The Connection Cure (with journalist Julia Hotz)

0:03Don't hold anything too tightly. Just wish for it, want it, let it come from the intention of real truth for you and then let it go. For me, our soul is like it's unbound. It's limitless. But we will use words to limit ourselves. When people stop believing that somebody's got your back or Superman's coming, we turn to ourselves. And that's where you become empowered. Courageous participation attracts positive things. I'm Gwyneth Paltrow, and this is the Goop Podcast, where we bring together visionaries, scientists, healers, artists, and seekers. I'm so grateful that I get to interview these extraordinary thought leaders and share their wisdom with you.

0:51And I love listening to the conversations that are led by my co-host and dear friend, Cleo Wade. Cleo is a beautiful poet and author. I deeply admire her and the way she keeps her heart open to the world. Together, we believe that engaging in open-minded, honest, and sometimes difficult conversations has the power to change our lives. All right, over to Cleo. Today's guest is journalist and author Julia Hotz. Her new book is called The Connection Cure, The Prescriptive Power of Movement, Nature, Art, Service, and Belonging, which explores the concept of social prescribing. Julia has spent the last five years reporting on the doctors who are pushing this movement forward and how these social prescriptions like art classes, nature walks, and community service are helping to improve health outcomes.

1:44I loved reading about this through Julia's perspective as an investigative journalist, who she tells us in this conversation was a bit of a skeptic herself at first. Okay, let's get right to our chat. Something I wrote down that you said was instead of just treating symptoms of sickness, social prescriptions reconnect us to our source of wellness. And so I want to talk about, because when I actually saw the title connection cure, I thought this was going to be that relationship book. And so when it introduced me to something that I, I, I guess I under, I knew about in a way, but I hadn't, I've never heard the words, a social prescription before or social prescribing.

2:26And so I want to hear about how you fell into wanting to really investigate the idea of social prescriptions as somebody who does not have a medical background. And I mean, I even laughed about your kind of like, I don't know how to navigate like insurance or this or that. And I was like, same. And I want to hear about how you kind of came into this. I'd love to also know the distinct point where you went from, oh, that's interesting to, I can't stop thinking about this. This is a book because I don't think you can write a thing you're not obsessed with. Amen to all of that. Absolutely. So I'm a healthcare journalist.

3:05I've spent the past five years telling different stories about what's working to reduce pressure on healthcare, what's working to improve health equity. And I found that every single story I wrote sort of tended to have the same theme. Generally, it was about a community connecting the person who is using the healthcare system to something that helps address the root cause of their suffering. So for example, I did a story about how lawyers are actually teaming up with doctors to offer legal prescriptions because they find sometimes that people who are showing up to the doctor with asthma or with stress-related illnesses, there's actually a root cause coming from an unmet financial need, whether it's your home has mold in it or you can't afford your rent this month.

4:03So anyway, there's the nerdy answer that, wow, okay, every story I'm writing kind of has Like a policy prescription. Exactly. Exactly. But then I also was really interested in loneliness as a public health issue. I started doing this in 2018, the year that the UK established a minister of loneliness, because we know it's really harmful for our health. It's health consequences are equivalent to smoking 15 cigarettes a day. So I was curious, okay, what actually works to treat loneliness? I heard about this really interesting thing called social prescribing, which is a practice through which doctors and social workers and other health professionals will literally prescribe their patient some non-medical resource, whether that's cash and food or whether that's a spot in an art class or a hiking group or on a sports team.

5:04So that was like the nerdy, you know, professional answer. This is cool. This has a lot of data to support it. And then I also had been obsessing about this during the pandemic, a time when I was feeling really disconnected from folks. I, you know, was back with my parents, taking care of them. I was going through a breakup. I, you know, am navigating this time in my life when it seems like a lot of people are sort of settling down and moving away and grappling with my own feelings of loneliness and anxiety and sadness and stress. So I became, yes, a person who is obsessed with this both personally and professionally, but also a bit skeptically.

