Mindful U Podcast 98. Stephanie Yuhas, PhD: Honoring the Earth: Climate, Ecology, and Ecopsychology
Today’s episode of our podcast is available at Mindful U, Apple, Spotify, and Stitcher now! We are happy to be joined by Dr. Stephanie Yuhas, the chair of both Ecopsychology MA program and the environmental studies BA program at Naropa University.
Dr. Yuhas discusses the topics of climate grief, eco anxiety, and how to mobilize and ease these states into helpful action for our planet. She also talks about the various career paths available to students studying Ecopsychology and Environmental Studies and why these are needed in our world going forward.
Check out this episode to hear a rich conversation on climate, ecology, and psychology!
Learn more about Naropa’s Ecopsychology MA program and Environmental Studies BA program below:
Ecopsychology Master’s Program (Low-residency)
Environmental Studies Bachelor’s Program
Full Transcript Below:
Full Transcript
Stephanie Yuhas
Honoring the Earth: Climate, Ecology, and Ecopsychology
TRT 53:52
[MUSIC]
Hello, and welcome to Mindful U at Naropa. A podcast presented by Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado. I’m your host, David Devine. And it’s a pleasure to welcome you. Joining the best of Eastern and Western educational traditions — Naropa is the birthplace of the modern mindfulness movement.
DAVID:
Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of the Mindful U Podcast. Today we have Stephanie Yuhas in the studio to speak with us. She is currently the chair of both Eco Psychology MA program and the Environmental Studies BA program. She has taught at Naropa since 2008, and has a background in religious studies, as well as eco psychology and ecology. Last time she was on the podcast, it was June 2018. And we chatted about approaching inter-spiritual dimensions, which was episode number 30, if any of you are interested to listening to that, you can go back and listen to that. And I would just like to welcome her to the podcast. So welcome. How are you today?
Stephanie Yuhas:
Thank you so much for having me, David, and I’m great today. It’s a beautiful day here in Boulder.
DAVID:
It is. Yesterday, it wasn’t, but today it is.
Stephanie Yuhas:
And tomorrow won’t be again.
DAVID:
Yeah, this is so Colorado. So, last time we talked, it was like a couple years ago and we had a little bit more religious kind of background. I think you were working in the religious department at that time. Right?
Stephanie Yuhas:
So I do have an extensive background in religious studies and spirituality. But I’ve actually been involved with eco psychology this whole time. And that’s what I did my masters in. And now I’m actually the chair of that program that I’ve been teaching in for many years.
DAVID:
Yeah, I think we were trying to get a podcast a couple years back with an eco lens. And then finally we were able to do it. And you sent me some awesome information. I’m really excited about our talk today. So to get started, I’m curious, last time we talked it was a little bit more like spiritually based, religious based. And today, we tend to have like an eco psychology kind of environmental department lens upon of like what you do now. And so you are now the chair of both the Eco Psych and Ecology department. And I’m curious, what do you do in that role? And what are some of the goals that you would like to implement while in this role?
Stephanie Yuhas:
So one of the things is we have one of the only eco psychology programs in the country?
DAVID:
No way. Really? Wow!
Stephanie Yuhas:
Yeah, I think maybe the only one actually. And so I really think that people with all the things about climate grief and anxiety that are happening right now, it’s actually a perfect program for people to actually really transform their views of their personal identity, their relationship to the natural world and to their own actions in the world. And to find, you know, a way for them to move forward so that they don’t feel they’re in despair all the time.
DAVID:
Yeah. Okay. So what would you say some of your roles are as that chairperson?
Stephanie Yuhas:
Oh, I think I am the chief cook and bottle washer. I think I do everything. I seriously, I mean, there is not anything I don’t do from scheduling the classes, hiring the adjuncts, planning the marketing, you know, you name it, I’m doing it. So —
DAVID:
All right. So this is a degree path students at Naropa can take. So what — what would you say the students are looking for when they get into this path? Like what kind of career paths are students wanting to fulfill when they leave with a — with a degree in eco psych or ecology? And what type of work are they interested in? Because obviously, it’s probably not like they want to become a welder, or a religious study major, because like ecology, eco psych has an environmental aspect to it. So they want to work with the earth. They want to work with people and communities, but like what type of work does that look like?
