Paying Attention

Lukas: Our next guest is a Professor of Psychology Emerita at the University of Notre Dame and in 2020 was identified as one of the top 2% of scientists in the world. She is an award-winning author and a founder of educational research project, The Evolved Nest Initiative, which we'll be delving into shortly. Today we're talking about wellness-informed pathways versus the trauma-inducing pathways, the importance of connecting with the natural world, and the healing power of play. A big warm welcome into the virtual Wearthy studio, Darcia Narvaez.

Darcia: Oh, it's great to be here. Thanks for having me. And it's so good to see you again in person.

Lukas: We first crossed paths in Seattle many years ago at a conference we spoke at, and it really informed my practices and just felt like it really opened my perspective to so much more within my own practices and how I can convey these theories of creating these nurturing environments that a nest is. And it's just a beautiful illustration and so accessible.

Darcia: I'm so glad.

Lukas: As we start today, I think it would be important to just define some terms so we're all talking about the same thing. Because when we start to delve into the realm of trauma, the definition of trauma could be so different to so many people. So just so we're on the same page, could you start by giving us that definition of trauma in relation to the trauma-inducing pathway?

Darcia: Well, trauma in my view is something that happens when your basic needs have not been met and when you've been abused perhaps, and so you're traumatized. And that's something you carry with you unless you have some healing practice or healing event occur. So for our species, trauma — what I look at in terms of the Evolved Nest — is when we don't provide the Evolved Nest to children. But actually, we all need it throughout our lives, but especially important for children because they're still developing. The younger, the more malleable and the less developed they are, and the more impact experience has on them.

So not meeting basic needs through the nest provision is traumatic. And there's degrees of how traumatic and what's affected. We think it's normal to have children that are disagreeable and have tantrums, and adults who are self-centered and aggressive. We think that's normal. But that's all, to me, signals of trauma that has not been resolved, that's just been carried forward.

Lukas: That's rocking me already. And the observation when I start to have conversations around trauma — a lot of the default is around bigger events like an abuse or an accident or things like this. But you mentioned the basic needs not being met. So would that be kind of like a Maslow's hierarchy of like shelter and then social connection from those basic needs definition?

Darcia: I have a broader list of basic needs than those, but let's take Maslow's list. You know, babies need all of it at once. There's no hierarchy. There's no waiting for it. Babies need to feel safe, need to feel loved, need to feel esteemed, need to be able to self-actualize, to grow their uniqueness, to unfold as they're developmentally prepared to do. But they need the support system that the Evolved Nest provides in order to do that. Otherwise they have to shut down and they are in trauma. They kind of have to brace, and things get disorganized, dysregulated, and the wrong trajectory is taken.

And that nervous system is fully activated, and at that frequency, multiple systems of the body have to be setting their parameters — how they're going to work, their thresholds, how they're going to be triggered — in early life based on experience. Babies cannot self-regulate. That's a myth. They are co-regulated by their caregivers, by the experiences they're having. And it's very visceral. It's in the gut that they have to feel that co-regulation.

And that's part of the vagus nerve, which is the 10th cranial nerve. It runs through to all the major systems of the body and it needs to be grown and nurtured into well-functioning habitual ways of being. But when babies are left alone or left to cry, you are undermining that development and many other systems like the oxytocin system and so on.

Lukas: And when it comes to — we've mentioned it a few times now — the Evolved Nest, can you give the broader understanding of that so our listeners can kind of relate to what we're talking about there?

Darcia: Sure. The Evolved Nest for our species is a set of practices that actually came through the tree of life. Many other animals have very similar nests. And many of the practices are now estimated to be around 70 million years old. That means they evolved to a fixation, meaning that they worked so well every generation after kept the same practices.

And it's only in the last few thousand years, especially a few hundred, especially a few decades, in human communities that we've undermined that nest. But the nest is set up to match the maturational schedule of the young and provide what's needed as they grow and unfold.

And our species — our babies are born so immature. We're like fetuses until about 18 months of age. We have — the skull doesn't fuse until around 18 months, meaning it's expecting to grow big. And the way you grow big is you provide the nest.

