Joe Sanok 00:00:00 You’re someone with a vision for your practice, for your side hustle, and for your personal journey. But when it comes to establishing your path and how to get to where you want to be with your practice, things get a little messy. You’re also someone who’d prefer to go in person instead of to groups and listening to everyone else’s story. To me, it sounds like you could benefit from one on one consulting with our experienced practice of the practice consultants from 595 a month and up, you can work with a consultant that will give you more direction and practical, tried and tested tips matched to you and your goals. For more information, visit practice of the practice. Com forward slash apply. Again, that’s practice of the practice. Com forward slash apply. Joe Sanok 00:00:53 This is the practice of the. Joe Sanok 00:00:54 Practice podcast with Joe Santa. Session number 1094. I’m Joe Cenac, your host, and welcome to the practice of the Practice Podcast. We are here depending on the week 4 to 6 times a week, helping you build a thriving private practice you absolutely love. Joe Sanok 00:01:18 we have had so many sponsors come out and want to just help the show help you. When we talk to them, they are just getting, just amazing results from the podcast. So it’s really awesome to just be able to do so many episodes and to talk to people that are just doing incredible things. the more I talk to people, the more energy I have and want to talk to people. So if there is any doubt in my mind that I’m probably an extrovert, I think doing more of this podcast just, tells me you don’t need to stop talking to people. I find people so interesting and curious and how they choose to live their lives and their careers. And, that’s why I’m just so excited today About Sydney Williams Sydney Williams is a speaker, author and the founder of Hiking My Feelings, a non-profit organization dedicated to the healing power of nature. Her 15 year and counting career in communications has run the gamut from launching Oscar Mayer’s social media channels and working with fortune 500 brands, to educating the public about the importance of stewardship and equitable access to recreation opportunities. Joe Sanok 00:02:22 See. She’s also been featured in HuffPost, Psychology Today, US News and World Report, and on the South by Southwest Stage. She’s also a certified wilderness first responder and instructor at the Desert Institute at Joshua Tree National Park, and instructor at the Field Institute at Sequoia National Park, and a founding member of the Outdoors Oath. Sydney has been nominated for woman of the Year by San Diego Magazine. Sydney. Welcome to the Breakfast podcast. Sydney Williams 00:02:50 Thank you so much for having me, Joe. Good morning. Joe Sanok 00:02:52 Dang, what an environmental outdoor baller you are. That’s incredible. Sydney Williams 00:02:57 You know, it’s funny because like, I think about if it like. I mean, I’ve been doing this work now for six years, and every time I hear a podcast host or somebody introducing me for a speech or something, read my bio, I still have to pinch myself because, oh yeah, for the majority of my career leading up into this, the first three decades of my life, that was not the case. And this is like once you find your lane, you find it and you just love it. Sydney Williams 00:03:19 And I just pinch myself that I get to be talked about in that way because I’ve done these things and that I get to do this work. So thank you for having me and thanks for the hype session. Joe Sanok 00:03:28 Oh man, I feel the same way when people read my bio and it’s just like, wait, how did this all come along? you know, just it’s like, it’s great when you hear it all together. and if you just always live for those high points, like I remember, like when I, you know, got the book deal with Harpercollins, I’m like, here it is. I’m going to get all these speaking engagements. Everything’s going to come together. And it’s like, yeah, it’s great that I have Thursday is the new Friday. It’s great that, you know, a lot of people know me as this kind of four day workweek guy, but it’s not like all of a sudden everything’s just completely easy and I have to stop doing the hard work too. So it’s great to just see someone who’s still doing the hard work and has done these awesome things. Joe Sanok 00:04:04 And you’ve worked in some national parks that I visited in 2020 and 2021 when we were living on the road. So can’t wait to talk about travel, national parks, outdoor stuff. yeah, it’s just incredible. Sydney Williams 00:04:16 Absolutely. Yeah. Joe Sanok 00:04:18 Well, let me just start with this. Before we started talking, it looked like you were in like, a camper van or something. Like, where do we find you right now? Sydney Williams 00:04:25 I am currently chatting with you live from just outside the giant forest. A little slice of heaven, actually. A little slice of heaven on the edge of the giant forest here in Sequoia National Park. This is the ancestral homelands of the Menashe people. The Tabata model, Paiute, Western Shoshone, and countless others that have come through here and enjoyed this space prior to me being able to sit here and chat with you today. But, Sequoia National Park is our home for the summers, and we spend our time in several other areas, public lands areas throughout the year. And I just. Sydney Williams 00:04:59 Yeah. the place where we’re chatting from is our 1998 Chevy van. Her name is Ruby, and she has been our Ruby stay. She’s been our steady vehicle for this mission and this message since 2018. But she’s old enough to buy beer. And if Ruby could rent her own car, she would. Joe Sanok 00:05:19 That’s awesome, I love it. Yeah. From, early September of 2020 until late April of 21, my daughters and I lived out of the national parks and all over the place, and. Yeah, so we started kind of along the north out of Michigan, like Badlands made our way through, like Yellowstone and Tetons. but Sequoia actually has a special place in my heart. we started the trip as a family of four, and during that trip, my