Stephanie Yuhas:
So let’s — let’s break this into two parts. Because there’s, first of all, we’re revising our environmental studies BA, and we’re going to offer it online as well as in person. So the online portion will allow people all across the country to be able to participate in this program in a way that they couldn’t if they had to move to Boulder. The ones who get to come in person, will do things like study permaculture, we have a permaculture certificate, they might actually get involved in community organizing, understanding how political and economic systems were, how they might be able to shift things in those directions. You know, there’s a lot of people who actually want to do things like landscaping, or I mean, it sounds crazy. But that’s actually things that people feel like they can change, regenerative agriculture, and things that are going to become really important, like, what is sustainability for the future? So, you know, all that people hear about are drive electric cars or, you know, put on solar panels, but there’s a lot more than that. It’s like, what about water issues? You know, there’s so many things. And there’s many, many nonprofits, that people can get involved with, movements that they can start on their own. I think there’s a lot of opportunity that we haven’t even seen yet that’s just starting to develop. And in terms of eco psych, a lot of the people who come to the master’s program already have some kind of background, Like, this year, we have somebody who’s already a therapist, somebody who’s already done regenerative agriculture, somebody who is working with disaster recovery. I mean, all kinds of people end up coming, but a lot of them are at a transition period in their life, where they’re trying to figure out the next step. And then one of the great things that we have is a rites of passage in the summertime, where people actually go on a three day wilderness solo, and they get to really find out things about themselves and work through issues that they might not have had any other way to meet.
DAVID:
There’s no better place to find what issues you have than to be alone for a while.
Stephanie Yuhas:
Like a long while.
DAVID:
They come up pretty quickly, just like oh, man.
Stephanie Yuhas:
It’s like an extended meditation retreat. But you know, pretty intense.
DAVID:
So one question I have is, so it sounds like there’s a couple of different career paths you can take. And they all sound very interesting from being a landscaper to like, you know, water rights, helping communities. And it’s just like, there’s a lot of diverse ways we can apply this degree to. But one thing I’m also curious is, what type of concerns do the students have when they walk into the classroom? Are they like, oh, I wanted to take this degree path, because I’m — I’m really worried about land usage. And there’s not enough like affordable housing, or, you know, I don’t like how we’re using our water, I feel like we’re wasteful, you know, or the sea levels are rising, and I must, I must go like, deal with the rising temperatures. What are some concerns that you hear from the students that are incoming students?
Stephanie Yuhas:
So I think you’re actually going to get right into the topic that I really wish that I would — could talk about here, which is ecological grief and eco anxiety, because I think if there is something in the background for every student, they want to know, if they have a future, they want to understand why they are here. Like, what is their purpose? And — and how will things be for them?
DAVID:
Yeah, and it’s interesting because the older we get, the more we’re like, wow, are we gonna do something about this? Or are we just gonna, like, keep talking about and like, sign treaties, and, you know, nothing really changes? So okay, you literally just mentioned it. So you mentioned climate, grief and eco anxiety. I personally had no idea what these terms were until you kind of mentioned them to me on preparation for this podcast. So while I have you here, can you describe each one of these? So we have a little idea of what we’re talking about? So I guess like climate grief and the eco anxiety? And maybe also like, how are they different?
Stephanie Yuhas:
Yeah, I think that — that is really important because I actually have been doing a lot of research myself to determine, you know, how these things differ and how they appear. So eco anxiety, I’ll actually quote you here from an article I pulled, eco anxiety is seen fundamentally as related to observing ecological problems, which include some kind of uncertainty and reacting to the problems. This kind of anxiety related to the ecological crisis can have many kinds of manifestations and they can change over time. They may be related to social situations, and thus have elements of social anxiety. They may lead to anxiety states, but fundamentally it emerges as a practical anxiety. So it’s something that’s emotional and it’s something that people are noticing, like when we talk about, oh, the IPCC report, and if we go above 1.5 degrees, the earth is doomed. You know, that whole kind of feeling is something that then stays in the back of people’s consciousness and affects them at a sort of subliminal level, they don’t even realize that it’s there. And they don’t know, like, what is this anxiety that’s actually coming up for them. So it’s trying to work with that. Climate grief is like a little bit more when it’s really in your face. And I can give you two examples right here from the Boulder area. So the flood in 2013, actually, like wiped out a lot of people’s homes. And I remember myself having to drive through a river, and then being cut off from wherever, like, I was lucky, I could get home. But I was cut off after that and you know —
DAVID:
You can get home, but you just can’t get back to work —
Stephanie Yuhas:
And. You can’t get anywhere else. LAUGHS. So, but just see the devastation that occurred from that. And then just like, what was it a year ago, maybe it’s two years now? The wildfire that swept through the Louisville Superior area —
DAVID:
The Marshall fire.
Stephanie Yuhas:
The Marshall fire, it was more than 1000 homes destroyed. Just incredible. And many of our faculty actually, you know, were affected by this.
DAVID:
My former boss, his house burned down.
Stephanie Yuhas:
Yeah, I mean, those are like, extreme examples. But we are seeing very many more extreme examples of that. And when people have to face a serious thing, like I live on the ocean, and the seas are rising, should I move? Should I stay?
DAVID:
Probably. Probably figure out something.
Stephanie Yuhas:
But those are — those are things that are confronting people or when they see the remnants of a burnt forest that causes them extreme grief and sadness, and they don’t really know how to move forward. They don’t see the future then, or —
DAVID:
You know, just to throw this out there, the burning of chemicals when a train derails —
Stephanie Yuhas:
Ohhh.
