A guided contemplative practice. Lean your back against a tree for five minutes of sensory presence.

Robin opens with Tommy Cooper's "pick a card, any card." It becomes a playful doorway into stillness.

He walks through breath, posture, and bodily sensation. The body settles into rhythm with its surroundings.

The episode then turns reflective. Civilisation has distanced us from sensory, embodied intelligence.

From hands-in-food eating to chairs and utensils, we've lost touch with our senses. This simple act of leaning against bark reclaims something.

It's "the oldest conversation," Robin says. One living nervous system meeting another.

This Episode Is Brought To You By

• Robin Harford

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Books

• Edible and Medicinal Wild Plants of Britain and Ireland
• Forage In Spring
• Forage In Summer
• Forage In Autumn
• The Eatweeds Cookbook

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• 30 Days of Domei Plant Practices
• Mindful In Nature
• The Green Path

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• Domei Newsletter
• Eatweeds Newsletter

In the 17th century, Descartes, Galileo, and Newton transformed a living world into mechanical clockwork.

Descartes drew the fatal line between mind and matter, rendering everything beyond the thinking self inert and available for measurement.

This lens birthed science and medicine, but cost us what Goethean scientist Craig Holdrege calls living thinking - thought that is responsive, relational, and shaped by what it encounters.

Goethe knew perception isn't passive: to truly see a plant, you must let it work on you. Through Domei's sustained attention, observer and observed dissolve into a meeting of subjects.

This Episode Is Brought To You By

• Robin Harford

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• Eatweeds

Books

• Edible and Medicinal Wild Plants of Britain and Ireland
• Forage In Spring
• Forage In Summer
• Forage in Autumn
• The Eatweeds Cookbook

Courses

• 30 Days of Domei Plant Practices
• Mindful In Nature
• The Green Path

Chris Holland has spent over three decades helping people - young and old - find their way back to the natural world. In this warmly personal conversation, Robin and Chris reflect on the threads that have woven their lives together: a shared love of plants, the legacy of plant mentor Frank Cook, and the quiet revolution taking place in nature connection education.

Chris is the author of I Love My World, widely regarded as the unofficial Forest School manual, and the founder of Natural Musicians. A practice that democratises music-making in wild places, inviting children and families to listen deeply and celebrate landscape through sound.

His work sits at the intersection of nature pedagogy, John Young's Eight Shields framework, and a profound belief that connection to the other-than-human world is not a luxury, it is a necessity.

They explore how children learn differently when handed a stick and a stone instead of a worksheet, why making music in a stone circle might change the listener more than the landscape, and what it means to truly stay — with a plant, with discomfort, with belonging.

For educators, parents, and anyone who has ever felt the pull of a hedgerow, this episode is a quiet reminder that the wild is always closer than we think.

This Episode Is Brought To You By

• Robin Harford

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• I Love My World
• Plant Of The Week
• Sharing Nature With Children
• The Heat Will Kill You First

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People, Places and Things Mentioned On The Show

• Buzzard Yurt
• Kingfisher Yurt
• City of Bath Roman Baths
• Fluxus Art Movement
• Frank Cook
• New Age Fraud
• Pam Horton
• Pauline Oliveros
• Sandor Katz
• Schumacher College
• Trill On The Hill

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