Depression & Rewilding w/ Sheila Henson || The Rewilding Podcast

I’ve lived with depression for most of my life. I’ve learned to  manage my symptoms in order to function and live a more fulfilling life.  I’ve dedicated this episode to working through some of the areas of  overlap between depression and rewilding. This is a very personal topic  that lives close to my heart. I was originally planning on doing this  one solo, but I realized that it would be more impactful if it were in  conversation with someone who shares similar but different experiences  with depression.

My guest on this episode is Sheila Henson. Sheila received  her BA in History and an MA in Education, spent twelve years as a  behavioral respite worker for children with special needs, working for  many of those years at the Serendipity Center in Portland. Today she is  an ADHD Coach, and is a well known and respected educator on tiktok. The  drive to understand how to be kind, collaborative, and restorative  within our social and ecological communities led her to Rewild Portland,  where she now serves on the board of directors, heading up our  transformative justice committee. Sheila and I also co-teach a Rewilding  Your Health class through Rewild Portland. 

Notes:

List of National Suicide Hotlines
https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/11181469

Sheila’s Website
https://www.sheilahenson.com/

Sheila’s Tiktok
https://www.tiktok.com/@adhdcoachsheila

Sleep & Depression
https://www.sleepfoundation.org/mental-health/depression-and-sleep

Exercise & Depression
The Challenges of Treating Depression with Exercise: From Evidence to Practice
https://sci-hub.hkvisa.net/10.1111/j.1468-2850.2006.00022.x

Meditation & Depression
An update on mindfulness meditation as a self-help treatment for anxiety and depression
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3500142/

Diet & Depression
Diet and Depression—From Confirmation to Implementation
https://www.anp3sm.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/jama_berk_2019_ed_190008.pdf

Music & Depression
Music therapy for depression
https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD004517.pub3/full

Green Spaces and Depression
Green spaces deliver lasting mental health benefits
https://www.exeter.ac.uk/news/featurednews/title_349054_en.html

Gardening & Depression
Gardening is beneficial for health: A meta-analysis
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5153451/

Soil Microbiome & Depression
Dirt has a microbiome, and it may double as an antidepressant
https://qz.com/993258/dirt-has-a-microbiome-and-it-may-double-as-an-antidepressant/

Crafting & Depression
Antidepressive response of inpatients with major depression to adjuvant occupational therapy: a case–control study
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s12991-016-0124-0

Plant & Fungi Medicine
Psychedelic Treatment with Psilocybin Relieves Major Depression, Study Shows
https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/newsroom/news-releases/psychedelic-treatment-with-psilocybin-relieves-major-depression-study-shows

The  Efficacy of Psilocybin Compared to Selective Serotonin Reuptake  Inhibitors in the Treatment of Adults with Major Depressive Disorder
https://scholarworks.arcadia.edu/showcase/2020/pa/60/

Pharmaceuticals & Depression

Antidepressants: Selecting one that’s right for you

https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/depression/in-depth/antidepressants/art-20046273

Other Sources:

DSM-5 Criteria and Depression Severity: Implications for Clinical Practice
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6176119/

Depression Definition and DSM-5 Diagnostic Criteria
https://www.psycom.net/depression-definition-dsm-5-diagnostic-criteria/

Behavioral Aspects of Animal Domestication
https://sci-hub.st/https://doi.org/10.1086/413673

All About Alexithymia, or Difficulty Recognizing Feelings
https://www.healthline.com/health/autism/alexithymia

Changing The name PDA
https://emilywilding.com/changing-the-name-pda/

What Does It Mean to Be Neurodivergent?
https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-neurodivergence-and-what-does-it-mean-to-be-neurodivergent-5196627

The roles of peripheral serotonin in metabolic homeostasis
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001457931500455X#:~:text=Because%20serotonin%20does%20not%20cross,be%20an%20attractive%20therapeutic%20strategy.

