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The 1000 Hours Outside Podcast
1KHO 848: Walking Aids Discernment | Deborah Gregory, Spiritual Wayfinding
00:52:33
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- [00:01]
Ad Read Host
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- [01:02]
Jenny Erton
Welcome to the 1000 Hours Outside podcast. My name is Jenny Erton, the founder of 1000 Hours Outside and I have a special guest today who has a really cool background. She has her own podcast, she's written her own book, she's got a website and also is a documentary filmmaker. So, Deborah Gregory, I'm so excited to talk about all these parts of your life. Welcome.
- [01:22]
Deborah Gregory
Thank you. So happy to be here. I wish we were outside.
- [01:26]
Jenny Erton
I know, I know.
- [01:27]
Ad Read Host
Me too.
- [01:27]
Jenny Erton
Me too. Actually, I've been recording podcasts all day, so I really do wish I. But I'm looking out the window and it looks beautiful. So it's close. At least there's a window. I don't know, but I am super excited to talk about you. Talk with you, because you have got all of these parts of your life. So the book that I read of yours is called Spiritual wayfinding. This is 33 walking meditations for Navigating Life with Embodied Wisdom. So this is all about getting outside movement. We're gonna be talking about some of those different meditations, but you're also a spiritual director. You also grew up in the mountains of Japan. You also are a documentary filmmaker. You're also a mother. You also have your own podcast.
- [02:12]
Deborah Gregory
I've had many lives.
- [02:15]
Jenny Erton
Can you talk about, can you talk about that layered part? You know, I think most people do, like one thing, right?
- [02:23]
Deborah Gregory
Yes. I'm not sure Why I have such a layered life, but I feel like a cat most of the time. I've got many lives, and maybe it's because of the way I was raised, with so much possibility between worlds. I grew up in Japan and the United States and was able to see a lot and imagine a lot. So that's what I think.
- [02:46]
Jenny Erton
Yeah. Talk about the documentary filmmaking part. What documentary? There was one about, and I thought this was such an important topic. It was like when someone is deployed in the military, and then their wife
- [02:59]
Ad Read Host
is back in the States and having a baby.
- [03:01]
Deborah Gregory
Yes, yes. So I. For years, I did documentary filmmaking for nonprofits, and then I. And then I worked for abc, and they sometimes had me do special projects. And one of them was to spend about nine months or so with military families while their spouse was deployed. And it was fantastic. And. But, you know, at the drop of the hat, I'd have to go do something. I'm making Thanksgiving dinner, and then one of the women goes into labor, so I have to run to the hospital with my gear. And so it was a wild. It was a wild and wonderful career. I did a lot of travel internationally, but it was very spontaneous, so it was hard to imagine raising a family that way.
- [03:51]
Jenny Erton
And so you did make some adjustments then, once you had kids?
- [03:55]
Deborah Gregory
Yes, we did. And my husband and I. Many families will relate to this, but we struggle with infertility for years. And when we. And it was actually in that hospital room filming the delivery of that baby, four weeks later, I got the double pink line, so. So I have no idea what happened through that embodied experience with all these other women, with such a powerful experience of labor and birth giving. So I was so excited that this was finally our reality. But then I went through this huge crisis of trying to reconcile my own vocational calling and, like, how would I do that, raising a family? So that was kind of a beginning, part of a whole new journey for me.
- [04:45]
Jenny Erton
You talked about it, and you said your life was nomadic, so this freedom to travel around the world was a part of it. And you say it also made you feel alive. So settling down felt like settling. Are there any other of the documentaries that really stand out from years past?
- [05:03]
Deborah Gregory
Yeah, I think the only. So most of my work was with. With either TV or just small projects with nonprofits. But I did one feature film, a documentary, and it was based on helping students understand the dangers of addiction. And so that. That really impacted me, spending time, you know, learning about addiction and trying to figure out how to communicate the stories of people who've gone through addiction and come out the other side.
- [05:35]
Ad Read Host
So that.
- [05:35]
Deborah Gregory
That was a really meaningful project.
- [05:37]
Ad Read Host
Yeah.
- [05:38]
Jenny Erton
So this was a big part of your life. Can you talk about the transition to something new? You know, you decide you're not going to be able to travel at a moment's notice anymore. What was that transition like?
- [05:49]
Deborah Gregory
Yeah, it was a really. It was much more difficult than I thought because I didn't realize how much of my identity was wrapped up in what I was doing. And motherhood was challenging for me.
- [06:04]
Ad Read Host
I.
- [06:04]
Deborah Gregory
We didn't realize that our. Our first daughter, she is neurodivergent. We didn't know that for years, but she has, and I'm allowed to say that she does have a severe sensory processing disorder. We didn't know that. So it made everyday life look different than I imagined. And I was exposed to a new way of experiencing the world through her experiences. So it took me a while to adjust and to get my head on straigh realize just the blessings of what I can learn by being her mother. So I. I'm very honored. Now I'm, you know, but it took me a while on that journey.
