Chaucer’s Books will host author Kathleen Lockyer for a book talk and signing of “Wild Inside: How Nature Protects Your Child’s Mental Health and Restores Yours,” 6 p.m. Wednesday, March 4 at the bookstore, 3321 State St., Santa Barbara.

The event also serves as a fundraiser for the Wilderness Youth Project (WYP), Chaucer’s said. From 5-7 p.m. March 4, 10% of all sales benefit the WYP, which will have representativs on hand to answer questions about the program. 
 
In the book, Lockyer draws on some three decades of practice as an occupational therapist and from pieces of her own story to offer a re-framing of how children develop and how adults can heal alongside them.

Lockyer shows parents, educators and healers how to transform behavior by learning how to build a healthy nervous system, with nature as a wise guide.

The author reveals how many modern childhoods suffer from developmental deprivation, leading to challenges often mislabeled as anxiety, inattention, or defiance.

“By helping the readers see 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),” Chaucer’s said.

“Together, they serve as a trauma-informed, nature-based antidote to the disconnection driving today’s mental-health crisis,” the bookstore said.

For 30 years, Lockyer has worked at the intersection of occupational therapy, neuroscience, and the living world, helping families rethink mental health, resilience, and human development through relationship, sensory health, and nature, Chaucer’s said.

Raised a little wild by a rugged fisherman from Newfoundland and a little refined by a debutante from New York City, she brings both grit and grace to everything she teaches and writes.

Lockyer lives on California’s Central Coast.