And then what's the nest? Well, it's soothing birth, gestational practices where the mother's calm and supported. Birth is soothing. Breastfeeding on request for several years. Lots of affectionate touch and caring. Pretty much never alone — babies never left alone, never left in distress. So responsive care. Multiple responsive caregivers — so not just mom, not just mom and dad.

And then there's a welcoming social climate — everyone loves the baby, they feel like they belong, they have a positive impact, and they're just integrated into the community. Free play — self-directed free play, really important — with multiple age playmates. Then there's also nature immersion and nature connection, and routine healing practices, because we all kind of get off balance in our relationships or in ourselves, our bodies even, and we need to have ways to get back into the center of our being.

Lukas: And a beautiful illustration in those early years that really painted a picture for me is that external womb being essential for the children at that age. It's like, it's not "arrive and then you get into all these books around controlled crying" and things like that. But the science, as you understand it — it's not conducive to the wellbeing.

Darcia: No, so cry-it-out sleep training — I know it's quite popular and pushed a lot in Australia — it's very damaging in all sorts of ways in the child. But parents are desperate because, at least in our country in the USA, parents don't have parental leave. Mothers have to go back to work after six weeks and they're desperate to figure out how to get through the night.

Because babies aren't intended to sleep through the night. None of us sleep through the night. We wake up periodically. And somehow we think babies should be independent and sleep alone. That's the opposite of what babies need. And so you're seeding anxiety and depression, all sorts of brain aspects that are supposed to be growing. And you've now pulled the rug out. You've got a gap there. You're not growing the good stuff. You're growing the self-protective, traumatized feeling of an abyss.

If you leave a baby alone, it's like they're in hell. They're in pain. They're alone. They don't know anything's going to change. It's forever. And so for the rest of their life, that's been really imprinted on them. The rest of their life they're avoiding that feeling. They're going to brace against anything that makes them suddenly feel insecure — you know, like from a different culture or someone with a different opinion. That's how it's getting in our country.

And so then you have to exterminate that person, you have to get rid of them, because otherwise you're going to fall into the abyss again. So this stuff is all related to how the culture works, how people get along with one another — or they don't very well. They stay in their own little group because they can't take the stress, because their stress response system has just been triggered to be immediately activated. And they don't have all the other skills that would normally develop if you were nurturing the child with the nest.

Lukas: It seems to me like you're activating the abandonment reflexes at that really, really young age. So then you're not having that security to be able to deal with challenges from an informed response. Instead, you're going and you're living a life in a reactive state.

Darcia: And you look for some remedy, right? So an external remedy — either it's a belief system, or a drug, or some practice, sex maybe — and you get addicted to things because you can't... you don't have the centering capacity in yourself because you never went through all this co-regulation stuff. And you're just out there, like in the wind, and you latch onto this addictive thing and "oh, that works for a while" but then gets you into trouble.

Lukas: And from an activation point, from my lens, I'm looking at navigating play a lot and working with educators a lot. And what I'm seeing more and more is the children gravitating towards those external gratifications — the approval from their teachers, the accomplishment of the goals that have been set for other people, and the avoidance of the types of activity where they have to challenge themselves. Is that reflective of what you see in the science?

Darcia: Yeah, well, this is how I would interpret it. They have not had the playful experiences from day one. Babies under natural conditions are ready to play and interact from the beginning. And they expect that. And then if there's nobody there — if the parent, the caregiver, is out somewhere else, or they're in a daycare setting where people are too busy to pay attention — all that stuff that's ready to grow just sort of fades away in time. The sensitive periods for growing certain things... we can't do experiments to know exactly when a baby's going through which kind of sensitive period, but you can see the results. They're going to be lonely and sad and depressed. And we can see it even in babies. A week old babies who are not breastfed show signs of depression and they're less self-regulated.

Lukas: And that breaks my heart. Obviously there's a big stigma around breastfeeding and not looking negatively on people that can't or choose not to breastfeed. But you're saying from the science standpoint, it's like it's an essential activation of their physiology. Is that right?

Darcia: Right. Breast milk is just this magic elixir. It's got thousands of ingredients. It's tailored for that baby at that moment because the saliva of the baby is telling the mother's body what to produce — what antibody is needed for an infectious agent, whether it's a boy or a girl or whatever, and whether the baby's growing fast or not. Different kinds of milks are produced.