- [06:47]
Jenny Erton
So you're a documentary filmmaker, and then you transition into these years of motherhood, and you are a spiritual director, and now you have this book out called Spiritual Wayfinding. So can you talk about the path to this? Which sounds really like a pun because it's about walking, but. But now this is a whole different. And you've got a podcast, so you're a filmmaker, and now you're. You're an author and also a podcaster. When did these interests. Were they always there or did they show up? Kind of. Did they show up later on?
- [07:21]
Deborah Gregory
Yeah. You know, I think what I am is I'm a producer. I love to produce and make and create. So whatever that looks like. I've been able to reiterate what that's looked like in different seasons, but the. The spiritual direction really took me by surprise, and that, that was a blessing because one of the best things I did as a filmmaker was interviewing people sitting down, put up the lights, turn the camera on, and, you know, that little red flashing light telling them that it's being recorded. Suddenly people would tell me all their secrets and they would cry. And, you know, I was like, what's happening? But I learned that I. I do love to listen to people's stories and help them make sense of the threads of their stories. And that's what I do as a. As a spiritual director. I don't have to bring my camera gear. I don't have to set up anything except sit with them and be present and listen and ask all the questions about their journey and make sense of the story that they're the star of.
- [08:25]
Jenny Erton
So then tell us about the book Spiritual Wayfinding. I love that you talk about wayfinders. This is long before gps that there was this embodied wisdom that was passed down generationally. I love how you frame this up like in Polynesia. So can you talk about that? And then these are walking, meditation. So these are embodied movements. I love the way that you framed it up. But the wayfinding, I thought, oh, that's right. You know, now we just have GPS and you're told where to go and you don't even have to put any thought into it. But what a different way of life when you had to pay attention to the water and the waves and this, you know, the sun and the stars and all of those types of things.
- [09:06]
Deborah Gregory
Yes.
- [09:07]
Ad Read Host
Yeah.
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Deborah Gregory
I, you know, I had never really thought much about how do people make their way back before technology. Right. Like we just do it because we have access to it. Um, or, you know, if you're older like me, we used to great, bring out the maps from aaa. Right. And sketch out her. But, you know, I became curious how do people make their way before? And I was really curious about why do people walk when they have to discern. Right. Like there's something about movement and finding our way both on a path or, you know, through, through life that requires us to be in motion. And so I just became really curious about that, began to explore how did people used to do that before technology? And was just so stunned and amazed by how people relied on the wisdom that we have in our bodies and we just don't pay enough attention to that anymore.
- [10:06]
Jenny Erton
I loved the way that you worded it. Polynesian voyagers who sailed the Pacific Ocean thousands of years ago. They were guided only by the stars. Their hands in the feel of the waves. They expert. They expertly navigated 60 foot canoes across thousands of miles of open water. Water and reach their destination with pinpoint accuracy. And then they pass it down generation to generation. And we do find, I think, ourselves in a spot where we're often lost. The world is changing rapidly. And so this is a book about who am I, where am I going, what should I do? These like, big questions that we have until you're reviving the practice of spiritual wayfinding. And so you talk about how a lot of it can come through walking. So can you talk about that part of it? How walking aids discernment?
- [10:54]
Deborah Gregory
Yeah. And you know, this part of it all began when I broke my ankle and I couldn't walk. So that was a big transition for me. We had just moved from Ohio to Florida and I didn't know a soul. I was still trying to figure out how to set up the house and get everybody where they needed to go. And then I broke my ankle and I just felt like everything in me was also fracturing. And in that time I just began to wonder, like, what is it about walking that helps us do this work of discernment? And so as I began to heal, I began to explore each of the different aspects of our bodies. You know, we just talk about being embodied generally, but I was like, okay, there's so many pieces of this. There's our sensory systems, there's our emotions, there's our thoughts, there's our desires. You know, how do I pay attention, maybe through my walks to each one of those pieces and, and see what wisdom emerges? And it was fantastic. It was so much fun.
- [12:00]
Jenny Erton
I love how you wrote about it. You wrote the physical sensations of foot compression. I was like, oh, I don't know if I've ever used that phrase before. Foot compression, eye shifts and rhythmic breathing work together to create an internal navigational system, a map of where we are that helps the body skillfully find its way forward, to figure out how can you move forward. So obviously you know, you're going to talk about the benchmark benefits of walking. This is for our cardiovascular system and cognitive function and emotional well being, but also for discernment. Who am I?
- [12:32]
Ad Read Host
Where am I going?
- [12:33]
Jenny Erton
What should I do? Can you talk about the relational part of it? You talk about how this fosters social bonding. And you had all this information about how when two people walk in step, they synchronize both their bodies and their brains.
- [12:46]
Deborah Gregory
Yes, that was surprising to me that I guess it made sense, you know, that if you start walking in step, you'll start breathing, you know, and maybe some of your breathing or your heart rate might come into sync, but the brain waves was really fascinating to me. And actually there's a couple universities in Japan that are really doing fantastic work on this, where they pair up people to walk together, usually strangers, and they notice, you know, how they relate afterwards, what is their sense of trust. And if they would match their stride, they would start to build trust even without uttering a single word. But if one person was just a little bit ahead or a little bit behind, it Broke trust. And some studies even say that when people can't walk together side by side very well, you know, sometimes it can feel even violent to us. It's like a violation. So that was really interesting to me of like, how even we're wired to walk together, but also to discern, you know, who's safe. How am I, you know, being accompanied and companion on the way. So, yeah, it was super interesting. Isn't.
