What I Shared at TEDx: Rewilding the Mind and the Missing Piece of Human Flourishing
Last Friday night, I had the privilege of stepping onto the TEDx stage in Bentonville, Arkansas to share a message at the heart of my work: that the most endangered habitat may be within us.
TEDx has a way of asking you to distill what matters most. For me, that message is clear: rewilding the human mind may be one of the most important acts of restoration of our time.
Outer Landscapes, Inner Landscapes
In the talk, I explored a parallel that is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore: as our natural environments degrade, so too do our interior ones. This isn’t just a poetic idea—it’s supported by decades of research across disciplines.
We now know that access to nature can:
strengthen attention and cognitive clarity
reduce stress and anxiety
foster creativity and problem-solving
support emotional regulation and resilience
Conversely, the absence of meaningful contact with the more-than-human world contributes to what researchers call the extinction of experience—a quiet erosion of qualities that help us thrive: patience, care, and the capacity for awe.
In ecology, rewilding often begins by identifying what’s missing from a landscape—keystone species, essential pollinators, the relationships that maintain balance. With humans, rewilding the mind begins with restoring our relationship with the more-than-human world, returning ourselves to the web of life that shaped us.
When that relationship is renewed, the missing pieces of our inner ecosystem can take root again. Attention. Imagination. Awe. Flourishing.
Why This Matters Now
We’re living through a time of unprecedented technological acceleration. Artificial intelligence is reshaping how we think, work, and relate. At the same time, our connection to the natural world—once a daily, embodied experience—has grown distant.
This widening gap has consequences:
diminished attention
increased burnout
loss of patience, care, and awe
a pervasive sense that something essential is missing
Rewilding offers a pathway back—not backward in time, but forward into a future in which human flourishing is deeply interwoven with the living world.
At ReWilding: Lab, we integrate peer-reviewed research from a wide range of disciplines to support that work.
A Moment of Gratitude
Sharing these ideas at TEDxBentonville on November 8th was both an honor and a responsibility. I’m deeply grateful to the organizer, Elizabeth Perry, whose vision made the event possible, and to the other speakers who joined me in exploring this year’s theme, Vitalis—a reminder to live, imagine, and lead with greater vitality and awareness. I’m also grateful to The Momentary, whose contemporary art space provided the perfect setting for the evening, and to the event sponsors who helped bring it to life.
The talk is currently in the TEDx review process and will be shared as soon as it is officially released. You can view the official TEDxBentonville event page here.
What Comes Next
Over the coming months, I’ll be expanding on the themes of the talk here on the ReWilding: Lab blog—diving deeper into concepts such as:
sensory rewilding
the arts as a pathway for rewilding the mind
the scientific research pathway for rewilding the mind
This work isn’t theoretical. It’s deeply practical, deeply needed, and deeply human.
Rewilding the mind begins with remembering that we are part of the living world—and that it is still speaking to us, if we choose to listen.
Thank you for being here as this work continues to unfold.
With warmth and gratitude,
Dana