Editor: You may wonder, why are we featuring a piece highlighting the connection between sustainability and our brains? Two reasons. First, you’ll soon see how the two are truly intertwined more than we may have imagined. Understanding both offer pathways for how we can overcome our limited choice of fight, flight, freeze and fawn in order to address some of our most massive, seemingly intractable challenges.
Second, we have an extraordinary guide for our journey, Jen Fraser, whose brilliant research and writing gives us hope that once we understand the predicament we’re in, we can actually take action together to heal and create a world of sustainability, health, equity and kindness. In fact, this cutting-edge contribution to the world of sustainability makes clear the connection between the health of our brain, bodies and planet.
Just remember, Jen is an academic so bear with for some essential technical background that will allow you to comprehend the amazing, liberating and empowering – even transformational – gifts she’ll give you. We promise that the fruit of your labor will be some of the best you’ve ever tasted.
By Jen Fraser, PhD and author,The Bullied Brain: Heal Your Scars and Restore Your Health
When brain scientists talk about the brain, they almost sound like arborists who are committed to the care of trees. Neuroscientists say that the adolescent brain is “blossoming” and it’s an important time to teach the value of “pruning.”
In history, those who named parts of the brain often used the language of trees to describe it. Thus, you’ll hear about “axons” that carry electrical information into the body from the neurons (brain cells) that work in ways comparable to roots. You’ll find out about the “pineal” gland that sits in the centre of the brain and regulates our circadian rhythm. It’s called “pineal” because it resembles a pinecone.
You’ll learn about the “cortex” that is the Latin word for tree bark that is folded in a comparable way and fundamental to consciousness. The brain cell itself looks like a tree with dendrites (Greek for branch-like) extending up. The “amygdalae” are so named because they look like the seeds of the almond tree. If you’ve ever cracked open a walnut, it shows you a mirror image of the brain’s two furrowed hemispheres.
The Inseparability of Our Brains and Planetary Environment
An evocative way to think about how critical it is to protect our planetary environment is to recognize that we are simultaneously protecting our brains on a deeply essential level. The two are inseparable. While the Alliance for Sustainability may not think of its work as fundamental to the brain, or relevant to the research of neuroscientists, indeed it is.
The Alliance’s decades of ground-breaking and tireless advocacy for sustainability – beginning with a focus on agriculture and food systems and then expanding to overall sustainability and its Campaign for Sustainability, Health, Equity and Kindness – has always been in sync with flora, fauna, ecosystems and humanity, all forming critical components for flourishing brains. It’s quite fitting that the Alliance’s logo features a tree and a farm field with a rising sun.
Let’s look briefly at the ways in which the dedicated work of the Alliance includes vital components of what our brains need before we unpack these correspondences in greater detail.
The Parallel Challenges for Neuroscientists and the Alliance and Their Calls to Change Course
The work of the Alliance for Sustainability can be narrowed and expanded when we look at it through the lens of brain science. Until recent decades, harm to the environment and harm to the brain was challenging to measure and to make visible.
With scientific advancement, we are far more aware of the danger to our habitat through a systemic failure to implement healthy sustainable practices advocated by the Alliance since the 1980s. Likewise, the advent of non-invasive technology has revealed the harm to our brains from a systemic failure to implement healthy sustainable practices via environment and what we practice.
Starting in the 1980s, leading neuroscientists began research questioning whether our brains were truly fixed in their development after the early years. They faced huge opposition, not unlike that the Alliance experienced as it shined a spotlight on the vulnerability of our interconnected global ecosystem.
Those neuroscientists envisioned a different model from the Nobel prize-winning science saying our brains cannot change throughout the lifespan. They, like the Alliance, battled equally impossible odds.
And yet here we are. If the altruistic Alliance’s work had been fully supported, it could have led us away from the terrifying tipping point we’ve reached in terms of global warming.
If the courageous neuroscientists who saw how our brains change throughout the lifespan had been listened to, our youth would not be at risk from the sedating or “rotting” of technology via the internet.
The Alliance for Sustainability reveals that our nations are plural when it comes to how we work with or against nature and the environment; neuroscientists reveal that our brains are plural when it comes to how we work together or against one another in domestic, organizational, and political spheres.
