Walk With SMB: More Good Days, Small Doses of Nature
Episode Summary: In this WALK episode of ROOTED, Susan Morgan Bailey reflects on her personal experience with stress, burnout, anxiety, and the role nature has played in helping her reconnect with herself.
Inspired by Mental Health Awareness Month and this year’s theme — More Good Days, Together — this conversation explores how small, repeated moments in nature can support nervous system regulation, emotional wellbeing, and a deeper sense of connection.
Show Notes
What actually helps create more good days?
Not perfect days. Not optimized days. Not productivity-machine days. Just days where we feel a little more grounded, connected, and like ourselves.
In this solo WALK episode, Susan Morgan Bailey shares an honest reflection on her experiences with chronic stress, near burnout, anxiety, and the gradual process of learning to listen to her nervous system more carefully.
She explores how high-functioning patterns can disguise anxiety, how the body often communicates long before the mind fully catches up, and how modern life — lived largely in built and artificial environments — can keep many of us in a chronic state of activation.
Susan also reflects on how time in nature became an important part of her own mental health and wellbeing journey. From birdsong and short “nature snacks” to walking the Camino in Spain, she explores the ways nature helped her reconnect with herself through sensory awareness, embodied presence, and small repeated moments of connection.
This episode also introduces several simple nature-based interventions supported by research on stress recovery, attention restoration, and nervous system regulation.
Nature is not presented here as a cure-all or replacement for mental health support — but as one meaningful part of an ecosystem of care.
Key Themes
Mental health and nervous system regulation
Burnout, stress, and anxiety awareness
Nature as part of an ecosystem of care
Connection to self, body, and the natural world
Built and artificial environments vs. living ecosystems
Nature-based interventions and sensory regulation
Small repeated practices vs. dramatic transformation
Reconnection through presence and curiosity
Key Takeaways
High-functioning people often normalize chronic stress and anxiety.
The body frequently communicates distress before the mind fully recognizes it.
Nature can support nervous system regulation through multisensory experiences.
Small doses of nature can meaningfully impact wellbeing.
Connection — to ourselves, others, and the living world — matters deeply for mental health.
Sustainable wellbeing is often built through small repeated moments rather than massive breakthroughs.
“Understanding stress intellectually is not the same thing as being immune to it physiologically.”
Resources Mentioned
Mental Health Awareness Month — More Good Days, Together
Nature-based interventions
Forest therapy / forest bathing
Research on stress recovery and attention restoration
Camino de Santiago
Reflection Prompt
What’s one small way you might reconnect with yourself this week through the natural world?
Not perfectly.
Not dramatically.
Just honestly.
Prefer to read? The full transcript is below.
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Susan Morgan Bailey:
Welcome to ROOTED.
A podcast that explores the connection between nature and wellbeing. I’m Susan Morgan Bailey.
These WALK episodes are a little different from the guest conversations on the podcast. They’re just me reflecting, walking through ideas, exploring the science and research, and thinking out loud about nature, wellbeing, and what it means to live more fully in relationship with the world around us.
And today, I want to talk about mental health and wellbeing.
May is Mental Health Awareness Month, and this year’s theme is More Good Days, Together.
I’ve been thinking a lot about that phrase lately. What actually helps create more good days?
Not perfect days. Not optimized days. Not productivity-machine days, which I am very familiar with.
Just days where we feel a little more grounded. A little more connected. A little more like ourselves.
And for me, nature is absolutely part of that answer. It’s become very clear to me.
It’s not the whole answer. It’s not magic, although sometimes I do kind of feel like nature is.
It’s not a replacement for therapy or support or community and healthcare.
Nature is a real and meaningful part of my ecosystem of care and wellbeing.
In late 2022, I got very close to burnout.
I didn’t completely crash. I pushed through it, which honestly is what a lot of high-functioning people do, not just me.
But I could feel that edge. I could see the edge. Burnout was all too near.
Looking back now, I can see how long I had been functioning in a state of constant output.
Carrying too much. Moving too fast.
One of my mantras was literally: “So much to do in so little time.”