And it's also formulating or forming the vagus nerve. The vagus nerve is running here, and the breast milk and the forceful feeding that breastfeeding requires is now training up that vagus nerve. And the vagus nerve is something that helps calm you down when it's well functioning, helps you become intimate and cooperative with others and compassionate. And when it's not functioning well, you can have brain seizures or irritable bowel or if it's not... because it runs through all the major systems.

So the whole body is being shaped by the nest, and breastfeeding is a really important thing. In our ancestral context — 99% of our history was spent in nomadic foraging communities, that's millions of years worth of those, and they still exist — the mother isn't always the only one breastfeeding. Other women in the community would breastfeed. And the baby is being passed around and being skin on skin with all sorts of people. And so they're learning to be flexible and know how to interact with all these different smells and different people.

It's such a different experience for our kids who are alone with a mother isolated in the home, bottle feeding which just pours the milk down their throat. It doesn't build the jaw. And so we have all these jaw problems now, people have problems from that and orthodontry is needed. Anyway, so it's really essential. But there are ways — you know, to do things like having milk banks or wet nurses and things — of providing the breast milk for those who cannot do it, which is a very small number.

Lukas: And that link — you were talking about that community and the old thing that "it takes a village to raise a child" — that is how we've evolved through that. I recall watching one of your clips on your website evolvednest.org, and it was "Breaking the Cycle." And you were saying it would come from this community and compassion model. I don't want to misframe, but I'd love to hand that to you to explain, because that was really daunting to see that timeline. And we've done it this way for so long, and then in this recent time it's like this tiny sliver where we've completely changed. It's a great illustration.

Darcia: Yeah, so you're referring to our little six-minute movie called "Breaking the Cycle." You can see it at breakingthecyclefilm.org. But we contrast two cycles. Right now we're in that trauma-inducing cycle. We call it the "cycle of competitive detachment" where the young are undercared for, basic needs of the young are not met. And that leads to neurobiology and sociality and all the aspects of being human that are underdeveloped. And so you end up with adults who are kind of sickly, they don't become very wise. And then they continue this cycle with building a culture that's based on being overwhelmed and controlling, or neglectful, and just dysregulation everywhere.

But that's not our history. That's only recently. That's just gotten worse over the 20th century, in the last few hundred years, with weird ideas going around Western culture that got pushed all over the world. I could say more about that.

But so our six million year old pathway is the wellness-informed pathway, which fosters cooperative companionship. So you provide for the basic needs through the Evolved Nest, create a well-functioning neurobiology and sociality and morality. And then the adults are well and wise, and they keep this cycle going with a community that provides for basic needs.

Lukas: And that "competitive detachment" is like such an accurate summary of so many social interactions we see in community these days. And when you look at the schooling model, when you look at the community model, it is completely that competitive detachment. And the media and everything you absorb...

Darcia: And the family. It starts in the family. The parents are told, "Yes, you must control your baby. Make them sleep alone, or you're going to spoil them," which is the opposite of what the science shows. But they then detach from their baby, and then they're competitive. It's like, "Are you going to be in control of your child, or is that child going to be in control of you?" — as if it's a contest, right? Instead of nurturing companionship, the friendship that parents should be providing their children to unfold themselves.

Lukas: And I can't help it when you're delving into this, being a father myself, I can't help but put this lens over my own family and reflect on their own experiences. As I've said many times, just because I'm involved with working with children and play doesn't make me a perfect parent whatsoever. I've got a lot of work to do.

But a bit of context of the challenge we're working through at the moment — my son's transition to school and he's having those, I think, the non-compliant or brief reaction to school. And it's trying to reframe to the school that he's trying to work through his safety security and the unsafe reflex of this, and he's obviously — it's been some trauma. He was in an early childhood center with the same group of friends for a long time, and now he's moved to a big school and his friends didn't go to that school.

So reframed — when a child has gone through this traumatic experience, significant as we frame it or minor in the spectrum, how do we start to support these children? What does the science say behind supporting your child?

Darcia: Well, it matters how old the child is and what the situation is. It's hard to make a general statement. Only that the child needs to feel that they are safe, as you're saying. And boys need a lot more nurturing and a lot more of the nest than girls, because they have less built-in resilience. So they need longer time to be home and not being in school, and longer time playing, want more cuddling, everything more of that — because they mature more slowly than girls too. So it's really... it's hard to say a blanket recommendation.

