In the Company of the Power of Trees: Christopher and Lindsay Branham in Conversation.

See PS on my chosen song for my funeral

In a time of ecological crisis and wisespread uncertainty, Dharma teacher Christopher Titmuss and activist/writer Lindsay Branham explore healing, grief and the natural support of trees. Their conversation ranges from Buddhist forests in Thailand to the mountains of Colorado, from neuroscience to deep ecology, and from personal loss to the possibility of renewed kinship with the more-than-human world. Lindsay has published a book this year (2026) on trees.

Below is a transcription, edited and adapted from our video meeting in May 2026. Lindsay spoke from her home in Los Angeles.

CT: We live in a strange, weird time. Every day, through Zoom calls, phone calls, emails and texts, I encounter so much personal and collective confusion in people’s hearts and minds. Bless them. In this country and around the world, things seem to be dissolving quickly, and those of us connected through international networks see just how difficult life has become for many people. There is so much uncertainty, so much pain. Would you like to begin by talking about your recently published book, Heartwood. Can I ask you some questions?

LB: I’d love to hear. First, I want to say what a beautiful opportunity this is. Given your long history with and deep knowing of the Heart Sutra, I imagine you appreciate how few people actually know its deeper dimensions. I love that Heartwood carries a double meaning: the living centre of a tree, but also a reaching back into ancient wisdom. I’m happy to speak about that.

CT: Why did you write the book?

LB: About six years ago, I became chronically ill. A cluster of autoimmune symptoms started appearing at the beginning of Covid. I didn’t have Covid itself, but the timing was uncanny. Up until then I’d spent nearly two decades as a war reporter and documentary filmmaker, working primarily in the Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of Congo with communities affected by conflict.

It’s mysterious why the body chooses a particular moment to express what it has been carrying, but becoming ill sent me on a profound healing journey and into a deep kinship with trees and the natural world. Had I not become sick, I don’t think I would have been as open or receptive to the more-than-human world. I came to it from confusion and pain. I began taking long walks near my parents’ home in the Roaring Fork Valley of Colorado, where they had moved to the edge of a national forest. Gradually, these encounters started happening between me and the landscape.

At the same time, I was enrolled in a Buddhist eco-chaplaincy programme at the Sati Centre for Buddhist Studies in Santa Cruz. We explored ecological grief, climate collapse, and how to listen to nature. All of those strands came together. I became convinced that nature is not only healing but also holds profound wisdom and may be one of the pathways out of the crises we face.

CT: What strikes me in what you’ve said is that sometimes life is unfolding according to its own rhythms, and then comes a great interruption – illness, loss, change, insight. Suddenly, consciousness shifts. We begin to look, reflect, meditate and explore in a new way. It’s not easy when that interruption comes through illness, but it can set something fresh in motion. I’m curious: how did you move from that early Covid period into this intimate relationship with trees?

LB: Part of it feels serendipitous. I happened to be in a remarkable ecology, but I also believe that wherever we are, there is an opportunity for deep listening and attunement. I was in the high Rockies of Colorado: 14,000-foot towering peaks, ancient mountain beings carved by glaciers, valleys filled with rivers of melted ice and these extraordinary forests. One of the most remarkable communities there is the Aspen forest. Aspens are genetically identical –an entire forest can be one living organism. Being among them became a profound teaching in interconnection and inter-being. It showed me what it means to belong to an entangled, living world.

CT: In Africa, was your work primarily with people, or did nature play a role?

LB: Mostly with people. I worked with children who had been abducted by rebel groups and were struggling to reintegrate into their communities. They faced stigma and profound mental health challenges. I created art-based mental health and public health programmes to support healing and reduce stigma. The final project I worked on before Covid involved the elephant population in northern DRC. That began opening me towards the natural world.

CT: Elephants and trees belong together.

LB: They do. The forests in that part of Africa are extraordinary – truly the lungs of the planet. But I still wasn’t fully awake to them. I could appreciate them intellectually, but I didn’t yet have this feeling-tone or heart-opening.

