The salient point of this podcast episode is the exploration of the profound connection between humans and the natural world, as articulated by our guest, Tigrilla Gardenia, a plant advocate and ambassador currently residing in Italy. Throughout our dialogue, we delve into the significance of tuning into our natural cycles and the liberation that arises from disengaging from conventional corporate structures that prioritize productivity over well-being. Tigrilla shares personal experiences that illuminate the transformative power of allowing oneself to work and rest in harmony with one's innate rhythms. Moreover, we discuss the intriguing concept of plant communication through music, revealing how this artistic expression fosters a deeper understanding of our relationship with nature. This episode ultimately serves as a call to reexamine our interactions with both the natural world and each other, emphasizing the importance of embracing our unique paths in life. A profound exploration of the intersection between humanity and the natural world unfolds through an engaging dialogue with Tigrilla Gardenia, an esteemed ambassador and plant advocate currently residing in Italy. The conversation delves into the simplicity yet profundity of daily practices such as breathing and their significance in reconnecting with the natural cycles that govern our existence. As Anthony Wright reflects on his experiences in an MBA program, he expresses concern over the stark contrast between the corporate world's mechanistic approach and the organic rhythms of life that are often overlooked. Tigrilla shares her transformative journey from the confines of the corporate environment to embracing a life attuned to her innate cycles, emphasizing the liberating realization of working only when inspired. This revelation leads to a deeper understanding of productivity that transcends traditional work paradigms, advocating for a more holistic approach to work that honors individual biological rhythms. The narrative further explores the implications of such an approach on personal and professional development, particularly in the context of societal expectations that prioritize relentless productivity over well-being. Tigrilla articulates her own rhythms of work and rest, revealing that true productivity can arise from honoring one's natural inclinations rather than adhering to rigid schedules. The discussion also touches on the cyclical nature of seasons and life, drawing parallels to the practices of deciduous trees that shed leaves as a means of resource conservation. By cultivating an awareness of these natural cycles, individuals can foster a deeper connection to themselves and the world around them, paving the way for greater fulfillment in both personal and communal endeavors. In essence, this episode serves as a clarion call to embrace the wisdom inherent in our natural environments and to reflect on how these principles can be integrated into contemporary business practices. Through the lens of ecological mindfulness and personal authenticity, Tigrilla and Anthony invite listeners to reconsider their relationship with work and nature, urging a return to a more balanced and harmonious existence that celebrates both human creativity and the natural world.

Takeaways:

• The podcast delves into the importance of understanding natural cycles in personal productivity.
• Tigrilla Gardenia shares insights on how corporate culture often disconnects us from nature.
• The conversation emphasizes the significance of deconstructing one's identity for personal growth.
• A central theme is the relationship between humanity and ecology as discussed in Confucianism.
• Listeners are encouraged to embrace their natural rhythms and honor downtime for increased creativity.
• The discussion explores the concept of plant music as a medium for connecting with nature.

I'm Anthony Wright and I'm your co host today on the Living Conversation with Adam Dietz.

Welcome back.

And we are talking with our guest who is in Italy right now, Tigrea, Tigrea Gardenia, who is a, an ambassador and a plant advocate.

And before the break, Tigrea, you were talking about a daily practice of just breathing.

I mean it's so simple.

But I also wanted to reflect.

I'm currently in an MBA program all about business and my goodness, what a different experience this is in business is all about counting stuff and there isn't a lot that I'm finding so far that is about humanity in the natural world.

And I was listening to you speak about the natural cycles that you are now attending to that are not allowed for.

Like when you were working for Microsoft for example or you know, they're not allowed for in the corporate culture because it's all this thinking and it's disconnected from this envelope that we happen to live in this human body.

So the thing that I'm curious about is what was your experience when you finally began to tune into that and be, be released from your corporate bondage?

This is such a great question.

So I made a pact with myself when I left the corporate world.

I made a pact that said I was never going to wake up with an alarm clock again.

Oh no, that was my pact.

How long were you there in the corporate world by the way?

I spent 10 years in high tech back then and then I left and then I started producing my own events and I had an event production company and a circus and I co owned a circus.