Lukas: Forging ahead and unpacking this — and I'm sure it will unpack and roll out as we go through — another consideration within the childhood experience that in recent times has changed dramatically is the sensory inputs from understanding the world around them. For a very long time, we've had a very nature-based sensory input into our bodies to understand the world around us. And now we have such high levels of light, sound, the diversity in touch. Is that then — the science behind that — pushing towards what you mentioned earlier, the power of nature and the nature immersion? So what role does nature play in creating that wellbeing?

Darcia: Yeah, I think there are more and more studies about this now. So we know that when you're out in the natural world that has more complexity — not just grass, a lawn of grass, right, but a forest or a complicated garden with a lot of different colors and sizes and shapes — that it's very calming to your body. It centers you. We know that if you lie on the earth — "earthing" — that also calms you down, lowering cortisol, which is a stress or a mobilization hormone. So we know those kinds of things.

The other thing that is really important from our ancestral context is to feel connected. So we did an experiment a few years ago with undergraduate students, college students. And the experimental condition — they were randomly assigned, half of the students — was one we called "ecological attachment." We were trying to increase their sense of connection to the natural world.

And they came in and did a pretest. Then they got assigned and they read some stuff — they read an essay about how important nature connection is, the facts about it, and a poem. And then they were given a whole bunch of activities and they were told to pick 21 activities in little slips. And they took those with them, and over the next three weeks they picked out one a day to do.

So for a college campus, you can do a lot of things. So: pay attention to the clouds today, acknowledge the trees as you walk by. They're supposed to do this all day, each thing. And then they came back and did a post-test. And we found that that experimental group did increase in ecological attachment.

So we were trying to nudge them over to paying attention. Where's your attention going? So critical for who you are as a human being. What you focus on is shaping your mind, is shaping your actions. If you think about revenge because you're so mad at somebody, then there's an opportunity to take revenge and you're more likely to do it because you've been thinking and thinking about it.

And so your attention is really important — to make sure that you are focused on beautiful things, on positive things, on the connections that you have and your responsibilities to the web of life that you're in. Because we're all on, like a spider, we're on a web, and everything we do is affecting everyone around us. And everything — that spider, that tree, that river — everything we are matters.

And attention is really key to who we are. Because our mindsets, when we shift into fear — someone, if we listen to in our country talk radio and they're telling you be mad at this person, oh there's Nazis here and there and everywhere — it puts you in a fearful mindset which increases your stress response, which shifts the blood flow away from your higher-order thinking, away from being open-hearted and flexible, which is intelligence, and to bracing. And your vision shifts into "what can I do to protect myself? Oh, there's a stick."

Yes, your mindset is shaped by where you put your attention. And that means your auditory attention, your visual attention, whatever you're thinking about. So it's really important.

Lukas: And it seems like the alternative to not being open and having that perspective and connection — what it comes down to — you just described all the symptoms of anxiety, which we're seeing a huge climb of anxiety and mental health challenges in every age in our country.

Darcia: Yeah, we've seen some research — I pulled from American data — the first six months of COVID, there was an 11% increase in mental health challenges in zero to five year olds. And there was a 36% increase in mental health challenges in the first year of COVID in America. It's scary stuff.

Lukas: And it reminds me of the work I've heard of Andrew Huberman around the eyes. The eyes, actually — when you're in that base of stress, because your eyes are so heavily linked to your brain — it actually narrows and tightens your vision. So you've actually got tunnel vision when you're in stress. The act of getting out in nature and just pulling that perspective out — you're working from your eyes back to your brain to say, "Hey, it's okay."

Darcia: And that comes down to that relationship, isn't it? That relationship, and in a perfect world, would go back to relating to environment, would be nice. And not seeing...

Lukas: And what I love about that, and what the science says — it's not these huge acts of grandeur. It's not like, "Hey, go open a community garden, hey, start composting, everyone has to have a worm farm." And what I'm hearing is just like, just bring your attention to what matters, bring your attention to where you are right now, what's alive around you.