- [13:57]
Jenny Erton
Is so interesting, so. Because, well, here's the thing. My husband is taller than I am, so he'll tend to walk ahead. And especially when our kids were younger, I would be like, I'm abandoned. Same. We're back here and it's such a simple thing. It has nothing to do with really abandonment. But you feel like that a little bit different strides. Yeah, that's intriguing. I'm like, you know, I could keep up, but it like, you know, it would take a little bit of effort.
- [14:27]
Deborah Gregory
So I was like, you have to work at it. Yeah, you have to work at it. It's so relational.
- [14:32]
Ad Read Host
Yeah.
- [14:33]
Jenny Erton
Okay, let's talk about some of the walks that are in the book. There's 33 of them in here for navigating life with embodied wisdom. I would like to talk about the horizon. I said that so wrong. It's horizon
- [14:46]
Deborah Gregory
horizontally.
- [14:48]
Jenny Erton
I know, I know. I'm so often like, I. I pronounce words wrong all the time. I'm like, why do I even have a podcast? Horizon. Okay. The horizon gazing walk. So here's what you talk about when we have this inset. The sensation of the world passing by while we walk. It resets our nervous system and helps our mind let go of worries with each step.
- [15:13]
Ad Read Host
It's called optic flow.
- [15:14]
Jenny Erton
I've never heard of this.
- [15:16]
Deborah Gregory
Yeah, I had. I had never heard of it either. This is one tip I found by walking with Andrew Huberman's podcast, where he does a lot with neuroscience and he's an optician or ophthalmologist. And so I was really curious about the eyes. You know, what do the eyes do? And even if you have blindness or you have some kinds of vision impairment, even just, just the way that our bodies are postured to look at the horizon and also just that sensation of the world passing. You could be on a bike, you could be in a car, you could be in a wheelchair, no matter what it is. But that, that, that sense of movement and the world passing you by and also just the posture of the body looking up either to the horizon or to the sky just has incredible benefits to our body and our nervous system.
- [16:09]
Jenny Erton
Isn't that interesting. Yeah. To have the sensation of the world passing by. So you talk about how walking is a practice of hope.
- [16:19]
Deborah Gregory
I mean, yeah, right.
- [16:22]
Jenny Erton
Oh, I mean, I've not thought of that before.
- [16:25]
Deborah Gregory
I. Right.
- [16:27]
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- [20:08]
Deborah Gregory
Like I think that, you know, think about when you're afraid. You usually freeze or step back and you move back. But hope just keeps walking, stepping forward, right? And so there's a whole posture to hope. And I've, I've met with people who will say, hey, my therapist wants me to do some walking meditations. Can you show me something to do? This is the first one I'll do with them because there's just a lot of research about looking at the horizon moving forward that helps us combat depression and other things of that nature. And we can build hope into us by just moving. If we can't feel it. At least we can take a step forward. We can look at the horizon, we can imagine what's up ahead. And so we can begin to step in hope even before we feel it, just by walking.
- [21:06]
Jenny Erton
I love that one. So that's the third walk. Horizon gazing walk. You talk about the forest bathing. So we were able to visit Japan this year as a family. Yes, it was very cool. We were there for about a week and it was just a wonderful experience. So can you talk about growing up in the mountains of Japan and this forest bathing concept? It stems from the Japanese. And so you're talking about a specific waterfall in here and how this can really help with feeling so much better.
- [21:42]
Deborah Gregory
Yes. So where I grew up in Japan, there's just tons of paths and forest around us and it was right on the train line from Tokyo. So people would come up from the cities every weekend just and come out and just be in nature for a while. And we had this wonderful waterfall named Shiraito Falls just up the road. And it was like my favorite place to go and play. But around that time, this was in the 80s, they, the government started doing some research. Well, I don't know if it was the government, but there was research done that showed spending time in nature and connecting with trees and plants, like physically touching them. Yeah, and breathing. The phyton science does incredible things to our body and to our, our healing. So there, that's how forest bathing began. Then everybody jumped on the train. So we'd come up to our area and, and do this wonderful thing of forest bathing.
- [22:43]
Jenny Erton
I read that if you forest bathe for a couple hours that it helps your immune system for 30 days.
- [22:49]
Deborah Gregory
Yes.
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Ad Read Voice 1
Yeah.
- [22:51]
Deborah Gregory
It lingers. It's very long lasting.
- [22:54]
Jenny Erton
Yeah, 30 days. So it's like a once a month out into the, you know, into the forest. So that's one of the walking meditations. Okay, let's talk about this. When you synchronize your breath with your step, you call it breath walking.
- [23:08]
Ad Read Host
What can that do for you?
