In our latest Rivers meetup, we explored how we might create conditions that allow us to move through creative risk and uncertainty while remaining connected to ourselves.

Our conversation centered around four areas: grounding, agency, accommodations, and reaching.

We began by noticing how uncertainty and vulnerability show up in the body and recognizing that grounding looks different for each of us. Breathing, movement, physical grounding, or simply noticing what is happening can help—but what feels regulating for one person may not for another.

We then considered agency: where we have choices in our creative lives, even when circumstances or expectations make those choices difficult. This led to conversations about sharing our work, navigating social media, approaching intimidating opportunities, and setting our own parameters around participation.

We also explored the role of accommodations—asking for what we need in order to participate more fully rather than assuming we must adapt ourselves to every situation. Sometimes a small request, a boundary, or a change in how we engage can make something previously difficult feel possible.

Throughout the conversation, we returned to the idea that the goal isn’t to eliminate discomfort or uncertainty. Instead, we can become more aware of our responses, recognize where we have choice, ask for what we need, and decide for ourselves when and how we are ready to reach beyond what feels familiar.

A PDF from our meetup can be found on our community assets page at the link below.

https://www.karenolsonphotography.com/community-assets

Password: riversspeak

Next month Rivers is moving from the gathering where I provide the subject → everyone responding

To everyone bringing something → the group becoming a creative resource for one another.

This shift connects with our exploration of agency: where participants choose what to reveal and what kind of response they want.

October Rivers Meetup

Imagine sitting in a café in Paris with a small group of fellow artists.

Someone begins talking about their latest fascination—photographing the streets at night. Another shares a sculptural work that is still taking shape and wonders aloud where it might go next. Someone else has just completed a body of work and is curious about what others see and feel when they encounter it.

There is no formal presentation. Just artists gathering around a table, sharing what is alive in their creative lives right now.

That is the spirit I would like to bring to our October Rivers Meetup.

I invite you to bring something you have been thinking about, making, questioning, or exploring. It might be a work in progress, a recently completed piece, a new idea, an unexpected inspiration, or simply a question that has been following you around.

You are welcome to share photographs or a PDF, show us something from your studio, or simply talk about what has your attention.

Plan to spend about five minutes introducing us to what you have brought. Then open the conversation in whatever way would be most useful to you.

You might ask for thoughtful critique, invite impressions or responses, pose a particular question, or simply see where the conversation leads. You decide what you share, and you decide what kind of response you would like from us.

Each person will have roughly ten minutes to hold the floor—enough time to share, listen, ask questions, and engage in conversation.

Think of it less as presenting your work and more as pulling up a chair at the table. Come with whatever is alive in your creative world right now.

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I’m excited to share my latest dye trials with you. For these experiments, I got pretty geeky and recorded the results meticulously.

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Fear in creative work

Fear shows up pretty often in creative work. The ideas flow freely, the desire to make is a fire, but the fear of sharing our work can stop us in our tracks before we even get halfway through executing the project.

But really, we do want to share our work. Why is it so hard?

It isn’t about showing off

I am willing to bet it is not about ego.

My guess is, that fear of judgment is not at the core of the fear of being seen for many creatives. Wherever the notion came from that artists make work because they need or want validation, I doubt it was an artist who said it. But the idea stuck, and it is often at the core of artists not wanting to “show off.”

Showing up is very different from showing off. Making art and wanting it witnessed is not egotistical.

We humans have made objects, images, marks, and music for thousands of years. Their purposes range from social connection and meaning-making to problem-solving and aesthetic pleasure. Art is relational. It often assumes that another person will eventually encounter it. Wanting to communicate is quite different from wanting approval.

Participation anxiety

“I know how to make the work. I want my work to enter the world, but I am uncertain about what will be required of me once it does. I don’t know how to inhabit the relationships the work might create.”

Could this be true? No doubt it is on some level.

Visibility is the beginning of exchange.

You put an image on the wall or on your website, and the work is now visible. But once someone responds, asks a question, buys something, or wants to know more, a relationship has begun. Suddenly, the artist isn’t simply making and presenting an object. They have to participate, engage, reciprocate.

It might not be stage fright, impostor syndrome, fear of criticism, or fear of failure.

It might be fear of engagement. Are we unsure about how to talk to others about the work? Unsure about the relationships that might begin with an audience or an individual?

What do I say when someone asks about my work? What do they expect from me? How do I explain something I understand intuitively? What if they want a relationship with me as the maker? How do I enter an art community? How do I follow up?

That string of thoughts can make us all squirm.

Perhaps what we fear is not visibility itself, but what visibility asks of us next. Is it fear of being seen, or is it uncertainty—not knowing how to inhabit this new territory?

If fear of judgment were the issue, conventional language might suffice: “Put yourself out there. Don’t worry about what people think.” But if the anxiety comes from not knowing what happens next, courage isn’t really what we need.