DAVID:
Because we can’t assess the situation and figure out a humane way to take care of it.
Stephanie Yuhas:
No, we shouldn’t have those chemicals in the first place.
DAVID:
Exactly. But we do and —
Stephanie Yuhas:
No, that’s one thing —
DAVID:
I don’t — I don’t think burning is the way to go about it.
Stephanie Yuhas:
No, well, actually, one of the things we should be doing is banning them. So that would be an example of an action that people could take to prevent this from the future, or transportation safety, you know, what are we doing for all the different modes of transportation and making sure that these kinds of accidents don’t occur?
DAVID:
So more preventative than reactive sort of situations?
Stephanie Yuhas:
It’s always better to, you know, have something that you can do in advance, you know, the precautionary principle, look at what you’re doing in the future, have a larger, wider view, you know, native peoples used to look seven generations in the future. Now, we’re lucky if we look seven days in the future.
DAVID:
True, we just take it day by day. So just a quick reference, you did mention the IPCC. And just for the audience, I just kind of want to tell them what that is. So it’s the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. So it’s a bunch of scientists gathering information about the climate. And I guess it’s like a website or an informational place where you can find climate information of like seas rising, temperatures, you know, maybe like soil samples, different things like that, right?
Stephanie Yuhas:
There actually, it’s sort of like the doomsday clock in a way.
DAVID:
Oh fun.
Stephanie Yuhas:
If you — if you’ve heard that, you know, there are — there are people who are measuring predictions, predictability, for all the different effects that climate change could bring to us. And so these people are trying to warn us about future scenarios. And they’re trying — there is a clock that basically says, we’re like at one second to midnight. And what’s going to happen, you know, what they’re trying to do is get people to change, like get off of fossil fuels. To make different movements now, so that even if this all occurs, even if we can’t really prevent climate change from occurring, since it’s already in process, and we probably can’t completely stop it, we can moderate the effects. And we can figure out adaptive strategies.
DAVID:
Kind of like a mitigation sort of aspect to it. We’re trying to like mitigate the damage that we’re doing. And I like a term that Terence McKenna says, where he’s like trying to steer a battleship with an ore, you know, it’s like you have this huge ship and it’s like, you just got this little paddle and you’re just like it’s not working.
Stephanie Yuhas:
Well, and that is, one of the things that I think people need to face now is that we may not be able to stop this process. It’s a very involved process. And we can plant a lot of trees, and we can, you know, do you know what the most troublesome activity is for creating, you know, heat in the atmosphere?
DAVID:
The most troublesome activity?
Stephanie Yuhas:
Yes.
DAVID:
Oh, I’m not gonna be graded on this, am I?
Stephanie Yuhas:
No.
DAVID:
I have no idea. Give me a hint, at least like, is it — is it like an activity that people do?
Stephanie Yuhas:
Birds do it?
DAVID:
Pooping?
Stephanie Yuhas:
LAUGHS
DAVID:
Like methane? I don’t know.
Stephanie Yuhas:
No, like flying in a plane. I’m talking about the fact that what is the — if you were to take your ecological footprint, what is the most — the most difficult activity that we should all stop doing?
DAVID:
Oh, I see where you’re going.
Stephanie Yuhas:
Yeah.
DAVID:
So traveling, maybe?
Stephanie Yuhas:
Well, traveling on a plane specifically, is the worst. You know, this is why they have carbon offsets that people can purchase for all the flights that they take. But, you know, there’s many different things we can also do, like, stop consuming so much, you know, don’t buy things that are wrapped in plastic containers. Because you know, we have plastic in our blood now, it’s actually measurable.
DAVID:
Like, sometimes when I hear information like this, it gives me anxiety, because I’m, as an individual, as you as an individual, you know, it’s not just individuals, its industry, too. So I feel like sometimes when we’re being talked down to, to like, oh, stop, stop trying to fly so much and buy stuff that has less packaging, but then you just have industries out there that like just don’t care and or maybe are not mindful of their pollutants that they’re doing. And it’s just like, dang, you know, maybe — maybe we need to stop focus on — we need to focus on our individual actions. But we also need to focus on like, corporation actions, industry actions, world political sways of like, commerce, and it’s — I don’t know, sometimes it feels a little bit bigger than the individual, which starts, like poking at my anxiety.
Stephanie Yuhas:
I think you’re right, actually. And so we could say that the capitalist system is one of the, you know, worst things for our planet. Now, some people would probably really disagree with me. But I think there is some sense in the fact that since the Industrial Age is when all of this change has really occurred. If you look at any charts, or graphs that describe the global warming, it’s like, an enormous curve upwards.
DAVID:
Like exponentially huge.