And then eventually I left on tour with Cirque Duos Soleil which to be honest, Microsoft was a lot better than Cirque du Soleil.

But that's another story altogether.

There was a lot of other good things that came out of this and then I've been pretty much working for myself like for, since then.

So it's, it's been a very long time.

And I, you know, I kept this packed for myself for a very, very long time.

Right now I do use an alarm clock.

But there's reasons for it and one of the things that I wanted to understand was when I started working with the Natur world, one of the things I really wanted to understand was my own cycles.

I spent the better part of a year where I literally, I said to myself I have, I have an innate trust that I am a, let's just say ambitious person.

Like in the sense that I have a desire for mission and Purpose and for service.

So I knew that I'm not, I feel like I'm lazy because I feel like I have a lot of downtime, but we'll get to that in a second.

But I knew that in the end my desire to do things was always very strong.

So I said to myself, you know what I'm going to, I don't know what my natural cycle is.

I mean, I've been waking up at a certain time since birth pretty much like, you know, you know, you have to wake up with an alarm clock, you have to go to school, you have to go to work, you have to go to, you know, all these different things.

You must, you must, you must.

And I, I don't know when I'm productive.

And so I did this experiment and I started to record and I said, what is if I was to just give myself perm to work whenever I felt called to work and to rest whenever I felt called to rest, what would happen?

And it was amazing.

I discovered my natural rhythm, for example, is I actually naturally get up decently early in the sense that by, you know, eight o' clock in the morning I am up and functional.

Like and then I, I that period of time, the morning time is like when I am peak strategy.

Like I can do things that are strategic in nature, things that have require thought process to do all that.

And then I have a very late lunch.

Like in my ideal world I don't eat until it was great because I was living in Spain at the time like 2, 3 o' clock in the afternoon.

And after that I am useless.

I am like veg on the couch, watch a movie, like sleep, take a nap, siesta.

And I, like I said, get along very well.

And then when I'm done with that, I become productive again, but in a more mystical like that's when I do, I'm a coach.

And so that's when I love my clients.

I love to do client calls or to teach workshops at that time because it's much more relational and that time and then I have another period of like downtime and then if I am awake past 10 o', clock, all of a sudden I'm up until 3 o' clock in the morning.

And I am super creative.

Like that's when I create the most innovative stuff that is like coming from outer space and who knows what the heck is inspired.

So when I, when I realized all of this and then decided to lean into it, you would be amazed.

I get so much more done.

I consider myself lazy because I Have a lot of downtime.

Like I spend a lot of time staring out at Gary the silver fur or sitting on my balcon balcony or sitting on my couch looking at art and just sitting there.

And yet people are constantly telling me, I don't know how you produce so much.

And I was like, I produce so much because I only work when I'm inspired.

Only work when I'm inspired.

And when I'm inspired, I am like a machine.

I mean, I can get so much done, but I don't force myself.

Like, I don't do client calls in the morning unless I have to.

I'll do meetings in person, but I won't do like other kinds of stuff unless, you know, there's a rare exception because that's just not when my body works.

And that has been liberating.

And then going back to the deciduous trees that you were talking about, deciduous trees are dropping their leaves because they're pulling in all their resources.

So in the fall I do a.

What is important to me?

What is the analysis?

Like, how do, what do, what do I keep, what am I going to get rid of?

Like, so that by the wintertime I am way slower.

My world is now built on my natural cycles.

Like what works for me.

And again, I am super productive in much less time.

We call it here the augmenting of complexity.

I am way more complex than I ever was.

And so it's great.

It's so much, it's liberating because then when I do feel tired, I just go and take a nap.

Like I do not have any qualms about it anymore.

And I only wake up early because it is in the wee hours of the morning that I like to exercise.

I like to exercise when it's dark outside.

Don't ask me why, it's just the way my body is built.

If I wait until after 8am, I will never exercise.

Somewhere between 5am and 8am that's when I get the most.

That's just how my mind works and that's how my body works.

And I now honor that.

And I think that's the biggest difference.

There are some places that I've worked on in the startup world that allowed for that.

