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EP60: Connecting Children and Families to the Wild – with Chris Holland

Chris Holland has spent over three decades helping people – young and old – find their way back to the natural world.

In this warmly personal conversation, Robin and Chris reflect on the threads that have woven their lives together: a shared love of plants, the legacy of plant mentor Frank Cook, and the quiet revolution taking place in nature connection education.

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

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

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

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

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Transcript

Robin and Chris are sitting beside an unlit hot tub at a smallholding with yurts. The conversation is recorded on 19th August — the anniversary of the death of plant teacher Frank Cook.

Robin: Hello and welcome to another edition of the Eat Weeds podcast. I’m Robin Harford and today I’m sitting by a hot tub that isn’t lit in a beautiful — what is it, a Yurt Hotel this, Chris?

Chris: Yes, a smallholding with yurts.

Robin: Smallholding with yurts. People can come and stay in the yurts.

Chris: Yeah.

Robin introduces his guest — a dear friend of many years.

Robin: So before I introduce you to my guest, who is a dear friend who I’ve known for a very long time. The reason I’ve got him on the show is twofold. One, he is one of the most extraordinary Nature Connection teachers, a fantastic natural musician, and we’ll get into all that.

Robin explains that the recording date — 19th August — is the anniversary of Frank Cook’s death.

Robin: I’m recording this on August the 19th, which is the day that Frank Cook, my plant mentor, the reason you’re listening to this podcast, the reason there is even this podcast — is because of this guy, Frank Cook. August the 19th is the day that Frank died and he died in 2009 at the age of 46. And it was a great loss to the plant community because he was an extraordinary character. And it is Chris Holland who is my guest who actually gave me a phone call back in 2009 and said, “You need to meet this guy Frank Cook, Robin.” So I padded down to Schumacher College and went on a plant walk for three hours with this extraordinary guy, and I’ll link to more information about him in the show notes.

Robin: So what happened was, before foraging became mainstream and fermentation became mainstream, Frank Cook and another guy called Sandor Katz from America used to do retreats and weekends — a double act. Now Sandor Katz is, if you know about wild fermentation, if you know about sauerkraut making, if you know about kimchi making, all the trend of fermented foods has basically come about as a result of Sandor Katz pioneering and exposing the world to the different cultures and how they ferment foods, because fermentation is what indigenous cultures and traditional land-centric cultures use in order to preserve their food — they obviously don’t have refrigeration. Frank would teach foraging, Sandor would teach fermentation, and so they had this amazing double act. And then Frank came to Britain, did his MSc in Holistic Science at Schumacher, went back to America, and sadly died a year after I had been on his walk and had actually arranged a load of teaching events for him when he came back to Britain. Sadly, not happened.

Robin: But Eat Weeds would not be known, this podcast would not be known, you wouldn’t be listening to this podcast, and I wouldn’t be a foraging teacher without having met Frank Cook. Long story — the whole point is to feed back to Chris Holland, my guest, because he met Frank and told me to go on this gig.

The Plant Journey

Robin: So Chris, enough of the preamble waffle — what’s your plant journey? That’s what I’m interested in because it interweaves within Nature Connection, Natural Musicianship, John Young’s Eight Shields, all of that. Tell us the story.

Chris: So yeah, that day of meeting Frank Cook came about because at the time I was working with a company called Wildwise. So Chris Salisbury, who runs Wildwise, must have met Frank at Schumacher College and said, “Come on, come and lead some walks.” Of course I was going to go on, because this guy Frank Cook — I’d heard about him being this amazing plant teacher. Not only was he an amazing plant teacher, he had these incredible hands, big hands. So when he was picking the plants, these big paws would be picking them so deftly and kind of sharing a taste of this and a taste of that. And we were just looking at a picture a minute ago, weren’t we, of Marsh Thistle. And I can remember that sort of moment near Dartington in Devon, going on a walk with this guy who had so much knowledge and so much respect for the cultures that his plant knowledge had come from. He was like this waterfall of plant knowledge that’s just falling out of him in thick torrents — like his thick dreads as well that he had. He looked like somebody who was definitely living off the land, and he knew so many plants.

Chris: So for me, my plant journey had begun many years ago. I wanted to be more like him because he just taught in such a relaxed, open, sharing way. His way seemed to be as though the earth was speaking and the plants were speaking through him. He was sharing knowledge that was so useful, so relevant, practical, respectful to the plants and the people that it came from.