Stephanie Yuhas:
It is.
DAVID:
Yeah. Ok. And while you’re saying that too, because you’re talking about like capitalist society, and the goals and the morals of capitalist society is make money, right? So it’s like, what if our, like, we shift our goals other than shift our habits because our habits can shift but like, what makes our habits shift more is if our goal shift because then your habits will essentially shift. So if we shift to instead of a capitalist society, we shift to more of like an ecological society where we honor the land, and we preserve it, we preserve our air, we preserve our soil, our water, you know, and it’s like, like, that is our, that’s our capital?
Stephanie Yuhas:
Well, I think that indigenous peoples would agree with you. And there’s a lot of traditional ecological knowledge that is coming to the forefront now. And some people would even suggest that we should find Native American elders that would help us to work with these situations and figure out what land should be sort of like a sanctuary, how we should actually work with it, what kinds of plants we should have, how — you know, many ways of how we could live on the land.
DAVID:
Instead of like mono cropping and over producing.
Stephanie Yuhas:
Well, you know, people need to shift, actually, at the very basis, like, think about your own lifestyle. You know, we think that we can’t do anything individually, but we all make a lot of individual choices. So if you don’t eat meat one day a week, it supposedly makes a huge amount of difference. If you don’t eat meat six days a week, that’s an even bigger difference. If you do things like buy local from your local organic farmer, even that creates a whole different kind of sustainable cycle that we don’t really think about. People just go to McDonald’s. I mean, it’s really amazing how we don’t really think about what we’re doing. We’re just conditioned to the lifestyle.
DAVID:
Yeah, interesting. Okay. So you talk to us a little bit about climate grief. You also said a little bit about eco anxiety. And I’m curious, like, let’s — let’s try and separate them real quick. And then let’s go into climate grief. So can you unpack climate grief a bit more for our audience to like, kind of know if we have experienced it? Or if we are experiencing it, and maybe some ways of dealing with it, and maybe recognizing that it’s something so we’re not, why — why am I feeling a little low today, you know, what’s going on?
Stephanie Yuhas:
So we can look at it from a couple of different angles. So one would be the traditional stages of grief, like in Elisabeth Kubler-Ross might have informed us of. Things where we see ourselves either in denial or anger, or depression, or even acceptance, you know, and how are we working with all of those things? Joanna Macy has a whole — I’m gonna recommend a couple of books for people to actually look at. One of them would be Active Hope, the most recent edition of Joanna Macy, because it’s actually talking about resilience, and how we move forward. So just to give a little refresher of Joanna Macy, she actually has a couple of formulas that I think are really pertinent here. She talks about like this triangle, business as usual, the great unraveling and the great turning. And so business as usual, is what we all are doing, our regular life —
DAVID:
Is that where we’re at right now?
Stephanie Yuhas:
That’s totally where we are — no, actually, we’re at the great unraveling. You can see —
DAVID:
We’re a like the precipice of the great —
Stephanie Yuhas:
Oh, you can see it, you can see bank failures, you can see war and violence. I mean, you can just see these things, you can see the results of the pandemic, like what has happened to people, what — do they have any security at all? You know, I think a lot of people really are struggling and may not recognize this.
DAVID:
Yeah, I feel like all these things happen so quickly too. Like, one bank goes down, and then another bank goes down, the crypto market is really weird, and it’s not on solid ground and regulations are changing. They change what FDIC insures now all of a sudden, because of banks collapsed, and they’re like, oh, no, we got to change how much we insure people now.
Stephanie Yuhas:
So I think, you know, there’s a question of whether we rely on institutions, or whether we develop our own communities, and learn how to rely on each other, which is the way several 100 years ago, most people live. So it’s amazing that within a 200 year technological era, we have basically forgotten and we live, like isolated, and alone in our little rooms. And we’re on the internet and social media. And we’re looking for likes and looking for people to say that we’re great. And maybe we have to develop something different, where we have a little bit more self confidence, a little more grounding, a little bit more relationship with others to see that we’re not alone, that we’re all in this together. And it’s — I mean, if I dare say, I think this is actually not just something happening in the ecological community. But this kind of divisiveness is happening in politics. And it’s happening in, what should we call it, race relations. It’s happening in the LGBTQ community being divided. You know, all of these things are occurring simultaneously. So we see a lot of chaos in the system. And what are we going to do about that? So, again, Joanna Macy has a really good formula for this. She talks about having gratitude as the first thing, then honoring the pain for — of our world. You know, we actually need to meet our grief directly and process it. And so I think that’s best done in an actual group, in person, and I really wish more people would be able to participate in things like that. I think it’s very helpful for them to recognize that they actually have others who are going through the very same thing they are.
DAVID:
Yeah. And I think maybe we just feel ashamed with grief sometimes that it is hard to share. So if we have a setting that encourages us to share our grief in a community setting, then we recognize that someone else is feeling the same way. And we’re like, we can work with it together instead of being alone.