We may need orientation, practice, and experience.

As makers, we are comfortable. We have a relationship with materials, ideas, and processes. As artists in the public world, perhaps not so much.

We spend years learning how to become artists and makers, but very little time learning how to become participants.

Crafting conditions to feel safe

Attachment theory suggests that a secure base can help us feel safe enough to explore and form new connections.

A secure base gives us a sense of felt safety—an environment that is predictable, supportive, and non-threatening.

That secure base could be a studio, a creative community, financial stability, a mentor, or simply the confidence that rejection will not sever our relationship with our art.

Generally, we don’t feel threatened in a small group of trusted friends. We can be ourselves—relaxed and animated, ready to share our perspective or the latest thing we have become passionate about.

If you have been able to develop within a small art community, fabulous! No doubt you value that engagement highly.

In an online world, however, it is easy to remain on the receiving end. You might admire and follow others, learn from them, and enjoy the fact that they share their process, while choosing not to become visible yourself.

Of course, that is a decision each of us is free to make, and there are many reasons someone might choose to remain less visible, including health, caregiving responsibilities, grief, or simply a need for privacy. But if what we actually desire is greater participation, remaining only on the receiving end can eventually become limiting. The conversation remains one-sided.

For a creative community to function well, it needs to provide enough psychological safety for us to take risks and admit mistakes. It needs to be reliably available and responsive rather than punitive. It should encourage exploration and ambitious goal-pursuit and provide a safe haven during setbacks.

On some level, perhaps we can also provide some of this for ourselves. Can we develop a more self-compassionate inner dialogue that allows us to experiment, fail, and try again?

And perhaps community doesn’t have to begin with a group.

Perhaps we can find one person.

Think about expanding your reach in the same way you think about expanding your creative knowledge. Use the same techniques for learning and growing. Be intentional about it.

We each have a window of tolerance at any given moment—a range within which we can remain present and engaged without becoming overwhelmed. We can gently explore the edges of that window without pushing ourselves so far that we shut down or retreat.

Ask yourself: *What small thing can I do right now to expand my reach or connection?*

Find that window. Peek through. Then, when you’re ready, climb through.

What if it’s not a matter of courage, but competence?

With each small step and each successful encounter, we are essentially training ourselves to trust that we will know what to do when the moment arrives.

Begin with low-stakes encounters and work your way outward. A feeling of safety can gradually begin to come from within the interaction rather than requiring the interaction to feel completely safe beforehand. Stay with each step until you begin to develop a level of competence.

Perhaps we don’t simply need courage to become visible.
We need experiences of being received.

Steps toward competence

**1. Be with your work.**

Ask yourself: Why do I make what I make? What do my material choices say about what matters to me? What am I exploring?

Write about it. Speak it out loud. Record yourself talking—first audio, then video. Become familiar with hearing yourself put words around what you make.

**2. Find a trusted witness.**

Show one person the work and simply notice what happens. What do they ask? Where do you become animated? Where do you struggle to find words? What might you want to clarify about your process or reasons for making the work?

**3. Practice conversation.**

Practice answering a few common questions.

Learn how to describe a piece without explaining it away. Learn how to recognize genuine curiosity and continue a conversation. Practice receiving praise without deflecting it. Learn how to end a conversation gracefully.

**4. Practice reciprocity.**

Learn to turn presentation into conversation.

“What did you notice first?”
“I’m curious what made you ask that.”

And if you’re speaking with a fellow artist:

“Tell me about your work.”

You are no longer performing for an audience. You are participating in an exchange.

**5. Meet unfamiliar people.**

Put yourself in situations where you might meet new acquaintances: an open studio, a gallery opening, an art walk, a workshop, or an artist talk. You don’t have to work the room. One meaningful conversation is enough.

These are not simply acts of courage. They are skills. And skills become more familiar through practice. Once we feel more comfortable navigating these situations, we can begin to imagine ourselves participating in a wider professional context.

Competence creates agency, and agency contributes to felt safety.

Of course, each of these steps requires self-determination.

Perhaps what we are really building is a sense that we have agency in how we enter into relationship with the world around our work.

We can choose when and how to share, how much to explain, which conversations to enter, and when to step away. We can learn the skills that make encounters less unfamiliar without changing who we are in order to participate.

Over time, safety may come not from knowing how others will respond, but from trusting that we can remain ourselves whatever the response.

Perhaps that is what makes creative risk possible: not the absence of fear, but enough trust in ourselves to enter the conversation.

Join Me for Our Next Creative Conversation

We will consider the following topic –

A Safe Place to Begin: Creating the Conditions to Make, Risk, and Share

Creative work asks something vulnerable of us. We follow an idea without knowing where it will lead, make choices without certainty, and eventually consider allowing what we have made to be seen. At each of these thresholds, fear and resistance can quietly enter the process.