Lindsay Branham. Rooted with trees

CT: So something in the mountains, together with your illness, awakened another dimension?

LB: Yes. The result was profound. Trees changed my life. They brought me into a deep kinship with the more than the human world. Trees taught me how to listen differently. That relationship awakened compassion and a fierce desire to protect what is vulnerable.

CT: Beautiful. As you know, the Buddhist tradition has had a love affair with trees for more than 2,500 years. The Buddha was born under a tree, awakened under a tree and died beneath a tree. Forest monasteries remain central to the Thai Buddhist tradition. In the monastery (Wat Chai Na, Nakornsridhammaraj, Thailand) where I spent three years, insight meditation (vipassana), monks and nuns practised outdoors among the trees. There is something deeply intimate between humans and trees.

I never met my biological father. My surname, Titmuss, came from my stepfather. My mother gave me a third name – Wood – because that was the surname of my biological father. My passport reads: Christopher George Wood Titmuss.

LB: Ah, talking to a tree. How beautiful. I know you spent long periods meditating in Thailand.

CT: I did. In the monastery in southern Thailand, we began at four in the morning and continued until ten at night. Much of the practice took place outdoors – sitting, walking standing and reclining among the trees. My love for trees deepened there. Decades later, monks ordained the trees at the edge of the forests when logging threatened the rainforest. The Buddhists refused to cut down the trees.

LB: Ordained them?

CT: Yes. Thailand is a deeply Buddhist country. Ordination is the ceremony by which a person becomes a monk. The monks adapted that ceremony for trees. They wrapped the trunks of the trees in saffron robes and formally ordained them. When loggers arrived and saw rows of ordained trees, they hesitated to use the electrical saws. To cut an ordained tree down would generate unwholesome karma for the loggers… The monks adopted an effective form of environmental protection.

LB: I love that. I’ve never heard of ordaining trees as environmental protest.

CT: Buddhism can be wonderfully eccentric. That’s one of the reasons I’m fond of it. Let me come back to the book. What were the main strands you were drawing upon for the book? What was your intention in writing it?

LB: Several strands came together. One was deep ecology, particularly the work of Joanna Macy.

CT: Ah, the Queen Bee.

LB: Absolutely. She joined our eco-chaplaincy programme on Zoom a few years ago, I’ll never forget the radiance of her spirit. She embodies right seeing, right action and a buoyant joy in a way that leaves a lasting impression. Another strand came from my PhD at Cambridge, where I studied something called interoceptive awareness.

CT: My God. What does that mean?

LB: It’s something you already know, even if the term is unfamiliar. We have our five senses, and then proprioception – our awareness of where we are in space. Interoception is our ability to sense what’s happening inside our bodies: heartbeat, temperature, tension, tingling, breath, even subtle sensations in the digestive system. Researchers have found that interoception relates to emotional regulation, emotional literacy and our sense of self. My question was whether it also shapes how connected we feel to the natural world. Could our relationship with nature arise through sensation?

CT: Who was doing this research?

LB: Neuroscientists and neuropsychologists, particularly Sarah Garfinkel and Hugo Critchley. Their early studies looked at whether helping autistic young people become more aware of bodily signals could improve emotional literacy. One of their studies taught participants to feel their heartbeat more accurately, and their emotional awareness improved without any direct teaching of emotional skills. I found that fascinating. Here was a scientific language for something contemplative traditions have understood for centuries.

CT: Meditation teachers would say exactly the same. Much of meditation is learning to attune to subtle bodily awareness. Sometimes Western culture needs people like you who can translate science into ordinary language. I left school at fifteen. We need bridges. Have you attempted that ‘translation’ in the book?

LB: Very much so. Each chapter includes both a body practice and a tree practice. The exercises cultivate sensory awareness while inviting readers into relationship with trees. I also wanted the book to be lyrical and story-driven. Science alone can become disembodied. This kind of wisdom has to be felt.