- [23:10]
Deborah Gregory
Yes. So this was something that I also found really fascinating. It was a technique that was developed in Afghanistan. Somebody was there, an avid walker, her name is Eduard Stiegler. And he would watch these camel drivers. They were coochie nomadic people and they would move their camels like 500 miles in just a few days. And he just couldn't believe like how could they walk this far with that much stamina? And so he began to watch their breath and he noticed in the cool springtime air that they were matching the breath and steps. So it would be like three steps, and then they would pause their breath because, you know, we would hyperventilate if we didn't do that. And then they would exhale for three steps, pause their breath, and. And so then be. He became very fascinated with this technique. And turns out that it's. It's amazing process for building stamina. So a lot of hikers and pilgrims will use this technique, but it's really great for our. For our nervous system as well.
- [24:18]
Jenny Erton
Yeah, I mean, that's such a simple thing to try. And then you have this quote in here that says, walking with breathing improves patients in anxiety and quality of life. So this is helping with your circular, your circulation, stabilizing your heart rate, strengthening your muscles, and then also with anxiety and quality of life. And then you went on to talk about interoception, our sixth sense. So can you talk about how that relates in this section?
- [24:49]
Ryan Reynolds
Yes.
- [24:50]
Deborah Gregory
Yeah. So when I was researching the senses, because my daughter has a sensory processing disorder, we know that we don't have five. We don't have just five senses. We actually have many more, but eight, the eight of them are really important for us, especially for neurodivergent people. And so we've got the five that we all know. Taste, touch, smell, sight, hearing. And then we have interoception, which is our sense of our interior state. So you think about being hungry, right? Maybe your temperature, feeling full, feeling empty, feeling tense, feeling relaxed. You know, these are all, like, clues that our body is giving us about how we're doing and what we need. Um, and so if we're not paying attention to them, you know, we might end up feeling hangry or, you know. Right. Like, we all know these feelings, but it's. It's a really important sense for regulating not just our. Our, like our nervous system, but also our emotions are regulated in this way as well.
- [26:01]
Jenny Erton
So one of the ideas that you give in this section about walking with breath, breath walking, is you could count, like you talked about, you know, the 1, 2, 3.
- [26:08]
Ad Read Host
Or you could have like a little
- [26:10]
Jenny Erton
prayer that you say.
- [26:11]
Deborah Gregory
Yeah, yeah. So. And this is how Christians would pray for, you know, the early. The early days of Christianity. Many people would do what's called breath prayers. And so you can add a. Whatever prayer you want to kind of match with your steps. Sometimes I'll just say, show me the way. Right? You know, I need help. Come Lord Jesus is the. The most ancient one. So if you just need an ancient one, that there's one Right there.
- [26:45]
Jenny Erton
Yeah. What great ideas. Okay, let's switch gears. But kind of similar, because talking about the senses, so we talked about interoception. There's proprioception, so that's dealing with balance. And so you talk about doing silly walks.
- [27:01]
Deborah Gregory
Yes, yep. So proprioception, also a really important sensory system we don't know much about. So proprioception tells us where we are in space, like how far I am away from other things, so I don't crash into them. Yeah, so. But it also regulates our emotions. It's the most important sensory system that helps regulate our emotions, and it does it through joint compression. So you think, think, think about children when they get over stimulated, when they get anxious, when they get upset. You might see them jumping up and down. Sometimes they will have behaviors that we think we're act, they're acting out, where in reality they're trying to engage their joints in order to help them regulate their sensory overload or their emotions. So it's a wonderful thing to begin to notice and especially in children because they do it naturally. And then, you know, what if we as adults began to, you know, try some of these things, We've lost the art of twirling and, you know, jumping up and down and. And silly walking. So this is just a delightful practice that our family likes to do together sometimes. In our neighborhood, everyone thinks we're crazy, but we love it. We have so much fun.
- [28:19]
Jenny Erton
And it's great for proprioception, imbalance, which, which like you said, is good for the emotions. But then it's also good as you get older to help so that it would protect you from possibly falling. So I think that's a really important one. You split this book up. So the book is called Spiritual Wayfinding 33 Walking Meditations for Navigating Life with Embodied Wisdom. Just a little one. You could pop it into your purse, the book, and just have all these ideas in there. So you split it up into sensory awareness. So, you know, we talked about sight, the horizon, walk, you know, the touch, you know, if you're in the forest bathing, we talked about the intercept, interoception, proprioception. Then you have a bunch of walks that are about your emotions. So like joy and sadness and anger and disgust. I feel like I'm talking about that one movie, Inside Out.
- [29:05]
Ad Read Host
Yes.
- [29:06]
Jenny Erton
Joy, sadness, anger, disgust, surprise and fear. I do really like those movies. And then there was like.
- [29:11]
Deborah Gregory
I think they added anxiety. Yes.
- [29:15]
Jenny Erton
Okay, so let's talk about a couple of those, the different emotions. One of the ones that you Talked about is surprise. And apparently I had no idea about this. There are people that are called surprise ologists. Can you tell us about them?
- [29:30]
Deborah Gregory
Yes, and I. I don't know their names off the top of my head. I forgot.
