Emotional Regulation through Nature

City life can be brutally loud, and sometimes the stress isn’t a personality flaw, it’s a nervous system response to an environment that never powers down. After a weekend at BookFest and a bunch of conversations with readers, we keep coming back to one practical question: how do you access the benefits of nature when you don’t live next to a forest or have time for big adventures?

We tell a simple story about our puppy, Alfie, who struggles with the sounds of the city. On a trail at the edge of town, with trees, trails, and a sensory garden nearby, his body language changes even when the same motorcycle noise shows up. That shift becomes a clear reminder of what research keeps finding about nature therapy and ecopsychology: green space supports stress reduction, grounding, and better emotional regulation, often in small, repeatable moments.

Then we get concrete. If you have houseplants, you already practice need-based care without judgment: light, water, soil, and the right spot. We borrow that logic for people and call it your “plant tag” a way to name what you need to grow and thrive. If you do not have plants, we share easy ways to start outside with a single tree, a park bench, a patch of flowers, or ten quiet minutes in the stillness.

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Transcript

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Welcome And A Question Worth Asking

Mary 0:00

Hi, and welcome to a mini episode of No Shrinking Violets. So I love guesting on other podcasts because I love hearing the questions that the host has, because it helps me to think about what are people really wanting to know?

BookFest And Why People Ask This

Mary 0:19

And yesterday I went to BookFest, and Bookfest was a celebration of authors. So it was the first annual, and it was in York, Pennsylvania, and we read from our books, we talked to each other about the industry. It was just a really great gathering. But there were people, sort of like people off the street, you know, that came in and browsed the books and asked questions. And so when I think about the questions that I tend to get asked when I am at a book signing, and my book is called Nature Knows Grow and Thrive Through the Wisdom of Plants. It's really an weaving of psychology and self-help and just, you know, the sprinkling of plants in there to keep it beautiful and to give you some good examples. But I often get asked questions about how people can start to access nature in a way that's going to help them.

A Puppy’s City Stress Test

Mary 1:15

And I wanted to talk about that today because we just took Alfie, our puppy, for a walk. Alfie struggles in the city. He does not like the sounds of the city. He's very scared, especially when people, you know, they they make their engines so loud that sounds like gunfire. And the motorcycles that are deafening, and then they play their music on top of it. The sound is, I mean, it hurts my ears. And so it it truly scares him. So we don't want him to be a dog that we can't walk in the city. So we're working with him. It's a really slow process. But today we died, we decided to take him to a park. And there's a beautiful park that's kind of at the edge of the city. Lovely trails, there's a sensory garden, there are community gardens. It's just a wonderful space. And so we did a little hike with him. It was our first actual hike that we did in the woods with him. He was a different dog. He heard motorcycles because, of course, it's not a hundred miles out there. It's, you know, it's still at the edge of the city. So there's a road very close. And at one point we could see the road and he watched a motorcycle go past. Body language totally different. He was very relaxed. He was alert because he's a very alert dog. He monitors what's going on. But his body language was totally different. And it just reinforced for me how important it is for all of us to have some type of nature in our life. So I get asked the question often: how do you help people bring nature

Houseplants And The No-Judgment Lesson

Mary 2:54

to themselves? And there's a myriad of ways. And I think it's like anything. Anytime you want to make a change, some of us might think, you know, if we want to eat differently, well, I'm not eating any sugar anymore. Well, if that works for you, that's awesome, that cold turkey approach. But oftentimes, when it's something that you want to bring more things into your life, you want to do it in a way that is fun or gradual because it cuts down on this sense of like I have to do it perfectly or I have to do it 100%. So if you're not somebody that already recognizes how important nature is or how it helps you, there's a couple ways you can start. And I can tell you that the research for doing this is overwhelmingly positive. So there's a couple ways. First, if you are a houseplant person, and I am not really a houseplant person, I'm a garden person. I have houseplants, but um, they're not really my thing, which is kind of ironic, I guess. But if you don't, if you have houseplants, then you already understand that they need a certain amount of light, depending on the plant. Some of them might want more water, like a peace lily. If it doesn't have enough water, you can tell. Man, it just wilts. Um, there are other plants with obviously a cactus. You can't give it too much water, and it does better if there's typically sand mixed in with the soil. Every plant has its thing. And so here's the basis of why nature can help. Because we don't judge a plant for needing what it needs. And we can figure out what's on our plant tag. In other words, when you buy a plant, there's a little tag there that tells you what kind of light it needs, how much water. If it's an outdoor plant, it's going to say when does it bloom and what are what's the climate zone? We all have those things, and I explain them all in my book in a way I think it's really fun and accessible. But without my book, you can do all of these things. So I would say observe those houseplants and start to think about the way you treat them and the care you take. And do are you doing the same thing for yourself? Are you making sure that you're getting enough water each day? If you feed your plants, are you making sure that you're getting the nutrients that you need? If it looks like the plant is getting too much sun, think about are you taking a break from too much connection or too much stress, that hotness we can feel in life when we need something cooler, we need a break. Plants can give us a lot of good lessons in small increments because we can observe how different things are impeding their ability to thrive. And I don't know if you can hear it, but there goes one of those motorcycles I talked about right now. Um, so that's one way is to just start to bring a houseplant into your life or start to observe your plants.