CT: Precisely. One of the problems in Western culture is that specialist language – whether scientific, legal or medical – creates distance from the rest of society. People begin to think, “I don’t understand this. I’m not capable of understanding these technical concepts.” We need translators. Could you give an example of some of the practices?

LB: Certainly. There’s the body scan, which I know you teach. There are also practices around consent and relationship: an inner yes and inner no practice, helping people sense how yes and no feel in the body. There is a practice of seeking permission from a tree before entering into a relationship.

One of my PhD participants describes herself as a somatic abolitionist. She studies how oppression and domination become embodied – how they live in our nervous systems and influence behaviour. Learning to recognise our genuine yeses and no’s becomes part of living ethically. So we ask: What does yes feel like? Where do we experience openness and expansion? And equally: What does constriction feel like? What does ‘no’ feel like?

These become ways of relating not only to people but also to the more-than-human world. I call this the language of sensation. The Earth is always speaking: in birdsong, wind, leaves rustling, the flutter of butterfly wings. We hear these things outwardly, but we also sense them inwardly. When I listen to a tree, I’m not hearing words. I’m noticing what happens inside my body in response.

CT: That reminds me of something that happened recently. We have a cat at home called Maggie Meow. One day she came into my office upstairs meowing loudly insisting I follow her downstairs into the conservatory. She stood over a still butterfly on the floor with folded wings. Gently, I picked the butterfly up and carried it outside. At first it seemed the wings were glued shut. I kept blowing gently on the wings. Slowly, the wings opened, and these magnificent colours appeared. After three or four minutes, the butterfly opened its wings flew upwards and away. What moved me that our cat with its tiger stripes on its coat, a small predator with all its hunting instincts, had brought this fragile creature into the house. Predator and prey. Maggie carried the butterfly in her mouth knowing its vulnerability for me to see. Extraordinary.

Coming back to trees and human intimacy. I recalled our annual 10-day walking pilgrimages in the low foothills of the Pyrenees. I learnt a tree practice from an eco-activist. I invited people to stand close to a tree in the forest and engage all five senses. Look carefully with the eyes. Listen outwardly to the movements of the tree and inwardly. Smell the bark. Taste it lightly. Touch it. Then hug the tree. Feel its presence, its roots, its relationship with the rest of the forest and earth. People can begin to sense a connection in a completely new way to trees, natural world and the Earth.

LB: That’s interoception without using the word. And then you can ask: What does the tree want to tell you? People often respond with words like love, harmony, patience, belonging, or the cycles of life. It’s remarkable how much wisdom emerges. There’s no such thing as an isolated tree. Every tree belongs to a forest of trees. Trees exist in relationship – through roots, fungal networks, exchanges of nutrients and chemical signals. The more we learn scientifically, the more we realise how relational life is. The old story of separateness simply doesn’t hold up.

CT: In the monastery, trees, birds and snakes were constant subjects of conversation. I remember reflecting that trees are always giving. This desk is wood. The floor is made of wood. The furniture is made of wood. Trees provide homes for birds and insects, shade on hot days for people and creatures, materials for shelter and, most fundamentally, oxygen. Trees give continuously. That’s why books, which are made from trees, like your book, are important. They invite people into practice, into gratitude and into relationship with the natural world..

LB: There’s another beautiful fact. Humans and trees share more than fifty percent of our DNA. Every breath we take is made possible by trees. We’re constantly welcoming them into our bodies. There is no human life without them. And yet climate change is threatening their capacity to store carbon. Some studies now suggest that trees have become stressed and forests could become carbon emitters rather than carbon sinks. That possibility feels like an alarm bell. We need to change our relationship with the natural world – not out of guilt, but out of love and mutual care.

CT: I’m seeing movements in this direction. Here in Devon, there are rewilding projects everywhere. Farmers are returning land to nature. I’ve seen similar initiatives in Bavaria, Germany. More flowers, more biodiversity, more cooperation. I’m reminded too of old roads. Leave concrete alone for long enough and the Earth cracks it open. Nature reclaims itself. At our monastery, there was a tiny temple abandoned for more than centuries. It was the size of a small, terraced house. A huge tree had grown straight through the temple. Its trunk burst through the roof. Its branches spread everywhere. Nature refuses to disappear. Nature patiently reminding us that life has the power to flourish.

