In E06 we muse over what love is, like Biophilia (love of nature), about which I talk to leading sustainable architect and interior designer, Oliver Heath, after digging into some of the layers that have built on beliefs about love over the centuries

Before delving into all the things that love might be & talking to Oliver Heath, there’s a new class on the Balance Garden online yoga schedule I tell you about - Yoga Nidra, which you can read more about here & sign up here for a free taster on Tues 2nd March!

The rest of part 1 is spent looking at where the ideas behind Valentines Day & romantic love came from, & asking what they might mean in this day and age. After learning about the myths & rituals of the Ancient Pagan festival of Lupercalia, which preceded Valentine’s Day on February 15th, there’s some updates in the Middle Ages that I explore in more depth, along with the hormones that are hard at work behind the scenes to keep us falling, & staying in love, in another blog I wrote about what I call ‘Post-Romantic Love’.

In part 2, I talk to leading sustainable architect & expert biophilic designer, Oliver Heath. ‘Biophilia’ is a relatively new word for the love of nature, defined as the ‘inborn affinity human beings have for other forms of life’. The term was the title of a work by the biologist, Edward O. Wilson in 1984, which proposed that the tendency of humans to focus on and to affiliate with nature and other life-forms has, in part, a genetic basis. Find out more about how Oliver works with biophilia with his company, Oliver Heath Design & look out for their new book, Design a Healthy Home, coming out later this year.

In part 3, I read an excerpt from the wonderful blog by Mark Sparrow, ‘Get to Know your Kith’, which includes a quote from the geologian, Thomas Berry (below), & the poem, ‘Snowdrop’, by Alice Oswald. Closing the podcast in part 4 with some reflections on love during lockdown, I read from a blog I wrote for Balance Garden that explores whether lockdown would open up Valentine’s Day for everyone.

“The greatest of human discoveries in the future will be the discovery of human intimacy with all those other modes of being that live with us on this planet”

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Podcast soundtrack

‘Yes Mic’ from the Manasseh Meets Praise LP, out on Roots Garden Records / video produced by Tiger Lily Productions and Badj Whipple

Credits

• Writer & editor: Tiger Lily Raphael

• Producers: Tiger Lily Raphael & Jasmine Pradhan

• Special guests: Oliver Heath & Mark Sparrow