ex-wife left in, stayed in California. And so in the middle of that whole divorcing uncoupling, I’m like, I’m going to just leave with the girls for a bit. We’re going to have an adventure to give you space to just think about, like, is this what you want? because it just seemed like it came out of nowhere. Joe Sanok 00:06:04 And obviously in my own therapy and stuff, there’s lots of clues that were ahead of that. But, we so I put together this whole, kind of itinerary, and we went to Sequoia and Kings Canyon and Yosemite, and we went whale watching, and, Sequoia was one of our first stops. And it really Sequoia to me represents so many things of like this new life. I have 85% plus custody of these girls, and it’s really like our life. And then they sometimes see their mom. And so the Sequoia is that idea that, like, their roots only go down like 18in, 24in, but it’s them connecting their roots to each other that helps them grow so tall was just such a great metaphor for going back to the community of friends that I had that could support me through a difficult time. And I mean, it was snowy and beautiful. And just like Sequoia is one of those places that just lights me up when I hear that people are there. Sydney Williams 00:07:00 Oh, God. I mean, like, I you’re going to have to. Sydney Williams 00:07:05 I was like, I’m speechless. Like, I’m just sitting here. I’m looking out at these beautiful Jeffrey pine trees right outside my van. And like, I have, like, this single tear rolling down my cheek, thinking about what this place means to you and what it means to me. Because this is our last day in this campground. Barry and I, my husband and I are about to embark on a six day adventure through the backcountry to wrap up our season here before we head up to Montana for some events we have at the end of the month. And I’m just. I just love it here so much. And I love hearing stories of what this place means to people. So thank you so much for sharing. It’s just it’s such a special place in these trees. If these trees could talk and they do, if they could speak English and if more people could hear them, I think we’d all be better for having sat with these trees and listened to their stories. Joe Sanok 00:07:47 Well, I know we usually do a half hour episode, but I’m pretty sure this is going to be like a three hour episode based on all. Sydney Williams 00:07:51 Fantastic. Joe Sanok 00:07:52 I’m here seven minutes. Oh, okay. So first let’s just talk about, like, outdoors, nature, all that. So, is that something that’s just always kind of intuitively been a part of you, or was that something that you had to kind of rediscover or find in yourself? Sydney Williams 00:08:09 I think it’s all of it. Right. So, the short answer is, I grew up in Kansas, where there aren’t big, ginormous, majestic mountains like the Sierra Nevada range that I currently sit in. not to say that there weren’t recreation opportunities in Kansas. Certainly there are. But my life was not centered around that. And so I came into my understanding of how I was finding healing in nature because I had no other choice. When I had access to therapy and I was struggling, I was terrified of the stigma. I in my mind, I, I figured a therapist client relationship was like, I don’t need somebody to tell me that I’m broken, much less do I need to pay somebody to do that. Sydney Williams 00:08:48 And then when I was ready for therapy and I understood what it was and why I wanted it and why it would be good for me, I didn’t have access because I couldn’t afford it. So spending time outside and all the tools that I picked up along the way meditation, journaling, things that like journal prompts, different courses that I took, books I read, all these different resources that I tried to call a healing practice out of, in the absence of having access to traditional talk, therapy really came into play and was the most beneficial when I was out in nature, because every other attempt to try to do something, to find some kind of healing, when I would be in a meditation and I and I hadn’t processed the hard stuff that I’d been through yet, when I’d have a flashback and I’d go into fight or flight, then my body would shut down and I’d be like, nope, I don’t want to do this anymore. But when I’m in motion and these memories and things come up, then I’m able to process it because I’m moving and I have something to do with that energy that would previously cause me to shut down. Sydney Williams 00:09:44 So I came into nature just enthusiastic about the idea of getting off the grid and away from my job for a week, and then it just sunk its teeth in me in the most. I don’t like that phrasing. It embraced me. Joe Sanok 00:09:58 In the most beautiful. Sydney Williams 00:09:59 Way. and I and I’ve been stuck on it ever since. And just so curious about how we got so disconnected from what is available to us here, and what we can do to reconnect with it. Joe Sanok 00:10:11 Yeah. I mean, all through grad school, most of my papers were about like, hiking therapy, like, wilderness survival. You know, I’m an Eagle Scout, so I was in the Boy Scouts when, for me, the Boy Scouts was a very healthy organization. at that time within my troop. so love that. No trauma. Yeah. No trauma or weird things. It was it was an amazing group of of men that, like, showed us how to just be in nature, how to survive. And it wasn’t this, like, weird political thing that a lot of it’s become now? but I think that for me, like in grad school, everyone was just kind of thinking about these just very traditional ways of thinking about nature. Joe Sanok 00:10:50 And they weren’t even thinking about nature oftentimes with therapy. and so it’s like when I started some of these programs, we started assailing program for at risk kids, where we were on this like 50 foot old wooden sailboat that looked like a pirate ship. And taking these at risk foster kids out doing therapy on the boat, having them work all day, sleep really well, eat healthy food, and then within one week they had like an 80% drop in their symptoms. And like it’s