I was resting without fully restoring.
I had normalized stress to the point where it barely registered anymore.
I think that was exacerbated by the pandemic.
And I think modern professional culture rewards that kind of over-functioning.
Being responsive. Being productive. Being available. Being capable.
But our nervous systems still pay the price for sustained activation. We’re not designed for it.
And what’s humbling is that I’ve been a health coach for a couple decades.
I’ve spent years helping leaders and organizations think about and design for wellbeing.
And still, I didn’t fully recognize what was happening in my own nervous system for a long time.
And honestly, I think that’s important to say out loud.
Because understanding stress intellectually is not the same thing as being immune to it physiologically.
I am human after all.
And I think a lot of us need that reminder.
Then in 2023, my body started speaking more loudly.
I had a variety of symptoms, but the most prominent for me was that I began breaking out in hives along my jawline and on my face.
And if you know me, you know that I immediately started trying to solve the symptom.
Was it food? Was it hormones? Was it a skincare change? Was it detergent?
And after a lot of trial and error, I realized my body was trying to get my attention.
And honestly, it is not lost on me that the hives showed up on my jaw.
Because at the time, after much reflection, I realized my body was trying to get me to speak. To release words.
And to acknowledge what I wasn’t acknowledging.
I was overwhelmed. I was holding back in some cases. I was caring a lot. I was telling myself I had it all together. Other people thought I had it all together.
And I was more anxious than I realized.
One of the things practitioners who work in nervous system regulation talk about is that the body often starts communicating long before the mind catches up — or when the mind ignores things for too long.
And research on chronic stress shows that prolonged activation doesn’t just stay emotional. It becomes physiological.
It shows itself through the body.
Our bodies keep score.
And honestly, it wasn’t until late 2024 that I fully understood anxiety was also part of the picture and had been for a long time.
I realize now that anxiety can disguise itself as competence.
Productivity. Vigilance. Thoroughness. Looking ahead. Thinking around corners. Planning for what might go wrong. Responsibility. Responsibility. Responsibility.
And when it’s been your baseline long enough, like it had been for me, it doesn’t necessarily feel like anxiety.
It just feels like you.
I had normalized living slightly braced. Contracted. Protected. Ready.
Looking back, I can see how vigilant my nervous system had become.
I’d be working at my desk, completely focused, deep in concentration, and someone would walk into the room and scare me to death.
My whole body would jolt. I’d jump out of my seat.
At the time, I thought, “I’m just really focused. I’m in the zone.”
But now I better understand that physiologically, I had become so accustomed to constant activation that I was startling easily and relaxing rarely.
Looking back now, I can see there were a few places where my nervous system actually softened.
Where I found I could relax.
Gratefully for me, I was able to sleep.
And I know for folks who struggle with stress, anxiety, and burnout, sleep is often a challenge.
That one was different for me, which is a testament to how different bodies react differently.
But the other place where my nervous system softened and I was able to return — or at least get closer — to relaxation was in nature.
And I think that’s partly why this podcast matters so much to me.
At my core, I am a nature girl. I always have been.
But over time, with corporate life and leadership work and all the built and artificial environments many of us spend our lives in, nature slowly moved into the background.
And I didn’t have the language for nervous system regulation that I now understand better.
I just knew I felt different when I was outside.
And it was essential to my wellbeing.
After time spent outside, I was quieter internally.
Less in defensive mode.
More myself.
And then came six days walking the Camino.
Yes, I talk about it a lot because it was a big shift for me.
I was outside almost constantly, with the exception of sleep.
Moving at a human pace instead of a society-machine, go-go-go pace.
And somewhere around the middle of the walk, something opened up in me.
I can distinctly remember being on the trail, speaking out loud:
“This.
This pace. This space. This is where I’m meant to be.
This rhythm. This partnership and exchange with the natural world.”
I felt like my nervous system finally had enough space to hear me again.
Or maybe more accurately, enough space to relax and let me be me.
I could hear my feelings. My body. My thoughts. My needs.