Poor Proles Almanac Podcast

A Conversation w/ Lisa Wells || The Rewilding Podcast

Lisa Wells is the author of Believers: Making a Life at the End of the World, The Fix, and winner of the Iowa Poetry Prize. Her essays have been published by The New York Times, Harper’s Magazine, Granta, The Believer, n+1 and others. She lives in Seattle and writes a column for Orion Magazine called Abundant Noise. She’s also one of my oldest and closest friends. In her latest book, Believers, she sought out many different people all seeking to find a way to live sustainably in the world, as we sit on the precipice of a collapsing civilization. In this conversation, we chat about the book, some of the subjects (including myself), the writing process itself, the role of storytellers as culture building, and much more.

Notes:
Lisa Wells Website
Instagram Account
Believers: Making a Life at the End of the World

The Handmade Life w/ Delia Ann Turner || The Rewilding Podcast

In this episode I converse with someone who has greatly inspired me, Delia Ann Turner. Delia co-owns and operates The School of the Greenwood: For Creative Rewilding. Delia is an amazing craftsperson and educator. Our topics wandered from making hand crafts, living off the grid, traveling to learn from communities where hand made crafts are barely holding on, integrating what we learn back in our own communities, to her philosophy in carefully crafting adventure and fantasy camps for children, to running a small business and the contradictory aspects of living a wild life but also utilizing tools like social media to increase the reach and impact of her work. It was a wide-ranging conversation and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Delia’s Links:
Delia Ann Turner Instagram
School of the Greenwood Website
School of the Greenwood Instagram

Mentions:
Coyote’s Guide to Connecting with Nature
The Art of Not Being Governed
Mushroom at the End of the World
Nancy Baskets
Eoin Donnelly (Timber Framer)
The Bear and the Nightingale

5 Ways to Start Rewilding || The Rewilding Podcast

In this episode, I answer three questions from my patrons on patreon:

  1. What is your advice for people just beginning on their rewilding journeys?
  2. What is your favorite part of rewilding?
  3. What are your favorite books for rewilders to use for help rewilding?

Exploring “Cancel Culture” w/ Clementine Morrigan || The Rewilding Podcast

Today I’m chatting with Clementine Morrigan, a prolific writer and podcaster covering a range of topics. In this conversation we talk about “cancel and call out culture” and the challenges of transcending punishment and imprisonment, in order to move toward a more egalitarian, transformative justice process when conflict arises–as it inevitably does–in our communities.

Notes:

Clementine Morrigan’s Work
Lnk.bio
Instagram
Fucking Cancelled Podcast
Fuck the Police Means We Don’t Act Like Cops to Each Other Zine

Other Mentions:
So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed
Conflict is Not Abuse
The Sociopath Next Door
Cursed Cancellations Instagram

Survival and the Will to Live w/ Eli Loomis || The Rewilding Podcast

Eli Loomis is an instructor and Executive Director at Boulder Outdoor Survival School (BOSS) in Utah. At 53 years old, BOSS is the oldest survival school in the country. It is notorious for its long, minimalist desert treks, including a 28-day field course. In this conversation, Eli and I talk about the history of BOSS, the psychology of survival and “The Won’t to Live,” the lack and need for Rites of Passage, context specific training, running non-profit wilderness schools, the transformative experience, and personal and psychological growth that can happen in survival courses, and so much more.

Links

This episode is in Memorial of my friend Alex Leavens, my first ancestral skills teacher. 

A Conversation w/ John Zerzan || The Rewilding Podcast

Today I’m chatting with John Zerzan, long time anarchist author, speaker and host of Anarchy Radio out of Eugene, Oregon.  John’s writing has been instrumental in crafting the rewilding narrative. In this conversation, we jump right into some of the themes and history of primal anarchy, and work our way around various topics. 


Notes

John’s Website

When We Are Human

Oak Journal

Future Primitive

Primal Anarchy w/ Natasha Tucker || The Rewilding Podcast

This episode is the first half of a conversation between myself and Natasha Tucker from Primal Anarchy Podcast. The second half will be released by them and a link posted here will connect you to it. The last time Natasha and I conversed this much was in my living room after the Rewilding Conference in January of 2020. It was great to catch up and chat about the things we are working on and thinking about at the moment.