- [29:34]
Jenny Erton
It's Tanya Luna and Leanne Renegar. But they call themselves surprise ologists.
- [29:41]
Deborah Gregory
Yes. So they're researchers who study surprise, which is so surprising. And I love is. And this was one of my favorite chapters to learn about was surprise. And, and I'll say this first about emotions, because most of us grew up with this belief, which is a myth, that there are good emotions and they're bad emotions, but all emotions are there. God gave us these emotions to help us do the work of discerning. And so we just have to pay attention to what they're telling us and if we're going to follow or not. So surprise was really interesting because it's the shortest emotion that we have. It just comes super fast, and then it dissipates. But what it does is amplifies other emotions that come with it, and they linger, and it amplifies it by 400%. So think about, you know, how if you're having a birthday party and you love surprises, how joyful that feels to you. But if you hate surprises and you almost step on a snake, like how terrifying that is for you. So this. This was actually really helpful for our family because of our sensory processing comes with it, emotional regulating and. And processing challenges because it's the same nervous system. And so surprise gave us a language to recognize. Sometimes a meltdown or sometimes behaviors in children aren't just because they're bad. It may be because something surprised them, and then now they've got this amplified emotion and they don't know what to do with. But the benefit of surprise is that it opens up something new for us, a new pathway, a new possibility. And so it really, from the perspective of spiritual formation, all of our formation, all of our growth will off well. It always needs to have some component of surprise in order for it to really change us and for us to be able to step into something new. So now I love surprise. I'm just always looking for it.
- [31:56]
Jenny Erton
So this one, you're saying, look, walk before dawn and start the day with a sense of surprise. Expect surprise. It's an exhilarating way to do that.
- [32:06]
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- [32:45]
Jenny Erton
Can you talk about the Japanese haiku where you talk about. With the paradox of surprise, we're offered a fresh perspective. Do you know which one I'm talking about?
- [32:54]
Deborah Gregory
Yeah, I think. Let's see. Oh, I forget how it goes.
- [32:59]
Jenny Erton
I've got it right here.
- [33:00]
Deborah Gregory
Yeah.
- [33:01]
Jenny Erton
My cottage burned down. I now own a better view of the rising moon.
- [33:06]
Deborah Gregory
Isn't that great? Yes. Yeah. So that. That haiku was written, like, I think in the 16th century, if I remember right.
- [33:15]
Ad Read Voice 1
Yeah.
- [33:16]
Jenny Erton
17th century Japanese poet.
- [33:18]
Deborah Gregory
Yes. And so. And because of that one surprising incident of his cottage burning down, and now he has a new view of the moon. But he went on to. To do a lot of pilgrimage and just wrote some of the best poems that. That the Japanese have today. So he's a beloved poet and just captures that sentiment so well. Yeah.
- [33:45]
Jenny Erton
You wrote. Through the paradox of surprise, we are offered a fresh perspective. Okay, so that's the second section. You're talking about walking and dealing with different emotions. The third section is about awareness of thought. So can you talk about poo sticks and releasing sticky thoughts?
- [34:00]
Deborah Gregory
Yes. And by the way, this book is so fun to walk with kids and with family. So, you know, maybe you're familiar with. With some of these mindfulness practices where you imagine like, a stream and you put, you know, a thought that keeps coming back to you on a leaf and it goes down. Right. So that's a really popular mindfulness technique that people use. But I became curious, what happens if we don't just do this in our mind? Is it more powerful to do this if we actually go out and do it with our bodies? So then I remembered this beautiful story of Winnie the Pooh where he and his friends play pooh sticks on Pooh sticks bridge. And they each drop a stick off of one side of the bridge, and then they run to the other side and they look to see which side stick comes out first. And in the story, if you kind of. And. And I tell about it in the book, but each one of those characters has a different anxiety about their stick. Right.
- [35:05]
Ad Read Voice 1
And.
- [35:06]
Deborah Gregory
And so that's kind of how we are with our own thoughts. Like, we have these anxious thoughts and they cause us anxiety or, you know, they impact us in different ways. So my kids and I We and my husband, we love to go out. Whenever we walk across a bridge, we'll. We'll go back and we'll find some sticks and we'll attach our stickiest thoughts to the stick. And then we will say, 1, 2, 3, release. And then we'll all throw them, and then we'll watch them. And we just have an opportunity to look at our thoughts differently, to watch them float by, see what it feels like to release them. Also accept when they come back. Right. So it's. It's just a really fun way of practicing that beautiful act of releasing a thought.
- [35:55]
Jenny Erton
Yeah. There's a lot of ideas in here that would be great to do as a family. Then one. Another one in this section about awareness of thought is making nature art. Can you talk about creativity? So you're talking about walking and how that's connected with creativity. And then also the nature is helping with stress because of the fractals.
