347 ~ Living in the City is a Wellbeing Crisis

Hello Magical Human & welcome back to Madison Mindset the Podcast 🧚🏼

Join me as I explain why dense city living is not for me (or really for anyone)...

overview:
• EMF exposure, noise and nervous system load
• Light pollution disrupting circadian rhythm and sleep
• Crowds without connection and loneliness in cities
• Tech dependence versus presence and nature time
• Pollution and misplaced priorities in urban growth
• Practical resets: stars, parks, bare feet, slow weekends
• Cost, space and the mental health value of land
• Invitation to question norms and try a nature reset

X2 Episode Recommendations on EMF:

102 ~ What is Electromagnetic Radiation? - https://open.spotify.com/episode/5FPNlyXeea7xxHSDUSmoNH?si=xCRBh2HwSJeT5cdCakn0Sw

290 ~ The Earth Element: Foundation for Natural Self-Healing - https://open.spotify.com/episode/1rf6I1Ofy18XDBB1H58z7X?si=xIalVJtsTb6NntN-lD5XdQ

Quote Used:

"City life is millions of people being lonesome together." ~ Henry David Thoreau

Come back to nature

Love,

Madison Mindset x

Chapters

• 0:00 Warm Welcome And Setup
• 1:10 Melbourne Trip And Festival Talk
• 2:24 Why Cities Don’t Work For Me
• 4:43 Coaching Offer For Anxiety
• 6:30 Reason One: EMF And Radiation
• 10:15 Reason Two: Broken Circadian Rhythm
• 14:05 Reason Three: Lost Human Connection
• 17:40 Reason Four: Tech Over Nature
• 22:15 Health Risks And WHO Findings

