Giving a Voice to Trees

There’s something about being with trees – a walk in the forest, the experience of planting a tree or leaning back against a tree with a book in hand. Are trees sentient beings? Can they sense how humans feel about them? Are they affected by our emotions? And, what is it about trees that has an uplifting effect on people?

Trees Are Intelligent

A new generation of scientists is showing that plants and trees are intelligent and aware; they process information, sleep, remember, and communicate with one another. They have at least 20 different types of senses, including ones that roughly correspond to our five senses. They also have additional senses that can do things such as measure humidity, detect gravity, vibrations, and sense electromagnetic fields. These scientists insist that plants and trees are intelligent because they can sense, learn, remember and even react in ways similar to humans. Their behaviors exhibit a coordinated activity and response across the whole organism that require signaling and communication systems which include long-distance electrical signals, specialized vascular tissues, and the production of chemicals used by the brain and nervous systems in humans and animals. The most well-known way they communicate is chemically. This is why some plants and trees smell so good and others awful.

Researchers have also tracked the exchange of nutrients and chemical signals between trees through an invisible underground fungal network. The oldest trees, or "mother trees," function as hubs and help nourish their offspring until they’re tall enough to reach the light. In other words, trees recognize their seedlings as kin. Trees also cooperate by trading nutrients across species. For example, when evergreen species have sugars to spare, they share them with deciduous species when they need them and vice versa. For the forest community, this cooperative and coordinated underground economy provides better overall health, more total photosynthesis, and greater resilience in the face of disturbance that allows them to thrive collectively.

Electrical Life of Trees

Although there has been an abundance of new research and insights on the way trees communicate through chemical processes, there is far less known about the electrical life of trees.

A professor at Yale University was the first person to conduct long-term measures of trees’ electrical activity which appeared to be related to the phase of the moon and solar cycles. There’s a lot more to learn about trees, especially how they may respond to human emotions and how being in the presence of their biofields can have an uplifting effect on people. The HeartMath Institute (HMI), a non-profit research and education organization, has developed a new technology that reads the electrical signals in trees and the surrounding earth and then feeds those signals to the cloud, where they are processed and displayed on a computer screen. Interestingly, trees have complex and different overall electrical patterns, almost as if each tree has its own personality.

One of Belvoir’s two 400 plus year old White Oak Trees

Spending time with trees.

Trees are an important part of intentional return to our natural habitat, our forests, to relink to the earth’s abundant forces of energy. This simple act of restorative cleansing soothes our minds, recharges our lives and improves health. Scientific studies validate the healing power of trees and renewal. Not only do trees emit essential oils called phytoncides, to protect themselves from germs and insects, the electromagnetic horse power within a trunk of a tree can be felt at a close distance. Exposure to the woods, inhaling the cool forest air filled with phytoncides and electromagnetic power doesn’t just feel refreshing — it actually improves the functioning of our human immune system.

We absorb the power of the trees into our own systems.