- [36:18]
Deborah Gregory
Yes. Yeah. So when we walk in nature, first of all, it can boost our creativity by 60%, which is amazing, right? Yeah. So if you need. You need to have some creativity, just get up, go for a walk, you know, give them some legs. But also when you go out and look at nature, like, pay attention to the amazing patterns and especially fractals, which. I had no idea what a fractal was until I started writing this book. But my daughter also told me, you know. Yes. So she loves math, and she would notice that there's all these shapes in math that are just perfect. But you never see a perfect triangle or a perfect circle in nature. Like, they're rough edges. So fractal geometry is a way of noticing the rough edges in nature and the way that patterns repeat themselves at different sizes. You know, you think of a fern, the way that it has the branches that are really big on one end, but then they taper down until they're very tiny at the tip. So that's an example of a fractal. Or you might see spirals, like in seashells. You see Y's. If you look at a tree, like the trunk of the tree, and the branches make a Y, but then those little Y's branch off all the way to the very tips where there's twigs. And when we see a fractal, it takes something like 50 milliseconds for our body to respond that's faster than our thoughts. And our body responds very quickly. Our blood pressure starts to drop and we become much more relaxed. So they're so fun. Once you begin to look at fractals And I always tell people, just notice when you see a pattern that catches you because you will always make a noise like oh or oh. Or you know, and just pay attention to how your body responds because it's much faster than our thoughts and it's got a lot of wisdom.
- [38:20]
Jenny Erton
So this was in the section of awareness of thoughts called Creative Imagination, Making Nature Art. So if you're paying attention to these things, this is going to. To capture your attention. You wrote, fractals remind us to trust God's order within the chaos and rough edges of life. And then just being out there is going to boost your creativity. And then you said it. Even you're reminded about it when you look at your fingerprint.
- [38:43]
Deborah Gregory
Yes. Yeah. And here's what's amazing, is that our bodies are made of fractals. And that's what makes us so strong and so flexible and so resilient. You think about our lungs. So when I lead people on a fractal walk, the first thing I do is have them take a deep breath and they feel very relaxed. And then I'll say, think about your lungs. Like your lungs are fractals. They are. You know, you got your big. I don't know what they're called. The big tubes. Can I call them tubes? I don't know what they're called.
- [39:16]
Jenny Erton
That must be what they're called.
- [39:17]
Deborah Gregory
Yeah. Then they branch out into smaller. Smaller. Right. And so, yeah, so we're. We're made up of fractals. That's why we're wired to see them in nature.
- [39:27]
Jenny Erton
All right, let's move on to another section. So there's 33 different walks in this book. 33 walking meditations in the book. Spiritual wayfinding. So we've talked about a couple of the sections. We've talked about sensory awareness, exploring your emotions, becoming aware of your thoughts. And then there's a section about spiritual orienteering where you talk about the. I thought this another really fun one with kids. The tree eyes track where you're looking for self pruning as well as maybe external pruning. But how they make faces on a tree.
- [40:00]
Deborah Gregory
Yes. Have you ever noticed that, Jenny? Like, have you ever looked at a tree?
- [40:05]
Jenny Erton
I mean, not really. No. So I was like, oh, I've been
- [40:08]
Deborah Gregory
missing out once I read your book. You see it now?
- [40:11]
Ad Read Voice 1
Yeah.
- [40:11]
Deborah Gregory
Now you. Now you'll see them everywhere. Yeah. We will notice, you know, just walking by trees. We'll notice the different marks in a tree. And so sometimes you'll have like two limbs that are cut Off. And then those scars look like eyes. But then there might be like a little lichen patch that looks like teeth, you know, or little, a little blip in the, in the bark that looks like a nose. So we've just begun to, to see tree faces everywhere. And they're hilarious. We have one outside, our neighbor has one that we call Gasping Gus. He's so cute. He's got his big brain, his arms raised up, you know, to the sky. Every time he sees us it looks like he's like oh, hi. So we, we love the tree faces. But then it, it became. My kids started noticing that some of the pruning scars look like people eyes. They're circles. And some of them look like cat eyes and they, and it's hard to describe what they look like without seeing them, but they're, the scars are kind of closing in with, with calluses and they look kind of like a cat's eyes. And what. And so became, I became curious like, like why are some, why are scars different? And I found out that trees self prune. Isn't that fantastic to know? Doesn't it just give you hope to know trees know how to self prune? What if I knew how to release things that aren't life giving? What if I knew how to just release things that aren't are stealing my resources from other areas and begin to do this beautiful work that nature already does of self pruning.
- [41:55]
Jenny Erton
Oh, I love it. I love that. And then every time you see it, it reminds you of that. If you're looking for the different types of pruning scars in the same section. You talk about a type of walk where you are seeing wind shaped trees. I'm not even going to pretend to pronounce it since I botched so many things, but can you talk about it? It's a German term for trees shaped by strong winds.
