As oleo­tourism gains pop­u­lar­ity, a grow­ing num­ber of activ­i­ties that seek to fos­ter healthy lifestyles are being hosted in the olive grove.

Olive oil tast­ings and other food-and-wine-related expe­ri­ences, as well as activ­i­ties, such as hik­ing, are increas­ingly pop­u­lar in olive groves, which have proven to be an ideal set­ting when it comes to prac­tices that pro­mote men­tal well-being.

The heal­ing effect of the con­tact with nature is widely sup­ported by research.– Nicola Malorni, psy­chol­o­gist and pres­i­dent, Kairos

In the cen­ter-south Italian region of Molise, an olive tree is at the cen­ter of an inno­v­a­tive project aimed at reduc­ing the stress of par­tic­i­pants with the sup­port of aug­mented real­ity.

“We had begun to exper­i­ment some years ago with inter­ven­tions in the olive grove aimed at pro­mot­ing the well-being of indi­vid­u­als and groups,” said Nicola Malorni, a psy­chol­o­gist and pres­i­dent of the social coop­er­a­tive Kairos.

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“It all started while car­ry­ing out the social olive farm­ing Aspem project, aimed at female vic­tims of vio­lence,” he added. ​“They par­tic­i­pated in the pro­duc­tion of high-qual­ity extra vir­gin olive oil, which, along with ther­a­peu­tic pro­ce­dures, helped them to rein­te­grate back into soci­ety and to recover their self-esteem.”

One day, while work­ing in an orchard in the vil­lage of Guardialfiera, one of the par­tic­i­pants bumped into an old olive tree that a light­ning bolt had struck. Despite the dis­rupt­ing event that left deep marks, the tree con­tin­ued to live and thrive.

“This encounter imme­di­ately trig­gered emo­tional res­o­nances in all of us, mainly in the woman who had dis­cov­ered it, who was strongly impressed by the resilience of this liv­ing being,” Malorni said.

The tree soon became a point of ref­er­ence for oper­a­tors and par­tic­i­pants, who gave it the name Fausto, from the Latin word faus­tus, mean­ing lucky or aus­pi­cious. They started to carry out ses­sions of med­i­ta­tion and yoga, dis­cus­sion groups and even super­vised activ­i­ties for the psy­chol­o­gists involved in the project under its branches.

Yoga in the Historical Olive Park of Venafro.

“With the use of active imag­i­na­tion, a Jungian method that pro­motes trans­for­ma­tion and explo­ration processes of the uncon­scious through imag­i­na­tion, we had con­ver­sa­tions with Fausto, which have been tran­scribed and also inspired a short movie, Gocce (Drops),” Malorni said.

The Aspem project was so suc­cess­ful that it was widely rec­og­nized as a best prac­tice. Buoyed by this expe­ri­ence, the social coop­er­a­tive responded to a call by the Ministry of Culture and received fund­ing for a project that will begin this autumn – with the help of aug­mented real­ity devices, Fausto will be able to speak and lead groups through med­i­ta­tion prac­tices.

“It will truly become a col­league since it will lead med­i­ta­tion groups just like us psy­chol­o­gists,” Malorni said. ​“This will be pos­si­ble thanks to a device that emits a recorded voice inserted inside of it. Fausto will there­fore be a mind­ful­ness facil­i­ta­tor for 20 peo­ple, which will par­tic­i­pate, after an open selec­tion, in this project that will last 18 months.”

Based on a wide range of med­i­ta­tion and yoga tech­niques, mind­ful­ness finds appli­ca­tions in clin­i­cal psy­chol­ogy and psy­chi­a­try. It is used to pro­mote bet­ter man­age­ment of stress, anx­i­ety and depres­sion. It is also effec­tively used for patho­log­i­cal addic­tions and other prob­lems in adults and chil­dren in inte­gra­tion with other ther­a­peu­tic means.

With its voice, Fausto will wel­come the par­tic­i­pants and give them tasks and direc­tions to prac­tice mind­ful breath­ing, the body-scan med­i­ta­tion involv­ing bod­ily per­cep­tions and mind­ful walk­ing through the olive grove.

“One of the actions envis­aged in the project is to demon­strate that the inter­ven­tion of the facil­i­ta­tor Fausto will have ther­a­peu­tic effects on the psy­cho-phys­i­o­log­i­cal well-being of the par­tic­i­pants,” Malorni said. ​“We will then exam­ine the ini­tial psy­cho-phys­i­o­log­i­cal state of par­tic­i­pants, namely the lev­els of stress, anx­i­ety and depres­sion, doing a sali­vary test for the bio­mark­ers cor­ti­sol and alpha-amy­lase.”

The expec­ta­tions of this research are that the lev­els recorded at the begin­ning will grad­u­ally and sig­nif­i­cantly decrease through­out the project.

“The heal­ing effect of the con­tact with nature is widely sup­ported by research; we are already con­fi­dent of a good result,” he said.

“Indeed, we are plan­ning to pro­pose this ther­a­peu­tic activ­ity also to the par­tic­i­pants of the ​‘Walking Among Olive Trees Day,’” added Malorni, who is the vice-pres­i­dent of the asso­ci­a­tion Città dell’Olio, which orga­nizes the hik­ing event in the Italian olive groves each year.

The fund­ing allows the asso­ci­a­tion to obtain aug­mented real­ity head­sets that will also be used to pro­mote tourism in the region.