5:49You know, like, are we really at the point where we need social prescriptions, where we need doctors and social workers to refer us to these non-medical resources and activities? And after writing this book, I have a couple of different answers to that question. But I think that as a concept, it is something that I'm so passionate about because I think it helps us understand the problems of health and healthcare a bit differently when we hear about this solution. I'd love to know how you arrived. So, you know, your basic kind of social prescription categories, our nature movement and our service and belonging.

6:29And, you know, it's really so interesting because service, I think, is the thing that Most people have the most difficulty finding. And so, you know, I think that it's really fascinating that service pops up in everyone who talks about what we can do to kind of invest in wellness as a way to deter different ways in which we find ourselves ill. And service is always there. And I think I would say service is culturally the thing we lack the most. I mean, I say that even just from my own group of friends, I could say that they all invest in belonging. Most of my friends are artists and most of my friends, you know, exercise in some way or have some value around moving their body.

7:13They at least know the value of nature. And I don't have friends except my friends who work in politics and look at their kind of job or vocation as an act as service work, which it is. I don't see that, which I thought was really interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Let's definitely talk about service because you're so right. It is an interesting one. And it is like all five of these movement, nature, art, service, belonging. I picked them because all of them have been ingredients that we have turned to since the dawn of time, right? Since like the beginning of civilization, we evolved, right? To move our bodies, to be able to pay attention to nature, to create and share art.

8:02We evolved to do this. And also coming back to something you said earlier about like your sort of inner child, it's no coincidence that kids sort of naturally gravitate to these five things as well. They naturally want to move their bodies. They have so much energy. You know, they are fascinated by nature. They love drawing pictures and telling stories. And yet, as we grow up, particularly as we grow up and we live in this society that is very indoors, is very online, is very disconnected from our communities, we lose sight of these five things. And what I love about social prescribing, I should have led with this, is that it's not a doctor wagging their finger and saying, you should exercise more, or you need to start volunteering.

8:54It's inherently personal because it's about shifting the question from what's the matter with you? Like, tell me about your symptoms to what matters to you. Tell me about what brings you joy. Tell me about the last time you experienced a sense of awe or flow. And so to your point about your friends, like they're going to look different depending on who you are, what you naturally gravitate towards. My book really goes into the science of why some of these five medicines are more effective for certain ailments than others, but really all of them, the same point about walking, like you do any of these things, it's all good for your health because it's reconnecting you to other people and to yourself, right?

9:39And was it scary for you to write a book like this? Because, you know, I think whenever you're creating pathways that are alternative to like kind of clinical message or pharmaceutical led tools for illness or wellness or health. You know, I think that there, it's really easy to attack these things because, you know, I think culturally in general, and I think that our online lives add to this is that we really struggle with nuance. And so we really struggle with kind of this idea that we get to contain multitudes. And so we need 10 things to help us with one thing? Because people are a little like, yeah, how dare you tell me to like, I have anxiety and a walk is going to fix it.

10:21A hundred percent. And I'm, I really try. I mean, yes. To your question. Yes. I was scared. I am still scared of that. Even like having this book listed under the alternative medicine category, you know, like I want to be really clear. I say this in the first part of the book that this is not an aim to like take down modern medicine. This is not aiming to replace the options. This is about adding an option to the menu. And I was really careful to try to pick examples of people for whom social prescription maybe wasn't the only thing they needed. Like there's this story about this woman, Amanda, for whom she's prescribed a spot in a sea swimming course for her severe depression.

11:09When she starts the course, she's on the maximum dose and at the end, she's on the minimum dose. So for her, like it didn't fully quote unquote cure her. I also don't love between you and me and all these listeners. I don't love the word cure, but you know, yeah, like it's not aiming to replace other forms. It's just about having another option on the menu and an option that has historically been very culturally important to us, has a ton of data supporting virtually no side effects of a walk or creating art. So yeah, I was really interested in framing this in that lens as not a replacement, but as a compliment to the other options on the menu.