Needs that I had certainly pushed aside for a long time as a parent, a leader, and a child who grew up in the home I grew up in.
Time in nature helped me reconnect to the version of me that didn’t have to be productive.
That didn’t have to demonstrate capability. That wasn’t polished.
It just connected me back to me.
Many nature-based practitioners describe this as a return to sensory awareness and embodied presence.
When we spend time in natural environments, especially away from constant artificial stimulation, attention begins to soften, widen, and return to self-awareness.
For me, the Camino was a flood.
A beautiful, necessary flood.
But floods recede.
And what I’ve been learning since that walk is that what sustained me wasn’t just being outside.
It was connection.
Connection to my body. Connection to my thoughts. Connection to my emotions — which are bubbling up right now. Connection to other people I met along the path. And connection to the living world around me.
I think part of what burnout and anxiety and constant stress had done was narrow my world.
My life became about productivity and management and staying ahead of things.
Nature widened it again.
And as I think about the theme for Mental Health Month, I keep coming back to this idea of connection.
More good days, together.
We often talk about mental health in terms of diagnosis or treatment, and those things matter deeply.
But I’m also someone who often says that social support is life support.
And expanding beyond that, when we think about connection, yes, connection to other humans is essential to our wellbeing. The data proves that over and over again.
But connection to ourselves, to our bodies, to the natural world, and to spaces where we can soften a little — those are essential to our mental health too.
Especially because most of us are now living primarily in built and artificial environments.
Screens. Notifications. Climate control. Constant information streams.
But our biology evolved somewhere very different.
We are living creatures who evolved in living ecosystems.
Researchers studying stress recovery and attention restoration have found that natural environments engage the brain differently than highly stimulating artificial environments do.
Nature offers different signals.
Variability. Natural rhythm. Movement. Sound. Spaciousness.
Nature also intuitively and very naturally helps our senses regulate.
In short, nature helps our biological, physiological, and mental systems soften.
Recently, I had the opportunity to participate in a workshop focused on nature-based interventions.
And the reality is that many of us are already using nature-based interventions instinctively.
These nature-based tools are intentional practices that use the natural world to support nervous system regulation, mood, attention, and recovery.
And what I love about this concept is that they range from simple to more comprehensive.
The Camino was a nature-based intervention for me.
Go walk outdoors and spend most of your time outside for seven days? That’s definitely a more comprehensive approach.
But there are also simpler approaches that don’t require as much time, planning, or expense.
And I want to focus on those today for anyone hearing themselves in my story and wondering if they might want to try a few smaller, accessible nature-based interventions as a complement to the work they’re already doing.
To navigate stress. To shift their body system. To recover from burnout. Or to manage anxiety.
Nature is a complement to the work. It is not the one and only answer.
There is no one way.
It is part of an ecosystem approach to mental health and wellbeing.
When we spend time in natural settings, measurable things happen in the body.
Cortisol decreases. That’s the hormone activated when we’re stressed.
Our heart rate slows naturally. Blood pressure comes down. The nervous system shifts toward restoration.
And it’s not one thing doing that.
It’s the light. The sounds. The movement. The air. The wind. The temperature. The visual complexity of living things.
Nature is a full multisensory experience.
Studies have found that 120 minutes a week in nature is associated with significantly better health and wellbeing.
Not per day. Per week.
Another study found that birdsong and natural soundscapes can reduce stress and support emotional recovery.
When I heard that, I thought, “I could actually play birdsong in the background while I’m working when I can’t be outside.”
Not as decoration. As an intervention. As a grounding tool to help me relax and remain present while I work.
So we’ll start there as one of the practices you might try.
Soundscape
Play with soundscapes.
Open the window and listen to birdsong. Listen to rain. Bring a small water element into your space. Maybe a fountain. Or simply listen to wind in the trees.
And if opening your window mostly gives you traffic sounds, then intentionally bring natural soundscapes into your environment through one of our wonderful artificial tools.
YouTube. Spotify. Nature playlists.
Let it play quietly in the background while you work or cook or regulate after a hard conversation.