- [42:21]
Deborah Gregory
Yeah. So I'm not good at. I can't speak German either. So my, my best attempt is to say wind flipter trees. And so these are trees that are, are bent. They're shaped by the wind. And sometimes we look at them and think that there's something wrong with them. I've got one across my front yard. It's like a huge bow across my front yard. And I've thought, you know, for a long time it must be sick. Like it must not be doing well. But every, every summer it just drops so much of the hickory nuts. So I'm like, it's actually very, very healthy. So it got me curious like why Are some trees bent? And does it mean that they're unhealthy? And it turns out that they can thrive just as well as other trees. But what they do is they. They are very strategic about their roots, where they grow their roots, and they're also strategic about growing what's called reaction wood. So you can look on the side of the tree where it's bent and see, like, this thicker, bulkier tree growth there. And it supports it. It helps it to grow as it needs to grow. And it was just such a helpful reminder for me in the ways in my own life where I feel bent, you know, by my past or certain experiences, just to remember that I, you know, I can grow some. Some strategic roots. I can grow this reaction wood. I can become stronger and resilient, and I can still flourish.
- [43:54]
Jenny Erton
That is interesting. We have two apple trees that we planted a while back, and one is growing up, and one grows to the side.
- [44:00]
Deborah Gregory
Does he?
- [44:01]
Ad Read Voice 2
Yeah.
- [44:03]
Ad Read Voice 1
Huh.
- [44:04]
Jenny Erton
What's happening there? They're right next to each other. But it. And I just saw yester, like, they all have. They both trees have blossoms on them. You kind of feel like, oh, I should cut down that tree. That's going completely sideways, but it's got blossoms on them. So that is an interesting, interesting connection there, that it's growing sideways, but it's still flourishing. So you wrote, I can freely pray. My one desire and choice is whatever orients my life toward the love of God and flourishes the life of the world, you know, no matter how that looks. So you can look for those types of trees as you walk in wooded area. So that's one of the walks, and that is in the section on spiritual orienteering. Then you have one section about exercising discernment. Goodness. I mean, there's five walks there about exercising discernment. And, gosh, it's a hard thing in this day and age. And I also think it's a hard thing for kids. Like, how do you learn discernment over the years? You know, what are your thoughts on that?
- [45:04]
Deborah Gregory
Yeah, well, I'm learning to separate discernment from decision making, and I think that's been really helpful because we. They're very similar. But I think decision making is, you know, you have to make this choice. But I think discernment is much more primal. You know, if I can say it that way, discernment is just noticing and discerning, like, oh, that stove is hot, and then we can make a decision.
- [45:30]
Ad Read Host
Right.
- [45:31]
Deborah Gregory
So discernment really is about the art of. Of noticing what's life giving? What is. Where's my attention going? Right? What, What's. What's stealing my joy right now? So these are, you know, just small, small questions that we can be asking ourselves to be. To begin discerning. And then for Christians, I think there's a thing called. Well, I know there's a thing called spiritual discernment, which goes a step further to. To just examine what's drawing me toward God, towards life, towards faith, hope, and love, you know, and sometimes we think that we're doing the right thing, but we might be doing it for a wrong reason. And it's not really moving us toward God. It's not really connecting us with other people. It's not, you know, it's not life giving for us. So. So discernment is really, I think, beginning to notice the orientation of our lives. Is it towards what's good and beautiful and true and lovely, or is it. Is it, you know, an orientation towards what's fearful or what's, you know, makes us feel anxious or towards our anger? Right. So some of these things that. That steal away our life if we're. If we aren't careful and aren't discerning.
- [46:57]
Jenny Erton
Let's talk about one of the examples in that section. This one is called bushwalking. And it's about the courage to want. I thought, oh, goodness, that's quite the statement. The courage to want. And you talk about how your favorite biblical bushwalker is. Is Bartimaeus. Can you tell us about Bartimaeus?
- [47:17]
Deborah Gregory
Yes. So Bartimaeus is a story in the Bible, um, and he is a man who has blindness and can't see. And so he is put on the side of the road where he is begging for his sustenance. And Jesus walks by, and Bartimaeus calls out to him and says, have mercy on me. And he names Jesus, son of David. Have mercy on me. And Jesus stops and says, bring him to me. And what's interesting about this story is that everyone tries to silence him. Everyone tries to tell him to be quiet, to put him in the place to stay where you are. But Bartimaeus very courageously keeps crying out until Jesus noticed. And then he makes his way. Jesus doesn't come to him. He makes his way to Jesus through that crowd and through all the obstacles. And then Jesus says, well, can I. What do you want? What do you want? And he says, I want to see. And so Jesus heals him. Um, but I. That is, I think, the most important question we can ask one another. And it's the most important question that God asks us, we, many of us. I don't know, Jenny, how you grew up, but did you have like a sense that you're not allowed to want or your desires are bad?
- [48:41]
Ad Read Voice 1
Sure.
- [48:41]
Jenny Erton
I mean, I think there's often that.
- [48:42]
Ad Read Voice 2
Right.
- [48:43]
Jenny Erton
Like not to be selfish or self centered, that type of thing.
- [48:45]
Deborah Gregory
Yeah, yeah. So I, Jesus kind of reframes this of we need to pay attention to our desires because they're already guiding us. And, and this is a really important question for people who have disabilities. And the most important question we can ask them because they don't often have agency. So for people with disabilities. And I tell the story of my friend Kayla, who has a disability in this chapter about how courageous it is to actually say this is what I want and to say it to Jesus and to see if he wants it too. Right. And so that courage to want is just bedrock of human dignity that God, you know, God places this ability to desire within us. Um, so it becomes a point of discernment. We get to see what it desires move us toward God and what's good, what turn us away.