Darcia: And the Native American tradition would say everything is alive, right? The plastic is actually part of the earth too, right? It comes from fossil fuels, from our ancestors. The paper, everything, is vibrating at the quantum level. You're not alone. But if that's too much, then find the tree, the plant. Have a house plant. I always welcome a spider when I see a spider. I say, "Hello, how good to see you." Because they're so hard to find anymore. The insects are disappearing on us because of the way we're treating the earth.

Lukas: Within bringing our attention, supporting our children to bring their attention to certain things — how do we support our children from that nest realm in terms of the nature connection?

Darcia: Yeah, there's a good book. Richard Louv has called "Vitamin N."

Lukas: That's right.

Darcia: What, 500 activities to do outside. So that's — you know, there's a lot of things you can do if you need ideas. There's a lot of websites too. What I did with my students — we were supposed to actually play with kindergartners and do nature connection stuff, and then COVID hit. We were supposed to be meeting them outside for class time. And so they had to do it — they all went home, some to Singapore, Colombia, elsewhere around the USA.

And so they read the "Vitamin N" and then small groups decided which activities to show the kids in a video. So they made videos about it. But they, you know, they grew seeds in the kitchen. One of the girls was in an apartment, she couldn't leave her apartment in Bogota, but they had a balcony. She found a bird's nest in the balcony. And then she did seeds growing in a plastic bag. There's lots of things you can do.

Lukas: Absolutely. To shift gears slightly — well, one thing that comes to mind as I go into the nest theory and looking at the activation from that brain-body connection, and comparing that to the current state of a common childhood experience — we're seeing a growth in the percentage of children that are deemed neurodivergent, children on the autism spectrum. Is there any science around our current climate contributing to that, how we're raising our children contributing to that, or the types of experience they're having in the womb that directly correlate with neurodivergent tendencies?

Darcia: It's a complicated question because autism, for example, is an outcome variable that has lots of causes. So there are genes sometimes that don't turn on properly. Some people have suspected pitocin, which is a labor inducement drug — that it keeps the oxytocin level flowing constantly, which is not naturalistic during birth. It's supposed to come in waves. And so it floods the mom and floods the baby. And maybe that has something to do with it. It's unclear. They can't do experiments on human babies.

And then there's so many toxins now in the food supply. Glyphosate, Roundup, is now everywhere. It's in the air. And it has consequences that get worse generation by generation. There's some evidence that that's increasing autism. It's just... it's skyrocketing across generations. And then there'll be other factors like that. So it's just... it's very sad.

Lukas: I came across an article — and I don't know the science behind it — but they were saying the highest concentration in the food chain of Roundup was found in mother's milk and breast milk.

Darcia: Wow. Obviously we're involved a lot with the social play aspects, and that's one of the nine steps of the Evolved Nest theory. So can we delve into your definition and understanding of self-directed social play as an integral part for that wellbeing?

Darcia: That's right. Yeah, so that's one of the nine components. It's self-directed, meaning that adults have not structured it with a sport activity, for example. So it's not organized by adults. That's self-directed. The kids are organizing it. And the socialness is with other people, and best outside climbing trees and wrestling on the ground, or exploring the creek or whatever.

So it's not — well, what it allows for is the child to test themselves and test their relationship. So if you're wrestling, you have to be careful not to be too aggressive. As we can see when pets, kittens or dogs, are playing and then one of them will go "ah!" — like, that's too hard of a bite. And if you don't listen to your partner who's signaling "that's too much," that partner is not going to play with you anymore.

We know that this back-and-forthness of play, especially the physical play, is turning genes on and off. But it's also guiding you in how to control your emotions and your actions and following consequences. So executive function skills, your leadership skills, your emotional intelligence, your social intelligence — all being built by play.

It's the best thing in the world. I say if you've been undernurtured and undernourished and undercared for and you're an adult now, go find a young child and play with them. Because it's going to grow your right hemisphere. Your right hemisphere will grow throughout life if you have to be in the moment reacting to someone else. You learn to be flexible, and it's growing all the good stuff — the empathy, the higher consciousness, the self-regulation.

Lukas: And from the science, when it comes to restructuring — we know, we're familiar with neuroplasticity — how available is that for all people within restructuring or engaging in types of activities that can restructure the brain and move beyond trauma?