What if, instead of asking ourselves to be more courageous, disciplined, or confident, we became curious about the conditions that make creative risk possible?

In this intimate Zoom conversation, we’ll explore the relationship between safety and creativity—what helps us feel free to experiment, what happens when we move beyond what is familiar, and why sharing our work can sometimes feel more difficult than making it. Together, we’ll consider how we might create environments, relationships, and inner practices that offer enough safety to take the next creative step.

This is not about eliminating fear. It is about finding enough ground beneath us to make, risk, and share.

I would love to have you join us!

September 24, 2026 at 1 pm EST.

Rivers Speak in Voltage meetups are available for paid subscribers.
Community members can visit the chat to access the link to register.

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The Sculptural Book - 2027 Italy Workshop

In our last live meetup, we explored how to recognize “golden threads” and learn to trust the patterns already emerging in our creative lives. Through conversation and reflection, we considered how c…

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Is belonging something we create, or something we recognize?

When we encounter a place that feels familiar before we consciously know it, what does it mean?

I suspect that even several hours spent around a fire—in thoughtful conversation with curious minds—wouldn’t fully solve the mystery. Scientific theory, family history, lived experience, and imagination all have something to offer. Perhaps they are not competing explanations at all, but different ways of approaching the same experience.

When I arrived in Collemacchia for my artist residency at The Museum of Loss and Renewal, I felt an immediate sense of belonging. It was as though my soul had been longing for a place it had never consciously known.

The landscape was lush and vibrant, carrying a soft sweetness on the breeze that seemed to soothe me with every passing wind. Cultivated orchards blended effortlessly with wild woodland, creating a feeling of abundance and quiet security. Fig trees appeared around nearly every corner, inviting thoughts of returning a month later when their fruit would be fully ripe. Blackberry brambles threaded themselves through the hillsides. It felt like a landscape capable of nourishing not only people, but every living thing around it.

The plants and trees were gently rewilding the village—not with force or conquest, but through quiet partnership. Nature and human habitation seemed less like opposing forces and more like old companions learning once again to live together.

During the weeks I spent there, I experienced an unusual sense of safety and ease. Surprisingly, the architecture contributed to this feeling as much as the landscape. Even the long-abandoned stone houses carried a sense of care and shelter, as though they continued to hold the stories of those who had lived within them.

Only later did I begin to realize that this feeling wasn’t unique to Italy. Earlier this year I experienced something remarkably similar while walking through the jungles of Costa Rica. Family history alone could not explain such an immediate sense of recognition.

Perhaps my body simply knows something my mind has not yet learned to articulate.

Research increasingly suggests that biodiverse natural environments have a remarkable effect on our nervous systems. Trees release phytoncides that influence stress hormones. Rich ecological diversity provides an intricate tapestry of shapes, textures, fragrances, and sounds that gently engage our attention without overwhelming it. The fractal patterns found in bark, leaves, rivers, and branching trees seem to invite the brain into a quieter rhythm. Birdsong, moving water, and wind through the canopy become part of an orchestra that encourages restoration.

My body seems to recognize these places almost immediately.

Perhaps yours does too.

So, can we create belonging, or do we simply recognize it when we encounter it?

I have come to believe it is both.

We cultivate belonging by returning again and again to places that allow us to soften, breathe more deeply, and pay attention. At the same time, certain landscapes seem to meet us with an uncanny familiarity, as though they awaken something that has always been present beneath the surface.

The same may be true of our creative lives.

Artists often find themselves returning to the same materials, colors, forms, and questions over many years. We sometimes mistake this repetition for limitation, when perhaps it is recognition instead. Something within us continues to respond because it has found a place where it belongs.

Perhaps belonging is less about finding a place that welcomes us than becoming attentive to the places that quietly awaken us. Whether that recognition comes through ancestry, ecology, memory, or something we cannot yet explain may matter less than our willingness to notice it.

The places that remember us have a way of changing how we move through the world. They remind us not only who we are, but who we are becoming.

I invite you to watch my short film, Following the Golden Thread. Rather than explaining the experience of my artist residency, it offers a more sensory journey through the landscape of Collemacchia—the light, the sounds, the conversations, and the quiet moments that gave rise to these reflections. I hope it allows you to step into this remarkable place for a few minutes and perhaps discover a golden thread of your own.

The video Following the Golden Thread can be found at this link
https://www.karenolsonphotography.com/artist-residency-at-the-museum-of-loss-and-renewal

Join Me for Our Next Creative Conversation

Following the Golden Thread: Recognizing the Work That Is Already Calling You

Thursday, July 30 • 1:00 pm EST

Artists often feel pressure to chase the next new idea, yet the most meaningful work is often quietly waiting for us, returning again and again through familiar materials, recurring questions, places, and experiences that continue to call our attention.

