EP 22: How Nature Can Be Our Greatest Teacher With Biomimicry Student Azita Ardakani
Episode Length: 1:15:17
This week, I’m speaking with Azita Ardakani all about biomimicry, which according to Azita, is about revealing nature’s strategies to solve problems or create new innovations. She’s currently studying biomimicry at Arizona State University, but prior to this, Azita had an incredibly successful career living in New York City as the founder of Lovesocial, a communications agency that landed her on the Forbes 30 under 30 list. I don’t want to give too much away because I think Azita should share her story in her own words, but Azita chose a radical path and left her agency and life in New York for an extended moment of pause and contemplative connection with the natural world. Her story is nature’s story - resilient, complex, full of opposites, and ever expansive.
“It’s not like an organism decides to be in its greatest power, a different organism. It knows to fulfill its role and purpose and greatest offering here, it has to entirely be itself and the evolution of the collective is entirely hinged on that one thing being itself.” - Azita Ardakani x Our Nature
“When you connect more to nature, you grieve more too…you have to reconcile all of the ways you haven’t been open to nature...and your own nature.” - Azita Ardakani x Our Nature
“I have to learn how to radically be myself and that’s from a biological basis, my greatest offering.” - Azita Ardakani x Our Nature
“We will never have the research and development, money and energy to come up with what nature has come up with.” - Azita Ardakani x Our Nature
“We have to refer back to her to help her.” - Azita Ardakani x Our Nature
“For you to want to preserve your natural world, knowingly and unknowingly, you are trying to preserve and love yourself.” - Azita Ardakani x Our Nature
Resources
Show Notes
On listening to Azita’s inner truth during a period of transition
How Azita dealt with uncertainty
What nature taught Azita about herself during this time
Biomimicry 101
How biomimicry is practically applied in modern society
Why humans haven’t universally adopted biomimicry
Azita’s plans for biomimicry
Everyday examples of biomimicry around us
What bees can teach us about communication
Why we’re still suffering as a society and how biomimicry can be used to solve every manmade problem
How nature influences biomimicry and how biomimicry influences nature
A practical way anyone can practice biomimicry
The last five questions
Connect with Azita:
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Gratitude List: This podcast would not be possible without the group of talented individuals below. I offer them my sincerest thanks and love.
Graphics by: Tim LaSalle
Music by: Nick Ceglia and Andrea Cortez of Mind Body Music Center
The Last Five Questions
What is your favorite place in nature?
Anywhere by the pacific ocean. A forest by the ocean. A balance of the rootedness of the earth beneath my feet and the enormous power of the fluid next to me is probably my happy place.
What is the animal, mineral or plant that resonates with you the most?
Whales and dandelions. Dandelions are wildly resilient. We see them grow in cracks. The whale is just a deep keeper of time, of histories and wisdom, and sound and frequency.
What is one thing we can do right now to connect with the natural world and bring more harmony into our lives?
Feel our breath. Every time you breathe it’s like this golden string connected to the pulse of all living things.
What’s the greatest lesson nature has taught you?
That I’m not alone. That i’m never alone. That I’m enough exactly as I am.
Complete this sentence: Nature brings me…
Calm.