Darcia: Well, I think the older you get, the harder it is. So especially malleable in the first five years. That's when it's supposed to be very malleable. The kids are kind of in a hypnotic state and they're just learning from being immersed in whatever the activity is. So you want them to be in whole-body experiences, not sitting in a chair memorizing some letters or filling out a worksheet. That's the absolute opposite thing. That's a good way to get them depressed later, because they're undermining their right hemisphere development, which is about collecting information and knowledge and know-how from real-life embodied experience. That's the right hemisphere stuff.

The sitting there with the worksheet is left brain. It's left hemisphere. It's the conscious mind learning all this stuff. You're ready for that when you're like 12, 13. That's when that kicks in. You really want to do it then. Kids should be playing the rest of the time through until age 12, most of the time of their life.

And they get so intelligent. But they get harder to control in a system that wants everyone under their thumb to go to the factory or to the job and do things nine to five or sit still — all the stuff we expect in an industrialized, technological society is not promoted by letting kids play generally.

Lukas: What about if you were to see a very young child and they are gravitating towards — like, "Here, I'm going to do these worksheets" — and they want... What's the thoughts on that? Because it's contradictory to what the natural course would be — to go play, have freedom, solve problems, explore. So what would be happening there? Is it like a people-pleasing thing, or what's going on?

Darcia: So I've seen a number of children doing that — resort to "hey, I'm going to do this worksheet really well." Do they have another option? I mean, okay, so part of the thing is they're modeling, right? They observe others and they do what others are doing. So they see their parents sitting in front of the computer all the time, they're going to want to do that. They see people writing on paper, they're going to do that.

So to remedy that, they need to be pulled out and outside into some fun spaces with some fun people, and a puppy — a dog really helps — who wants to play. So that they wake up out of that kind of trance into adult-like behavior.

Lukas: Wow, that's a real picture of what they're actually swaying towards there. When it comes to healing and developing that confidence through that self-directed play — I'll actually take a step back. I love how in that term it's actually highlighted that it is self-directed, and it's social play. It's not just a stamp of "play" because then it's very broad and left up to definitions of "well, they can play on an iPad, they can play this." But when you get into that term of self-directed and social — what impact on the brain would the alternative have? Non-self-directed play, or screens as well?

Darcia: Yeah, what you're missing is that interactive social — reading the face of your partner, reading their emotions by the way they move their body, predicting how they're going to move so you can do another move if you... you know, whatever it is, you're dancing or wrestling. So you're missing all that with this kind of flat screen.

Or sports activities would be... you don't have much choice, right? You're being told what to do. It's all external controls. So there's not a lot of internal kind of learning that you do. A little bit, but not as much as if you have to create the games yourself.

Lukas: And what's going to be the long-term impacts of a generation that experiences structured, very structured, outcome-focused childhood experience?

Darcia: I'm not sure we know. At least, as long as they're getting some play — structured play — that's good. There's Stuart Brown, who is the head of the Institute of Play in the United States, has postulated that what was common to serial killers was that they never played in childhood.

Lukas: Yes, you've heard that.

Darcia: I mean, that's pretty... yeah.

Lukas: There was research into the Texas University shooter that was very specific and detailed in breaking down his childhood experience. And if he was exposed to play, he would develop the skills and emotional regulation to deal with life stresses without extreme reflex to it. And he came from a very strict household where it was like chores, not play, academics, homeschooled. And then it was like, "Hey, go out into the world, go to university," and he just could not... did not learn any skills whatsoever from dealing with stress.

Darcia: Or social skills.

Lukas: Or social skills, absolutely. And yeah, we'll have to save that one for another episode — delve into serial killers. Oh my gosh, this is taking a left turn! It's great.

I love a quote of yours, and I've shared it with many people. And their first reflex is "too, oh, wow, okay" — or some people like, "I've got to write that down." And the quote is: "Our greatest asset is our attention." Now, as you say "our greatest asset," your brain instantly goes to "oh, it's time" because we've heard that so many times. But that slight reframing of "our greatest asset is our attention" — can you unpack that for us and how you got there? Because you have a very science background. And what I love about what you do — it's very obviously science-based, it's evidence-based, but the way you transfer that into the heart, and it actually does come back to the heart and the science, is that it's about a heart. It's not clinical and it's holistic as well. So how did you end up on that?