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:22

Hello, Magical Human. Welcome back to Madison Mindset the podcast. It is a privilege having you here with me today. I hope you've had a great day so far. I hope everything's going well. We are very quickly winding up to the end of the year. So I hope you're feeling good and grounded in this time. It's very easy for everyone's energy to just vamp up during this time. We just get busier and busier and noisier and noisier. So I hope you're able to keep a sense of calm and stability in this time. This episode has been requested and voted upon on Instagram stories. So if you're not already involved in my Instagram community, come and check it out. Madison underscore mindset. The links below. Come and follow me. It's beautiful to connect and yeah, have a place to chat to you and actually interact. It's beautiful. So on the weekend, I went to Melbourne, which, if you're not familiar with Australian cities, is one of the big cities in Australia. And I went to go and do a talk at the Mind Body Spirit Festival. It was amazing. I had so much fun, so many great people, and I met quite a few people who are fans of the podcast. So it was really nice to connect and chat and meet on a personal level. It was really fun. But I had the struggle, and so did my partner, of being in the city. I grew up on a farm, five-acre property out in a western city of New South Wales, Australia. So we're talking lots of land, trees, grass, lots of animals around, and the population of Orange is around the 45,000 mark. That's I guess it's around that. It is around that. So it's not huge, right? You we have a very intricate community, you know. I think it's still probably too big for human connection, but you know a lot of people, you connect with a lot of people, and it feels very homely, very, you know, very like everyone knows each other and it it's beautiful. It's a nice connection, which is what we're supposed to be doing as human beings. So I put up a story while I was in Melbourne and I said, I really struggle with cities. And I asked everyone at this idea, I was like, what if I do an episode on why I don't like cities? And I put it out there and everyone was like, yes, and yeah, let's hear about the cities. But I the highest vote was actually yes, talk about it, but I like cities. So if you were someone who loves the city, no stress, no heat for you, honestly. I don't mind like what you like. We're all so different. You know, I grew up in the country, so naturally dealing with a city is very hard for me. But there are specific reasons I don't like the city. So I thought I would talk about it and leave it to you with what you want to do with. You know, cities are obviously they can be very helpful, you know, for big events wherein, you know, we go to the city, you know, to watch, you know, a cool concert, or, you know, if you want to get on a big plane, you know, you've got to, you know, embrace these cities. So, you know, I'm not against them. I do use them, I utilize them when I need to, but I will avoid them as much as possible because of what it does to my health. So there are a few reasons I don't like cities, and there are things that I think even if you do like cities, you should be aware of. Because the reality is, and no one can argue with this point, cities are incredibly fake. Incredibly fake and completely out of alignment with nature. Completely out of alignment with nature. We can't argue this point. Okay, we can't argue this point. Big cities, they're not natural, they are pollution, you know, on steroids and they don't do anything for anyone. You know, they're they don't support animals, they don't support, you know, the ecosystem, they don't support our health. So while they are useful to some degree and, you know, in our very modernized lives, yes, we need them. But I think if we let, you know, if we all abandon cities for like 10 years and let nature take over and then move back in, I reckon we'd all be far better off. You know, it's it's not healthy, these cities. And there are so many reasons, and I do have a few information thingies up on Google that I will read to you so that you know, I you know, I'm not just making stuff up. But do your own research if you're curious. Before we jump in, I want to know how you're feeling. Do you experience anxiety on a regular basis? Daily basis, moment-to-moment basis? Are you anxious right now? I have been there. Sometimes I'm still there. I completely feel you. I am opening a coaching program called Anxious to Abundant. This program is going to be all the beautiful things that I have used to help myself go from constant anxiety attacks to more of a state of peace and ease where I can actually enjoy my life and I'm not becoming completely frozen with fear. If this sounds like something you need, if you deal with anxiety, if you allow the fear of the future to really impact your present moment, then I want you to really consider booking a coaching call with me. I'm offering 30 minutes free coaching sessions to support you with any anxiety trouble you might be having right now. So you can book a call at a time that works for you, and we're going to chat all things anxiety, what's been going on for you, how are you feeling, what's been getting in the way, completely free of judgment here. You know, I most likely I don't know you as of yet. So completely free of judgment, no criticism, open space for you to talk about what's been going on. And if I have any advice that I might be able to offer, I will offer that. And if we align, and I think that Anxious to abundant might be for you, I will offer you a spot in the program. You've got 30 minutes of coaching right there, ready for you to use when you book in. The time is now. We don't want to live with anxiety. You don't have to live with constant anxiety. We've got to change our relationship with it, and I'm completely here for that with you. So go down below and book your free 30-minute coaching call with me. I can't wait to meet you. Let's jump into the first reason I don't like cities. This is the biggest one and the most obvious one: radiation. If you haven't heard me talk about EMF and radiation risk before, I want you to go and find a previous episode that I have done on radiation. I will link a couple below. Go and check them out. I'm not going to get into it now, but basically, cities are radiation pits. There is Wi-Fi everywhere. There is Bluetooth everywhere. There are phone towers. There are, I was driving past buildings with 5G towers glued to the side of people's bathrooms. Like you're literally being radiated. There are constant lights, constant stress, constant stuff, signals and noise and so much. You are being radiated every moment you are in a city. And even if you turn your Wi-Fi off, even if you put your phone away, how many Wi-Fi networks are around you? You can't escape it. You know, when I'm at home, we turn our Wi-Fi off at night, and there's no other Wi-Fi signals. It is bliss. And it is so much better for you, right? Radiation is inflammatory and inflammation in the body causes disease in the body, disease, right? We get sick and it ultimately kills us. So radiation is one huge reason I will never live in a city. It is not supportive to physical health at all. So I'll just stay away from it. I went to