Planting Trees Within
We are living in a psychopathic system that degrades and destroys life. This system requires our disconnectedness from ourselves, each other, and nature. This disconnectedness erodes our joy, flattens our spirits, deadens our souls. Being part of a system that subverts the laws of nature has embodied consequences for all members. Addiction, depression, loneliness, and now so many of our young ones bear the signs of deep psychological disturbance. Our mental health services are stretched past breaking, the staff burnt out and despairing, the waiting lists a joke.
The degradation of our global mental health is akin to the degeneration of our planet’s rich earth. And just as we now understand the mechanisms behind topsoil erosion and we have solutions to fix it, we are also waking up to the causes of the mental health crisis and finding new methods for deep emotional restoration. I am not talking about psychedelic therapy. I am talking about trees. Forest Power.
The best way to naturally regenerate depleted soil is by planting nitrogen-fixing trees. Within its trunk, a tree can transform the toxic soil on which it stands into sweet sap from which springs forth a crop of leaves full of goodness. When these leaves fall, they compost down, infusing their offerings into the depleted earth. In this way, nitrogen fixing trees can resuscitate dead earth in 4 years.
And just as we can plant actual trees to restore the world around us, we can plant a metaphorical tree inside ourselves to restore the world within. Imagine a seed cracking open deep within the core of you. Imagine its little root growing down, and its little tender shoot curling up. From this tiny seed, a whole forest can grow. When we grow a tree inside ourselves, the laws of nature start to flow through our veins again. Acceptance, Connectedness, Embodiment, Restoration. We can let our inner tree teach us how to restore our human selves back to the web of life.
In the ACER online integration community we practice ‘Psychological Photosynthesis’ which is the art of turning mud to leaves, as trees do. As humans we tend to feel helpless to change the toxic ground from which we grow. Psychological Photosynthesis is about getting to know the rocks that our roots have had to grow around, starting to trust that our bodies can become a place of transformation where the suffering at the roots can become meaning at the branches.
In our ACER community, our ‘forest’, we use practices to strengthen psychological flexibility, breathwork, guided imagery journeys, sharing circles and music meditations to start distilling the gold of insight from the lead below, to sprout leaves full of goodness and offer them out. To bring change to depleted landscapes within us, and around us.
The process is communal and follows a framework called the Twelve Trees, where each month we focus on a particular topic together (Yew: ceasing relentless over-doing, Elder: developing the qualities of an ‘elder’ at any age, Silver Birch: releasing the old story, Rowan: keeping our heart-fire glowing through times of despair, Redwood: coming out of fight-flight/shutdown into ventral vagal states of calm connectedness, Alder: resilience, Douglas Fir: nurturing links to local community, Hawthorn: forgiveness, Oak: welcoming home all the parts of ourselves, Apple: creative collaboration with community of purpose, Hazel: gratitude, Ivy: pruning our patterns of self sabotage). After completing this cycle in the ACER online community with us, we hope our ‘graduates’ will continue with this framework together and perhaps become ACER sharing circle facilitators for future forest members. Our original ACER community members are more than halfway through the cycle, and our second cohort has just joined in- starting with the Douglas FIr, our tree for May.
The Douglas Fir teaches of the importance of belonging, of being connected, at the roots, to caring community. Trees are not expected, or able, to thrive alone. Their roots are intertwined with neighbouring trees, in a reciprocal web of support, sharing, co-evolving. As they grow, their communal interconnections become more complex and established and solid. There is no such thing as a tree, just as Winnicott said ‘there is no such thing as a baby’ (what exists is the baby plus its carers) but in human ( unlike tree) societies, ongoing bonds with community are not guaranteed.
Without a sense of belonging, trees and people stiffen and wither and fail to thrive. I was recently joined in our new in-house (in-forest) podcast by Dr Julian Abel from Compassionate Communities UK who explained how to be safe, we need to be part of a close-knit community that has our back. The bulk of human evolution has been spent in small groups of 25 to 100 people. And our survival has always been dependent on the people around us.
For most of our evolution, if we became isolated from our tribe, our life was at risk. And within our biological systems still, isolation triggers an emergency response, our warning systems fire off, our need for a sense of belonging is urgent, inflammatory. Without connection to our trusted tribe, our bodies suffer ongoing inflammation, and get sick. Chronic loneliness is worse for our health than smoking or heart disease.
The psychopathic system we live in requires us to be separate from community so that we share less, need more, buy more, and yet still feel empty, and get more addicted to things that harm us. Growing in depleted soil requires the use of artificial fertilizers: tv, alcohol, drugs, shopping, gambling, porn, the tyrannical little rectangles of our phones. The iller we get, the more toxic fertilizers we need for our dopamine hits, the more separate and more depleted we become, the less empowered to create change.
But we can live in the forest instead, a forest we create with likeminded people. In our ACER forest, we have small groups of approximately twelve people (your ‘orchard’) that you go through the whole cycle with, whilst also being connected to everyone else in the forest for gatherings and workshops and just to chat. After completing the initial Twelve Trees cycle, our ‘graduates’ will remain part of an ever-growing forest, a deep mycelial network of care, support, creativity and co-evolving.
After many years working as a clinical psychologist, in both mainstream services and psychedelic therapy research, I know that quick fixes do not hold. The bamboo that shoots up fast is easily felled. And I know that for positive changes (after any intervention) to last, we need our tribe, our forest, to keep us strong. So we are creating this place where all are welcome, where there is space to feel, and to share, and to remember that nature wins. Through the concrete, green tendrils rise up.
If you would like to plant some trees within, with us, we will be opening up the ACER community again soon. You can find out more here.