An oil spill taints the ocean for all; the abuse of a targeted individual infects the whole organization; the air pollution from forest fires does not stay within the bounds of the country on fire; individuals who are emotionally neglected or abused in childhood may visit their trauma on other brains throughout the lifespan.
There is a plurality to environmental and neurological harm, a negative, cascading effect. These leading ideas need to continue to shape how we move forward. Brain science reflects, deepens, and reinforces the fundamental work of the Alliance for Sustainability showing how its core principles apply to minds as much as to environment.
We ignore our environment at our peril; likewise, we ignore our brains at our peril. Science can shine a spotlight on what would otherwise be invisible harm and is far more difficult to deny, dismiss, or manipulate.
Pretending climate change isn’t occurring is like arguing with a thermometer. Pretending physical damage does not occur from normalized abuse such as humiliation, emotional neglect, berating, threatening etc. is like arguing with a brain scan that makes the neurological scars visible.
Environmental degradation that we see accelerating all around us parallels the youth mental health crisis. In short, the planet and the brain are suffering and we need to change course to create positive outcomes for all.
The Neuroplasticity of Our Brains Allows Repair and Recovery
Neuroplasticity is our brain’s ability to change in response to practice and environment until our final days on the planet. The “Father of Neuroplasticity,” Dr. Michael Merzenich, as a young scientist, showed the world that despite the Nobel prize-winning breakthrough on our brains being fixed after the early years, in fact there was more and it was exciting.
If our brains are weakened, we can strengthen them. Full of hope and promise, our brains are wired to repair and recover. If we have been maltreated or led to believe falsehoods or even have been manipulated to distrust our own perception via gaslighting, well the good news is we can return our brains to organic health and normalcy.
Nature Can Help Prevent Bullying, Reduce Stress and Help Heal Our Brains and Bodies
The global achievements of the Alliance are even more enhanced when seen through the lens of neuroplasticity. In fact, protecting our environment is fundamental to brain health.
As outlined previously in an article for my “The Bullied Brain” series for Psychology Today, I shared the work of medical doctor Eva Selhub and naturopathic doctor Alan Logan in their book Your Brain on Nature. Selhub and Logan drew on a number of studies to provide in-depth insight into how nature positively affects our brains and specifically helps us avoid bullying as a stress response.
As I demonstrated in my book, The Bullied Brain, all forms of bullying can cause physical damage to our brain architecture and therefore, the preventative and healing properties of nature can be critically important for us to maintain our brain health.
Selhub and Logan present extensive research that shows “exposure to nature-based environments is associated with lower blood pressure and reduced levels of the stress hormone cortisol (and other objective markers of stress).”
How many individuals resort to nature when their brains and bodies are unwell? How many even know that time spent in nature, pictures of nature, and exposure to plants indoors can all make a notable difference to their health and mental health?
Nature as an Ancient Cure for Stress, the Silent Killer
In society today, it is well-recognized and often discussed that stress is a silent killer, but rarely do we hear what Selhub and Logan recognize and discuss in their comprehensive coverage of research, which is that nature is “an ancient cure abandoned.”
Selhub and Logan explain: “Overtaxing the brain sets the stage for increased anger and impulsivity, and this in turn sets in motion a cascade of negativity in all manner of interpersonal interactions.” Brains that cannot find the relief and restoration afforded by nature become easily frustrated. They’re prone to the kind of impulsive, aggressive behaviour we see in bullying.
Not only are brains cognitively impaired while infuriated, they also are quick to give up on problem-solving tasks, unlike those which have been exposed to nature. It does not require full-on immersion in a forest or meadow; research shows that even vegetation and trees along a highway can support less stress and more calm in drivers, as well as help them sustain attention to solve problems or do other cognitive tasks after experiencing driving stress.
In a study of adults exposed to recent life stressors including “relationship problems,” the results showed that those who lived close to green space were “less likely to experience the negative health impacts of stress.”
In a study of children — who Selhub and Logan acknowledge are often exposed to stressors including “violence, abuse, bullying” — negative health impacts of stress were reduced significantly by “safe neighbourhood green-space.” These children with the stress of violence, abuse, and bullying have amygdalae that “are significantly larger” and nature exposure can reduce their size by reducing the constant sense of dread and threat to which they are responding.