Chris: Going back to my plant journey and my plant teachers — I’m 54 now but it’s like 33 years ago, at sort of 21, being at uni in Plymouth, a friend of mine, Adam, would go walking up onto Dartmoor and he would pick these different plants for making tea, he would pick some wild garlic and put it in dinner of different sorts. He’d studied medicinal herbalism and Chinese medicine a bit. So he was just making all these concoctions to help us feel better. And I was like, “Oh my God, all of this stuff in the hedgerows that can give us health and nutrition and help with a hangover or anaemia or all these kind of things.” I was just totally hooked at that point — I need to learn more.

Chris: And a couple of years after that, when I finished my degree in environmental science, I moved to Bath and was working in this shop called Starchild — quite a hippie shop.

Robin: Quite hippie. I think extreme hippiness.

Chris: The epitome of hippie.

Robin: Yes, the epitome of hippie shop. It was. Incense and essential oils.

Chris: And that was such a moment for me because I got the job because I was just so keen in learning about the medicinal herbs — because there were racks of them in jars and it was heaven, total heaven for me. And they had some didgeridoos in the corner and there were so many different incenses and resins and things that were not only linked to magical or mystical or spiritual properties, they were linked in with the seasons and the festivals through the year, which I loved. And then just round the corner was this other — I wouldn’t call it a hippie bookshop, but an alternative bookshop.

Robin: New Age.

Chris: New Age, that’s the word. That’s what I couldn’t remember. But that’s where you were working and that’s where we first met in that shop. So I was learning about plants at that time. What were you doing then?

Robin: I was co-managing the bookshop. So if anyone knows, there’s an esoteric bookshop in London called Watkins — I think it was in Cecil Court. It’s still there. It’s one of the oldest esoteric bookshops in Britain. And I thought, you know what, there’s loads missing from that bookshop — which is quite a thing to say, quite cocky. So I decided to build the best esoterica bookshop outside London. And actually people would come down from London, and Americans who would fly over for all the esoterica that was around, would come in and go, “You know what, you’ve got a better selection down here in Bath than Watkins have in London.” And I thought, thank you, because that is kind of the point. And I’m really nerdy, and I go down rabbit holes — so I would find beautiful books that needed to be on a shelf that weren’t necessarily available through the regular trade. So that’s all I was doing.

Chris: Yeah, it’s great. And hanging out with some extremely strange people.

Robin: Yeah. Doing strange magical rituals. Bath, if anyone wants to know, has a lot of history. It’s got the Roman Baths, and then we’ve got all the pagan magical people and traditions that hung out around there. Full moons — we’d break into the Roman Baths. There’s a cross-keys window, actually — I remember the window we could flip up and go in and do incredibly weird things that I most probably shouldn’t be declaring I’ve done publicly.

Chris: Onwards!

I Love My World — Children, Families and Getting Young Hands in the Hedge

Robin: You’ve written a book called I Love My World, which many people consider the unofficial forest school manual — that’s what I’ve heard, that’s what people say to me. And you work a lot with children and families. That seems to be a real kind of passion — getting the young hands in the hedge. How did that all come about? Because it’s so important. I speak to people and they might not necessarily know your name, but they know I Love My World. You talked about Frank, it all coming out like a waterfall — I mean, your passion comes out in a similar way.

Chris: I had this kind of realisation that, yes, I’ve got to bring this knowledge to children and families — they are like the most important people. Why? Because it felt to me that so much of culture was moving away from playing outside as kids growing up, and there was more and more of a move because telephones were just beginning —

Robin: Mobile phones.

Chris: Mobile phones, yeah. Sorry, mobile phones. You’re not that old. And there were electronic games around, although they’d been around since I was like 11 or 12 — Game Boys and all that kind of stuff. More and more TV channels and people were just forgetting about the outdoors. And the connection with the plants, the birds, learning about bird language and the food, etc., was being lost. And I just felt like I needed to keep that alive. And one of the ways to do that was to teach foraging.

Chris: And I know that after I’d been in Surrey for a while, I was then married. And my ex-wife and I sort of looked at the map and thought, where should we go to start a new life? And we ended up living four miles away from where you were living in East Devon.

Robin: Yeah, that was really weird, actually.

Chris: Wasn’t that cool? Very, very serendipitous. And then we started teaching foraging together — I think you sort of wanted to, we filmed one, yeah?

Robin: We did, didn’t we, on the beach. I remember, yeah — because you took me out. I was trying to deepen my plant knowledge and you took me out for a day or whatever.

