Humans + Nature + Mindfulness Resilient Sustainable Cities

BY SUZANNE JEWELL

©LISA NALVEN PHOTOGRAPHY

Suzanne Jewell

CEO, The Mindful Entrepreneur

Miami, Florida

Suzanne Jewell is a thought leader in modern-day mindfulness spaces, offering mindful resilient leadership training for Babson College’s Women Innovating Now (WIN) Lab, the Idea Center at Miami Dade College, and PhilanthropyMiami, as well as corporate clients like Credit Agricole, Allvue Systems, and the first World Happiness Summit. A former global TV executive, Jewell became a “green space connoisseur” as she bounced back from burnout, which led to her concept of the “park with a purpose,” the Mindful Pocket Park Project.

“WE NEED TO LOOK BEYOND THE BUILT INFRASTRUCTURE TOWARD THE HUMAN CAPACITY TO LEARN TO STAY PRESENT IN THE MIDDLE OF DIFFICULTY.”

Beyond the built infrastructure, mindful resilience is a key, learnable skill set for humans to wisely navigate storms, both internal and external.

We are reaching a fascinating time in history: Not because of the code red that the IPCC issued in August. But also because for the first time in history, the majority of people live in urban centers. We’ve moved from an agricultural society to an urbanbased lifestyle. We’ve lost our connection with nature. From personal experience with climate change, I learned how to fall and get back up again. And that is the definition of resilience.

The resilience I’m speaking about is tied to human infrastructure—not built infrastructure, not the roads, the septic system or sewers, but the ability for humans to not just survive the storms but thrive during them.

Most of us are distracted for the majority of our lives. According to Harvard’s Lazar Lab, 47% of the time we’re awake, our mind is either in the past or the future, when our mind and our body are not aligned in the present, which is really the only moment you have to be alive.

We have approximately 70,000 thoughts run through our minds every day. And when you are in a crisis-oriented mode, your thoughts look like a whirly, monkey mind, and you are in a sense of overwhelm. This is what happens when you are in a flood, storm, or fire. When your body is in this state, you don’t make good decisions.

And this is one of the reasons why nature and mindfulness in the urban areas of our lives need to be threaded together. Because when you are in a moment of stress, or emotional flooding, you flip your lid. Your mind goes offline, and you go into fight, flight, or freeze. This has been occurring for many of us already without having the words to speak about it.

Beyond building sea walls and putting pumps near our roads, we need to all learn how to weather the storm. And that is what the practice of mindful resilience can do for you.

I came to these practices not because I’m a yoga teacher but when I became a modernday climate refugee. I was in my home, we’d had rain for two days straight, and I realized that water was coming above the baseboards and rising through the floor. And I had one of those moments, which was, “I have a matter of moments. How do I get out? What should I do? What do I bring?” And before I ran out the door, I turned off the breakers.

In that process, I was so thankful for my training about how to breathe, respond versus react, pay attention, and turn toward what was occurring in me that was difficult. And those skills, which I call grit, helped me ground myself, resource myself, integrate myself, and let me be resilient in the face of an actual storm.

The University of Michigan has proven that 20 minutes in green space lowers your cortisol levels. Why is that so important? Because you can’t think straight if your brain is hijacked. And when you are around too much concrete, you don’t feel as well.

Fascinatingly, when you learn to breathe intentionally, ground yourself, and resource your skills, you can build resilience. When you know how to respond instead of react and do so in nature, you reduce all those cortisol levels. You bring the prefrontal cortex back online, and you will make more rational, logical decisions.

We need to look beyond the built infrastructure toward the human capacity to learn to stay present in the middle of difficulty. We need to have our rational mind be online and not emotionally flooded, overwhelmed, or in fight, flight, or freeze.

I hope that you’ll look into what it means to build human resilience, human infrastructure, and to do so in a mindful way within the basis and foundation of nature. Because this is how we will build resilient, sustainable cities.