In this month’s live meetup, we’ll explore how to recognize these “golden threads” and learn to trust the patterns already emerging in our creative lives. Through conversation and reflection, we’ll consider how coherence is discovered rather than designed, and how following what continually calls to us can lead to deeper, more authentic work.

I hope you’ll join us for this thoughtful 90 minutes of conversation and shared discovery. Whether you’re just beginning a new body of work or searching for renewed clarity in your practice, this discussion is an invitation to listen more closely to what has been quietly calling you all along.

Sessions are limited to 12 participants and have been extend to 90 minutes to allow everyone the opportunity to contribute.

Rivers Speak in Voltage meetups are available for paid subscribers.

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Our May gathering explored the relationship between structure, flexibility, and the long-term sustainability of creative practice.

We began by looking to the natural world, where structure and adaptab…

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In this video, I share some…

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Lately I have been thinking a great deal about sustainability.

Not ecological sustainability, though that matters deeply to me as well.

I mean the sustainability of attention. Of cognition. Of nervous system capacity.

Since recently receiving a late diagnosis of autism, I have become acutely aware of how differently energy distributes itself in my life. I seem to have endless capacity for research, artistic inquiry, pattern recognition, and conceptual exploration—and remarkably little for many ordinary demands of daily living.

It is reassuring to know that brain fog, forgetfulness, and a host of other long-held concerns are not the beginnings of cognitive decline, but patterns that have been present all my life. I simply did not recognize them for what they were. The last few months have involved a plethora of tests and assessments, but I am deeply grateful to have discovered this part of myself, as it has profoundly informed the way I understand my experience in the world.

During the months of assessment, I found myself making work in order to understand what was happening. As I often do, I turned toward materials before language. Later, I found I could express the experience more directly through a written project statement.

Fragments of memory began to gather into pattern. Experiences once held as confusion, sensitivity, or contradiction started to reveal a deeper coherence. What had long felt scattered was not scattered at all—only differently organized.

You can view the full statement and the ongoing project, Coherence, here:

Karen Olson Photography – Coherence

As I move through the world with this new lens, I am beginning to understand structure not as restriction, but as a form of support—a flexible architecture that allows me to remain open rather than overwhelmed.

Planning helps me externalize what my mind cannot reliably hold on its own. It gives shape to time. It reminds me what matters now and what can wait until later.

My daily plan helps me remember what needs attention, the order of importance, and the flexibility to shift things from hour to hour or day to day. This structure creates a sense of grounding for me and supports my proprioception, something I often struggle with.

I am also realizing that I need daily routines that allow time for open-ended play.

I used to set aside one morning or one day each week for play. If I powered through several days of responsible work, I could reward myself with a play day. But it was not enough. Not enough cognitive rest to sustain what I was trying to accomplish in my creative life.

Five hours of administrative work must be balanced with three hours of play, at least. Otherwise, burnout ensues. When I make time for rest, I am actually more productive in less time, and the work itself feels more enjoyable.

I did not need more time. I needed more time to play.

My planner now holds two distinct categories for each day:
responsibilities and play.

Responsibilities are the tasks that require sustained cognitive effort—the administrative, logistical, and organizational work that often drains me.

Play is something else entirely. Time outside. Gardening. Experimentation without outcome. Art-making without productivity attached to it. Sitting quietly enough to watch the more-than-human world continue on without asking anything of me, and without my asking anything of it.

I recently heard a conversation between Shankar Vedantam and Dave Evans that stayed with me. Evans spoke about the impossibility of fully actualizing every potential self within a single lifetime.

Human capacity, he suggested, exceeds the scope of human life itself.

Mentally and cognitively, we have the ability to imagine and pursue many different directions. But it is impossible to pursue them all. Pushing ourselves beyond our capacity to the point of burnout is not a sustainable way to live.

So these days I keep asking myself quieter questions.

Have I made time for play today?
Have I sat still long enough to notice something alive around me?
Have I done nothing, even briefly?
Have I nourished myself with delight rather than only productivity?

I am beginning to think this, too, is sustainability.

Not how much we can produce, but how gently and honestly we can remain in relationship with our own aliveness.

*The conversation between Shankar Vedantam and Dave Evans can be found on the Hidden Brain podcast here.

I am deeply grateful for your attention and presence here. Thank you for walking alongside these reflections with me.

Designing What Holds: Structure, Rhythm, and Creative Sustainability

Our May salon-style gathering will explore the forms and patterns that support a sustainable creative life. Together, we’ll consider how structure can act not as constraint, but as a kind of holding—something that steadies the work and allows it to continue.

This will be a reflective and interactive session, with space for shared conversation and quiet noticing.