Chris: Yeah, we just went for a long walk together and then just kind of the friendship rekindled. You said, “See Frank,” and then I filmed you a few times for YouTube, because no one was doing YouTube. I got myself a camera and was just like, well, what is this? Can we teach through film?

Robin: Yeah, you can’t really — for foraging — because it’s two-dimensional. It’s not — eyes. You can’t smell, you can’t touch, it’s not holistic enough. It’s consumer entertainment, actually, watching people forage on YouTube. I know that sounds sacrilegious and it’s going to upset a few people, but what the hell. It is a truism for me. And that’s not saying we don’t show plants on film as a tease to get people outside. But if all you’re doing is experiencing nature through a TV screen or a mobile phone screen, you can’t build a relationship like that. You can’t. It’s a very superficial relationship, isn’t it?

Chris: Yeah. You’ve got to have that connection with the plant in its place.

Robin: Very much.

Chris: When we re-met at that time, I was kind of realising — well, Ray Mears was a bit of a hero. And then there was this other guy that I’d met through my work with Wildwise, but previously doing the environmental science degree — there was this guy called Joseph Cornell. He’s now a yogi, but he was a park ranger in the States and he came up with loads of sort of playful ways of connecting people to the landscape. What was his book?

Robin: Sharing Nature with Children.

Chris: Yeah, it’s a classic book. And I realised there was this gap in between those two people, Joseph Cornell and Ray Mears, and I just thought I need to write this book and get this knowledge out there. The Blobsters had to come out.

Robin: They did. They had to. Like the Diddy Men of when we grew up. The Blobsters are now — anyway, we’ll get into what a Blobster is. And it was after meeting Frank Cook, actually, because Frank Cook’s in the picture — his thumb actually. And you helped me launch the book with a bit of filming — did I?

Chris: Yeah, and taught me about what a website was. OK, stuff like that.

Robin: So in I Love My World, I just mentioned Blobsters — would you like to explain Blobsters?

Chris: Yes, I would. They’ve got a bit of a reputation, they have. And basically a Blobster is a character made out of clay and found natural objects. So Blobsters can be used in so many different ways — just for fun, because you want to make a little character out of what you can find. Some of my work has been used for when we’ve been talking about climate change and carbon footprinting — we’ve been making Blobsters to make it very clear as to how many resources we use just to keep ourselves going. The Blobsters are a good playful way to start storytelling as well, and use them like personal therapy, but also just getting to know people. If you want to make a Blobster and make it as your alter ego or your favourite animal or whatever it is — but it’s mainly for kids.

Robin: Yeah, mainly for kids, but there’s the big inner kid as well.

Chris: Yeah, grown-ups thankfully still remember how to play, given the right materials and the right moment. And once you unlock that connection through play it’s very beneficial for grown-ups, isn’t it?

Robin: I can see you’ve got a big smile on your face. Well, yeah — I mean, you do these summer camps, Trill on the Hill, and I just know that my granddaughter has been for the last — was it two years or is it three?

Chris: I think it’s three now. I think it is three.

Robin: And she so looks forward to going to spend a week or five days in beautiful woodland. And the phones just get left. These kids don’t pick their phones up, do they?

Chris: No.

Robin: So you have this ability to create a setting where families come with their kids. Well, my granddaughter goes in the summer with my daughter and my wife. I stay out because it feels more of a female space for them to do that together. And I drop in occasionally in the evenings. And I just see these children who live normally in the techie world — because everyone lives in it — just leave the phones and become butterflies flitting around the woods, playing and absolutely loving it. I mean, the vibe of them is like they just don’t want to leave.

Chris: They don’t want to leave. And they all really look forward to going the next year because they know they’re going to be experiencing wonder.

Robin: And that’s what you’re really good at — is that you can engender wonder within young beings and bodies and eyes and minds, and just allow their curiosity to open up. And from that, they get filled with awe. And that’s quite a skill.

Chris: Yeah, thank you. I think that awe partly comes from my sense of wonder and amazement at this incredible planet that I’m living on at the moment and all the incredible life forms. And I know that these camps have this kind of menu — a mix of craft, play, storytelling, cooking together. It’s so much about building community and a sort of sense of belonging to the place, and really making sure that everybody’s voice is important when we have Circle. So even the smallest ones — the littlest ones who, you know, I’m just thinking of a couple now who’ve been for three or four years who would normally just whisper to their mums to speak for them — they’re now five and speaking clearly into the circle of adults and teenagers, all-age people, with confidence. That moves me to tears. Just knowing that they’ve got the confidence, the belonging, the sense of acceptance from the people who are there, and this kind of deeper nature connection to their nature and the nature of the place through all these different activities and through being there. And they just — it’s like they’re allowed to be themselves. Like they’re kind of normal, unfiltered being.