The authors state in no uncertain terms: “researchers and clinicians should be placing full priority on examining green-space as a medicinal agent.”
Co-creating Sustainability Compares to Co-Regulating Brains
The Alliance for Sustainability defines its work as “co-creating sustainability, health, equity and kindness on the personal, organizational, and planetary level.” The concept of co-creating is reinforced by the nervous system concept of “co-regulation” on a personal and organizational level.
The polyvagal nerve links our brains and bodies and it’s where we can co-create safe, healthy, sustainable environments or we can create unsafe, toxic, collapsible environments. Co-regulation is a term coined by Dr. Stephen Porges whose decades of research show that consistent safety is critical for health.
How do we co-regulate? It’s similar to the Alliance’s approach. Co-regulation is grounded in kindness. We use welcoming facial expressions and gestures. We speak in a sing-song rising and lowering voice like we do with pets and children. We reach out to help someone calm their stress.
When we use our innate capacity to soothe someone’s anxiety or uplift their feelings of depression, we are working on the personal and organizational level to move individuals and the collective out of a red zone (fight or flight) and out of a yellow zone (freeze).
We are encouraging them to connect and co-create an environment where brains and bodies can move into homeostasis that Porges sees as the green zone of health. When we treat others with equity as part of the human family, then the co-regulation can take on a planetary value and impact.
Health, Equity and Kindness Sustain the Planet and the Brain
The principles of health, equity and kindness are not only integral to healthy sustainability, but also to brain health, psychological safety, and high-performance. Abuse cultures turn health into mental illness and chronic disease; they turn equity into targets and favourites, out-groups and in-groups; they turn kindness into bullying and cruelty.
A disregard for the planet that results in normalized abuse of the planet parallels a disregard for individuals that results in a society that has normalized bullying and abuse.
When we study unhealthy interpersonal dynamics, such as bullying, harassing, and abusing – all of which destroy the brain and nervous system’s need for safety on a psychological level – we see performance being compromised. When the brain and the planet’s resources are channeled into survival, resulting in progressively more desperate attempts to function healthily, it’s hardly surprising that outcomes are lessened and weakened.
The Result of Abuse Cultures on Us: Fight, Flight, Freeze or Fawn
In abuse cultures there are three pillars that appear on micro and macro levels: fear, humiliation, and favouritism. The micro level (domestic, school, sports, arts) and the macro (in organizations, governance, politics) level are mirror images of one another when it comes to what makes an abuse culture flourish.
These pillars form the opposite of what creates a healthy, sustainable culture. Fear, humiliation, and favouritism cause stress to the brain and nervous system that tries to survive by automatically succumbing to fight, flight, freeze, and fawn.
Individuals and whole societies respond with aggression and violence (fight), escapism and avoidance (flight), paralysis and withdrawal (freeze), and identifying with the bully or abuser, joining in, applauding, getting benefits for it (fawn).
Planet’s Stars and Brain’s Neurons
Most stunning and startling of all the parallels between our environment and our brains: when neuroscientists seek an analogy for the neurological world within our darkened skulls, they refer to the galaxy of stars as only that realm can account for or provide a vision of the over 86 billion illuminated neurons that are in our brains. In a way, the neurological and planetary level share a comparable space.
The magnitude of a single unique brain mirrors the magnitude of the universe itself. With this knowledge, we can harness our brain power to be the environment’s greatest ally as on a cellular level we are profoundly entwined.
While the brain learns by making mistakes, we have the capacity throughout our lifespan to correct and become better. Brain science offers hope to the continued extraordinary work of the Alliance for Sustainability.
Conclusion: Hope for Us and Our Home
In summary, the work of the Alliance can be narrowed and expanded when we look at it through the lens of brain science. The global achievements of the Alliance are even more enhanced when seen through the lens of neuroplasticity. The Alliance’s concept of co-creating is reinforced by the nervous system concept of co-regulation on a personal, organizational, and planetary level.
The principles of sustainability, health, equity and kindness are integral to brain health, psychological safety, and high-performance at home and at work. Most stunning and startling of all, the stars we see in the night sky are mirrored when we look within our skulls at the glittering neurons of our brain.
Protecting the environment forms a powerful parallel to protecting brains.