Stephanie Yuhas:
Well, and then, once we do that, we can actually think about how we’re actually going to go forth, like what is it that we’re going to do together as a community. And so the other book that I recommend is Mary Pipher’s, The Green Boat. And Mary Pipher is a psychologist who wrote Reviving Ophelia, which was about adolescents, and how they were going through their own stages of trauma. And —
DAVID:
Of course.
Stephanie Yuhas:
Of course, we’re all in trauma —
DAVID:
Realizing who you are is like the traumatic thing ever.
Stephanie Yuhas:
LAUGHS. But what she does is she is talking about, she’s moved to Nebraska, and the Keystone XL Pipeline is about to come in. And so she recognizes this, but she’s there by herself, basically. And so she does a whole narrative of how she meets her neighbors, how she gets them involved, and how they mount a campaign against this hideous objective. And, you know, shows how people can actually support one another and get involved in some kind of a political action.
DAVID:
Okay, I see. Interesting. So I’m a big fan of Graham Hancock and Graham Hancock and Randall Carlson talk about like the Younger Dryas and how the world has frozen over a couple of times and like natural climate cycle. And we just sort of happen to be in the rotation of that natural climate cycle, where it is some sort of like climate change happening, which is a natural occurrence. But then there’s also the occurrence of humans and industry and pollution, adding to this natural occurrence. And I’m wondering, how do we see the natural occurrence of climate shifts and the human causing climate shifts? How do those work with each other? And what would it look like if we weren’t polluting? And it was just like a natural climate shift?
Stephanie Yuhas:
Well, it certainly wouldn’t be devastating. The Antarctic and the Arctic the way it is right now. As a matter of fact, there’s a photograph that I saw recently of the Himalayas, from 1925, and then more currently, and I would say that the loss of snowpack and glaciers is more than 50%. And actually, the Himalayas are just as important as the Amazon in terms of maintaining our climate balance. And we’re also cutting down all the forests in the Amazon for big agriculture. I mean, this is a ridiculous, like, people are not really thinking about the outcome.
DAVID:
What is it, like palm oil?
Stephanie Yuhas:
Well, yeah, that is one thing, you know, or cattle, you know, people are just thinking about an immediate gratification. Just the — it’s greed, it’s pure greed. And, you know, what can I get for myself right now? No thought for the future.
DAVID:
Yeah, we’ve kind of made everything so easy to just consume that we forget the process to get it there. So we kind of went on, on climate grief. And I’m wondering if we can just have a little moment with eco anxiety. So can you discuss eco anxiety a bit? If I was feeling a certain feeling and I was unsure how to understand it or diagnose it, how do I know it would be eco anxiety?
Stephanie Yuhas:
Hmm. I think that, you know, well one thing is, it’s really helpful to have some sort of a practice where you actually observe your own mind and your feelings on a daily basis. Some of us have meditation practices, other people have different movement practices, even tai chi or any of those kinds of things might help. But I think that you, you’d recognize it, because when you start thinking about something in your future, you have this trepidation that arises. And it’s — it’s in your body. You can actually feel it, your muscles tense up, or your brain doesn’t function the same way you can’t focus. You know, all of these things might happen.
DAVID:
Wait a minute, I felt that before?
Stephanie Yuhas:
Well, when?
DAVID:
I definitely feel anxiety about the earth and kind of how we’re moving forward, and just like, it’s such a bummer to not see things change.
Stephanie Yuhas:
So one of the things that I would recommend, and I think it’s important from an eco psychological perspective, is that people actually remember to make relationship with the earth directly. So that means when it’s springtime, like it is now you go out and you appreciate the flowers when they come up. And you give thanks for the rain that actually appears and makes everything grow. And you appreciate the sun and its warmth and what it does for you, all that good vitamin D that’s coming in. You know, you actually, but more than that, you can actually make real relationship with trees and plants and animals. And they can actually communicate with you. But many people have forgotten how to do that, or that that’s even possible. And so one of the things in eco psychology is we give people opportunities to actually develop some of those skills and some of those intuitions that they don’t actually think about in our modern technological world. You know, they’re relating to screens much more than they are to the actual planet. And when you go out and you remember, oh, yeah, I feel so much more at ease when I am in the woods. When I am by a stream, it makes me feel calm. It really does. That’s why there’s a practice like Shinrin Yoku, which is like a Japanese practice of forest bathing. And the idea of just going out and being in the woods and noticing and observing and not trying to get anywhere. It’s not about conquering a mountain, it’s about actually being there. And feeling that place in your body
DAVID:
Yeah, it’s like notice what you notice.
Stephanie Yuhas:
Oh, totally.