Robin: And unguarded.

Chris: Unguarded, yeah.

Robin: Actually, I remember there was a young lad, and I knew from conversations that normally in the outside world he’s very, very shy and really doesn’t, doesn’t really speak, actually. He’s that kind of internal. But when he was in the camp, I sort of saw him, and this guy was like organising things with the kids — he was confident, he was — it’s like, wow. Is that how beaten down our culture puts on our children? Now some of them are obviously confident as hell, but there’s a large number of them who are just slightly more sensitive — or whatever the word is — which is a real skill to have. Sensitivity. And not repress it in any way. And these — you know, put kids in nature and that sensitivity flourishes and blossoms.

Robin: Because I don’t know about you, but my observation is: land is pretty sensitive to a lot of things.

Chris: Yeah.

Robin: And sensitivity is a skill.

Chris: Yep. It’s not a weakness. But in the culture it’s often seen — oh, they’re a bit quiet, or whatever. And that’s just like, you know what, they might be in that context. But put them in another context where there’s trees and oxygen and there’s bugs and dirt —

Robin: Yeah, and that changes.

Chris: Yeah, they come into their element. So it’s kind of, almost — when you say the relationship to place — it feels to me almost like — you know, my plant work: I talk a lot about finding your place and using our senses and the sensory body as the kind of internal guidance system. Not the head — the head translates. But the senses. And when you enter land, we can do it even in a city — because we’re sensory beings, we’re like a tuning fork, we find resonance, don’t we? And we can feel that in our bones. So when we move into a field, we can know our place — not in a deferential way, but in a holistic way — through our feelings and our senses. And that, I think, is what play does. The giggling and the laughter is a sensory experience, which is really important.

A mechanical sound intrudes on the recording.

Robin: Got a — I don’t know — something flying over. It’s definitely not a bird, although some would call it a bird, wouldn’t they? A whirlybird, or whatever.

Chris: Whirlybird, yeah.

Robin: It’s not a dragonfly. So hopefully it’s not going to be too loud on the mics. But for those who are new to the podcast and who’re just coming on this show — I use field recording mics deliberately, because I’m not really interested in having a kind of polished event. This isn’t Hollywood. This is where we are — in the landscape and the culture and the society we live in, and we have mechanical machinery and it is part of the landscape.

Chris: It certainly is. Even though sometimes you might be a little bit flustered by it.

John Young’s Eight Shields

Robin: So again — when we kind of reconnected, you were doing this thing called the Eight Shields. What are the Eight Shields, and why do you find it important with your nature connection work?

Chris: Speak to that bit first — why is it important? Because it’s such a multifaceted model that I can use. It’s got so many layers to it, but it’s a model that’s based on directions in nature, it’s based on the seasons, it’s based on the festivals through the year. So it’s based on knowledge that’s evident in the landscape, and it’s based on cycles within nature as well.

Chris: So to give an example that’s relevant for right now — this time of year that we’re speaking, which is the middle of August. In the Eight Shields model, that time of year is associated with the southwest. So south is the peak of the heat of the sun — that’s like midsummer, summer solstice. And the next one round in the journey of the year is where we are now, which is the southwest. And it’s this kind of dreamier, hot time of the year. It’s also associated with siesta time in the day — so like between two and three o’clock, when often birdsong is quieter, there’s less happening in the landscape, it’s got this dreamier feel to it. And that side of the Eight Shield — that direction of the shield, being the southwest — is associated with plants, because it’s associated with self-healing and the wisdom that you need to look after your body.

Chris: It’s called Shields because each of these directions — the eight directions — they all have these different qualities. And so in the old days, you had these family shields with little symbols on them, the whole collection of them on a shield. And John Young, who’s one of the guys who’s come up with this model, who’s contributed to its growth and development anyway, called them Shields because there’s all these different elements that you could put in a particular direction.

Chris: I use this model for planning events — for planning an hour-long workshop or a whole week-long workshop. And again, how would I do that? To give a little example: the north is associated with midnight, so it’s associated with winter. And then the next one round is the northeast. So the northeast is the opposite to the southwest, and it’s the sort of dreaming time at night — between midnight and sunrise — and it’s when we wake up with dreams and ideas. It’s associated with the spirit, with creativity, with thought.

Robin: Lucid dreams, twilight, space coming out of sleep.

