of numbing oneself and avoiding emotions, and so on and so forth, just it became too much. Actually how I managed it was becoming an engineer, and at that time I thought that was something quite prestigious to do, and it would be a good way to fill the void of the emptiness I was feeling, and actually just to feel proud, and something different to experiencing shame, which is what I did experience for most of my life before then, and actually after.

In 2007, I was awarded a PhD and I started to work as an engineer, as you said at Bosch developing heat pumps, and surprise, surprise, having a certain job unrewarded, it didn't really change how I felt about myself. Actually in retrospect, yet I simply became more and more detached from myself, so it was clear that I was on a path or way which wasn't really fitting to the person who I was. After going through a series of live events, I began therapy, and actually at that point, it was honestly the first time in my life I experienced compassion, and it really-- I think people who have done therapy or are on a therapeutic journey, they would relate to this. It's only then was I able to start evaluating who I was as a person. I think at that point, I think now this answers the question is, why then psychology?

Quite simply I wanted to better understand myself, and also others. What's the importance of understanding others? Well, actually, when you're on a therapeutic journey most of the time you are using relationships to try and make sense of one's meaning. You look in the past and you look at your parents or friends, relatives, other things in school, and so on, and actually in that respect, then understanding others helps you understand yourself. Doing the psychology was actually just a way of understanding myself, and it become a really good way of understanding other people. That also helped me grow more into this person who I should have been perhaps had I not have done an engineering degree.

Kirsten: It sounds like a crisis led to a lot of personal reflection, and then that personal reflection led to you wanting to understand both yourself and others more.

Alister: Exactly. Of course, all of our experiences contribute to who we are today as people, and good or bad, they always end up in a place or you use those experiences to end up in a place which works. Had I not have been an engineer and something else, most likely I would've ended up doing psychology anyway at some point because of what was going on in my mind before then.

I think the other thing is as well, whilst doing the therapy there was a lot of transference between myself and my therapist, and this is a really important part of the therapeutic process. Actually, I was just very inspired by his ability to confront suffering or let's say compassion, and his skill in being a therapist, and also his wisdom. I think these two things combined just-- There was no other way to go. I didn't really feel like being an engineer then when I started and I had this urge to learn more about myself, others, and what's being inspired by this really wonderful person.

Kirsten: For your own thesis, you are looking at nature connectedness, and why is that important?

Alister: It's a good question actually, because it's actually quite difficult to form some sort of universal description, and that's actually because it's a very subjective interpretation, so what does that mean? Being connected to nature is a relationship someone has with nature, and it depends on them. It depends what that relationship means to them.

It's hard to describe, but what I can say is it belongs to the paradigm of positive psychology, and positive psychology is basically concerned with understanding the factors that supports personal growth or healing and wellness. It's different to other areas of psychology, not all areas, but some which focus more on the pathology, so understanding why people are unwell and how they get unwell and so on.

The concept of nature connectedness is rooted in the Biophilia Hypothesis. I hope I said that right. I've only ever read that word, I've never heard it from someone else, so it could be wrong, and if an expert is listening, it's probably cringing right now. Biophilia Hypothesis, that's how I say it. According to Kellert and Wilson, they describe it as a innate tendency for humans to seek connection with the natural world. What does that mean? Innate means it's something within all of us, which is there, there's potential for it but perhaps it needs some stimulus or interaction for it to be activated. Other people have tried to define this in other ways. [unintelligible 00:09:27] they define nature connectedness as satisfying positively and subjectively a fundamental need of belonging.

That involves being close to what one with the natural world. Both of these interpretations are-- People will relate to this in different ways, but I think the important things are that it's an innate tendency, so everyone has the ability to connect with nature, and it supports a subjective interpretation of belonging. It's a relationship. Like any relationship, it's something that we need. More specifically with nature, it's about feeling at one with nature. Feeling like you are part of nature rather than nature above it or beyond it.

Kirsten: Okay. We don't all need to travel to exotic places to experience this nature. This can be right in front of our own doorstep in city environments, depending on what we pay attention to?

Alister: Yes, exactly. Maybe the audience can also think about this a little bit. When we are in nature, we often will experience feelings and sensations like we will anywhere. If we go to the library or go to work, then we will have certain feelings and sensations. These are like a primitive level. Let's just say for example, we're laying on a beach and we can see the sea and somehow it makes us feel relaxed. We would feel this by sensing something change in our body. There would be maybe subconsciously we would feel our heart rate start reducing. We would feel a lightness in extremities, like in our fingers or our toes and so on.

These feelings are really important to nature connectedness, but it isn't being connected to nature. This is just reacting to stimuli. As I said, this can happen anywhere. If nature connectedness is more about how you interpret what's going on in that moment. Let's take the example again. If we're laying on the beach and we're starting to feel relaxed, what is it about that situation which is making us feel relaxed? What can we observe which changes how our thoughts are being made. What meaning does it give us? What beliefs does it relate to? These ideas and questions are related to emotions.