sustained for the next 12 months from this one week intervention. And it’s just like, why are we pumping these kids full of drugs they don’t need now? And I’m not challenging psychiatrist. There is a place for that. But we’re not starting with a lot of those basics of like, how are you eating, how are you sleeping? How much are you in nature? Are you moving your body like, oh, you’re not doing any of those things? No wonder you seem hyperactive. You’re like a dog that’s been inside all day. Joe Sanok 00:11:38 Like you want to move, you want to go for a walk. So it’s one of those things that I think that the therapy world, since I joined it in 2004, has really come a long way to align with what we just intuitively know or knew. when you think about whether it’s companies you work with or people that follow your work, like what is it about nature that you’ve seen shift since you started doing more of this work? Sydney Williams 00:12:03 Well, I’ll tell you this. So I had a life changing experience on Catalina Island off the coast of Los Angeles, California. Two of them, actually. and in my new book, Hiking Your Feelings Blazing a Trail to Self-love, I talk about the whole story of the two hikes, all the lessons learned along the way. But the biggest takeaway from for me was this after my second hike in 2018, I got. When we got back to cell reception, the first point of contact I made was to the Catalina Island Conservancy, and I sent them a DM on Instagram and I was like, hey, I’ve had two radically powerful, transformative, spiritual, mental, physical experiences on this island. Sydney Williams 00:12:41 How can I protect and promote this place like I want everybody who’s currently on this planet to know that this place exists. Please don’t love it to death, but like, know that it exists. Know that this is available to them and for future generations for them to have access to recreate here. And that simple thing like that, that transactional mechanism of something where I went out had this incredible experience connecting the dots between trauma and the physical disease that I was managing, the mental illness that I had been struggling with, all the signs and symptoms connecting those dots on that place, healing and that place, that place gave me the time, the space, the energy, the capacity to hear my inner thoughts, to walk with myself and the the world around me, and not the distractions of this hyperconnected world we’re living in. For me to heal in a place and then want to protect that place. As soon as I sent the message, the next thought I had was like, can I recreate what just happened for me? Can I pull together all the tools that I’ve curated, created, been handed, and gifted throughout my life that are destined to try to help us heal, do that in nature, create a judgement free environment like the one that my husband created for me in this container of doing this backpacking trip, and then immediately turn around and get people’s hands in the dirt and get them connected to the land. Sydney Williams 00:14:03 Can I do that? And the answer was yes. So this it just it’s changed for me. It used to be like, oh, like I’d walk from, you know, my office building to the, to the train and in Chicago and I’d be like, oh my God, fresh air. Wow. So nice. Chicago summer. Love it. And that was about it, right. Like we we spend there’s a study that keeps coming up and should be at the top of the headlines. The average American spends 93% of their lives indoors. So for me, outdoors used to be the transitional phase between indoor spaces. And now if I’m inside for too long, like I’m more sensitive to the sense that it get pumped into hotels and office buildings, right? Like I the nature is is my preference and is my default. And while I know that the chances of us all going back to living off the land the way our indigenous ancestors did is probably not going to happen. But the more that we can tap into the principles of what humans have been experiencing since time immemorial, the more we’re going to see present day, just how much more is available to us from a creativity perspective, from a productivity perspective, and of course, for the mental and physical benefits as well. Joe Sanok 00:15:14 Yeah, it’s interesting when so I work from home and kind of the soundproofing is best in my office. But just like forgetting to go outside sometimes and then realizing, like, what am I doing? Like, you know, even this summer, Claire and I went up to Canada and stayed on this island called Manitoulin, and we stayed in this off the grid unit. And for that week, the only time we were really inside was driving in the car to get to a different trail. We were hiking or a different waterfall. We were going to go swimming and even the yurt. It was like, you know, it had a composting toilet, you know, outside. So you had to middle of the night, go to the bathroom outside, go, go. You were inside hardly at all. And just to feel that change where every night we had a campfire and we talked for hours on end under the stars. And it’s like, why do we come home and then just have like, Netflix be our default at the end of the day to relax like there’s so many other ways to live that would be just healthier for our brains. Joe Sanok 00:16:11 So I love that you bring that up. I’m wondering, a lot of people have transformative experiences, things that challenge the way they think and maybe a spiritual experience. Like people will have something that happens in their life usually, and that often comes and goes, you said, I want to do something with this, you know, even to the point that you said I might want to, like, change my lifestyle to not be living in Chicago, where summer is probably the only good season of the year, similar to Northern Michigan. it’s like, you know, you know, I actually do love winter. So, Michigan is perfect for me. but it’s like, how did you go from this spark of an experience to then moving into an idea to then moving into an actual lifestyle that you can afford life and actually live that life that you wanted to create? Sydney Williams 00:17:03 