Chris: Yes, exactly that. And so that’s where you might have an idea that forms. And then the next one round is the east, which is the place of taking this idea into — it’s kind of, you’ve woken up with it. You want to do something. So say I’ve got this idea to run a plant walk. What I would need to do to run this plant walk — the easterly direction of the shield would be: I need to go to this place and I need to plan it a little bit. I need to look around for the hazards. I need to look for where the plants are, where all the different larders are, and plan a little journey. So I would think about the needs of the people who are coming to that place. How would they get there? What do they need to feel safe and grounded when they get there? Those kind of things.

Robin: It almost feels like it’s a thinking tool.

Chris: Very much so.

Robin: But in a circular way — it kind of feels linear, but it also feels circular when you’re explaining it.

Chris: Yeah. And it’s so useful because it’s circular. If you work your way round the directions, it’s like you work out what you need to put in and what you’re missing. There are many different other ways of planning events, of course. I just find it amazing because it’s based on nature and cycles in nature. So I feel really comfortable with it.

Robin: I was quite curious when you started getting into it. There’s a lot of shamanic practitioners, but there were the shamanic practitioner trainings that basically culturally appropriated loads of stuff from indigenous people. And they’re seriously pissed off with it. So I thought, I’ll just check out this guy John Young, because — you know, Shields — it suddenly felt a bit like there was a native appropriation going on here.

Robin: And I dug deep, and there’s an amazing website called newagefrauds.org, I think it is. If you just put “new age frauds” as one word into a search engine, it will pop up. And it’s run by indigenous people. And if you go to the website, there’s a forum on there, a discussion forum, where you can go and dig around and find out who the native people are really not happy with. And John Young is just not in there. And if someone is not in that discussion forum, then it means there’s certainly no bad marks against him. Whereas there are other people, people are listening to out in the general public — the native people are furious with them because they just appropriated their stuff, charging stupid money. I just wanted to say that because cultural appropriation to me is pretty — well, extremely important.

Chris: Yeah, to be respectful for where knowledge and stories and things come from.

Robin: Yeah, and you know, with that whole kind of spiritual capitalism — the kind of shamanic practitioner work — there’s a lot of people who go on the gigs and they do stuff, they’re unaware that the people maybe they’ve learnt from are appropriators and give nothing back to those communities that they’ve appropriated from. So I don’t want to bring the vibe down, but for me, it’s an important acknowledgement to pay attention to. Because we’ve stolen so much on the earth and we’re stealing from ourselves as well.

Chris: Yeah, well, we are, aren’t we? You know, the shared humanity.

Robin: Yeah, reciprocity.

Chris: Reciprocity, yeah. It’s so important — with knowledge or with actions or whatever we’re doing. Just to be mindful of it. It’s not about giving anyone a bad rap necessarily, other than those who are intentionally stealing.

Plant of the Week — Where the Work Is Now

Robin: Where’s your work at now? Before you answer that, you put out a book on plants recently, didn’t you?

Chris: I did, yes. At the moment I work three days a week in a local school doing forest school. That’s really important to me — for the kids playing outside in a place that they get to know well and feel comfortable in. And I would like to give them the opportunity to learn about their neighbours, the plant neighbours that they’re playing amongst. So I started creating a plant-a-week sheet, so that I could show the children these plants. And I created it from the point of view of the plant speaking.

Chris: I’ve combined in that book a plant for every week of the year. And then as we go through the year, I’ve got these little summaries of mentoring tips that I use — because I use the Eight Shields as a guide for the people that I mentor, to bring about holistic health and holistic connection with nature. And also holistically how they’re running their businesses or their schools, etc. And so I’ve put those in the book too. And that was a sort of self-published thing. It’s an A4 spiral-bound notebook, which is going great, actually.

Robin: It’s for teachers, isn’t it, really? And parents.

Chris: Teachers put it in an office on the office table. A lot of families tell me this book is on our kitchen table, we enjoy looking at the next one each week.

Robin: That is so cool. Because I want parents and kids to go off and find out about these things themselves — like the way that plant knowledge can be shared in that way. Because it’s not about getting a thousand plants under our belt. It’s about taking one plant, especially in a family situation or a community situation, and going off and exploring it together. It’s a book that nudges people — “Oh, here’s this week’s plant, I wonder if we can find it this week.” It’s not like doing it every day, which feels a bit like a marathon, you know, when all you want is a bimble through the countryside.

