Chaucer’s Choices: Naughty When Nature Is Naught and Concert in the Park

Kathleen Lockyer draws on almost three decades of practice as an occupational therapist as well as her own story to offer a powerful re-framing of how children develop and how adults can heal alongside them. In her new book Wild Inside: How Nature Protects Your Child’s Mental Health and Restores Yours, Lockyer offers parents, educators and healers specific guidelines for transforming behavior by learning how to build a healthy nervous system with nature as a wise guide. 

Lockyer reveals how many modern childhoods suffer from developmental deprivation, leading to challenges often mislabeled as anxiety, inattention, or defiance. Positing nature as an essential need for healthy development, she introduces her concepts of ecoception (our innate sensory connection to nature) and relational-regulation (how the nervous system is shaped by interacting), which together serve as a trauma-informed, nature-based antidote to the disconnection driving today’s mental-health crisis.

Lockyer, who lives on the Central Coast, talks about the book and signs copies at Chaucer’s Books on March 4. The event will also serve as a fundraiser for one of the local nonprofits that puts the concept into practice, namely the Wilderness Youth Project (WYP). Ten percent of all sales from 5-7 pm that day will go to WYP, who will also have representatives on hand to answer questions about the program.  

www.chaucersbooks.com

Chase-ing a Gig: Concerts in the Park Seeks Bands

Want to appear in one of the biggest and best-loved free outdoor community events in town? Santa Barbara Parks & Rec is seeking musical acts for the annual summer concert series Concerts in the Park. The family-friendly summer tradition has brought a range of musical entertainment to Chase Palm Park since its inception in 2000, attracting thousands of attendees to the waterfront open space every July. Shows this year are slated for July 2, 9, 16, and 23, and musical acts interested in being considered must submit an online application by Wednesday, March 4. Bands must be able to demonstrate their experience playing for large crowds, provide a 90-minute sample setlist, and links to past performances. The selected bands will be notified in April, and the official line-up will be released in June. 

Visit SantaBarbaraCA.gov/Concerts