DAVID:
Yeah. And it’s interesting, you say that too, because I have to, I have to, like, literally tell myself, like, go outside! You know, I have to tell myself to go outside. But when I was younger, I lived outside — all I did — you know, you throw your bike on the lawn, you drink from sprinklers, and you just like, go to your friend’s house and grab them and then go to the park. And, you know, it’s like nowadays, I have to tell myself to go outside, like, I have to make time to do something that was so natural. I feel like we’ve kind of lost our relationship with being outside and how it makes us feel.
Stephanie Yuhas:
I think the saddest thing is to look at young children, and realize that the difference in just 50 years, where people used to do that, they’d go outside and play the entire day and just come back for dinner. And they had safe places to go roam, where they could go play in a park or in a forest preserve. And now, parents are afraid to let their children even go outside at all. And so they get adapted to an iPad, like from the time they’re very young. And then they’re hooked into technology. And they don’t even want to leave it. Because it is really addictive. And so you can see that then they don’t make that relationship with the outdoors.
DAVID:
Yeah, that’s interesting. So when it comes to the climate, grief and the eco anxiety, are these things that you teach in the eco psych program? And are we empowering students to notice this, to deal with it? Because I almost feel like some of these students are taking these courses because they’re feeling this and they’re just like, I need to give back, I need to do something. I want to work with this. So — because you mentioned meditation and going outside and bathing — and you kind of loosely talked about like rallying community, is there any other tools that we can empower people with to help with these things like anything that you — we teach our students?
Stephanie Yuhas:
So I think the first thing that we teach our students is to develop that relationship with nature. So for the BA’s, I have a class called, Nature and the Sacred, in Contemplation. And so it’s a number of different exercises that people might do, just noticing things, sensory things around them in the world, creating their own self generated rituals, how to do that. You know, how to — how to actually make offerings to places, how to show respect for plants and animals, how to, you know, have gratitude for your environment. I think those things are all incorporated and most important is this idea of spending time alone outdoors because you’d be surprised how many people are terrified to be outdoors by themselves for any length of time?
DAVID:
Why do you think that is?
Stephanie Yuhas:
I think they didn’t grow up accustomed to it. That they’re —they’re simply unfamiliar. And they feel like the earth is their enemy instead of their friend.
DAVID:
Oh, wow.
Stephanie Yuhas:
Yeah, so I mean, this is actually you could trace this back to the times of the Great Famine in Europe, and plague — the Black Plague. And that’s one of the first times you could notice when people said, oh, we don’t trust the Earth, we feel like we need to control the earth. And then science started to develop all of these ways that they could keep the Earth at bay. And then there’s a pretty hideous comparison of the earth and women, and how women also need to be controlled. And women have these wild emotions, and the earth too seems to have wild emotions, in like tornadoes and hurricanes and floods. And so it’s really interesting.
DAVID:
All these natural disasters, it’s weird to be from the earth, and afraid of it at the same time.
Stephanie Yuhas:
You know, I think that we have lost contact. And, you know, that’s why the first point of all these programs is to build back your appreciation for the fact that we are not separate from the earth, that is like the most important aspect, we see ourselves as somehow different. But if we look at it, we’re made of microbes, we’re actually the same stuff as soil, and we go back to soil eventually. So why don’t we see ourselves as part of the process? You know, that’s very important. And a lot of new science now is actually seeing that, like in systems theory, they’re actually noticing that we are all part of the process. And so, if our consciousness evolves enough, we will be able to see that we are actually, you know, we are contributing, but the earth is also influencing us.
DAVID:
I see. Interesting, yeah, we are like soil to the earth at some point. You know, we have the IPCC report was the internal governmental Panel on Climate Change. And I’m just wondering, like, what — what are the things they’re reporting on? What are the scientists adding to this informational bank?
Stephanie Yuhas:
Well, mostly, they’re looking at the actual temperature rise. You know, a lot of times we call it global warming, and that’s misconstruing it a little bit, because then people get confused when suddenly the temperatures are much colder. And it looks like we’re about to have an ice age, or we have these great waves of precipitation coming from the Pacific and making the largest snowfall in California in many years. So it’s not always what it looks like, but it is things that are affecting the climate. So if we produce too much carbon in the atmosphere, then it creates a cloud above us where, you know, we can’t actually have the same systems effect.
DAVID:
I mean, I think I know what you’re saying, because it’s — it’s kind of like a terrarium. You know, it’s like the terrarium is like a contained environment. And if we change it, the — the plants inside, can’t thrive. And I think it’s like, we’re, all the CO2 and emissions is sort of choking the way that the earth is supposed to filter certain things out. We’re like kind of clogging its mechanisms to filter, whatever it is that it needs the filter.