Chris: I know. And so often it’s like when people come to connect with plants, there’s like this green wall that’s kind of presented — “Oh my goodness, all these leaves look exactly the same and the greens are all just about the same. How do I connect?” So just, yeah, with one plant a week and learning a little about its medicinal or its purposeful uses, or its playful uses, some of its history, that kind of stuff — once you know a plant like that, then you respect it and you see it, and then hopefully people will care for it as well.

Robin: Frank always said, it’s not about the number of plants that you know. It’s about knowing one plant really well and starting to teach that. But to know it really well. And I think your nudge book — what’s it called?

Chris: It’s called Plant of the Week.

Robin: Plant of the Week. You don’t have to learn 52 plants, even if you’d only learn three or four in the course of a year because of whatever constraints. Learn it really well. Go deep with it. Connect with it through the playful stuff in the book. And then teach it to your mates. If you’re kids listening — teach your brothers and sisters, teach your friends. And for the big kids listening who look after the littler kids —

Chris: Definitely.

Robin: This plant knowledge only gets spread by people talking and sharing. About being keen, curious — and what humans do naturally: tell stories and share knowledge about stuff.

Chris: Hopefully it’s catching, in this world of change at the moment. There’s that connection to what’s happening around you and what’s changing — what plants are growing that weren’t there before, and just noticing these things. Some plants aren’t doing so well with the heat, and some are. And so if you know your neighbours, or if you particularly like one and want to nurture it, then yeah — get out there and water it, or give it the conditions that you think it needs.

Robin: I think, yeah, I need a bit of help. They definitely need help. And I do think — like you say, when we start engaging with plants — you and I had a discussion earlier that the heat’s been really intense this year. Everyone’s just carrying on, shopping and sitting in cafes, going, “Isn’t it lovely, we’re having such a lovely Mediterranean country,” and that’s fine at this particular point. But it’s also an indicator of some serious stuff that potentially is coming down the line.

Robin: I was reading this book called The Heat Will Kill You First — not to bring the vibe down, because it’s actually quite an uplifting book in a weird way. It talked about plants in really high fire-potential zones and that because of the heat, the only way they could get moisture was to reabsorb the moisture they’d put into the fruit earlier in the year. And I said to you, I was walking out with Zilla the other day and walked past the sloes and they had all started shrivelling because that process was happening. As well as the hawthorns — the amount of abundance of hawthorns at the moment, so it’s all red, but they’re really small because they haven’t developed. And then the leaves are really shrivelled. So these are important signals for us — not to get blasé about, “Oh isn’t it lovely, Mediterranean weather!” Well, yes it is on the one hand, but on the other, that’s an indicator to us, and we need to pay attention.

Robin: And I find plants are massive indicators to me of what’s potentially coming around the corner. So the more the younger generation — who let’s face it are going to be the ones who have to deal with this, they’re the ones who are inheriting all that — so the more we can teach them to play and learn and respect the wildness and plants, the more they can read landscape and the landscape’s barometer. I mean, how deep do you want to go with what nature can teach, not only us as big people, but the little ones when they’re showing it. And you are a massive conduit for that. As I say, I don’t think you acknowledge just how good you actually are.

Chris: Thank you.

Natural Musicians — A Tune from the Willows

Robin: But more than that, you also do what’s called Natural Musicians. You’re a musician — you play didgeridoo, you play handpan. So I’d like you to get your handpan out now and just give us a bit of a tinkle. And I’m not going to change the mics — we’re just going to see how it comes out.

Chris plays a tune on the handpan.

Chris: Well, here’s a little tune from the willows. ‘Cause we’re surrounded by willows at the moment.

Chris plays.

Robin: Thank you. If you don’t stop me I’ll keep on going for ages.

Chris: It’s really hypnotic, isn’t it?

Robin: Yeah — just looking at the willow and the way it’s growing at the moment out of the stumps and it’s so lush here because it’s right by the edge of the hot tub and so the leaves — they sort of spiral up the stem. So that’s what I’m sort of mimicking with the music.

Chris: Thank you. That was great. Nice.

Robin: So that feeds into your Natural Musicians. I mean, I take it handpan’s not really part of Natural Musicians?

Chris: Oh yeah, of course it is. Totally.

Robin: Tell me — what is Natural Musicians?

Chris: Natural Musicians is a bunch of activities that I use for team building, for play with kids, with grown-ups, but they celebrate plants and place and your own internal creativity. That’s what it’s meant to turn on. But it’s a way — it helps people feel like they can be musicians and write music and express themselves without having to use sheet music or know how to play any instruments. Wonderful.