And I think that that's why the innovation happens in the startup world.

That idea of just the straight up 9 to 5 doesn't work.

The idea that somebody and many startups had, I mean, at least in the days that I used to work in startups, you know, we had, you know, pool tables and ping pong.

I Mean, even Microsoft had them and games and stuff.

Why?

Because need downtime.

I can't not a machine.

And I think that if you looked at for example biomimicry for social innovation and you introduce some of those principles into MBA programs, for example, and this is the reason why biomimicry like is in coming into certain kinds of business structures, especially for social innovation, which is a little bit more difficult because you have to look for other kinds of patterns.

But when you do that, oh man, there's just.

It's so much more enjoyable.

It's so much more enjoyable.

Yeah, I really got a sense of joy.

So yeah, you're a Confucian specialist and does.

What is.

What does Confucius have to say about this?

Or what were you going to mention?

Well, yeah, I want to just point out real quick that, you know, when you're Talking about the 5am to 8am window, that's where in.

Let's take it from a Taoist bent, that's where the world is fresh, it's new energy.

And I just want to make the connection that that's the time of the year that we're in right now.

Lunar New Year occurs at this time for a reason.

Because you know, the, the winter is over, we're past midwinter.

We've had a month past midwinter where we kind of, you know, collect our thoughts, gather our energy and now brand new fresh energy is going to be entering the world.

So I just wanted to make the connection with Chinese cosmology.

Confucius is very, very interesting in this regard.

There are some really profound moments in Confucianism where it talks about ecology and human relating to ecology.

Like use a big net when you're fishing.

No, use a net that allows.

Oh, I'm getting it wrong.

The thought of my head, I'm getting it wrong.

But I want.

More importantly though, and this is where I want to get your take on it to gorilla is Confucius has I had this experience when I was working with state parks.

I thought, oh man, you know, spirituality has to be in a mountaintop somewhere and I have to listen to the birds and the streams and get away from this dirty world.

And then I got smacked right in the face with Confucius who said we're not birds, we are human beings.

And I think you hit on it a little earlier where human beings have a role to play and our role to play is in humanity, in our relationships and that only we can fulfill that role.

Our entire, entire time and space of cosmos has come into this human being and my entire destiny and karma has put me in these relationships in this time and space.

And only I can fulfill what we call in Confucianism, heaven's destiny in this time and space.

Could you say something from your perspective on, on how humanity plays its role?

You mentioned it a little earlier, but could you, could you go back into it in this context?

Yeah, this is, this is a great conversation because, you know, so Diamond Hurrians believe in reincarnation and we also work very close with the soul structure.

And as you said, when you incarnate, right, we incarnate with a set of personalities into a general structure.

We have a piece of ourselves that is always kind of.

We call it the element.

In nature you call it the deep pattern.

It's something you see often when you're talking about social innovation.

What is the deep pattern?

And we all have this like element and deep pattern that we express at everything from life to life to life.

But your personalities are different based on what is necessary for you to accomplish in this life, right?

So it's that, that time and space that is very different.

And, and how do we get into connection with this?

It is, like you said, understanding our role.

Remember I said Dhamen hur is a culture where we look at, instead of meditation, it's medit action because it is the actions that we take.

It is the role that I fill as part of what we call the super individual.

Right?

We are a collective we for us Dominherans, we say you need to have a minimum of five people in order to create a person.

So it takes five people to create a person.

Because each one of us has different roles that we play.

We play mirrors to one another to help us in our evolution.

And even in nature we say that species evolve faster together.

And it's the same thing for us.

We are part of nature, so we evolve faster together.

And so when you're working with others, you can create what's called a super individual, which is definitely the sum of, you know, the, not just the sum of their parts, right?

It's that, that plus that gets created from the union.

So in reality, we always live inside these super rich relational fields.

And it is those relational fields, whether we're talking about our connection to Mycelium, whether it's talking about connection to your brother, your sister, to your friend, or even to your enemy.

Because as we know from nature, right, we have parasites and we have competition and we have all these other beings that in the right dosage, in the right Duration can be really powerful entities that help us move into new levels.

And so all of these different pieces kind of connect together in order for us to create what needs to be created.