Oh, man. That’s yeah, that’s the question. so it’s interesting, I think. So a friend of mine asked a similar question on a podcast several years ago, and she was, I told her, and she was like, oh, so you have delusional confidence. Sydney Williams 00:17:18 And I was like, yeah, I guess so. And it seems to work out in my favor. because once I once I saw what was possible for me. fortunately. Unfortunately, that backpacking trip in 2018 was pivotal for so many reasons. One was the reconnection to like mind, body, spirit and the place that I was in. More profound than that, though, was I was previously like nine months before that trip, I was diagnosed with type two diabetes, and so I had this metric of blood sugar numbers where that became the holy grail for me. So there’s four factors in general. There’s lots of. Joe Sanok 00:17:50 Type one I get it. Sydney Williams 00:17:51 Oh, you get. Joe Sanok 00:17:52 You know looking at your a onesie I’m on the pump. I just got on the pump like six months ago. All right I got my my CGM on my shoulder. People are always like what is that bio man. So no I yeah. Wow. We again cut from the same class. Sydney Williams 00:18:07 So anyway yeah three hour diabetes. Sydney Williams 00:18:09 Here we go. Yeah. So oh my gosh. So I had I had blood sugar as the metric. Right. And so like I could use that to dictate how I wanted to live my life, how I was living my life and the tweaks that I could make. And the data analyst side of my brain Loved it because I could eat something. And this. I never had access to a CGM, so I was a finger picker before I. Oh yeah. Joe Sanok 00:18:29 I was that till nine months ago. Sydney Williams 00:18:32 Oh my God bless your heart. So so I would like prick my finger, eat something, prick my finger again. And like, I was like a little mad scientist. So, like, as I dialed in my nutrition and I started hiking and I was taking my meds, the stress was the last thing. This hiking trip, when I was out there, I was like, I don’t know what’s going to happen. I’m going to be in motion all day. And I was I was nervous because backpacking food was the food that was contributing to not backpacking food specifically, but some of the ingredients in the meals that I eat when I’m out in the backcountry were contributing to higher blood sugar numbers, and so I hadn’t been prioritizing those in the nine months leading up to this trip. Sydney Williams 00:19:09 And my doctor was like, yeah, if you’re going to be outside all day, you need to eat more. And I was like, and that was like the most permission I ever didn’t know I needed to be granted because I was like, oh, so I can still live my life. I can still eat things that I enjoy, And if I’m moving in motion and hiking and doing all these things, then, then that kind of becomes the lifestyle. Like I can live the life I want to live socially, outdoors, in this body that I’m currently learning. At the time I was learning how to manage with diabetes, I hiking was like the the the permission slip. It was like the genie in the bottle, like the golden ticket. And it became the center of the life that I built because I was like, if I can build a life where I can prioritize hiking and have time to be able to spend time outside, not just like a weekend warrior once or twice a month, or maybe every weekend if I’m really feeling lucky. Sydney Williams 00:20:00 If I can build a life around hiking, then I don’t have to be worried about being chained to a desk at a job where I can afford insurance and be on meds for the rest of my life, like I took it as like the most beautiful opportunity and the biggest sign that this was the time for change. So I just, I literally just built a life around hiking. And it started with I had this idea at the top of a mountain. I was, in the throes of learning how to manage diabetes. I had just quit two jobs in the span of five months and in pursuit of managing my stress better. And I was on top of this mountain on this training hike before that big trip. And I was like, I should be losing it right now. Like in times of stress or sadness, I prior to diabetes, I would jump into a bottle of wine at the end of the day to turn off my brain and help me fall asleep. I would wake up and eat Ben and Jerry’s if I was sad. Sydney Williams 00:20:48 I couldn’t do that if I was going to be a good diabetes patient. So I’m not eating and drinking my feelings anymore. Now I’m hiking my feelings. So a single phrase and a recognition of a new coping mechanism became a talk that I delivered to more than 140 different audiences our first year. It turned into our nonprofit organization, and now it’s the foundation. This concept of hiking my feelings instead of eating or drinking them, just being with myself on the trail in motion with my thoughts, using the tools that I have to process the things that come up. That is everything now. And we posted more than 400 events around the United States. I’ve now written two books about it, and it’s the most impactful work I’ve ever done for myself, for the communities that we get to work with and for the when in the case of public lands, for the people that work in public lands, like so many of these folks that work in the National Park Service and other public lands, kinds of roles are so disconnected from the resource, they also, on average, spend 93% of their life inside, and they work for the parks that are so beautiful that we get to enjoy here on vacation. Sydney Williams 00:21:52 So to be able to reconnect ourselves, communities and the people that are protecting these places has been just mind blowing as far as impact and the things that make you feel good and help you get to sleep at night, it’s it’s absolutely wonderful work that we get to do now. Joe Sanok 00:22:17 Something always comes up when you’re running a private practice. While gusto. Payroll and HR services can make it a little easier. 