Thursday, May 28, 2026

1:00 pm EST

We gather as a small group. Sessions are not recorded in order to support presence and connection, though a PDF of the material will be shared afterward.

Paid subscribers are warmly invited to join these monthly gatherings as part of the Rivers Speak in Voltage community. If you are currently a free subscriber and would like to participate in future salons, tutorials, and community discussions, you can upgrade your subscription below. You will find the link to register for the meetup in the community chat.

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Paper Sculpture Retreat - Italy

Wild Light Retreat - San Miguel de Allende

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KarenOlsonPhotography.com

Recap and assets for our April Meetup

Our recent Rivers salon, The Quiet Work of Connection brought us together in a small, attentive circle. It was a lovely group and an engaging session, where conve…

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It’s been hours and hours of exploration, and I’m not finished yet.

What I’m sharing today comes from the middle of the process—not the end. It’s a point of testing, adjusting, and paying attention to…

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The jungle is my happy place. A feeling of belonging is strong there—immediate and sure. The moment I arrive, there is a connection felt deep under my skin. A sense of awe pulls me into a theta brainwave state so pure that little can disrupt it. The twist of a vine, the curl of a palm leaf, the chatter of the macaw—all hold me in a way nothing else does.

I am home, I am alive!

What allows us to feel this type of connection—so pure and so real? Where in the body does this connection live? What if what we call “sensing others” is actually the body sensing itself in relationship?

The answer may lie in a web—a continuous web of tissue that surrounds and interpenetrates our muscles, organs, bones, blood vessels, and nerves. This system-wide sensory network is called fascia.

Introducing Fascia — A Sensory Field

Fascia is a network of connective tissue without beginning or end. It is largely made of collagen and elastin, giving it a strong tensile quality that is also capable of stretch and recoil. Between these fibers is a gel-like substance composed of water and hyaluronic acid, allowing for sliding between tissues, fluid movement, and shock absorption.

It surrounds virtually everything in the body and plays a role in holding everything in place. More than that, it forms a body-wide communication network—transmitting tension, pressure, and movement across the entire organism.

As researcher Bruno Bordoni describes:

This description gestures toward something important: fascia is not simply structure. It is relational.

The study of fascia’s role in biomechanics is now well established. Its role as a sensory field is still emerging.

What we know is that the nervous system is deeply intertwined with this tissue. Fascia is richly innervated, surrounding and containing more than 250 million sensory nerve endings. It continuously sends and receives information throughout the body.

What is now being explored more deeply is the sensing capability of this system.

Is fascia involved in how we perceive our place in the world? Does it play a role in our felt sense of safety, connection, or belonging?

Fascia Is Extremely Sensory

Studies led by fascial researcher Robert Schleip have shown that fascia contains a high density of sensory receptors, including mechanoreceptors, proprioceptors, nociceptors, and interstitial receptors. These detect pressure, movement, body position, and aspects of the internal state of the body.

Because fascia is continuous throughout, it forms something like a whole-body sensory field.

Through fascia, the body becomes an instrument that senses itself.

Enter Psychoneuroimmunology

It has long been understood that the immune system and the autonomic nervous system are in constant interaction. The study of this relationship is known as psychoneuroimmunology.

What is becoming increasingly clear is that fascia, the nervous system, the immune system, and our emotional states are deeply interconnected. We may now be able to measure aspects of this interaction—but on some level, we have always known it.

What Does This Mean?

How does this information help us? How does it help me?

First, it invites a shift in how we understand connection. We often recognize our interconnectedness with the wider world, yet we may overlook the complexity of connection within our own bodies. If the knee hurts, we search for a cause in the knee. If the heart aches, we turn to the heart. But for many of us—especially those navigating diverse concerns and syndromes—it becomes helpful to recognize that we are, at our core, a network of relationships. Body and mind are not separate systems, but part of a single, interconnected ecosystem.

To understand that the nervous system influences the fascial system and the immune system—and that these relationships move in both directions—opens a wider field of awareness. It deepens our capacity for interoception: the ability to sense the internal state of the body.

It also suggests that what happens in the mind—both conscious and unconscious—is not separate from the body, but continuous with it.

Trust

Secondly, this understanding points toward trust.

Trust in the intelligence of the body.

Trust in forms of knowing that do not always arrive as language or measurement.

Trusting our intuition.

What might shift if we moved through the world with a deeper trust in this internal intelligence? With the understanding that the body often knows before we can explain?

A Further Reflection

And if I might geek out a little bit here with another quote from Bruno Bordoni:

Stigmergy refers to a form of indirect, decentralized coordination—where one can modify their environment, leaving traces that stimulate subsequent actions by themselves or others. It enables complex, collective intelligence without direct communication or planning.

This describes a kind of distributed intelligence.