And you said another element that I think is so, so important and which is there was a study done many, many years ago by Stephen Kellert, who is the person who co founded or co coined the word biophilia with E.O.

Wilson.

And they did a study called the Nature of Americans.

And it was a study done that compared adult Americans and children in their relationships to nature.

And what they found was super fascinating because they said one of the problems for humans talking about that disconnection is that we see nature as out there.

I need to go hiking.

I need to go to the mountaintop.

We believe that that mystical experience comes from going out there and getting far away from humans.

But children find it in the most awe inspiring places right next to them.

They walk out of the house and they see like a little plant that's growing or moss growing in the sidewalk crack.

And they're like, wait, it's a whole.

Look at that.

It's like the miracle of everything.

And all of a sudden those endorphins hit.

All of that awe and wonder that that is part of our connection to nature gets triggered.

Remember I was one of the things I discovered is I sit here sometimes like for an hour and I just either I have a beautiful wall, you can't see it, but my house is covered in art and I love art for, because it triggers that connection, that creativity, that, that connection to the energy people put into it, that, that nature connection.

So I'm always like just sitting there staring and that is my mystical experience.

I don't need.

I mean, I go to the mountains a lot.

I go hiking.

I live in this beautiful valley filled with gorgeous mountains and.

But I also love just sitting at home with, you know, Noel, the Christmas cactus, or today I was in a weird mood and I went to go buy to move something by my window.

And Zan, who is one of the Galactic Aloe siblings that lives in my house, is putting out a beautiful flower.

And I was so awestruck that my whole afternoon was fantastic.

I just finished my nap and I was like a little groggy still.

And all of a sudden I saw this flower.

I even wrote a Instagram story about it because it's like, oh my goodness and hope.

Thank you.

And all of a sudden I feel amazing.

My mystical experience doesn't require me to go out there.

I am totally captivated by all the natural, whether that's holding on to the wood of my table or the cotton fibers of my clothes or Zan putting out a flower or Gary the silver first standing huge right outside my window.

It's all nature.

And it all has the opportunity to trigger that beauty that you see in Kabbalah when we talk about like Tiferets, that awe, that wonder that is what is so healthy for us.

Yeah, we have to take a short break, I'm sorry to say.

I'm Anthony Wright and I'm your co host today on the Living Conversation with.

Adam Dietz, who just remembered the net story says stay tuned.

Okay.

And stay tuned.

And we're with our guest, Tigrella Gardenia.

And how can people contact you?

Tigrella and I can be found on all the platforms at just at Tigria gardenia or@tigriagardenia.com and it's t I G.

R I L L A and then G A R D E N I A.

Great.

We'll take a short break and be right back.

So stay tuned.

I'm Anthony Wright and I'm your co host today on the Living Conversation with Adam Dietz.

Welcome back to the conversation.

And our guest today is Taguya Gardenia.

And you had something that came to mind just before the break, Adam.

Yeah, I was mentioning in Confucianism there is a sense of ecology.

First of all, earlier Tigria you were talking about five people.

And it's very interesting because in Confucius they have five relationships.

Five relationships, yeah.

Yeah.

So we can get into a different time.

We don't need to get into details.

But I also coming up is you're talking about your enemy can actually help you grow.

It was a net earner for the university and they used budget concerns to just blow us up in six, five other departments and the entire athletic department.

And I just want to say, like we've met so many amazing people.

We're doing this podcast because of that.

So this trickster enemy thing that happens that helps you grow, I want to point out, and the last thing was I just remembered the story from Confucianism where there, there's a sense of ecology.

I think people think of Confucian often as very patriarchal, hierarchical.

Do this do that and it's meant to be a relationship back and forth.

A father should be a father, a son should be a son.

Both a father should be very caring and loving.

Anyway, point being, they also have a sense of, of human responsibility, including with the natural rule world, including with ecology.

So he tells the story of how a fisherman should use a net with big holes, right.

So that all the small fish can go out and you only catch the big fish.

So the small fish can keep living and multiplying and thriving.

And the old fish, they're probably closer to death anyway.