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Now, I know for a lot of people they they would probably look at how do we cut spending while also like boosting passive income or active income through your writing books. You’re doing these talks like how did you start to structure out what like the the business side or the money making side of your life would look like as you’re discovering these things about yourself? Because, you know, of course, this is, you know, a position of privilege that a lot of people, just because of their life situation, their race, their all sorts of reasons, like might have a harder time to do. But like, for you, how did you transition into, like, I’m actually going to have a life that I can afford to live, and live the kind of life I want to while also doing the hiking while also managing my diabetes. Joe Sanok 00:24:05 because that’s where I think a lot of people get stuck is like, how do I even pay for doing this life? That sounds great. But Sydney, like, I can’t. I don’t know how to do that. Like, what did you do to, like, actually be able to live this life? Sydney Williams 00:24:16 Well, I’m not going to I’m going to say this with an asterisk in front of it that I do not recommend this path to anybody. Find your own. but this is what I did. I sold everything that I own. I sold everything that I own except for what we needed to do our jobs. When we assumed that our job someday would be leading people through wilderness experiences. So we sold everything we owned except for the clothes that we could fit in the van and the gear that we had that would help us do our jobs. I had credit card credit available as an unemployed person. Not great, but I knew that the amount of money I had in the bank, which wasn’t a lot, was enough for me to make minimum payments on the cards if I max them out for six months. Sydney Williams 00:24:57 So I had a six month runway to make minimum payments on maxed out credit cards, and that was what I had. I don’t have friends or family that I can call on for financial support. I don’t have a big chunk of savings that I can sit on and and dip into, or a 401 K or some other kind of savings or something. so I did the best I could with what I had, and you’d be surprised how far what little money you do make goes when you don’t pay rent, when you don’t pay for utilities, when your cell phone is your wi fi. so we cut our expenses down to the absolute bare bones. The only expenses that we have currently are because we we bought the van cash with the money that we used or the money that we got from selling everything we own. So we had, car insurance, cell phone, groceries, the business expenses that go with the business. But like, our personal expenses are like car insurance, cell phone, groceries. I’m not currently. Sydney Williams 00:25:55 I don’t currently have health insurance. I don’t go to the therapist anymore because I can’t afford it, and I like I am living as minimally as one can survive without being unhoused. And the fact that I’m doing this is as a choice is it’s both choice and necessity for me. Like, is it necessity because I’m destitute and I have no other options? Absolutely not. I could go, well, who knows what the job market is? I used to say this, this doesn’t seem to be the case anymore, but I used to say I could go back and get a bartending job, or I could go back and work in a PR agency again, no problem. But that life and that way of living is what contributed to a chronic illness and the mental health issues that I was dealing with, and living this life where I’m separate from all of that. I reversed my diabetes. I am not currently insured, but I also don’t have any conditions that require me to go to the doctor. Now, if there was a catastrophic situation, that would suck. Sydney Williams 00:26:49 But my day to day health is on point. Like the number of panic attacks, I went from having two a day over like a 2 to 3 week period at the end of my last, like, corporate position to I can count the number of panic attacks I’ve had in the last six years on two hands. So it’s I, I acknowledge the privilege that I have because I have the education to be able to make this choice in these moves and the experience to go build something and the skills to carry us. Like freelance writing. I build websites like the things that I’ve done to to get us to this point where now we can start to think about what it looks like to be making the kind of money we made in our old jobs. Yeah, I have a lot of privilege that leads me to that. But the fact that we’re living like this in and of itself, like it looks like a lot of fun on Instagram, but like, we chose this so we could afford to do the work that we want to do because it doesn’t currently exist. Sydney Williams 00:27:44 And I don’t feel like money should be a barrier to entry for people having a healing journey in nature. So we we’ve priced our programs and our experiences as low as we can just to cover the cost. Like it? It’s it’s a labor love, man. Like, I don’t know how to say it like. Yeah. And if you don’t and if you don’t love it, and if you don’t love it, this life will rip you apart. But I do love it, so it doesn’t. Joe Sanok 00:28:10 Oh well, I love that you said it because it’s so funny. Like literally two episodes ago. Episode 1092. I just interviewed Paul Levitin and he was talking about the habits, and it was all about change made easy. And the habits that sustain are those that we love. Those are that that bring us that excitement and so that we would do whether or not we were getting paid for those. And so even just that you come back to that, it’s like I literally interviewed him two hours ago. Joe Sanok 00:28:39 It’s a couple of days ago now when it goes live. but but I think that idea, of considering what do we want out of life is something that sometimes we just default in. You know, I was guilty of that when it came to. Okay, you date someone, then you get engaged, then you get married, then you buy a house, then you have kids, like, for me in, you know, now I’m 45. There wasn’t a narrative like, choose your life. Choose what you want out of relationships. Choose your partner wisely. I mean, there was choose wisely, but it was always like who you date might become your mate. Like you are going to get