Hi, I'm Zac. In my daily life, I'm a lawyer and that keeps me pretty busy. I started to get into meditation practices a couple years ago, but I'm looking for something new. Feeling something a bit more grounded, like most of the planet, started to get really interested in climate change and trying to make changes in my life there. So this felt like the right thing for me. 

The journey's been fantastic. I will admit I was a bit reluctant, it is outside my comfort zone. When Louise said that it was gonna get a bit weird, I didn't realise quite how weird it would get at first. But what amazed me was how natural it felt very quickly. And I'm on a bit of a journey to not let myself get too caught up in my head anyway. It was very helpful to see how the process itself helps me get out of my head and into my body, and how quickly that happened, how natural it felt. And it makes sense, right? Because when you're connecting with nature, you start to feel more natural yourself quite quickly. 

The key capacity, I think I've noticed the most quickly, is slowing down. And that's the one I was after the most, you know, I've got a pretty busy life and it's very in my head. When it's not working, it's socialising, it's on social media or watching shows, it's so fast paced. And what I noticed, when I went on my first date with my tree, when I first touched it, was feeling how slow it was, and then feeling myself slow down. And for me, it's amazing. I've tried slowing down through other things, breathing and meditation or whatever. But it was amazing how I could feel that ability to slow down pretty instantly. 

I think it's important to do this together more broadly. If I think about it even quite logically, probably one of the things that's stopping radical, rapid action on climate is that people don't feel connected to the climate. So, as well as a tool for helping people who needed a bit like me, slowing down out of that kind of neurotic headspace, more broadly, if people connect to something, their instinct to protect it grows. 

One of the experiences that stood out to me is I, because of the line of work I'm in, everything is cognitive, right? So everything is kind of a problem. The law, its application, implications, advice, and connecting with nature and connecting with the trees, I'm starting to feel that there's probably something a bit more intuitive in me that I've maybe shut down a bit or has been kind of put aside. 

I can feel there's a wisdom, it might sound silly, but there's a wisdom in the trees. That's why they've been here the whole time. And slowing down and connecting to that. I feel that might be something I can grow in myself a bit more through that process.