For me, this vision of fascia as a living, responsive network—gliding, adapting, communicating—encourages a different, more expansive way of being.

To move more fluidly through the world.

To respond rather than resist.

To recognize that each action participates in a larger field. And perhaps, in doing so, to contribute—however subtly—to a more coherent and connected whole.

Walk well, and carry the jungle with you,
Karen

Our April salon-style meetup for community members will gather around the theme The Quiet Work of Connection—exploring the moment of reaching, the vulnerability of extending outward, and the ways these gestures become visible within the work itself.

Our next Rivers Speak in Voltage meetup will take place on April 23, 2026, at 1 pm EST. If this resonates, please consider subscribing as a supporting member.

Won’t you join us?

The core concepts guiding the discussion for our March meetup centered on entrainment and coherence. When two systems interact, they begin to align in tempo or pattern. Coherence is the state in whic…

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I am very happy to share that my online course is now open for enrollment.

This course grew from a simple question I’ve explored in my own life and art practice: how can creativity help us slow down, reconnect, and move through the world with more clarity and care?

Inside Focus & Flow, we’ll work with photography, papermaking, paper sculpture and expressive printing on handmade papers. We’ll also step outside the studio and into nature through gentle forest immersion practices that help restore focus and open up creative flow.

Together, these processes become a quiet toolkit for making – one that helps you return to your work with curiosity, resilience, and a sense of possibility.

If this feels like the right moment to deepen your practice and create space for both reflection and experimentation, I would love for you to join me.

Karen Olson

View the course and enroll

Welcome. In this tutorial, we’ll to explore what happens when two materials meet — natural dye and Oriental paper — and how that meeting becomes more than a surface application. It becomes integration. It becomes resonance.

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It was exactly one year ago today. I arrived at Macaw Lodge in Turrubares, Costa Rica, for a Forest Therapy Immersion. I attempted to find my bearings after the long, winding ascent up the mountain through washed-out ruts of red clay and cliffside hairpin vistas.

And yet, as we approached this isolated retreat center—nestled within a 12-acre botanical garden, surrounded by jungle paths and pristine waterfalls—I felt immediately at home.

My shared room was one of eight at the top of a spiral staircase. It overlooked a stream-like canal that flowed into a deep, acre-wide pond just outside the dining hall. A huge screen spanned one entire wall of the room—no glass, no enclosure—just floor-to-ceiling mesh connecting us to the outside world.

It was about 5 p.m., and the wildlife in the pond was actively pursuing dinner. Toads, frogs, birds, insects, and lizards joined in the symphony.

It was the cicadas that led the chorus. Their song was almost deafening—whirring, buzzing, clicking—a steady vibration rising from the air itself. Their call has been described as a cyclical rising-and-falling crescendo that feels tidal. I completely agree.

One might think such a high-pitched, extremely loud sound would drive a person crazy. But the opposite was true.

My nervous system had been running hot for months—truthfully, for years. But here, in this moment, I could feel it ratcheting down toward baseline. And it stayed there the entire week.

The rhythms and wave-like song of this small but powerful creature created a coherence between my heart rhythm and the rhythm of the jungle. An experience I will never forget.

What Is Resonance?

When something resonates, you feel it immediately. The nervous system feels met by someone or something. It might arise from the more-than-human world, a conversation, a concept, or even a warm and genuine smile.

We are constantly entraining to the world around us. When two systems interact, they can begin to match tempo or pattern. Two hearts can entrain. Our unique system can match step with another unique system. When this happens, all feels right with the world. We experience coherence.

I have recently been introduced to the idea of a baseline—or set point—in the nervous system. In a dysregulated state, the nervous system can run too hot or too cold. When either state becomes our norm for months or years, it can contribute to illness. This is because the nervous system is intimately connected to other systems in the body—cardiovascular, musculoskeletal, immune, and endocrine. The endocrine system in particular shapes how pain is perceived and influences nerve sensitivity and stress response.

No system in the body exists in isolation. It is all connected.

I quote:

It works both ways. Stressors can pull our nervous system away from baseline and contribute to illness. Illness itself can further shift our set point, creating a feedback loop.

At baseline we are not numb, nor hyper-alert. We are in a state of responsive presence—ready to meet the shifting demands of the day.

Running hot—hyper-alert, hyper-vigilant—is where I personally get stuck. My experience in the Costa Rican jungle showed me just how profoundly environment influences this state. It also set me on a path of inquiry.

If environment can dysregulate us, can it also regulate us? Can we craft environments that support our return to baseline?

The answer is yes. But we must seek this out. Leaving regulation to chance encounters or epic vacations is not enough.

And so I began to notice.

Four Doorways to Resonance

Sound

As the jungle illustrated so clearly, sound is one of the most accessible pathways to resonance. It is inexpensive, universally available, and an amazing potential for profound joy. It may be as simple as stepping outside to listen to birdsong, or as involved as learning an instrument.