Darcia: Well, we know from science that a lot of our behavior and a lot of the way we move through life is unconsciously controlled, right? It's recognizing patterns and then reacting, and then just getting into habits. The one thing that we do have free will about is our attention. We can choose where we put our attention.

Now, there are all those people out there that are trying to manipulate our attention. So we have to know that and be attention-savvy — literate, I guess. So that's really the center of guiding your own life — is to take up that power. It's a power you have.

Now, everything else is impinging on you. You've got all these subconscious beliefs and habits from your early childhood, before you had words and verbal capacities to understand it. Perhaps you had that abyss experience and you're haunted by this abyss always over your shoulder. And so you're always running away from that and trying to find a safe space.

But you still have a choice. You can face that abyss if you're with a counselor or some other technique and realize in this moment you are fine and you are safe right here. And you are whole. You are alive. You are connected. And your attention can be right here on how beautiful this is — how beautiful it is to be alive.

So you do have a choice. You can focus your attention on the past and get all worried and depressed about "oh, I should have done this." Or on the future and get all anxious about what might happen. But right here, you can put your attention now and just feel how wonderful it is to be in a body. The beauty around — find what's beautiful and put your attention there.

Lukas: That gratitude — I'm hearing that as an underlying tone there. Like, your attention and gratitude will give you... can directly contribute to that.

Darcia: It's where the attention flows. And I guess for Native Americans, for indigenous peoples, it's gratitude for all the lives keeping you alive. So when you sit down to eat — gratitude for this animal that gave you some of its life, for this potato who gave you its life, for everything, the water, magical fluid of the earth. Be grateful right now. So mindful gratitude and attention all kind of go together.

Lukas: It pops into mind, that quote of Tony Robbins always going on about: "Where your focus goes, your energy flows."

Darcia: Yep, right. Just a thought.

Lukas: Is anxiety the result of ill-focused attention?

Darcia: Well, it can be. But you can be anxious because you're dysregulated somehow in some systems — physiologically, emotionally — so that the nervous, the panic systems kicks in. You maybe are going to have a panic attack maybe because of what happened when you're a baby. So we have to equally look after our emotional, in conjunction with our physiological state.

Lukas: Right, it's all connected.

Darcia: So that's part of my work — to show that we're not just beings in our heads, you know. And that's unfortunately most of the university disciplines focus there. It's like it's all about reasoning and will and making a good decision and then willing yourself to do it. And it's like, no, no, no, no. It's neurobiological. Attachment is neurobiological. Your parents are engraving on your brain — the way they treat you is the way you're understanding how the world works. And you carry it with you the rest of your life unless you have some healing experiences.

And we have to remember then that our whole body is with us, and not just a little head. I don't know if you know "The Master and His Emissary" by McGilchrist, but he talks about all the research on left and right brain shows how the left brain thinks it's in charge and poo-poos everything else, which is actually where everything's happening. And so our system in the West has emphasized that, has promoted that, and so it leads to all this ill-being.

Lukas: Was there any event in particular, or a certain point in time we can say, "due to that, that is where we created that switch-over"?

Darcia: It's actually complicated. There's a lot of different factors, and it happened over a slow period of time. There's something about climate change which — they had a big population in the past. They were nomadic foragers, but then they had all these people and they couldn't feed them. And so some people planted something, or they got afraid nature wasn't going to provide so "we better do this." And but it's so hard to be a farmer — it's the worst thing compared to foraging.

And then another theory is about herding animals — that herding animals, the males got into that, and then they got into inequality. Farming — you know, some people accumulated more. Inequality. And then you go into inequality, you've got a hierarchy, and then you're undermining the care of the young is what. Because everyone has to work to keep the system and the elites at the top happy.

Lukas: We're kind of there still.

Darcia: Yeah.

Lukas: It reminds me of a book, "Surviving as a Hunter in a Farmer's World." And it's in reflection of ADHD and ADD evolution. And they're saying, "Well, your neurotype is remnants of the hunter gene." And then they go through the history of the development of agricultural nations, and things like Japan having very early agriculture and how they've moved to a very lineal, structured culture, and how it's contributed to that mindset — lineal, as opposed to hunter-gatherers which tend to be non-linear, more fluid and changeable and aware of environment more.