“With the movie direc­tor Simone D’Angelo, we will cre­ate scener­ies that each par­tic­i­pant will visu­al­ize through the head­set,” Malorni said. ​“Fausto will inter­act with the char­ac­ters of Signora Ava and Le Terre del Sacramento, which are two his­tor­i­cal nov­els by the writer Francesco Jovine, who was born in the town where Fausto is located. As they talk about the ancient peas­ant world, this can be a way to con­vey impor­tant cul­tural con­tent that enriches the tourist expe­ri­ence.”

“We also plan to use the income from the first exper­i­ments to mod­ify the scener­ies fur­ther,” he added. ​“We also would like Fausto to become a pro­moter of the Mediterranean diet and healthy lifestyles.”

The aug­mented real­ity project is just the lat­est of a series of fruit­ful expe­ri­ences related to well­ness led by men­tal health pro­fes­sion­als that have been hosted in some groves of the region over the last months.

“We recently had a great expe­ri­ence in the Olive Tree Park of Termoli, where I led a mind­ful­ness med­i­ta­tion on the occa­sion of the ​‘Merenda nell’Oliveta’ (Snack in the olive grove) orga­nized by the Città dell’Olio,” Malorni said.

Moreover, in the Historical Olive Park of Venafro, yoga ses­sions were car­ried out with Tibetan singing bowl music, gongs and other per­cus­sions.

“There are stud­ies show­ing the effec­tive­ness of these musi­cal instru­ments in help­ing to reach altered states of con­scious­ness that acti­vate self-heal­ing fac­tors in the indi­vid­ual,” Malorni said.” These are fur­ther means that can be eas­ily used in the orchard in the frame­work of these inno­v­a­tive approaches to well-being.”

“Olive farm­ing is giv­ing me the oppor­tu­nity to leave the ana­lyt­i­cal study of the psy­cho­an­a­lyst and explore the pos­si­bil­ity of bring­ing ana­lyt­i­cal psy­chol­ogy into nat­ural con­texts, just like Jung him­self taught us when he prac­ticed psy­cho­analy­sis in the gar­den or by the lake, where it is pos­si­ble to redis­cover a rela­tion­ship with nature, with the earth mother,” Malorni added.

“In the set­ting of olive grove, our projects aim to pro­mote healthy lifestyles and a healthy rela­tion­ship with the envi­ron­ment, along with food and sport. Our view is that olive farm­ing can suc­cess­fully pro­mote human health,” he con­cluded.

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Each week, Marion Technical College shares MarionMade! stories of our many wonderful people, places, products and programs in the greater Marion community. To read more positive stories of Marion, or to share some of your own, visit us at marionmade.org or on social media.

Tucked in between Hayes Glass and the Metro office at 117 N. Greenwood St., a new independent bookstore offers thousands of new and used books for readers of all ages. Crystal and Justin Bessler offer a range of genres at the Birch Tree Bookery.

“We both have always loved to read!” Crystal said. “Many of our friends were driving to Columbus for discount used books. We wanted to fill in a gap that was missing in Marion to keep money in the community.”

Crystal Murrell grew up in Marion and graduated from Ridgedale in 2000. She went to Indiana Wesleyan University to earn a bachelor of science in social work. There she met Justin Bessler, a Hoosier studying creative writing and computer graphics. They married and started a family, which grew to six children. They just celebrated their 21st wedding anniversary.

About the Besslers

Justin earned a master of fine arts degree in creative writing from Ashland University. He wrote a collection of poetry and memoir essays for his master’s thesis.

“I was officially married to a bona fide writer and unashamed book nerd!” Crystal said.

He also earned a master’s of Divinity from Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Kansas City, where he was ordained as a Baptist minister.

They returned to Marion in 2009 and live in Nevada, Ohio. Crystal homeschools their children, though one son is currently studying interactive media at Tri-Rivers Career Center.

“We want our children to become life-long learners and book lovers,” said Crystal.

About the Bookery

The shelves offer an eclectic collection including romance, science fiction, fantasy, self-help, nonfiction, mysteries, young adult fiction, biographies, theology and Westerns. The Bookery offers discounts for all educators.

“It doesn’t have to be a book for the classroom. Teachers need to relax, too! They can pick up a thriller and receive a discount,” Crystal said.

The couple also handed out free books to students taking summer classes at George Washington Elementary.

“Children’s books are our largest collection,” Crystal said. “It’s so important to promote a love of reading.”

“We hope that people find us so we have to keep restocking the shelves,” Justin said.

Readers can order new books online at BirchTreeBookery.com. They are a part of Bookshop.org, a public benefit corporation that serves independent bookstores while offering 10% off the publisher’s price.

“We’re not going to take a trip to space based on how well we do with our independent bookstore, except in our minds as we read books,” Justin said. “It supports our family, and we spend it locally.”

Connecting with the community

In the three months they have been open, they have enjoyed talking to hundreds of customers.

“We have a great library here in Marion. We look forward to helping to promote a love of reading and building a community around books,” Justin said.

“Some people love to buy a pile of books so they always have the next book ready to start,” Crystal said.

“We want to give books a good home,” Justin said. “The more readers we can supply with books, the more conversations we can start around the books, the stronger the community becomes.”

In addition to bestsellers, the store offers puzzles, board games and Crystal’s handmade jewelry.

“The community has been very kind,” Crystal said. “We receive book donations nearly every week.”

This woman-owned business is looking for opportunities to collaborate with other small businesses.

“There’s great support from other local business owners. All of that helps the community,” Crystal said. “We want Marion to rise and thrive!”

For more information, customers can stop by the store on Wednesdays from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.; Thursdays and Fridays from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.; and Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. The book store can be reached at 740-262-3312. They can be followed on Facebook.com/BirchTreeBookery.

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