11:59And it's just this idea that we are allowed to, and you give permission for people to have various ways to deal with what comes up. It is just so helpful to have, what are just some things I can do? And I talk about this a lot in my own work of allowing words to kind of help me out of a hole. And it's not the only thing, but there are certain moments where I remember when, you know, I could name that the thing that I was lacking the ability to love myself in postpartum depression, you know, like, and the minute I like, which is why I called my last book, remember love. Cause I just remember the moment of somebody saying, can you remember love?

12:42And I was like, and the words had just like clicked something in me and it didn't, I didn't stop being depressed, but it did click something as a label. And then it became a mantra that helped me to remind myself to fall into the various weight prescriptions I was following, whether that was movement. And it was a lot of your social prescriptions, actually, you know, whether it was the different ways in which I connected to my spaces of belonging, whether that's in therapy with my friends or with my family, the different walks I went on the ways in which I, you know, connected to nature and art and service and everything else.

13:16And it's helpful to know that there is something just sitting there waiting for you. That could be even it's because sometimes you just need that one tweak out of the rock bottom where you're just like, okay, just one step above. And that actually is the beginning of the calming. Do you know? Yeah. Yeah. Oh, amen. Like you totally get it. Like, yes, I think that's sort of like the sneaky spoiler alert and messaging beneath all of this. Like, yes, moving our body, spending time in nature, creating art. All of that is really good for us, does come with all those empirical benefits. But I call them gateway drugs because what they're really doing is they're helping you shift the perspective on your suffering, right?

14:01There's this researcher I love who I quote in the book, Dr. Ellen Langer, talks a lot about health as we age. She's considered the mother of mindfulness. And mindfulness, kind of like wellness, is another one of those words that I think is very co-optive. But what it really is, is describing exactly the scenario you just described about yourself on the plane or in the throes of postpartum depression. It's being able to understand that what you're going through, it feels awful right now. And it's not going to feel that way forever. And what can you do to try to move you closer to that knowledge that the awfulness you're feeling is not going to feel this way?

14:47And the answer that I've found in my work is often movement, nature, art, service, and belonging. gateway drugs that help us shift our perspective, recognize that our suffering is not permanent, it's not a part of us, and that we're not alone in going through this, that these are reactions to the experience of being a human in 2024.

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16:22There are also really incredible tools that act as destinations. Like, you know, where you should walk towards if you're having a thing. So for example, I have someone very close to me in my life who I feel endures a lot of suffering because they walk towards isolation. The feeling that probably starts out as discomfort or insecurity, and then soon turns into suffering. So, you know, If you know where to go when the immediate, the first feeling of hurt, pain, sadness, discomfort, inconvenience, insecurity, all the feelings that give us and bring emotional elasticity and resilience and all these things to help us with empathy and compassion for ourselves and others, like they are so valuable and they are deeply uncomfortable and they are hard.

17:12And so when the hard thing comes up, knowing someone giving you a destination to walk towards and bring that hard thing with you is so incredibly valuable because most of us are walking around with the hard thing happening and being like, A, the hard thing feels so big. I think it is me. And then even if I can get enough distance to say, I'm actually holding a hard thing, I'm not the hard thing. Now, what do I do with it or where do I bring it? And that's why I also love the way in which your book flows, because it really acts as like, well, here's where you can bring it. And perhaps it could turn into something else, as Audre Lorde would say, that all of those hard things do do.

17:53You know, pain doesn't stay pain. It turns into something else. Right, right. And so I, that I so connected with that in your book, because I was like, gosh, not just for the person who's like, okay, like, how can I be mindful in this moment, but someone who just actually needs clear direction to say, all right, like you are deeply disappointed by this thing that happened at work, you know, you didn't get the promotion, you're feeling like you're not enough, you're feeling like this, you're feeling like that. okay feel those things take those feelings here like this is your processing layer for that yeah that is helpful do you know it has never been easier for us when we are dealing with a hard thing to do what your friend does and sort of like keep it in right and to isolate and to ruminate and we're hardwired to think that okay the more we ruminate and think about this hard thing the closer we'll get to like solving it.