LB: Slowly, perhaps, but persistently. I love the idea of tree time. Trees live according to rhythms vastly longer than ours. They remind us to slow down. Life returns when given the chance. The Earth’s intelligence is extraordinary. If we step back a little, nature often knows exactly what to do. There’s one more thing I’d add. There’s so much grief in the world right now.

Trees can become companions in grief. There was one tree I found during a particularly difficult period. It had been felled years earlier and lay across the landscape. Rain had washed away any identifying features. I didn’t even know what species it was. I used to drape myself over them, cry with the tree, rest with them. That tree carried me through some of my deepest heartbreaks. It taught me that intimacy doesn’t have to come solely from human beings. Nature can hold us too, especially when our hearts are breaking for the Earth itself.

CT: I often tell people: outdoors, outdoors, outdoors. One of our great challenges is information overload. If we consume too much news, too much crisis, too much catastrophe, we become overwhelmed. People need places to breathe – practices, communities, silence. Otherwise, the spirit becomes exhausted. Trees are rooted in the Earth. There’s so much to learn from them. They embody patience, generosity and resilience.

Sometimes people say to me, “I really want to be in a relationship.”

I say: “You’re already in a relationship. Why not cultivate a relationship with a tree? Why restrict intimacy to human beings?”

LB: Hug them. Kiss them. Western culture has taught us that humans are separate from everything else, that we stand above nature and should dominate it. It’s simply untrue. Religion and science have both, at times, reinforced that illusion. The world is alive, relational and mysterious. Which is why we need to make room for mystery and magic. Nature is endlessly surprising – improvising, creating, dancing and singing. We can participate. That, to me, is one of the great gifts of paying attention. We discover that we belong.

CT: Yes. Here we are. It’s been an absolute pleasure speaking with you,

LB: Thank you so much, Christopher – for your generosity and for the impact you’ve had on my life, even from a single retreat. I carry enormous gratitude for you and your work.

CT: Thank you, Lindsay. It’s been delightful speaking with you.

Heartwood:

The Wisdom and Healing Kinship of Trees

336 pages

Lindsay Branham

ISBN 9781538778562

March 2026

Lindsay Branham, PhD, is an environmental psychologist, Emmy-nominated film director and eco-doula exploring embodied and erotic ecology. She makes documentaries to improve human and ecological crises in Africa, Myanmar, India and Haiti. Her teachers include Roshi Joan Halifax and Thich Nhat Hanh. She is the founder of The Heartwood Institute, dedicated to restoring kinship between humans and nature.

She holds a PhD in Psychology from the University of Cambridge and has been featured by the New York Times, BBC, CNN, and National Geographic. She lives in Los Angeles, California and Colorado. For more, visit heartwood.institute.

PS. Solo artist from Illinois, USA, singer Ryan O’Neal of Sleeping at Last provided an original score for some of Lindsay’s earliest films. Christopher shared Ryan’s song Saturn (recorded 2014) with its precious spiritual depth and gave a commentary on the song (audio and transcription in Substack newsletter, 6 March 2024) during a retreat in the Waldhaus Retreat Zentrum near Koblenz, Germany. Attending the retreat, Lindsay told me she was delighted and stunned. She kindly arranged to introduce me to Ryan. Two years ago, I asked Nshorna to play this song at my funeral. I attended one of Ryan’s concerts in Bristol in May 2024. Song begins with a gentle and heavenly cello and after two minutes the lyrics emerge out of the universe.

Saturn by Sleeping at Last. First Verse

“You taught me the courage of stars before you left

How light carries on endlessly even after death

With shortness of breath you explained the infinite

How rare and beautiful it is to even exist.... “

YouTube link

Love

Christopher