- [49:49]
Jenny Erton
Okay, so then the final section. So six sections here split up into 33 different walking meditations. The last one is the Pilgrim's Way. Can you explain what you mean by that?
- [50:00]
Deborah Gregory
Yeah. So these, these are more practical walks based on pilgrimage. So I've always wanted to go on a pilgrimage. I haven't been able to yet, you know, because I'm still in the throes of motherhood and that's very hard time of life to be able to do something like that. But I do have a lot of friends who go on pilgrimage and I, I want to go on one. So I've been trying to prepare myself for, for some, some practical walks that I can do for the stamina and the strength and all of that, but also the spiritual wisdom that comes with them as well as well.
- [50:36]
Jenny Erton
All right, let's talk about one of those. Since we've touched on each of the sections. One of them is walk 31. Japanese interval walking. Cultivating inner strength. I thought that's a great one because we were able to visit Japan and you grew up in Japan and they do this interval walking training.
- [50:51]
Deborah Gregory
Yes. So it's called a three to one protocol. Did I say that right?
- [50:58]
Jenny Erton
I think it's. Is it three by three?
- [51:00]
Deborah Gregory
Three by three. Thank you. You've got the book?
- [51:02]
Jenny Erton
Yeah, I have the book.
- [51:04]
Deborah Gregory
It's a three by three protocol. So the idea is that you walk, you do fast walking for Three minutes. And then you do kind of normal, relaxed walking. And I love the way that the Japanese help each other to know what is fast walking. They say fast walking is where you walk fast enough where you can't really have a conversation with someone very easily. You're a bit winded, but not too, not too fast where you can't smile. So keep your smile on.
- [51:34]
Jenny Erton
Yeah.
- [51:34]
Deborah Gregory
And then you slow walk is just a comfortable pace where you can have a conversation with somebody. So you kind of go back and forth for three minutes fast walk, three minutes slow walk. And the benefits are fantastic. The health benefits, especially for cardiac patients. And I, you know, I've got some heart problems where I have some restrictions on what I can do. So walking is really important for me. I can do walking and I can do interval walking. So. And it's really great because you can discover, you know, you push yourself a little bit further and harder than you did the last time, and you discover I'm stronger than I thought I was.
- [52:16]
Jenny Erton
Yeah, the three by three protocol. And so that's going to help probably increase your endurance and how far you can get. And then the book also has different things at the end of each walk, like a scripture meditation, a walking meditation, and a rest and reflect. So you're going to find that there's a lot in this book. Scripture, meditation, walking meditation, rest and reflect. And in the walking meditation, you talk about before you go. And then as you walk in, are there things you're going to notice or can you synchronize? What can you receive? So it's a beautiful book. A beautiful little book. Spiritual way finding 33 meditations for navigating Life with Embodied Wisdom. When did it come out?
- [52:55]
Deborah Gregory
So it just came out in April 14th.
- [52:58]
Jenny Erton
Oh, my goodness.
- [52:59]
Deborah Gregory
Brand new. It is brand new.
- [53:02]
Jenny Erton
Congrats to you. What a cool accomplishment and what a beautiful topic. So people can find more about you at flourish spiritual direction.com can you tell people about your podcast? It's called Betwixt.
- [53:14]
Deborah Gregory
Yes. So the Betwixt podcast is something that I did years ago, and it was mainly an exploration of kind of those middle spaces in life. But this year we're rebooting and I'm doing it within our varsity press, and we are focusing on some practical embodied wisdom. So I've got people, all kinds of people coming in, but each, each one, each episode will end with some kind of meditation that you can do with your body. So practices for those middle spaces of life where you're kind of going through transitions and you're like I just need something to help get me through. So that's what we're exploring.
- [53:54]
Jenny Erton
Yeah. Oh, how exciting. How exciting. Well, this has been such a treat, Deborah. I love these different ideas of ways to walk, especially because we can sometimes get a little bored with what we're doing. So there's a lot of options in here to change it up and to. To find more and to get more out of your walking. Especially in a day and age where we have these large looming questions like who am I? Where am I going? What should I do? We always end our show with the same question. What's a favorite memory from your childhood? That was outside.
- [54:23]
Deborah Gregory
Okay, well, I have to go with Shiraito Falls. I loved going out to the falls and to the forest in Japan. I loved touching the cool water at the falls and to play in it. And I loved the smell of the leaves that have fallen. Right. Oh, my goodness. I just. That's my.
- [54:45]
Jenny Erton
That's a full sensory experience, isn't it?
- [54:47]
Deborah Gregory
Yes.
- [54:48]
Ad Read Voice 1
Yes.
- [54:49]
Jenny Erton
Goodness. Being around a waterfall like that. This has been such a treat. Thank you so much for being here, Deb.
- [54:54]
Deborah Gregory
Thank you.
- [54:57]
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Deborah Gregory
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Jenny Erton
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