married, you are going to have kids. And so I think that in our careers and in the way we live our life to challenge that. So like even in the lead up to us living on the road, I, I’m a money guy in the sense that I like to be smart about my money. Joe Sanok 00:29:24 You know, with type one diabetes, I know that I have to have, you know, health insurance, insulin, all those sorts of things. But it was like we sold both cars, bought a truck that could pull a camper, rented our house out to someone that was building a house, and so knew that they’re going to be in here probably at least seven months. So that covered the full mortgage. had a little bit of income from some Airbnbs. and then looked at what’s it really going to cost on the road. I knew that every day we drove somewhere would be about $100 a day based on gas prices. But if we didn’t drive somewhere and we stayed somewhere, like we were in Fort Collins for a month. And when you do a month of a campground with a big old camper, you usually get a week for free. So it’s like, okay, it’s like 35 to 50 bucks a night. So say you’re at 50 bucks a night. That’s like 1500 a month for rent, to be out in nature. Joe Sanok 00:30:14 And so it was actually cheaper for us to live on the road for nine and a half months, minus the divorce costs. But it. Joe Sanok 00:30:21 Was cheaper. It was. Yeah, it was cheaper for it was cheaper. Joe Sanok 00:30:26 For us to live on the road, than it was to live here, you know. So I think sometimes people, you know, think that it’s out of reach. But even for a family of four, you know, that was road schooling the kids that, you know, my daughter went from, she was really behind in her reading. So going into her fourth grade year, which was the road year, she was reading at a kindergarten level. And so it’s like we we got tutoring for her online, where she met an hour a day with this tutor. and by the time she was going into fifth grade, she was reading at a late fourth grade level. So she was able to get that intense focus and now has experience where when she’s in her honors social studies class, they talk about Carlsbad Caverns, or they talk about Sequoia, or they talk about different places. Joe Sanok 00:31:08 She’s like, oh yeah, I’ve been there. Let me tell you all about it. And it’s it’s probably sort of annoying to the other kids because she’s been so many places. But learning has become a way of life, not just something you do in the classroom. And so I think that just to me, one of the takeaways is if you have these big dreams to do something, you can make it happen. There’s some creativity you may have to do depending on your financial situation, your life situation, things like that. but there’s usually ways to work around it. when you think about the therapists that are listening here, whether it’s for them or for their clients, what are some of the kind of key things that you’ve learned that you think would apply to people, no matter what their life situation is? Sydney Williams 00:31:49 Oh, man. I love this one. And since you’ve been to Sequoia, we’ll we’re going to roll with a metaphor here. So this I. I don’t have letters after my name. Sydney Williams 00:32:00 I wanted to go to med school. I experienced a traumatic, situation in college, and that derailed my course of study. I ended up going into mass communications and public relations. but I wanted to go to med school, and then, like, now, doing the work that I do, where we’re talking about healing, I’m like, who am I to talk about healing if I don’t have therapist letters after my name? Right. So I think that there’s the thing that I, I’ve been really pleased by and really inspired by as far as like kind of bridging these gaps, like you mentioned, when you were going through school, like people were starting to kind of talk about nature and how that has expanded in the world of therapy. There’s therapists that are talking about nature, there’s people that work in these healing places, but we aren’t like the therapists aren’t talking to park rangers. Right. Like there’s not a lot of crossover. Like these industries are so distinctly separate, but they they work so beautifully together when they come together. Sydney Williams 00:32:54 the thing that I love the most about the work we do here in Sequoia is how we are able to give a visual for mental and emotional healing. and what I mean is, like, if I was if I broke a bone. Right? And I have my my arm is like, split in half and I have a bone sticking out of the skin. You would be like, yeah, your your arm is broken. I would be like ten for good, buddy. I got a bone sticking out of the skin. We know it’s broken, but then we go to the doctor and the doctor is like, here’s your cast, here’s an x ray. You can see the break from the inside. Here’s what we know. After years and years and years of experience, how long bones take to heal. And this is what it’s going to look like while you’re doing that. Here’s your cast. You’ll wear this for this long. You’ll come back. You might need to do some PT, but we have a plan and we’re going to keep you posted on how your healing is going at these different check in points throughout the healing process. Sydney Williams 00:33:41 Unfortunately, we don’t have that as easily for mental and emotional kinds of things, so we like to use the meadow round meadow specifically in Sequoia National Park as our metaphor and visual for healing. And so the thing like, if I could inspire anybody listening, whether you’re a person who is in a healing journey and you are a therapist and you’re also helping helping people through this, or if you’re somebody that’s looking for a therapist, I think the thing that we can take out of our wilderness experience and bring it into the front country and into our day to day lives, is this visual? When we go out into the meadow and we’re sharing about why we’re here? In the case of our work in Sequoia National Park, we have been supporting the mountain round meta restoration for the past three summers. This is removing an invasive species of grass which takes up all the resources in the