Conversation with Regina and Cecil Esquivel-Obregón:

“Do Some Trees Mind Being Photographed?”

Audio Interview:

Interview Notes:


  • Further Reflections
    • The Wood Wide Web: Two marvelous TEDx talks by Suzanne Simard.  Youtube  and  TEDtalk
    • Do Trees Have Standing?  Reconsidering Environmental Rights in Light of Big Heart Intelligence. When we discover trees are conscious, we become conscious.
    • Connecting to Nature as an Antidote to Burnout
    • Curing Plant Blindness
    • How to Befriend a Tree Li Junfeng urges that practitioners bring consciousness to this practice lest it turn out to be exploitative and actually injure the trees  (i.e. sucks energy/life force) without restoring it to the tree.  Hence we might include in the caption, the following caveat.  “Please note: Qigong Grand Master Li Junfeng, who is very familiar with this practice, cautions that it be conducted consciously by approaching the tree in the spirit of love, including the tree in an invocation to the universe to provide pure and healthy qi energy, which can restore life and vitality of the tree itself in addition to ourselves.”

  • Acknowledgement
    • Ian M. Obregón
    • Regina Esquivel-Obregón
    • Cecil Esquivel-Obregón
  1. If trees are sensate, conscious creatures, surely also animals?
    A marvelous book, The Animal Mind (2014), by Jeffrey Kluger makes a poignant case exploring animal friendships, collaboration, grieving, architecture, communication, and ultimately rights. Kluger states, “the view (that animals are merely tools for human use) is becoming impossible to sustain. The more deeply scientists look into the animal mind, the more they’re discovering it to be a place of richness, joy, thought, and even nuance.” The spotlight of his comparisons is between animal brain capacity and that of humans. But what of the heart? Again, it is ignored if not forgotten.

    Yet, if the heart is as central to human engagement as we are urging in this work, might we also plausibly inquire:
    • Do animals also possess Big Heart Intelligence (BHI)?
    • What are the characteristics of animal BHI, and how does it differ from our own?
    • What might humans learn from animal BHI to deepen ours?

    This seems a fascinating new frontier, rich in the world’s myths, fairy tales, and fables where wise animals abound, but virgin to scientific inquiry, and so we welcome our readers’ contributions.

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