What it means to see with ours ears and to hear with our eyes - Worthing and Horsham

Ray will take his audiences on a journey that will explain how to get the most out of our surroundings by developing and more fully using our natural senses of sight, sound, smell and taste. At the same time he is keen to raise awareness of the vast richness of the natural world.

By both demonstration and audience participation, Ray will share knowledge that has, until now, been accessible only to students on his woodlore courses which many participants have described as “life-changing” and “as though the blinkers of modern life have been removed.”

Ray aims to teach us what it means to see with ours ears and to hear with our eyes.

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Dates include Tuesday, March 15 Guildford, G-Live; Thursday, March 17, Worthing, Assembly Hall; and Thursday, March 31 Horsham, Capitol Theatre.

As Ray says: “People have found solace and a sense of freedom in nature during the pandemic which has been wonderful. It has a therapeutic effect which we have all known about for a long while but it is something that we have generally taken for granted just as we take a lot of things for granted.

“But there is new awareness now and we have had COP-26 which brought the environment to a lot of people’s minds for a while and I am glad that more people are able to go out and enjoy nature. I’m also glad that our ancestors were clever enough to set aside green belts and that is something that we have got to hold onto. There are a lot of greedy people that want to grease palms and buy it all up so the green belt is something that we need to protect.”

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For Ray, there is inspiration in the Japanese forest-bathing movement: “Back in the early 1980s they discovered that there were a lot of workers that were suffering from stress and some were taking their own lives. And there was also a lot of auto-immune deficiency. The idea came about that maybe if people went out in nature they would find a degree of benefit, and that is what happened. The Japanese are very efficient and they suggested a way that people could interact with nature to the greatest benefit. The idea is to wander aimlessly allowing nature to seize your attention. It’s that sense of releasing yourself and becoming part of nature.”

They gave the idea a name, and scientific research has backed it up: “When we allow our minds to be free from conscious pursuit, we give that part of our psyche the opportunity to take a little breather. We over-use that part of our consciousness and yet we don’t use the intuitive side enough. So by doing this you create a healthier balance.

“But they also discovered that out in the woodland there are chemicals produced by the trees that are really good for you, chemicals that can lower your blood pressure and increase your immune response among other benefits. You look at the science and they’ve now started trying to work out which trees actually offer the biggest benefits.

“What it can’t do is cure psychological illness but it is very good with our fears and our anxieties. It is very good for people suffering from post-traumatic stress. It is a great way to alleviate some of the feelings. But actually for me it is something that I’ve always done all the time. I am searching for wildlife and so I always do that in a passive way, just going out and being open to discovery.

“I think we have allowed ourselves to be drawn away too much from this kind of thing. You’ve got all the years of human evolution during which we lived side by side with nature and it’s only in the last blink that we’ve gone away from being hunter gatherers to being the technological people that we are now. We just need to make that connection again with nature.”

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