What makes an experience resonate is not the sound itself, but how our body responds to it.

As a forest therapy guide, I offer this invitation that can be responded to while in the forest, a green space, or in your home:

Giving attention to your sense of hearing,
I wonder, what is the quietest sound you can hear.
I wonder if there is a melody to this place.
Is there a rhythm in the sounds around you?
I wonder if you can connect your inner rhythms with the rhythms of this place.
Perhaps you would like to add your own sound to this place—just loud enough so only you can hear it.

I might add, if you are in a place where you can vocalize more freely, sounding loudly can be cathartic—something we rarely allow ourselves to do.

Begin noticing sounds on a daily basis. Which sounds resonate with you. Make a list. These are materials—tools—you can return to when you need to find your set point again.

Rhythm

Rhythms—wave-like patterns—are everywhere. Music is a beautiful and immediate way to introduce rhythm. It can match our mood or gently shift it.

We can also create rhythm ourselves: tapping fingers, swaying, swinging arms, walking, knitting, stitching, folding paper. When you do these things, you are not just “doing something with your body.” You are giving your nervous system a predictable pattern to follow.

The heart is one of our primary rhythm-makers—an organ of sound and movement, intimately tied to breath and life.

I offer this invitation:

Make a fist with your hand, bringing that fist to the center of your chest and resting your closed fist in the center of your chest.
You might feel the sensation of your own beating heart.
What does the rhythm of your heart feel like?
What is your heart sensing right now?
What might your heart be reaching toward?

Movement

Moving too fast, trying to accomplish too much, stretching beyond my capacity—that is where I get into trouble. Intentional movement, however, is my grounding.

I can confuse hyperfocus with intentionality. They are not the same.

This awareness is ongoing work. I try to check in daily.

A combination of rhythm and movement supports proprioception—our sense of where we are in space—and interoception—our awareness of the internal state of the body. When both inner and outer sensing come online together, I return to equilibrium.

What does this look like?

Walking forward slowly and rhythmically, noticing hip alignment, the distance between my feet, the shifting of balance.

Walking backward—safely and slowly—placing one foot behind the other, torso aligned.

Swinging arms wide, overhead, behind me, reaching toward the ground.

Not mere repetition as exercise, but movement infused with awareness.

You also might try a slow wander for five to ten minutes. Notice what it feels like to move slowly. As you move, notice what is moving. Let your body recalibrate through deliberate motion.

Repetition

Creative repetition is especially helpful in the evenings or during difficult seasons.

I suggest having three types of creative engagement available:

1. A project requiring focus, innovation, and discovery.

2. A project building on those discoveries without requiring new invention.

3. A repetitive process—something you can do without much cognitive strain but that remains satisfying.

This third engagement might be stitching, sanding, simple paper preparation, light editing, organizing files, or planning. It may even be something unrelated to your primary body of work.

For me, repetitive process puts everything in a row. It packs the day up gently and puts the cares of the world to bed.

We are electrical beings—voltage moving through tissue, rhythm pulsing through muscle. When we find or make sounds, rhythms, movements, and repetitions that meet us and support us, we recalibrate. We remember our original tuning.

Resonance is something we can choose to notice and invite.

Perhaps the work is not to control the nervous system, but to surround it with patterns that allow it to settle. To listen for what feels like home. To cultivate the conditions where heart and world can match tempo again.

And then, gently, to stay in relationship with that song.

Our March salon-style meetup for community members will center around the idea of finding what resonates. Please consider subscribing as a supporting member. Our next Rivers Speak in Voltage meetup will be on March 26 at 1 pm EST. Won’t you join us?

Thank you so much for your presence and for the generosity of your time and attention. It truly meant a great deal to share that space with you. I was deeply moved by your reflections and the care in…

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It is now well documented that trees communicate with one another through airborne organic compounds and underground mycorrhizal networks. Over the last decade or so, a new generation of scientists has published groundbreaking research demonstrating that trees are, in fact, intelligent beings—capable of sensing, responding, and adapting in remarkably complex ways.

What is more, it is said that trees possess up to twenty different types of senses, or ways of perceiving and responding to environmental information. Trees detect light, pressure, and physical contact from animals and neighboring plants. They sense vibration. They track time, recognize pathogens, register moisture, temperature, and nutrient availability. Trees transmit electrical impulses through their tissues in response to injury, stress, or environmental change. Much of this sensing does not occur in isolation, but in collaboration—within a living community.

So we know that trees communicate with one another. And although we rarely want to admit it, we communicate with trees, often verbally.

Do you have a tree story?

Is there a particular tree or plant relationship that holds a memory for you?

Can you describe that relationship?

It is difficult to quantify or qualify this kind of connection.

