Conversations with Dr Jen Podcast

I am super proud and excited to announce my brand new podcast in collaboration with The Adventure Syndicate.

Conversations with Dr Jen is a podcast exploring how spending time outdoors and having adventures has helped people overcome different challenges in their lives. It’s about promoting the health benefits of the outdoors, drawing on theory and personal experience and inspiring people to find adventures of their own. No matter how big or small.

This weeks episode introduces Natasha Barlow, a Associate Professor in Geosciences who shares her experience of recovering from Long Covid. We discuss how the ability to get outdoors and go for a walk was critical in helping her feel normal again. We talk about different perceptions of endurance and adventure and how this changes, especially when recovering from illness or injury and rebuilding fitness. Natasha shares how her experience of Long Covid has helped her to appreciate the small things, being able to get out, be in nature and have adventure.

We also discuss mindfulness and the similarities this has with the restorative effects of nature and it’s benefit to our mental health. I introduce the Attention Restoration Theory and explain how spending time meditating outdoors can enhance the benefits of both meditation and spending time in nature. This leads us to exploring perceptions of what nature is and the tendency to see ourselves as separate from nature. We discuss how adventure is often described as going in to nature and how changing our perception of our place within nature may change our relationship with it.

If you would be interested in being interviewed about your experiences of using the outdoors and adventure to help you overcome different challenges in your life please get in touch. We’d love to hear from you.