meadow. It eliminates a lot of the nutrients in the soil. It ruins how the meadow actually absorbs the water and does what a meadow does. Sydney Williams 00:34:42 The meadows only make up 2% of the land mass that is contained within the borders of Sequoia Kings Canyon National Park, but they’re responsible for the health and biodiversity of the other 98% of the park. So when we go into the meadow and we’re taking people in at this point, we’ve already talked about invasive thoughts and limiting beliefs. That’s what my work is. We take conservation projects and I develop programming that mirrors this inner wilderness that we have within us, and the outer wilderness of the space that we’re occupying and bringing healing to. So we’ve talked about invasive thoughts. We’ve talked about limiting beliefs. Now we’re going out in the field. I introduce you to the meadow. You lose your mind because you’ve never seen a meadow so gorgeous in your life. You’re like, wow, this meadow is meadow ING and it is stunning. I love it. And then I’m like, yes, it is beautiful. And also introduce you to Orchard grass. And then you’re like, oh, orchard grass, you are the villain in this story. Sydney Williams 00:35:28 And now I can’t unsee you. All I see in this meadow is orchard grass, because it’s like when you’re looking for a new car and you’re like, I’d like to buy a Prius. And then all you see on the highway is Priuses. It’s this very same thing. You’re like, oh my God, every grass is orchard grass. This is invasive. It’s taking over all the resources. Oh my God. It’s like what happens when I have a bad experience and I can’t stop ruminating on it. Now. All I see is orchard grass and all I’m thinking about is orchard grass. And so we go out in the meadow and you see all the orchard grass. And then we’re going to take it out and we’re going to remove this invasive species. We have a variety of ways that we do that depending on the cycle of the plant. If it’s about to drop seed, we’re cutting those seed heads off so it doesn’t go spreading seeds throughout the rest of the park. Sometimes we yank it up out of the ground, the whole thing by the root ball. Sydney Williams 00:36:09 Take it out. When we get done with that, it looks like we’ve trampled this stunning meadow. Like there is just flattened vegetation everywhere. There’s big bald patches where this grass used to exist, and it looks like we ruined it. But as we all know, especially anybody listening to this podcast, healing is not linear, nor is it pretty. It is quite messy. And sometimes things get trampled that we didn’t mean to trample in the pursuit of what we were trying to root out. But when we come back the next year and year over year for this project in Round Meadow, the amount of orchard grass is decreasing by about 50% year over year. So when we have people come through and repeat the program, we get to show them, hey, this is the area we worked last year. Look at how there’s no orchard grass here now. Now it’s over here now. So it’s a little bit different, but like it gives people an opportunity to think back to where they were last year and reflect on their journeys since then. Sydney Williams 00:36:58 It gives them a visual representation of how, when we put our hands in the earth and care about this place, how that earth comes back to give us what we need. And we’re doing all of this in community. And that’s a really long way of saying, wherever we can, the more time we spend in nature, whether you’re a practitioner or somebody seeking healing, whether you’re providing it or looking for it, the more that we can disconnect from the podcast, I mean, obviously, listen to Joe’s podcast while you’re out in nature this episode specifically, and then turn it off and. Joe Sanok 00:37:27 Then go over. Joe Sanok 00:37:28 And over and. Joe Sanok 00:37:29 Over. Sydney Williams 00:37:30 And then but like, turn off the notifications, forget about your clients that are like top of mind for just a minute and like go out there, have an experience, use your five senses, do all the things that you teach your clients how to do to stay present, to scan their bodies and go do it for yourself. And then take what you feel and what you hear and what you see, and bring it back with you. Sydney Williams 00:37:51 And share that with the people out here in the front country, because not all of us have access to rugged, remote wilderness. 83% of Americans born today will never see the Milky Way due to light pollution. And the way the world works. It is. It’s honestly, it’s becoming more and more of a privilege to be able to take time off work, to be able to arrange for child care, spouse care, pet care, plant care, and go have an experience like this. So wherever we can find it, whether that’s in the park, down the street, if that’s our favorite tree in our yard, if that’s our little basil plant on the windowsill in our kitchen of our apartment where we have no grass, whatever it is, where we can find that connection to nature for ourselves, share the things that are resonating for you. Because if 93, if the average American spends 93% of their life indoors, there is so much reconnection that needs to happen. And we’ve really missed the missed the memo on how humans, prior to colonization, have shared story and shared medicine and shared tradition orally like it’s through shared story, that I’m even still here to talk about the work that I do today, because somebody talked about the worst day of their life and gave me language to articulate what happened to me. Sydney Williams 00:39:06 We live in a culture where we don’t talk about the stuff that’s hard. We don’t talk about trauma. We I mean, this audience notwithstanding, you hear about it all the time, but outside of your office, like, we’re just not doing it as a culture. We’re getting closer. I’m rooting for Gen Z to bring us across the finish line. As far as being okay about talking about mental health, but like, there is so much to be gained from time spent outside, whether that’s just a few minutes or weeks or months, if you have the opportunity to spend