That's a much higher level of processing than just feeling something. As you said, you don't really need to be in the wilderness to experience these emotions. You can quite simply just observe a flower in the garden or a weed growing i between the crack out of the crack or on a concrete path and just wonder how it got there and what it means for that lonely weed to be there all on its own and how it relates to ourselves. Essentially, it's about thinking and it's about feeling and it's about challenging and confronting ourselves and trying to understand what it means.

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Kirsten: You had once mentioned the five pathways framework of nature connectedness. Can you highlight these five different ways of connecting to nature?

Alister: Yes. The pathways approach, the nature connectedness has been studied for around two decades now as a theory. Before then there was other work which focused more on the stimuli, the feeling side. The pathways approach was devised in a scientific study which used a qualitative approach. This means it was using word, so what people say to interpret their meaning. A focus group was set up, the study was by Lumber et al. This undefined was also done at the University of Derby. This qualitative study was grounded in the Biophilia Hypothesis.

They wanted to understand how connected people related to nature and how disconnected people related to nature. From this study, this scientific study, they were able to establish the so-called five pathways, which are compassion, meaning, senses, beauty, and emotion. Interestingly also the pathways which lead to disconnectedness to nature. These are consumption, dominance, egoistic and utilitarian attitudes. The five pathways are important, but also let's say, the four pathways to disconnectness are also important. How to describe these because these words are difficult to relate to for most people.

When we talk about compassion, for example, this is essentially the wisdom to confront suffering. Let's say in our case for our study, we would encourage people to support bees and how might they do that. One way might be if they see a bee on its own and it needs help, what to do. You make some sugar syrup or some water and feed the bee. This is the idea of confronting suffering in that context. Sensory, so senses. Senses is, like I was explaining earlier, when there's a stimuli and you have feelings, but it's going a bit more than that.

Being aware of all the senses. Sight, smell, taste, touch, and being mindful of what those senses are doing. What do they mean? What's going on in your head when you experience this stimuli? The idea there is that one is instead of just accepting, "Oh, I feel relaxed," or "This makes me feel good," it's to go a little bit deeper and use everything which you have and absorb all of it and try to make sense of it.

Kirsten: It's about really being present in the moment as well.

Alister: Yes, exactly. Things which we would often take for granted. There's some good examples of forest bathing and so on and so forth. Why do these work is because people are being very mindful of themselves in that moment and they're allowing themselves to be actually quite vulnerable in a situation to not think they have to do or do something else because they're worried or afraid or I don't know. They have to be home in time to cook dinner for the kids, or when am I going to pay the next bill, and so on. They really just allow themselves to be in that moment and absorb all of the sensory information which is available to them.

That's compassion and senses. Then there's meaning. We touched on this already. Meaning can be described by thoughts, which is basically the cognition, that the things we are thinking about in our mind when we're having that experience. The feelings or the emotions. What's going on? Does this make us feel happy? Does it make us feel sad, and why? Then lastly, it's the attitudes. This is really important for nature connectedness because this brings in the other component of nature connectedness, which is about being environmentally aware and having pro-environmental behaviors.

If we spend enough time in nature and are connected to nature, then essentially we will be more respectful of nature and have this belief that we should take care of nature because actually we are a part of it. Such as our relationship, that we have a belief to take care and to nurture and to not disrespect nature at all.

Kirsten: You had mentioned that one of the ways to become disconnected is to look at nature from a utilitarian perspective.

Alister: Yes, that's right. From the study of the pathways, then there was these four other pathways which led to disconnectedness. Consumption, dominance, egoistic, and utilitarian attitudes. These basically describe modern society and more precisely capitalism because essentially society is driven by or rewards egoistic behaviors and attitudes rather than altruistic attitudes and behaviors. Of course, if this is the opposite of nature connectedness, then it's quite clear how as a society we are becoming more disconnected if that's how we are rewarding ourselves. Nature connectedness is a way of preserving our planet, let's say, or our environment. Society rewards the contra. This is quite a difficult thing to think about and it also creates a huge conflict for most people, I think. Especially if we think about nature connectedness as being an innate ability.

Kirsten: This of course carries extreme consequences for the natural world, so how do you think we can counteract this focus on consumerism?

Alister: Oh, that's also a very good question. The evidence is clear for nature connectedness. Correlation studies have shown that people who are connected to nature, they feel good and they tend to be doing well. They are less interested in, for example, socioeconomic status. Other studies have shown as well a dependency on gender and time outside and exposure to nature and childhood, and also nationality.

You should put all these things together. What does it mean? It basically tells us that in order to be nature-connected, we need to spend more time outside as children, and we should look at those cultures and societies which encourage that. Also, interestingly, there are other studies, twin studies.

Twin studies are really fascinating because you have genetically identical people yet they can be raised in different environments, so you get a very clear understanding of what's going on or the influence of nature versus nurture. There was a twin study, I can't remember when exactly, but it looked at the effects of nature or exposure to nature in childhood in twins who were raised at separate locations, so twins who were raised in urban environment, twins who were raised in a natural environment.