Easy Ways To Start Outdoors

Mary 6:10

The other thing is go out into nature. And I'm not talking about taking a 50-mile hike, even a five-mile hike. Find a place where there is a tree or a little strip of flowers. If you're if you take a walk, maybe pick out a tree that you really like. And we typically respond to these things. We might not realize it. Like maybe you take a walk where you tend to pass a certain uh area that's a little more wild that might have flowers or more grass. Um, if you don't go to a park, find a park. And and you don't even have to walk, sit there, look at the sky, feel the grass, and start to be curious about how you're feeling. And I had somebody tell me um yesterday at BookFest, I was talking to another author, and she said she was at a writer's retreat, and between the sessions, she would go out. There was a little patch of woods there. She would go out to the woods and she would sit on a log. And she said she felt so much better just taking those maybe 10 minutes, 15 minutes to just sit there in the stillness. And it just starts to bring in a little bit of sanity. Like if you're feeling crazed or overwhelmed or you're not sure where to start, you can start with nature because it reinforces that whatever you've been through, however you're created, you're exactly the person you're supposed to be. And there are things

You Are Not The Problem

Mary 7:44

you can look to in your environment that can help you thrive more. The problem isn't you. It's just the same as if I buy a plant and I put it in the wrong spot in my garden. Wrong spot being it gets too much sun, it gets too much shade, it doesn't get enough water, or it doesn't have the right soil nutrients. There's not enough uh nutrients that it's getting. I don't blame that plant if it doesn't thrive. Same is true for you. There are things in your environment that could be impeding your ability to feel fulfilled. And so that's really the basis of this: that every plant needs what it needs. A rose is not a cactus, a cactus is not a fern. They're all very different, and we understand that. And if we can start to think about ourselves in that same way, then I think we give ourselves permission to look at how we're trying to grow and where we're trying to grow and consider what might need a change for us to be able to do that more fully. So any way you can connect to plants, get outside, touch a tree, it starts to ground you, but it's also a way to access this observation, this observation of nature, how everything is different, and how we find those differences beautiful or amazing. We don't always do that with people, people that are different, people that need something different sometimes than what we say is the correct thing to need. We can judge those people. We don't judge the plants. And so be the plant that you are, be the person you are, figure out what's on your plant tag. And I talk about that in my book. And that's the way to get started.

Quiz, Guest Spots, And Goodbye

Mary 9:36

And if you want a little more information, you can go to my website, maryrothwell.net, forward slash L L A P quiz. Stands for Live Like a Plant Quiz. L L A P quiz. And it's not one of those quizzes where you answer questions and you get a score, because that's not real life. It helps you to start to think about the areas that you might want to start to create change so that you can just thrive better. So that's my thought for the day because that came up from discussions I've been having, guest spots I've been doing. And if you want to hear some of my guest spots, because I have talked to some, you know, some pretty cool people, um, if you check out my Facebook page or my Instagram, it's they're both Mary Rothwell official. I put my guest spots on there too. So you don't just have to listen to my podcast here. You can hear me on other people's podcasts, which is so fun for me to do. So that's what I've been thinking about. And so I hope you have a great week. And until next time, go out into the world and be the amazing, resilient, vibrant violet that you are.