that much time in the outdoors away from what we’ve created as society, because nature has Everything it needs. We are. We have been born onto a planet that gives us everything we need to survive. Why do we not tap into that more? Why are we not more respectful and appreciative of that? I don’t know the answer to that. I mean, I do, I think it’s colonization capitalism, but those things have given us radical, beautiful innovations in technology and medicine and diagnostics to where we can really take what we find outdoors and bring it into our everyday lives for the betterment of society, not to extract and extract and extract from this planet, but to really develop a reciprocal relationship with the organism that we live on, that we are not separate from as much as we have been told that we should be. Joe Sanok 00:40:25 We are so awesome. I mean, you kind of answered the last question I always ask, but we’ll see if you got more in you. if every private practitioner in the world were listening right now, what would you want them to know? Sydney Williams 00:40:37 Oh, I would want them to know that this is accessible. This is possible, and I truly believe that adding nature based curriculum, nature based interventions into your existing practice is one of the most, if not the most important thing we can do for two reasons. One, to combat, I want to bring that statistic down. I want to bring that 93% down to like maybe 50, right? Like 50 would be great. It’s going to help people get outside. But when we get outside, when we find healing in the outdoors, we want to protect and promote these places. So I think we can save each other and our communities and the planet by doing the work that you are already so skilled at and so masterful at, with all the letters behind your name and all the degrees you have, and all the research you want to do, all the papers you’ve ever read, everything you’ve ever learned is only amplified and made better when we’re reconnecting with nature. Sydney Williams 00:41:36 So just get outside and get people out there. And if you need an idea of how to start and what that looks like, we have a custom curriculum for mental health practitioners that helps you take what you’ve learned and add in, like the layers of wilderness to it, and different ways to work with your clients in that way. we host events. I have a book called Hiking Your Feelings Blazing a Trail to Self-love, and I the way I like to think of my book, because it’s not written from a therapist perspective. It’s kind of like a success story book. Like every therapist or psychologist that’s read this book is like, oh my God, you’re like, if my patients listened to me and did what I said, so it’s like, it’s it’s it’s it’s a relatable, peer driven, peer written kind of thing for the people that you work with that are going through the shit. Give them a copy of my book one so they know they’re not alone, but too, that they understand that this kind of healing is available to them the second that they choose to pursue it. Sydney Williams 00:42:30 And at a very it borderline free. Like you can go walk outside and start working with this healing in this way. it doesn’t have to be some big grand adventure. It can be as simple as going for a walk around the block and building from there. Joe Sanok 00:42:45 So awesome. Well, head on over to hiking my feelings.org. You can read all about the retreats coming up at the time of this episode. You’ll have just wrapped up your Glacier National Park one. in late November, early December. You guys are going to Joshua Tree and then Grand Staircase in May. so some awesome things for you or for your clients to attend. any other things that we want to make sure that people hear about that you guys are working on? Sydney Williams 00:43:11 Well, I think the most interesting thing that’s come out of this work. So for the past six years, we’ve been doing this, delivering these experiences and programs directly to the people. and with the publication of my new book this year and some of the speaking engagements that I’ve done, we’ve had a lot of interest from practitioners, from educational institutions, businesses like how can we bring the wisdom of the wilderness into the workplace. Sydney Williams 00:43:35 And so for anybody that’s working with a group or looking for some kind of organizational health or employee wellness, or how you can develop some curriculum to give to your clients or to bring into your private practice. We started wellness in the wilderness consulting for that purpose, to be able to support our fellow helpers in their pursuit of spreading this healing modality within their communities and their clients. So wellness in the Wilderness Consulting is our new venture to do exactly that. And you can learn more about that at White Consulting. Joe Sanok 00:44:08 Com so awesome. Joe Sanok 00:44:11 Well, thank you so much for being on the practice of the Practice podcast. Sydney Williams 00:44:14 Thank you so much for having me. It’s such a treat. Joe Sanok 00:44:25 Man, I am totally going to go for a walk before I go to my doctor’s appointment. so I’m going to go move my body outside. And, hopefully, you know, I bring that 93% inside down a little bit. also, as a small business owner, if you’re like me, you want to do it right? And so taking care of your team can sometimes be tough if you’re not using gusto. Joe Sanok 00:44:45 It’s just you’re making it hard on yourself. That’s what we use. Take the pain out of payroll benefits, onboarding an HR tools. Even better, you’re going to get three months for free over at gusto.com/joe again that’s gusto.com/joe. Thank you so much for letting me into your ears and into your brain. Have an amazing day. I’ll talk to you soon. Special thanks to the band Silences Sexy for that intro music. And this podcast is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is given with the understanding that neither the host, the producers, the publishers or guests are rendering legal, accounting, clinical or other professional information. If you want a professional, you should find one.