Chris: And so I use real basic things like shaky eggs, percussion toys, sometimes handpan, but it came from didgeridoo and trying to find a way of teaching didgeridoo but enabling didgeridoo students to create their own pieces and write their own pieces. So we were just — I just look at, like, an oak leaf, and it has a certain shape, so you can make a shape with your lips and with your tongue inside your mouth when you’re playing didgeridoo, which creates a different sound shape. You can use the shapes of things around you to put them in a line or put them in a circle to make a loop — or the long line is a kind of longer piece. And I realised that through teaching the didgeridoo that I could use these same techniques of using observations of plants — for example, like the willow just talking about there, or like with nettles: the way that their leaves come out in opposite pairs. You can use that to not only mimic movement with your hands, with the shaky eggs for example, but you can also use it for writing notes — two different notes, two different notes, etc. Just simple ways of composing and creating stuff.

Robin: Yeah, I love all that. There was an art movement called Fluxus. What came out of Fluxus was that everyone’s an artist, everyone’s a musician at some level. The fact that the culture has constrained that expression through the ability you have to read music — which automatically excludes, doesn’t democratise it, does it? Whereas what you’ve just explained democratises musicianship to everybody. Because we all hear sounds in our heads, we all often whistle or sing a song out loud. We’ve all got a heartbeat. We’ve all got a heartbeat. So there’s a rhythm naturally — from the moment we’re born, well before we’re born, because the heartbeat’s inside our mums when we’re inside them. So there’s natural rhythm to the world.

Robin: And to be able to express that without the constraint of — “Oh, well, I’m meant to be able to read music, well I can’t read music, so how do I do that?” So Fluxus came up with this thing where basically we’re all artists, we all have the right to be able to paint, to draw, to create music, to make sound, to do whatever. And so often the way they would compose things would be just like texts. And Pauline Oliveros, who was the Deep Listener — the deep listener in the 1960s, who was also a Buddhist, who was massively into community — she would get her community together, none of them could read music, so she would create the scores through text. She would read the score, read what they wanted to create, and then people would interpret that in their own way. And you would have this kind of mixture of improv, improvisation, starting initially a little bit wonky and no harmony. But over time, the more you all groove together — to use jazz expressions — it worked. It worked.

Robin: And yet, you know, to a traditional classically trained musician, they’d be going, “My God, you can’t let the riffraff do that. They can’t read sheet music.” And it’s just like, well, two fingers to you lot, because actually we are able to do all this if we’re given the chance and for someone to think out of the box. So it feels like Natural Musicians is a bit like that. In the tradition of Pauline Oliveros, you’re in the tradition of John Cage, you’re in the tradition of Fluxus, which is democratising this art form for everybody — from the little ones that walk around on their knees still to the big ones that really, you know, just are getting really old. Like me.

Chris: You’re not getting really old.

Robin: No, I’m not getting older. Getting older is the way.

Chris: We’re not elders yet. We’re just getting older.

Robin: Yeah, there’s so much in a way a hidden purpose behind making music together in a place. And apart from just connecting with each other and having a bit of a laugh — what often happens when you’re trying to compose things? But that thing of, say for example, two people are making a bit of music together and putting two sticks and some stones along because the two sticks might mean a clap and then the stone means jump, jump, and they’ve got a flower — and they go. It celebrates place. But on a level underneath there’s something else mysterious going on, because we often in our western world don’t think about the kind of spirit of the landscape much, because we’re so used to things being just physical in our sort of education.

Chris: Quantifiable.

Robin: Say again?

Chris: Quantifiable. That’s it.

Robin: But there’s this short story I’d love to tell about going to a stone circle with a friend of mine, and about how celebrating a place with music changes the vibe or something — or changes us. So we walked up to this stone circle and we’d been dowsing along the way, and we’re not expert dowsers at all — we just kind of got a Leatherman and cut a bit of wire from an old hedge. And when we got to this stone circle, we dowsed the stone circle to see if there were any lines of energy in it. And we found that there were these five radiating lines from the middle of the stone circle, which was probably 30 yards across. It was quite big.

Robin: And then we played some music. I played didgeridoo. He played a thing called a berimbau, which is a long piece of wood with a string and a gourd and a stick, and he hits it — it goes wah, wah, wah, wah, wah.

Chris: Which country is that from?

Robin: Angola, that kind of place, and Brazil. And so we just celebrated and we were giving thanks to the people who created the stone circle, those who are looking after the landscape, the ancestors in terms of the rocks as well, not just the human ancestors. Just thanks for everything. And then we dowsed the circle again afterwards. And then it appeared that there were 13 lines of energy from the centre of the stone circle, and three concentric rings of energy within the stone circle. So our music had changed that place. Or we had become more sensitive. Or something.