Not unsurprisingly, the twin who was raised in a natural environment was more nature-connected. Again, this tells us that nature connectedness is something which is innate, that everyone has the potential and it can be learned, but it needs focus and attention. It needs people to prioritize this over other things which society rewards such as socioeconomic status or egoistic or utilitarian behaviors.

Kirsten: This seems to suggest though that you can learn it. If trained to appreciate it, or at least given the opportunity from somebody who understands how to be connected to nature, it's not something that we can't add into our lives.

Alister: Exactly. A lot of research in the UK has used nature connectedness on a national level through different schemes. This was also mostly done by Miles Richardson. He's the champion of nature connectedness at Derby University for the last decade. His work has shown that actually people doing very simple things in nature can increase their level of nature connectedness quite rapidly. Once it's there, it stays there, it doesn't go away.

They found as well in some studies that, for example, when people were, as part of their development to increase their nature connectedness, they would write in diaries. Even when the intervention had finished, they carried on writing in their diaries because it stayed with them. This is then pointing towards, well, actually if we think evolutionary, it's obvious that humans needed to have a knowledge of nature.

It was an essential part of their survival to know what's going on in nature. This supports the idea that it's innate that everyone has this potential and you just need to learn it. Actually, it doesn't really matter when. Sooner rather than later but if you didn't do it when you were younger or you are a man or so on and so forth, then there's no reason why you can't do it now and still reap the rewards of being nature-connected, which is basically feeling a lot happier and having a lot higher wellbeing.

Kirsten: You have an ongoing survey at the moment so people can participate as well. We'll post the link.

Alister: Yes, that would be great. We're doing this with bees, as you know. Bees are really an interesting way to get people involved or to become more nature-connected because besides there being a lot of other things involved like plants and landscapes and so on, people can relate to the bees because in many different ways, they're social creatures. They're also solid lonely creatures.

They work as a team. They give themselves for the greater good. They support nature. They're part of this massive ecosystem. I think there, there's a lot of messages for people to also relate to. It's a really exciting study also because it's one of the first to involve wildlife as a stimulus for nature connectedness.

We're also offering interventions as well. The idea of the intervention is to also teach or allow people to learn how to become nature-connected in a very quick and efficient way, and hopefully see if that improves their wellbeing.

Kirsten: I'm really excited about it because I think it's a great opportunity to see if learning a little bit more about how nature is interconnected, if that can change the way we think about our relationship with nature. I think the world is desperately in need of people who care. We see the impacts of climate change, we see-- and it can be depressing when you start thinking about all the things that are going wrong in the natural world.

I think the idea of stopping and appreciating the small parts, the individual flower, the bee moving from blossom to blossom, and spreading pollen for pollination while getting a reward for her own efforts, I think there's a lot of potential there to teach people about how nature has an impact on all of us.

Alister: Definitely. Of course, at your institute, there is a wealth of knowledge there. It's normally used in a scientific way to support agriculture policy and so on, but it's an untapped resource for psychology. Most people who are exposed to a little bit of information about bees are just amazed by how fascinating they are. I think because it's easy to relate to bees.

As I was trying to explain before, there's all of these different facets, which are really interesting. It's a great opportunity for people to get nature connected and to such little expense. You don't have to go somewhere exotic or, I don't know, make an expedition to Alaska or whatever.

Kirsten: Nope. They're buzzing all around. In any urban environment, any field that you find, if you take a moment to pause, you will find some pollinators. That actually brings me to my, my final question, the one I ask all of my guests, if you had to choose a pollinator or a plant to represent you, what would you pick?

Alister: Oh, I'm torn between basil and strawberry.

Kirsten: Ooh, they go very well together.

Alister: Well, maybe that's why I can't differentiate. In my mind, it's-- [laughs]. If I could only choose one, I would probably take strawberry. I take strawberry.

Kirsten: Why strawberry? That's a tough plant to pollinate correctly.

Alister: I think it's a good example of this symbiotic relationship, which we as humans should be utilizing as something in nature rather than using nature. We can eat the strawberries, which is really nice, but we also have to care for the plant. We also have to make sure that they get pollinated. If you do everything right, they will grow, and they will grow really, really far. This is also quite nice because--

Kirsten: Yes, and they send out runners and new plants, and then they overwhelm you with root.

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Alister: Exactly. This could be a good symbol for ourselves. If we are taking care of something and that thing grows, then that should also remind us that if we take care of ourselves, then we can also grow, and then life can be sweet.

Kirsten: Well, thank you so much for sharing a little bit of your journey. As I said, we will post the links to the survey. We hope you will take an opportunity, 10 minutes of your life, to participate. Then as Alister said, there's also some interventions, both in person in Stuttgart and online where you can learn more about nature connectedness and how it might be a way forward in your own life. Thank you so much for being on the show.

Alister: Thank you, Kirsten. Pleasure to be here and hope everyone finds what I just said interesting.

Kirsten: I'm sure they will. Thank you again.

Alister: All right. Cheers. Bye-bye.

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