Darcia: That's right. I've written a paper called "The Missing Mind" and contrast our capacities with those in the foraging communities, because they have diffuse attention. They know what's going on — they're kind of observing all around them. And what we do to our kids is we make them focus into one thing. We don't want that. And there's other skills and capacities that we neglect.

Lukas: Yes. How do we support healing?

Darcia: Well, I think telling people that their instincts to be compassionate towards children are right. Especially those new parents or future parents — you can't spoil a baby. Nope, impossible. You can ruin a baby by neglecting them, by following these rules about making them sleep alone or something. Remember, it takes 18 months for them to actually look like a newborn of another animal. So give them that external womb experience for at least that long. It should be, you know, three years at least, really keeping them calm while their brain is going so fast.

Lukas: I think it's important to highlight that when we talk about nurturing, it doesn't mean protecting and shielding them from challenge. Because through challenges is where that self-governed type of play comes. They will naturally seek challenge to develop and understand themselves around them. So I don't want our listeners to think, "Well, I've got to protect our child and protect them wholly from this womb." You — what you want to maintain is the connection. They want to feel like you're there with them. That's the thing that's important. And then when they're ready to move off, they move. They'll be happy to move off and do their own thing. And you have to let them go and let them wander and put the toddlers in places where they can wander around and you don't have to say no.

Darcia: Yes, you don't want to impose your will on them when they're testing their autonomy, who they're going to be.

Lukas: Absolutely. There's one thing I have to try to teach educators. It's like, it's okay if they're trying to do something and they can't do it yet. Don't be there saying, "Now pull with your arms, push with your legs, put your foot here, you can pull yourself up." I've seen experiences where it's been like three months and more before a child could actually fulfill one of the elements in a play environment of ours. But the sense of accomplishment — I was fortunate to be there when he achieved it after months — and that sense of accomplishment and joy that that child got could not be recreated in any type of direction from an adult.

Darcia: And just think, they carry that forward. "I can do it. I have the capacity." You know, self-efficacy. So for the next challenge, they have some confidence already built in.

Lukas: Absolutely. And they've learned from that physiological state and it's done that head-heart connection for them. So when they come up against a similar challenge, or something even falls out of that realm — it might be a social interaction — the physiology said, "Well, you overcame your challenge last time. You could do this again. It's okay." And they're not escalating into the adrenaline stages of the fight-flight-or-faint response. They're actually going, "Okay, I can negotiate this." And then they're going to be managing their dopamine response as opposed to their adrenaline slavehood, if you will.

Darcia: Yeah, they don't break down in fear or run away.

Lukas: What can our listeners do? What's your thoughts — what do you want our listeners to know about supporting children?

Darcia: The most important thing is to stand out of the way. Babies need a lot of — it's almost like you need to helicopter a baby, but only to keep them in a calm state. You have to figure out how to do that with each child. But it's a lot of touching and moving and calming and being with them all the time physically.

And then, you know, they're going to unfold. They're going to be like a butterfly. Let that child follow their inner spirit, whatever that is. And encourage them and offer them what's needed, but then let them be in charge.

Lukas: It's a hard one, isn't it, for parents to hear — "let your child be in charge" — and they're like, "What? How am I going to control that?"

Where can people find you? I've mentioned evolvednest.org. Where can they find your books and work?

Darcia: Well, Amazon will have them. On my website, darcianarvaez.com — I know it's hard to spell, it can be in the show notes. And kindredmedia.org — there's a lot of things there that are really fantastic.

Lukas: Well, thank you so much for contributing directly to my journey in supporting children and creating environments for them to thrive, and really being that holding that place of wisdom in conjunction with compassion in this space. It's so necessary and needed. And it doesn't need to be a band-aid fix. It needs to be the hug and reassurance.

Darcia: That's right. And we can do it from the heart.

Lukas: Yeah, absolutely. And we can lead with our heart. It doesn't need to be our head. So thank you so much for your time today. Thank you for giving me the personal reminder as a father, as an advocate for children, where to lead from. So I appreciate the work you do, and I really look forward to chatting to you more and getting to do some maybe research and data collection with each other as well.

Darcia: Well, thanks so much, Lukas, for having me. It's been a great pleasure. And thank you for all you're doing for families and kids.