Chris: Yeah, it’s interesting that one. The way you just said that — I do find that interesting. Because often we think we are doing something to it. But I don’t think that’s the case. I think it’s doing something to us. But through those practices, we’re just sensitising ourselves more. Because it’s this human thing of, “Oh, of course, I’m doing it — let’s go and heal the earth.” It’s four billion years older than us. It’s already trying to heal itself from the mess we create. It’s nice to try and reframe. So actually, yes — maybe by doing the practices you did, it changed you to be able to perceive more in nature.

Robin: And I mean, that, just purely from — because I don’t do woo. You’re a lot more woo than I am. We know this. It’s just part of the friendship. I always try and bring everything down to rationality. And I mentioned knowing your place earlier in this discussion — about we’re like tuning forks. So, now I’m going a bit woo here. And your current practice, the things that you’re putting out. The Domei practices are deliberately designed to slow down and see what happens. But by doing that, we perceive more, which then makes us perceive what we’ve done to the land, which makes us more responsible. Hopefully.

Chris: Yeah, hopefully.

Domei — Observe, Stay, Belong

Robin: How do you deal with that? Do you have people feeling grief, or expressing that — becoming more sensitive in your practices? Because that is often an inevitable consequence.

Chris: There is a bit of grieving that goes on. But actually it’s more — you see — OK, now you’re interviewing me. So part of the Domei thing, there’s three words: Observe, Stay, Belong. And most people don’t want to stay. And what staying means — in this context, a plant — we start getting bored or discomfort, as well as all the other good stuff, but generally we want to move when the discomfort comes up. Maybe sadness comes up — where’s that sadness coming from? Well, it may be the sadness that you’re experiencing of what we’re doing to the land. It may be your own personal wounds that you’re suddenly sensitive to, making you sad. However it comes about, and I’m not prescriptive on it — I don’t say, “Oh, this is going to happen.” It’s like, whatever happens, happens. And oftentimes something doesn’t happen.

Robin: You know, Domei is being described by someone as zen in work boots, which I think I really like. But I’m not a zen practitioner. But I’ve got a friend who’s a really deep zen practitioner who walked through the door the other day and said, “Robin, when are you going to accept you’re a zen Buddhist?”

Chris: Yeah.

Robin: And I’m like, well, I’m not, because I’m not a zen Buddhist.

Chris: He’s going, “Yes, you are.”

Robin: So anyway, that all aside. There is this sensitising. And the practices you do with the music — we — yes, deep listening, isn’t it? The deep listening. And I mean, Domei does mean deep listening, from two Gaelic words. But it means listening through the experience of the body and all of our senses. Your work does that with the little ones. And the big ones, obviously, but predominantly the little ones.

Robin: So it feels like we need to wrap this up. But it’s been lovely to have you on. It’s been far too long — should have got you on a lot earlier. But you know, it happens when it ams, really, with this podcast. We can always talk again.

Chris: Of course we can.

Where to Find Chris’s Work

Robin: Yeah. If people want to find out about your work, where’s the main portal?

Chris: I’ve got too many websites, but the one you need to head to is natureconnection.co.uk. And that’s got some of my books, storytelling courses, some Natural Musicians courses — they’re all there to help people become better educators, because I think we’re all educators and in some form we share knowledge, and they’re there to help people do that. You can also access mentoring. And right now I’ve been doing some retreats over the last couple of years, honing them and working with groups of staff of a couple of different organisations. So I’m just making that page at the moment for the work with a lady from the Eden Project called Pam Horton — we’ve done a couple of really good deep retreats recently. And that’s more corporate work.

Robin: It’s more corporate work.

Chris: Yeah, because I’ve missed working with grown-ups for a while. Pre-Covid I used to do a lot more, but there was a shift there. So I’m just putting that retreats page together at the moment.

Robin: And you’ve got a newsletter on there that people can sign up for.

Chris: Yeah, the blog and that kind of stuff.

Robin: Yeah. Okay. Well, it’s been lovely. You do live in this wonderful place, and I have to say, Jan’s got this amazing smallholding with all these yurts. What’s it called again?

Chris: Homemade Holidays.

Robin: And it’s found — you can find it on Airbnb and Homemade Holidays on Instagram and Facebook.

Chris: All right, mate. Thanks for coming along to be here today, Robin.

Robin: Lovely to see you. Thank you.

Chris: All right. Talk soon.

Robin: Yeah.

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