Melbourne with an amazing amount of EMF protection on myself. If you would like to get your hands on some EMF protection equipment, there is a link below where you can go to OrgoneFX and use my discount code. Go and check it out. I actually spoke to the owner of Orgone Effects at the Mind Body Spirit Festival on the weekend. He is amazing. So much research going into these products and to the current risks. And I am going to get him on the podcast for another episode together. So stay tuned for that. But seriously, our EMF risk these days is crazy enough as it is without living in a hot spot of it and being in a city. So that's a huge reason why I would not live in a city or stay there for an extended period of time. Number two, circadian rhythm. You're meant to live in a rhythm with nature. The sun comes up, the sun goes down, right? You're supposed to rise with the sun and go to bed when the sun goes down. In the cities, you can't even see the stars in the sky. There's constant lights. Constant lights. You can't get away from the constant city glow. And it's to the point where the pollution of that is creating this cap over the sky where you don't even know what stars look like. You know, it's insane. You know, when you're in the country or in the mountains and you look up at the sky at night, it is unbelievable. You see shooting stars, you see beautiful, you see planets, you see amazing things, you see the moon and in the cities, you're so out of touch with your natural rhythm, with your body's natural rhythm that you don't even remember to look up and even see stars. It's not even a thing. I'm sure there are people out there who've never seen stars in their life. And that is so sad because when you get to see the stars at night, that reminds you who you are, that you're on a floating, you're a teeny tiny being on a floating ball in space, and it's just remarkable. It reminds you of you're really the reason of life. But city people don't get to experience that, and it's because there's too many lights. So not a fan of that. And when you're sleeping, come on. The coin, the constant lights and beeping, honking, people so cranky, even if it's 2 a.m., they're beeping on the streets. It's so sad. It is a horrible way to live. I don't know how people do it. Number three, the lack of connection. There are too many people in cities to care about. Let me explain. We are beings that thrive off heart-to-heart connection, of true friendship, of family, of having a beautiful partner, of having genuine connection with people. And in cities, there are so many people and there's so much busyness happening. You see a million different faces a day, you'll probably never see those faces again. There is no time to connect with someone really deeply. There's no time to care about people in the street. When I walk down the street here, if I need to hold the door for someone, I will. You know, if I drop something, someone picks it up. The other day I dropped my keys in the middle of the road and someone stopped driving to tell me that I dropped them. And I was like, oh, thank you so much. In a city, there's no time to do that. You don't even realize that someone may have dropped something. You don't realize that someone needs help. There's just people go, go, go, go, going. There's no time to help everyone. There's no time to care. So what happens? People don't care. And it's incredibly sad. And there is a quote that I really love about this particular thing. I can't say this guy's full name, but I'm going to put it in the description below. City life is millions of people being lonesome together. Right? City life is millions of people being lonesome together. So sad. So, so sad. It feels it's the most lonely I've ever felt being in a city. No one even looks at you. No one cares. And no one can care because there are too many people. We're not supposed to have that many people in one place. Another reason I don't like the city is the technology. Everyone's glued to their phones because that's honestly the most connection you're going to find. Everyone's glued to technology. You don't see nature. You know, you never get time to actually be in nature. Even in the park, like me and my partner, we went and found a park to put our feet on the ground after being in a plane, which is crazy radiation as well. We put our feet on the grass. All around us, there's rubbish. The river was brown and disgusting. There was rubbish all the way through it. There were helicopters flying like a hundred meters above us. There was constant train noise and people noise, and people were walking past with their speakers, you know, playing doof-doof music and, you know, their headphones on and walking around. Everyone's so disconnected to nature. And nature is your mother. Nature is our creator. We're so disconnected from it. And that disconnection and the lack of nature, the lack of fresh air, that's what creates sickness and air pollution and all this stuff. There's not enough nature to cleanse the germ that is the city, you know? So of course our physical health is going to drop. When do you get time to earth? We had to try hard to find a nice park. And even then it was noisy and there was very little bird noise. And bird noise is actually something that helps your nervous system calm down. There are no birds, right? There are no, you know, there's pigeons. That's about it. There's pigeons and flies. That was it. That was that was all we saw. You know, and it's it is so sad. And you can feel like I was so desperate to come back to the bush. And literally only an hour ago, the first thing I did was I was hanging out with my friends and feeling the love of actually being connected to other human beings. And then I went straight out to the bush to put my feet on the ground and I was picking up rubbish, which I spoke to my client about. I was, you know, walking around talking to her and picking up the rubbish, you know, that was around, which isn't a lot because it's the country, you know, it's nothing like the city, although I still love to help where I can. Picking up rubbish, saying hi to the trees that I hadn't seen for a while, looking up at the sky, and oh my goodness, it is like the best exhale ever. When you finally get out of the city, when you finally get out of the city and you come back home and go, oh, better, so much better. You know, so I don't understand. And people who live in apartments, I can't think of anything worse. I feel you, if you have to live in an apartment, if you grew up in an apartment, I feel so much love for you because not having a backyard or grass to touch or a tree to talk to is got to be the saddest thing ever. So again, no judgment. If you love your apartment, that's totally cool. I'm just offering a different perspective. Okay, there are many different perspectives, many different opinions. I'm giving you my reasons, take it or leave it. I do encourage you to think about it though. Now, there was a beautiful study I found. I went on to Google and did a bit of a research for this episode because obviously mental health is something I was going to mention when it comes to cities. So I went online and I looked up, you know, how are cities bad for our health? How are they bad for our mental health? Let's see what comes up. And something came up from the World Health Organization. I'm