So we, we working to kind of call them same thing when you do hunting for the, for the ruler.

Same thing.

Allow, allow the smaller, allow the smaller creatures to go away and just only hunt the bigger creatures.

So I just remembered that story and wanted to point that out.

Since it was a loose thread.

I want to ask you the one question.

Much earlier in the conversation, we were talking about some of the work that you do with people to help them connect.

And to me it felt like there's a sense that you have to kind of deconstruct your own identity.

You have to kind of empty out your preconceptions of yourself.

Is that true?

Yeah, that's absolutely true.

I mean, one of.

So I work a lot with people, with conditioning with again, whether you're multi, passionate, neurodivergent, helping you really understand.

I always say that you want to understand within your own bubble how your mind works so that you can feel super comfortable and confident about that.

And then we can work on how to translate that out to an external need, for example.

Right.

I might work in one way and then I might need to give my boss a deliverable that works in a certain way.

And so the packaging, it shouldn't be confused with how I process and how I deal with it and how I get my work done.

So a lot of my work is about deconstructing and I would say even more than anything, being honest with yourself, giving yourself permission to, to be able to see who you truly are and without any kind of judgment.

So my kind of, you might say, superpower is to be able to create a sacred space.

And I am, I'm a bridge.

I help people kind of get from where they are to where they want to be.

So by creating a super, super safe space where you could literally look at anything without feeling like there's something wrong.

Because I fundamentally believe that your ecosystem is, is natural.

Right.

The way your mind works, for example, many people try to have one system where they're disciplined for, I don't know, a to do list or a task list.

But the truth of the matter is that we translate things differently.

Like creative tasks I might need to write down technical tasks I might have in a calendaring app.

Tasks that instead feel more relational might be something that I put post it notes around my house or my friends have to call me.

Like, when I start to understand how my own nature works, I can then create those relational fields that I was talking about.

Right.

The I. I basically cultivate your inner ecology.

And to cultivate your inner ecology, you've got to remember that when I go into, I don't know, a temperate forest or when I go into, you know, any kind of savannah or any other thing, there are a series of ways that all of these plants and animals work together.

But there's also a lot, a lot of innovation that's constantly happening.

Right.

There's evolution is happening right before your eyes.

And so a plant that might be kind of taken out, like most of the plants in our homes were actually originally tropical plants.

Many, many plants that live inside of homes with people.

They've had to adapt to cold weather.

They've had to adapt to a whole series of things.

But that doesn't mean that they're not fundamentally that same plant.

I mean, there's two aloe plants sitting here, those galactic twins that I was talking about, and they are fundamentally aloes.

Right.

So they're not going to start, you know, doing something completely different.

And at the same time, they do adapt to be able to live in a place where it's cold outside, it gets cold here at night, and all these different pieces.

So my work really is about helping you see all of these little quirks, not as things.

I don't believe you should eliminate anything.

One of the things the plants taught me very early on was all of your skills are useful as long as you learn how to use them in their constructive powers and in their destructive power.

A chainsaw is something that can be scary and dangerous and terrible.

It can also be extremely useful and something that is necessary in certain situations.

There's nothing wrong with the chainsaw.

It's all in how you use it.

There's nothing wrong with the way that you do things or your skills or all of those negative traits that people say you might have.

It's all in how you use them.

Yeah.

You know, we're coming up to the end of the interview here, and I want to touch on something that we talked about before we began.

I'm a piano technician and you have done something I really want to listen to more of.

And it's created music with plant musicians.

Talk to us a little bit about that.

And would you play one of the pieces we talked about, please?

Absolutely.

So this is.

This is one of my big passions because it was what opened the door for my relationship with plants.

So I'm a musician also by nature.

I have a degree in music engineering.

And so music and engineering, that right brain, left brain thing is my thing.

And the first time I ever heard plant music, which is basically kind of the.

Similar to the fact that we all have instruments like guitars and pianos and such, there's this instrument called the music of the plants device, which is a musical instrument specifically for plants.

And the first time I ever heard a plant play, all of a sudden it was like a plant reawakening.

I was looking at the plant, listening to the music, and I was like, are you talking to me?