Take a listen and check out their site:

Listen to Part 2

Primal Anarchy Podcast
Natasha Tucker

The Ethics of Craft Culture w/ Lise Silva Gomes

In this episode I chat with Lise Silva Gomes, an artist who works  with fiber, knots, paint and more, who has spent a great deal of time  thinking and teaching about community grounded art practice. A huge  aspect of rewilding is the practice of ancestral skills–learning to use  your hands to create the technologies that we need to live, from the  elements of nature that grow and dwell near us. I came to Lise’s work  when searching out ethics, etiquette, and boundaries around communities  of artists and creatives. Lise is an innovator in this field and has  created some amazing resources around this topic that I’m excited to  share with you.

Notes

Lise’s Instagram

Lise’s Linktree

Craft & Practice: Meditations on Creativity & Ethics Zine

Fighting for Tribal Peoples w/ Stephen Corry || The Rewilding Podcast

“The earth’s biodiversity depends [very directly] on its human diversity.”

Stephen Corry

In this episode I chat with Stephen Corry, the former director of Survival International, a global organization that supports indigenous peoples in their struggles against colonialism. We talk about why the organization is important, and how it relates directly to rewilding. Stephen discusses the central myths of civilization and the prejudices that it generates in order to justify its destruction of tribal people. In the end our conversation lands on the problematic aspects of conservation, and the challenges that members of Survival International have faced in this work. 

Links:

Survival International
https://www.survivalinternational.org/

Stephen’s Book:
Tribal Peoples for Tomorrow’s World

Stephen’s Twitter:
@StephenCorrySvl

New report details indigenous struggle for land rights

Savaging Primitives: Why Jared Diamond’s “The World Until Yesterday” is Completely Wrong

Why Steven Pinker, Like Jared Diamond, Is Wrong

The Fierce Anthropologist

Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States by James C. Scott

Who was Ötzi?

Sahlins resigns from NAS as Chagnon enters

The Great Dance; a Hunter’s Story

The Big Conservation Lie

WWF Funds Guards Who Have Tortured And Killed People

United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples

Ishmael by Daniel Quinn

Willamette; The Valley of an 8,000 Year Old Culture


Photo Credit: Gleilson Miranda / Governo do Acre

Embodied Anthropology || The Rewilding Podcast

Much of the narratives found in rewilding originate from the study of cultures outside of civilization, through the discipline of anthropology. In this episode I chat with two of my friends that dwell in the academic world, around the challenges of navigating the benefits and problems with the institution of anthropology and the practical applications of it outside of academia. We talk about the history of anthropology, contemporary ethics behind it, and the potential for continual cultural transformation. How do we take anthropology beyond the institutions, in order to *do* anthropology in the real world? How do we leverage the study of culture(s), in a just and careful way, to help us understand more about humanity and our place in the world? What are the best practices behind an embodied anthropology?

Fern Thompsett grew up in Australia, and is now working on a PhD in cultural anthropology through Columbia University, on Lenape land in New York City. Her research looks at how people define, critique, and live outside of civilization. She is also a co-founder of the Brisbane Free University.

Josh Sterlin is working on a PhD at McGill University as part of the Leadership for the Ecozoic program. He is researching how rewilding might help us rethink classic anthropological categories and thinking, and how that might help us change the way we live. He was previously trained in environmental anthropology, and is also a graduate of the Wilderness Awareness School’s Anake program. When he’s not doing that, he’s canoeing across the Quebec wilds. You can get in contact at jsterlin.org.

Notes

Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology:
https://libcom.org/library/fragments-anarchist-anthropology

The Undercommons’, by Stefano Harney and Fred Moten:
https://www.minorcompositions.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/undercommons-web.pdf

Klee Bennally’s ‘Accomplices not Allies’:
https://www.indigenousaction.org/accomplices-not-allies-abolishing-the-all