I’ve talked with a couple clinicians recently who play birdsong in the background of their offices.
And honestly, that’s probably a million times better than having cable news on.
Imagine the difference in a patient’s mental state listening to birds instead of nonstop television drama.
Those small, subtle signals matter.
Nature Snack
Taking it up a little further, another option might be what I’d call a “nature snack.”
Research suggests that 20 to 30 minutes outside can significantly lower stress biomarkers.
Yes, five minutes matters. Ten minutes matters.
But some of the biggest physiological shifts happen around that 20–30 minute mark.
This is about getting outside with intention.
You can absolutely go outside to walk or exercise.
But in this case, the point is being outside.
And noticing that you’re there.
Being present with the outdoors.
Leave the AirPods at home.
Walk slowly around the block. Take your shoes off and stand in the grass. Sit on a park bench and simply see what you can see.
And don’t forget to look up. Take in the clouds. The trees. Whatever might be around you.
I had the opportunity to do this during the workshop last weekend.
We were given a couple ten-minute breaks and encouraged to go outside and just notice things.
That day, I found myself watching robins pecking around in the grass looking for worms.
And my curious mind started wondering, “How do they do it? How do they know where the worms are?”
And it was fun. It was childlike.
For a few moments, I let go of everything I had been thinking about before I got there and was simply present with the field in front of me.
One of the things many forest therapy practitioners emphasize is that slowing down matters.
Noticing matters. Relationship matters.
And what I realized while sitting there observing was that I was beginning a small relationship with robins.
Just observing them. Trying to understand them better.
That created a little bit of connection.
Finding Your Forest
The last practice I’ll share today is what I’d call finding your green space — or specifically, finding your forest.
This is a bigger-dose practice, so it may take a little more effort.
Sometimes we get stuck because beginning feels overwhelming.
So in this case:
Step one: open a map.
Maybe a paper map if you still have one. Or Google Maps. Or whatever map app you use.
Zoom out and look for the green spaces.
Sometimes the green is a golf course. Sometimes it’s somewhere inaccessible.
But often it’s public parks. Trails. Preserves. Green spaces.
As I did this exercise recently, I was reminded how many forest spaces exist within twenty minutes of my home that I still haven’t explored.
And now they’re on my list.
The next time I know I’m heading into a heavy or demanding week and will need to downshift afterward, I’m going to intentionally plan time in the forest.
Not to conquer a trail. But to reconnect. To be curious. To connect with whatever is there.
I think about a walk I took last year on a forest trail I’d never visited before.
I approached it with childlike curiosity.
What’s down this path? What’s over here?
I stopped to read signs. I let my senses connect.
I leaned in to smell trees.
There’s a pine tree in Colorado with bark that smells incredible, and I still can’t remember what kind of tree it was.
So if you know, email me.
But ever since then, I’ve found myself leaning in to smell trees.
Feeling the bark. Noticing texture. Comparing one tree to another.
Right now there’s new growth on many of the pines, and I’ve been paying attention to how different it feels.
Some are soft and almost rubbery. Others are firmer. Different textures.
I even made tea from pine growth recently because I learned this is a good time of year to harvest for pine tea.
And yes, apparently it’s high in vitamin C.
I think one of the things I’m realizing is that more good days are usually not created through one massive breakthrough moment.
Although sometimes a flood can begin a major shift.
More often, more good days are built slowly.
Through small repeated moments of connection.
Birdsong while you work. Ten minutes outside. A walk among trees. Looking up. Breathing deeper. Feeling your shoulders soften.
The Camino shifted open a lot in me.
But what sustains me now is not a flood.
It’s more like drip irrigation.
Small doses. Repeated intentionally and often.
Small ways of returning to myself over and over again.
And honestly, one of the things that makes me happiest about all of this is that I don’t have to perform.
I just get to be me. Curious. Present.
So before I go, one question I’ll leave you with:
What’s one small way you might reconnect with yourself this week through the natural world?
Not perfectly. Not dramatically.
Just honestly.
Buen Camino, my friend.