gonna read a little bit of what I found on there just so you get a bit of an idea. Cities face the triple health burden of infectious diseases. There's a bunch of things listed here, including pneumonia and diarrhoea. There are also diseases such as heart disease, stroke, asthma, cancer, diabetes, and depression, violence and injuries, including road traffic injuries, of course. And then we've got up here urbanization, so living in cities, is also linked to high rates of depression, anxiety, and mental ill health. There's also diabetes linked to obesity and physical inactivity that cities promote. It is scary what it does to us. You know, yes, you've got heaps of things to do, but you know what? Boredom, really good for you. Really good for you. You don't need constant things to do. What people are doing out there, you know, you know, caring what they look like and doing crazy things. And, you know, there were people just I don't even know. I don't want to talk about it. I don't want to talk about it. There were just people being so completely out of touch with life, on the street, yelling at people, doing strange things, you know, just doing all these things that are so disconnected to life. And it is so, so sad. You know, I never want to be in a situation. I don't even want to live in the suburbs. You know, you know, you might think of suburbs as like, you know, everyone has a little house and a backyard. You know, you might think that's a dream if you're living in an apartment. But we have, you know, suburbs here, and people have, you know, their Lego house with their backyard and their washing line, and that's it. I've grown up on a massive property with trees and kangaroos and you know, rope swings and animals and chickens and you know, all these beautiful things, and there's so much fun and so much joy there. I couldn't possibly, couldn't possibly do it. Couldn't live with a neighbor right there or something right there. You know, it's when you've got that space, you've got your family around you, and you've got good friends and community, and you've got space to run and explore and build and create. There's nothing quite like that. And what it does to your mind, what it does to your mental health and your physical health, it changes everything. You know, there is so much about the cities that are bad. The final point I want to make here is obviously pollution, what it does to nature. We all know what's going on with the pollution, with air pollution, the water pollution, pollution on the ground, the chemicals and toxins and animals eating rubbish and see animals being wrapped up in plastic, and it is disgusting. And cities are providing a lot of that. A lot of that. You know, we're not all meant to live in one little bubble. Yes, cities have their place in our current life, but if everyone would slow down, reassess priorities, and perhaps live in different places, you know, Australia, the majority of Australia is just not populated. You know, when I crossed Australia with my partner earlier this year, we went from the east all the way to the west and back. The majority of that, there was towns where there were literally six people. There's no one there. You know, and some of the towns are really beautiful. They had a beach, they were warm, and yet there's just no one there. And it leads you to wonder why is everyone crammed up in the city, polluting this one area, ruining this one beautiful place. You know, Sydney, if if you everyone knows Sydney in New South Wales, you know, it's it's a big, big thing, you know, the harbor bridge, all that stuff. If you look up pictures of what Sydney's natural bush used to look like before they destroyed the place, you'd cry. It was beautiful, beautiful. How many animals, how many birds got pushed out? It's insane that we ruin these places, not to mention the Amazon and everywhere else in the world that's being destroyed. Why? Because we've got our priorities so messed up. So no, I've grown up in a relatively healthy place with lots of land, with lots of stars, with lots of sunshine, lots of trees, lots of nature. And you know, I come into a city from that place. So if you've grown up in the city, it's a different thing, but I can tell you right now how much better you feel when you're running down a hill and playing with the grass and playing with the animals and being, you know, bare feet on the ground or on stone or you know in the river, and you can actually swim in the river because it's not polluted, you know. It's a completely different feeling and it feels so good. So I encourage you, if you're in the city, why don't you go and book a week away? Especially like we're going into like Christmas, New Year, right? Hopefully you get some time off. Go and book an Airbnb in the middle of nowhere, a little tiny home to prove that you don't need anything. Don't bring a TV or a laptop. Monitor your phone time, you know, come out to the beautiful places. If you're in Sydney, if you're in Melbourne, find a beautiful place. You know, Orange is very popular right now. That's where I am. You know, you might go a little bit further into the bush, you know, go and experience what it's like to get out of the city for at least a few nights. Look at the stars, touch a tree, talk to a tree, have your feet on the ground and tell me that doesn't feel better. Do your own experiment, do your own research. But yeah, if you live in the city, I feel you, you know, we've grown up to think this kind of thing is normal. Many of us think it's normal. I want to offer you the perspective that it's not normal, it's very unnatural, and our bodies are just not made to do it, our minds are not meant to do it. So I encourage you to explore being elsewhere just for a moment. And you know what? It's cheaper, heaps cheaper. You can buy a property out here with grass, you know, with an actual backyard for the same price or even less as a fancy apartment in the CBD of Sydney or Melbourne, right? It's there's something different about it, and I am re-reminded every time I go to a city and then come back to the bush and to the lush rainforest of you know the mountains and all of those things, I'm reminded how lucky I am to have grown up where I am, and it reminds me to get back in touch with nature because it is a savior in so many ways. Thank you so much for listening, beautiful human. There will be an affirmation episode being released on Friday with a really cool end-of-year offer to get your own private affirmation episode created for you as a beautiful Christmas gift. So please stay tuned for that. I will be announcing that on Friday at 6 a.m. So please stay tuned. DM me if you have any questions, any concerns, feel free to put them in the comments. Feel free to email me. All those details are below. Let's chat. I am all about talking about things that need to be spoken about, bringing out ideas that perhaps you haven't thought of yet, and giving you information that could perhaps inspire you to live in a healthier way. So please continue the conversation, talk to your friends about it, talk to your family, and let's chat about how we can be healthier and happier as human beings. Because you know what? It's your birthright. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for tuning in, and I will chat with you in the next episode. Lots of love