Stephanie Yuhas:
Yeah, I guess in a way, that’s — that’s actually pretty true. You know, I think that there’s so much industry right now that is contributing not — not just in the ways that we look at in terms of like, are we using fossil fuels, which we probably should never have started doing. But we are mining many other minerals out of the earth. Our substitute for driving gas powered cars, is electric cars that are fueled by lithium batteries. And when we have to mine the lithium, that is a pretty horrible process, and it’s just as destructive. And those batteries don’t last that long. So —
DAVID:
And you don’t want to catch them on fire either.
Stephanie Yuhas:
No, absolutely not. So there — it’s not really a very good substitute. So we need to really come up with better strategies for how we’re actually going to power our lifestyles. And maybe part of it is that we can’t have the same exact lifestyle as we’ve grown accustomed to. But we’ve only had this lifestyle for about 150 years. So in geologic time, that is a blip on the radar. So actually it’s not really very long.
DAVID:
That’s interesting. So, you know, like fossil fuels, they — they’ve definitely have done some destruction of the earth and the ozone and, you know, emissions and all this and then, you know, we’re kind of switching to electrical lithium batteries. But if you really look at it, it still does some damage to the earth of like mining essential, rare earth materials and what is the alternative other — other than because it’s — that’s a really hard play to be like, hey, guys, we need to change how we live, you know, that might be a hard thing to rally behind, since we’re so accustomed and used to our lifestyles nowadays, is there like an alternative to lithium and batteries?
Stephanie Yuhas:
I think there’s an alternative to lifestyle. I think that, you know, many more eco communities are forming now. And it’s really interesting, it’s not as radical as you think. There’s a lot of co-housing projects, where people are actually growing their own food, doing their own agriculture, finding ways to buy local, to do things as trade, to use the materials that are in their bio region, to eat locally, to eat seasonally, you know, because one of the great transportation costs is tracking our food halfway across the world.
DAVID:
Even our food has a carbon footprint.
Stephanie Yuhas:
Totally. And so I think there are many small ways that we can actually start to adapt to a different lifestyle.
DAVID:
Yeah. Okay. With the IPCC, it’s this report that scientists are gathering all this information, with that information, do they — is it just on their website for people to look at? So you can — this is stuff that you can actually go look on — on the web? But do they also present to policy makers? Do they present to, you know, like world organizations? Do they have sway in governments and politics and world leaders? Like, how do they present this information? Do they get to present it? And do they push for narratives and policies to be changed?
Stephanie Yuhas:
You know, there’s a lot of people that are working for non governmental organizations, and pushing for all kinds of different policies. A lot of this, though, comes down to funding and politics, and how things are being financed and who’s in control of the money system. So that’s why some people are also looking to alternative currency as another way to actually work with all this. I have friends who are totally into crypto and blockchain and everything like that. And thinking that, you know, we need to actually come up with new ways to fund what we’re doing and how we value it. Because, you know, if we just wait for the regular, they have, we’re on Cop 26 now, in terms of like, climate action, global meetings, and trying to put all of these things in front of politicians and world leaders, and they blow past the deadlines all the time. So we are not, we cannot really count on those people. If you’ve ever watched Greta Thunberg, who started out very young as a climate activist, and was very effective, and many people have heard her, she still says, we’re not making any difference. And she’s been doing this for at least a decade. And you would think if this was such an imperative, that people would listen and do something. But I think we need to actually also change how we think about the world, how self centered we are. Many people are talking about our approach, as narcissistic, you know that we are only thinking about what’s in it for us, ourselves, and not thinking about the rest of the world. As a matter of fact, some people in the rest of the world would actually blame countries like the United States, and those that are developed for their own climate crisis. Like the flooding in Pakistan that happened recently that basically decimated at least 1/3 of the country. People don’t have homes, they can’t grow their crops. And it’s basically a climate disaster. And so they’re saying that people like the United States and developed nations should provide remuneration for the devastating effects of the climate change that we cause because we actually pollute more than anyone else.
DAVID:
I thought the CCP pollutes more? The Chinese Communist government?
Stephanie Yuhas:
I think we could actually say we’re probably about —
DAVID:
We’re definitely up there. Yeah, we’re — like, there’s a couple of countries out there that are just like, oh, boy.
Stephanie Yuhas:
Don’t just look at the pollution in Beijing and New Delhi to say how bad it is, because they don’t have any pollution controls. That’s one of the problems there.
DAVID:
Regulations, yeah interesting. So while you’re talking, I was thinking in my head, it’s like we have a climate deficit. You know, and I thought that was kind of interesting. But, you know, we kind of went with climate grief and eco anxiety. But some of the information you sent me, I also came across this term, solastalgia — solastalgia, right?
Stephanie Yuhas:
Solastlagia.
DAVID:
And I thought it was pretty interesting. But I kind of want to give you the floor. And I want to hear you tell our listeners what that’s about and what it actually means.