“Life is no mere description. To experience life, to get to the heart of things, to see truly the face of Nature—not just to describe it through the framework of an illusionary, disinterested, objective observer—a nonlinear mode of cognition must be used. For life is, as Frank Herbert realized, always one step beyond logic.”

— Stephen Buhner

If we were to enter into a reciprocal relationship with a tree or a plant, we would need a different way of approaching that relationship—a different kind of sensing.

This idea of relationship that exists one step beyond logic was explored in a recent Emergence Magazine podcast interview with Monica Gagliano, Learning to Listen to Plants. I find it difficult to extract a single quote from the transcript because there is so much to unpack, but this passage offers a small glimpse:

“So if you want to know life, you need to have a taste for it. Literally, you have to eat it, which we do every day—especially with plants. In a way, if we could taste our food with awareness—if we could really feel that we are being remade all the time by these others, so alien and yet capable of creating something so familiar, our own bodies—our knowing would change. It would become more contemplative, less fixed on facts and binaries, less black and white.”

— Monic Gagliano

Still, the question remains: Do trees talk back?

And if so, on what level might this be possible?

The tree huggers among us want to know—do plants and trees initiate conversation? Do they respond to our inquiries? Do they offer knowledge of some kind?

Recently, while researching the relationship between sound and the nervous system, I found myself asking these questions more seriously. I had been experiencing low-level tinnitus after spending too many hours on the computer over several days. At the same time, I was mapping my nervous system—learning how my body responds to the world moment by moment, noticing patterns in sensation, emotion, thought, and behavior. (More on that later.) What I discovered is that the auditory system is deeply intertwined with the nervous system.

And then it occurred to me:

What if trees and plants communicate through imperceptible auditory signals designed to engage the nervous system? Our nervous system.

I began to form a working theory.

Trees emit subtle, low-frequency pulses—vibrations that align with human brainwave states associated with deep relaxation. Our nervous systems naturally synchronize with the rhythms of the natural world, which may explain why spending even fifteen minutes in nature can begin to shift brain activity. While plants produce sounds in frequency ranges that humans cannot consciously hear, it appears that our nervous system can still detect them.

In this way, trees may speak through multiple channels at once: chemically, through airborne compounds; vibrationally, through low-frequency pulses or sound waves; and electrically, through bioelectric signals moving through tissue.

Last year, a plant appeared in my small garden, quietly but insistently asking to be noticed. At first, I paid little attention. Yet its leaves shone in a way that reminded me of people who glow when they carry a secret—a secret not meant for everyone. As time passed, it continued to draw my attention, again and again. This was the first time I had felt this particular type of strong connection to a plant, and I wondered if I had finally lost my grip on reason.

Then came the research. I discovered that this plant holds an important place in herbal medicine—one that would have been particularly beneficial to me at that moment in my life. It became difficult to dismiss the feeling that it had, somehow, reached out.

A year later—and after a deep dive into the emerging field of plant intelligence, a subject only just beginning to be explored by the edges of the scientific community—I find myself sitting with a familiar uncertainty. Sometimes it is difficult to qualify what we know to be true. Perhaps we simply do not yet have the language. Or perhaps this deep connection we share with plants and trees will always resist words.

As technology advances and we move closer to actually hearing what trees may be saying, perhaps we can also learn to refine our own senses—to widen our attention, feel vibration and rhythm, to trust the body’s response over interpretation.

Then maybe—just maybe—we will hear what trees have to say.

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Paper Sculpture Workshop Italy 2026

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I am thrilled to have been invited to present a free, online masterclass in collaboration with the Paper Lab Members Platform.

I have a limited number of tickets available for my subscribers. If you are interested in joining me, please register today. The class will be recorded and shared with all who are registered.

I would be delighted if you could join me. Together we will explore a gentle, embodied approach to making—one that begins with forest therapy as creative grounding and moves into paper and photographic process.

February 19, 12 pm EST - Online via Zoom

FOREST, FIELD, IMPRINT

An embodied approach to forest-based attention, handmade paper, and image transfer.

What if the first material we work with is not paper or image, but our own nervous system?

This immersive one-hour master class explores forest therapy as a creative grounding practice, handmade paper as a receptive field, and photo transfer as imprint and trace. Moving from attunement to material engagement, artist Karen Olson offers a spacious, relational approach to making—one that honors perception, vulnerability, and the quiet intelligence of materials.

Participants will leave with both practical insight and a renewed way of arriving in their creative work.

Visit the Paper Lab Platform for more information.

February 19, 12 pm EST
A link will be provided on registration.

REGISTER HERE TODAY!

Hope to see you there!

Karen

A delightful discussion was had around the topic of glue–as relationship, attention, listening, and presence. We discussed what makes something stick; cohesion vs. adhesion and strength vs. flexibili…

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