18:53But sometimes they have no resolution in our heads. Sometimes what they really need is an environment shift. And I mean, the last part of the book goes into my quote unquote hard things. I try to be really, you know, have a lot of disclaimers at the beginning of that saying, listen, what I'm dealing with is nowhere near comparable to the throes of the depths of depression or a clinical anxiety disorder or chronic pain. But all of us deal with some of those symptoms sometimes. On the spectrum, yeah. And what can we do? We don't have to just sit with it and ruminate on it and isolate. When we're feeling stuck, moving our bodies can help.

19:39When we're feeling stressed and distracted and overwhelmed, paying attention to And nature, which is literally designed to capture our attention and calm us down, can help us feel better. When we're feeling anxious and like we are so worried about something and like we're never going to get out of that worry state, immersing ourselves in art, ideally art in which other people have gone through that very hard thing, can bring us comfort, right? So it's finding ways to, to your point, not sit with that, do something with it, get out of your head and into your community and with other people and relying on these five ingredients that have carried us, you know, for as long as we've been a species.

20:31I want to go into the five with you for a minute. And I want to start with nature because I did bring up forest bathing earlier. here. So I would love to know about, you know, I'd love to hear a little bit of, you know, your data research on and, and, and helping us understand like, what is forest bathing? I think most of a group person would know how cold plunging manages stress and reduces anxiety, or maybe they wouldn't, because I will also say that sometimes things become really trendy and you're not really sure why you're doing it. And they're just like, well, it's, it's longevity. So I cold plunge.

21:05Do you know why you want a cold plunge? Like, do you know what I mean? Like, Instead of like you, you heard it was a good idea. A hundred percent. Same here. Like you could probably see it in this shot. I bought one of those like LED masks probably because I like heard about it on, you know, Goop or like my feed and people are like, so what does that do for you? And I'm like, crickets. I have no idea. I just think it's good. So yes, let's unpack forest bathing before everybody hears that and is like thinking, oh my gosh, I need to like take off my clothes and go bathe in the forest. That's not what it is.

21:42It actually is a really cool origin story. So forest bathing is the English translation. It actually comes from a Japanese custom called Shinrin-yoku. And this custom began 50 years ago in the 1970s and 80s when Japan was dealing with this massive epidemic of overwork. People working up to 80 hours a week was the norm. And not only is that like just, oh, okay, that's a bummer, but it was actually having a huge effect on the public health of people. People were dying of heart attacks. People were increasing reports of stress, So much so that a new Japanese term emerged to describe this phenomenon, karoshi, meaning death by overwork.

22:37So there's all these horrible stories about people who are literally just working themselves to death physically or psychologically. And the government said, we have to do something about this. It seems like all these laws we're trying to pass about limiting working hours aren't working. I think what we need to do is give people an alternative and invest in this campaign to bring people out and back to the forests. Because at that time, you know, Japan, a lot of people were working in the cities, the booming tech industry. This was a campaign to send people back out into the country and to spend some time in nature.

23:17So it sounded great, right? Like, sure, that makes sense. Let's go to the forest. But it wasn't until the 90s that a researcher, one of them being Dr. Ching Lee, said, let's actually investigate the science behind this. Is this actually working to reduce stress? and he was the one who helped really understand how forest bathing, which is the practice through which you engage very mindfully in the forest with all five senses, sight, smell, hearing, your clothes stay on and you measure like your health before and after. And so Dr. Ching Lee did that. He took people's blood samples, saliva, urine, and he measured for the presence of all all these different biomarkers.