Stephanie Yuhas:
So this was actually developed by a guy in Australia named Glenn Albrecht who very independently, you know, Australia’s suffered many of the same, if not worse, climate grief problems that the United States has. They’ve had many floods, many fires, and they’re heating up much faster than we are. So you can actually see the effects on a daily basis. So then how do people actually respond and react to this, and he came up with this term, solastalgia, which is like a combination of solace, and desolation. And the idea is, desolation has its origins in solace, and desole air, with meanings connected to abandonment and loneliness. And then the algia means pain, suffering or sickness. So if you think about that, referencing nostalgia, like this longing for something that was, then you can see this as a pain, or grief that’s caused by the loss, or lack of solace. Like this isolation, like as if you are no longer part of your own home, you’re feeling like your home is abandoning you. It’s a loss of the sense of belonging and identity that you had in your place. And this feeling of stress and distress about how it’s transforming into something else that you no longer feel good about. And you actually have like a homesickness, for the way things used to be.
DAVID:
Hmmm. Do you think that homesickness is like a natural feeling that we have? Because, I think if we weren’t going through the climate — climate crisis, we essentially may not — we’d more feel at home, I guess. But do you think the climate crisis accentuates this feeling of loss?
Stephanie Yuhas:
If you talk to people who are older, you know who lived through the Great Depression, even, you’ll find that they could relate — they didn’t have the same issues. Like they didn’t have any money, they didn’t have any things. But they lived on land that they felt, held them and cared for them, and they could grow their own food, and they felt sustained. And they had community and they felt a sense of belonging. And almost all of those things now, we have no connection with. If you ask a young child, where does milk come from, they’ll tell you, it’s the grocery store.
DAVID:
Well it depends on how young you go too, I guess.
Stephanie Yuhas:
But I mean, you know, the point being that we really have lost our connection with place. But now, that places are really being destroyed in front of our eyes. And development is another thing. So you know, even here in Boulder County, they’re talking about the possibility of all the open space that we’ve preserved for the last 100 years. Let’s build tri-plexes and accessory dwelling units and let’s build everything up so that we take away all that space we had protected. But the difficulty with that is when that change occurs, it doesn’t go back to the way it was. It’ll take hundreds and hundreds of years for that to occur.
DAVID:
Yeah, we love looking forward, we’re now very retroactive.
Stephanie Yuhas:
We’re not very forward thinking.
DAVID:
Yeah, that too. What — I’ve came across something where people think like chocolate milk comes from, like chocolate cows.
Stephanie Yuhas:
LAUGHS.
DAVID:
You’re just like what? I don’t know if that’s right. Wow, you definitely enlightened me. I’ve never actually heard of any of these terms or the IPCC. But now I’m — I got it, I got my tab open, I’m going to add it to my infinite amount of tabs that I look at every single day. And I’m going to skim through it and kind of check it out. But it’s very enlightening to hear that some of the things that I feel they’re not necessarily my fault and or just, there’s just things that we’re subjected to of feeling the grief and feeling anxiety, and I love hearing some of your examples of how we can become better people and like, filter and deal with these real issues that affects kind of everyone and everything around us. So, it was really beautiful to hear this information come from you. And is there anything that you would like to say, in closing, while — while we wrap this up?
Stephanie Yuhas:
I think I’ll just say that I think the pandemic has completely affected the way that we deal with all of our psychological and social issues, and that people are more apt to feel despair, and depression, and a sense of futility. And I see it in students who are asking about how do they create a future for themselves? Do they even have one?
[00:51:37.03]
CODY:
That’s heartbreaking.
Stephanie Yuhas:
It is heartbreaking.
DAVID:
Geez.
Stephanie Yuhas:
And I see that — that people have this longing to find community. And I think this is where a place like Naropa can actually help people to build those networks. Because like, I know all the people from our eco psych programs over 20 years, they all still stay in touch with each other. So they’re all still in their own communities and networks. And I think that that’s a lot of what we really need is like a support system. So if we can just develop that, that would be a great benefit.
DAVID:
Yeah. Dealing with our overwhelming feeling of hopelessness, because that doesn’t work in our favor. We need to sustain our willingness to really do the hard work because we’ve got an uphill battle in front of us.
Stephanie Yuhas:
Which is why we actually need to do the work, to confront it within ourselves and to look at it, where does it really come from? How do we work with our minds and our emotions? And then how do we actually relate to others with compassion and kindness? All those things are all part of the same system.
DAVID:
Yes, very beautiful. Well, I appreciate you coming in today and having our second episode, five years later. It was really beautiful talking to you. So I appreciate you speaking with us.
Stephanie Yuhas:
And I’m so glad that you’re still around. It’s — it’s really — it’s great to be here and I hope you have a beautiful, wonderful day and year.
DAVID:
Thank you so much.
[MUSIC]
On behalf of the Naropa community, thank you for listening to Mindful U. The official podcast of Naropa University. Check us out at www.naropa.edu or follow us on social media for more updates.
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