What is going on here?

All of a sudden, it was like an understanding that not only is a plant alive in a biological sense, but aware and conscious and able to make decisions.

And then later, that got backed by science.

And, you know, I got a master's degree in vegetable future, which is plants social innovation and design.

So it's like I just took it to the next level.

But plant music really is a way for.

It's an interface, because we think of language as a music, as we think of music as a language, but it's actually the opposite.

It is language that is a musicality.

Music comes first.

It is the foundation of everything.

Rhythm and tone, as you know, and all the different powers that come from that vibration, how it affects our body, how we think, the emotionality that comes through the notes of music, all these different aspects.

So when a plant is able to, you know, create music, it's almost like all the language barriers break down.

Because I bypass language and it goes straight to the source.

Absolutely.

Can you.

Could you say a little tiny bit more about the interface first before explain to us?

Of course.

So the music of the plants is actually very simple.

It's a biofeedback device.

So what we did was we created using the electrical impulses.

So similar to the way that we have electrical impulses going through, plants have something called action potentials that are electrical signals that are used.

Plants have very sophisticated senses beyond our five.

They have the same five, but also about 15 others.

And one of them is connected to their electrical responses.

So it's much more sophisticated.

We discovered that if you created two probes, one that goes into the soil and one that goes to the leaf.

You could measure these electrical impulses, the impedance between the two, and then we could then map those onto notes of music.

Now we thought we were going to be listening to the plants, like kind of a one way conversation.

And all of a sudden we started to realize, oh my goodness, the plant is actually hearing.

This is before plant neurobiology.

So the device is very, very simple in that what it, what it tries to do.

And probably the difference because there's some other devices that exist out there now, is that because we're a community where part of our mission is this reunification with the plant world, this deep connection, the device itself, especially the original ones, were co created with plants.

In other words, the person sat with a plant and was just like, you know, playing around with this algorithm, trying to get it to work and like kind of looking at the plant going, help guide me through this.

Right.

So we really try hard not to impose a human melody.

I mean, there's some limitations, of course.

Just like a guitar has frets that have, you know, certain octaves and certain notes, it has to have certain parameters to a certain, you know, just like you would expect any musical instrument to.

But we try very hard to give maximum liberty.

And that's the reason why especially the bamboo device has a lot of different settings that allow you to then give different spaces to the plant based on what you think the plants like.

Is this plant going to want to play in a chromatic scale or is this plan instead going to want a major scale?

Or is this plant going to want, you know, a Lydian scale, like so that we can then try to give that plant that space to be able to create their own.

And you know, so that gives us a little bit of leeway of like the difference between when I'm a musician playing with other musicians, I might of course modulate my sound or you know, use certain key signatures because we want to play together versus if I'm fiddling at home, I can start doing all kinds of weird things and playing intervals in between and all these other aspects because that gives.

That's my expression.

And so we see the same behavior in plants.

Right?

So let's hear it, please.

And we're right at the end of the interview.

I'm Anthony Wright and I've been your co host today with Adam Dietz.

Thanks for joining the conversation.

We have been talking with our guests, Tigrilla Gardenia.

And how can people contact you, Tigrilla?

So people can contact me pretty easy by going to Igria Gardenia.

All one word.

T I G R I L l a g-a r d e n I a either.com or at Instagram or YouTube or Facebook.

And you can easily find me there.

And what's the name of this song that you're going to play us?

So the song is called Sonic Bliss.

Sonic Bliss was a track that was created during the pandemic time where basically my business partner at the time, Spider Plant, wanted to create a track for healing.

So it is a plant that.

It is a track that has four plant musicians, Spider Plant, Coco, the Coconut, the Yucca and the Kalanchoa who are playing different instruments, and three human Clive Wright, Simone Vitale and Anika Clio.

And so together, each one of us recorded based off of a bass track that Spider Plant played.

And then it was mixed together by a beautiful Krishna Prani who was an amazing, you know, amazing sound engineer who mixed it all for us.

Great.

Well, let's hear it.

Sam.

Ram.

Sa.

My goodness, this is extraordinary.

So we're over time here.

So.