24:05And sure enough, he found that people after their forest bath produced less cortisol, they were less stressed. They increased their production of what are called natural killer cells, which help to fight cancer and have all these immunity properties. People lowered their blood pressure. People of course had self-reports of feeling, you know, more calm, less anxious. I mean, so many different scientific effects that it's hard to even summarize them all now. But long story short, this became a really empirically supported practice. Japan now has, you know, dozens of different forest therapy bases around the country and it's spread all over the world too.

24:50Now here I am in New York, I could go look up a local Shinrin-yoku guide, I probably would have to pay some money and have them take me into a guided Shinrin-yoku experience of just really being called to go in the forest, but pay attention to everything around me. Yeah. So that's a bit about forest bathing, but it's one slice of data within which we know that nature is really, really powerful for our health, particularly around stress, any sort of ailment related to stress or related to attention. There's a lot of data suggesting that nature is extremely powerful for ADHD. That is a great social prescription for those sorts of issues.

25:38What's really interesting about that is I feel like the double kind of whammy that's cool is nature and movement together. And I do think that part of forest bathing, I think part of the ritual around that is stillness also, but I do what I call like a walk for noticing at once a day where I just walk and noticed what's going on. So I noticed that, you know, how the flowers have changed or if a leaf is here, it really helps to, there's certain things where I can, you know, in movement, push my body in order to reset. I had a friend staying with me after her father passed and I was like, come on, we're going to do this really hard, long walk and it's mostly uphill.

26:15We're going to do it really slowly and we're not going to run, but we're going to just like keep going. And it's going to be, you know, we're going to do like a seven mile walk right now. Wow. A long time. And we were both saying, I was like, you just have to like, it re it just like resets yourselves. And I was like, it's like, it's just going to change your brain. Like, it's not going to change your grief, but it'll change your brain today. And it will be a reset. And it does. And I swear every time, and I don't do that walk often because it's so hard. But when we come out, you really do feel like you're like, wow, I, that, like that did something to me, which is also very different than my, you know, kind of walk, walks for all noticing, because that is in a way helping to, you know, settle what's there.

27:00And another one kind of helps to remove what's there. Absolutely. If you're just kind of throwing it up, knowing it's going to fall back on you later and sink back in. That is so aligned with the science, what you've described there. You taking your friend who just experienced a loss, maybe showing signs of grief or even depression, so much data supporting that movement is so medicinal for that. Because what we do when we move, especially when it is a bit physically challenging is we're producing endorphins, right? Which are associated with a boost in mood. We're stimulating our dopamine pathways, which are rewarding us for doing something hard.

27:45All of the sort of chemicals that get released when we move our bodies in a vigorous way are the same chemicals often that get released when we take an antidepressant, for example. and the same is also true of your noticing walks i love that i'm gonna start using that which by the way would be so fun to maybe do with your your girls when they get a bit older like kids are so freaking good at just noticing things especially adults if we have our phones are like never paying attention to we like pretty much once a day we'll be like let's go look at stuff in the yard i love that but you know because it's and and they like it because they're just like what's that What's, you know, where we'll look at something really, really closely and for a really long time, and we'll kind of wonder about things together.

28:33I love that. One of my favorite, like, little tidbits from the chapter on nature that relates to this is about the way it invites a sense of what's called soft fascination. Like, think about the average day of a person in the 21st century. We have a gazillion things we have to pay attention to, right? We have our emails, we have our text messages that are pinging, we have, you know, work calls and obligations, all this so much of what requires what's called directed attention. But researchers have found that one of the only things that can capture our attention and not leave us feeling depleted because of its properties of what they call soft fascination is nature.

29:21And this comes down to a very primal evolutionary rooted tendency to pay attention to nature because it was good for our survival, like if we knew our environment. And it's just amazing to me that today, you know, we might think at least I have certainly thought when I have a million things to do, like there's no way I have time to go to my park right now and just spend some time looking at all the cool shit in the trees and the bushes. But like actually doing that is an investment in your attention. And you'll come back to your desk after you do that, feeling more restored, feeling more focused, feeling like you can concentrate better.