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Tag: embodiment

  • The Ecology of Presence: Why Re-Embodiment is a Radical Act.

    The Ecology of Presence: Why Re-Embodiment is a Radical Act.

    🌀 Reclaiming the Small Body: Why Re-Embodiment Matters More Than Ever

    We live in a culture that has become profoundly disembodied.

    The average person has between 15,000 and 90,000 thoughts per day — a staggering mental churn that keeps us suspended in the realm of cognition. We’re encouraged to live in our heads, to value speed, productivity, and intellect above all else. Rarely are we invited to pause, feel, or listen to the quieter rhythms of the body.

    I have been reflecting on this cultural disconnection. We’ve lost touch with what I call the small body: our physical, tactile, energetic self.  Because, far from just flesh and bone, the body is a sensing instrument, a portal to presence. It’s also a bridge to something much larger: the large body of the earth, the ecosystem, and wider field of life.

    🧠 The Worship of Intellect and What It Costs Us

    One striking signal of our cultural imbalance is how we allocate resources. In the United States, the largest financial endowment ever made was to Harvard University , an institution that epitomizes the worship of intellect. Harvard’s endowment now exceeds $53 billion, funding research, innovation, and academic excellence.  The leading universities in the UK, Cambridge and Oxford, are renowned for having some of the largest financial endowments, often competing closely with each other. This underscores just how much value is placed on intellect, on both sides of the pond.

    It isn’t inherently wrong to value intellect. Indisputably, intellectual pursuits are fundamental in terms of how they fuel advancements, foster growth and shape society.  But let’s consider some of the vital things which get lost when intellect becomes the dominant or only perceived form of valued intelligence:

    We lose somatic intelligence — the wisdom of the body.
    We lose emotional intelligence — the capacity to feel and relate.
    We lose intuitive intelligence — the knowing that arises without logic.
    We lose relational intelligence — the ability to attune, connect, and co-regulate.

    To elevate one form of knowing while dismissing the others is imbalanced, dangerous even. It leads to fragmentation, alienation, and a loss of meaning.

    And it’s no coincidence that so many people today feel anxious, numb, or disconnected.

    🌍 The Small Body and the Large Body

    The small body – our personal, felt experience – was never meant to exist in isolation. It is in constant dialogue with the large body: the earth, the seasons, the cycles of life. Indigenous traditions, ancient philosophies, and somatic lineages have long understood this relationship.

    The way we treat our bodies mirrors the way we treat the earth.

    When we neglect the small body, we also neglect the large body.
    When we override our own signals, we override the signals of the planet.
    When we numb ourselves, we numb our empathy for the world around us.

    🌱 A Path Back: Embodiment in Practice

    The good news is that can return.

    We can learn to listen again, through breath, movement, sensation, and presence. There are teachings and practices that support this re-embodiment, and they’re more relevant now than ever.  Through these teachings and practices we can heal the split between mind and body, self and world; we can reclaim presence in a world that profits from our distraction.

    Re-embodiment doesn’t mean abandoning intellect. It means integrating it. It means listening to the body’s signals, honouring its rhythms, and allowing it to guide us, in movement, in decision-making, relationships, and creativity.

    This is a key component within my seven-week course, rooted in the foundations of embodiment. It’s designed to guide you gently back to the wisdom of your own body and the deeper connection it holds.

    We’ll explore:

    • Somatic awareness and nervous system regulation
    • Philosophical inquiry into body-mind integration
    • Tools for daily embodiment in a disembodied world

    If you’re curious, I invite you to explore. Not just the course, but the possibility of living from a place of felt presence, grounded awareness, and embodied truth.

    Let’s remember what it means to be fully alive.

  • Rooted and Reaching

    Rooted and Reaching

    🌿 The Nourishment We Carry

    Trees feed themselves through an intricate root system that pulls water and nutrients from the soil. This process is quiet and constant. Hidden underground, the roots are doing the work of drawing in minerals that sustain every branch, leaf, and bud. The tree doesn’t rush; it trusts the slow, steady flow of nourishment rising from below.

    We do something similar. The nutrients we take in -from food, air, and sunlight -move through our bloodstream and into our cells, keeping our bodies strong and balanced. What trees absorb through roots, we absorb through veins. Our systems are internal, but they echo the same principle: life depends on circulation.

    But nourishment isn’t just physical. Trees respond to light, air, and the changing seasons. They bend with the wind, rest in winter, bloom when conditions are right. We, too, are shaped by what we take in emotionally and relationally, what we listen to, who we connect with, how we rest.  Tension can be softened with a kind word. Walking outdoors can calm the nervous system. A moment of stillness can restore balance.

    It’s all part of our internal and external ecosytem. Like trees, we need to be fed consistently to grow well, not just what we consume but how it circulates through us, keeping everything in rhythm. Growth is as much integration and flow, as it is about intake, and the importance of these quiet systems that sustain us.

    🪵 The Stillness that Holds Us

    Once whilst on a silent five day retreat was the instruction to go and stand opposite a tree, to feel commonality with it.

    An easy place to start in exploring this is the grounded rootedness at the base of the tree trunk, its roots reaching deep into the ground. It can be so helpful to feel that we, too, are rooted within solid ground.

    To stand before a tree is to be reminded that stability exists. 

    There are many moments during the day, be they fleeting or enduring, when the whirlwind of thought lifts us from ourselves. We can be swept up in mental activity for indefinite lengths of time, unaware even, that we have come away from a sense of ground.  Blown around like the weather and lacking a sense of stable ground beneath us.

    Trees offer the antidote. We could think of it as replugging the circuit: it’s as if without this electrical charge plugged into the ground we are susceptible to every wind that blows, every emotion, thought or mindstate. Grounding ourselves is like a re-entry into a slower current, an earth-borne vibration that steadies the nervous system.

    Trees can remind us that with a sense of our charge plugged into the earth, we don’t have to be tossed by every wind. We are wired, quite literally, to connect to the earth’s charge, to feel supported, held, regulated.

    This has always something of a fascinating area to me, ever since learning about the contemplations of the body in terms of earth, air, water and fire.  I could sense the vast potential of the earth element within trauma healing.  As if in confirmation of this, I learnt soon after that these modalities make much of grounding and stabilisation at their core.

    🌀 The Shape of Becoming

    We often talk about healing as something to achieve, almost as if new levels of growth are untouched by what came before. But isn’t it more the case that real growth is from accumulation of, rather than overwriting experience? Trees remind us of this so beautifully.

    When we look closely we can see where the bark thickened during a hard season, where water was scarce, where lightning kissed the trunk. Rather than scars these are integrity made visible. To honour experiences like these is to reject the pressure to be endlessly smooth or untouched. In a similar way I say that I grew through the fire, not over it. My depth isn’t formed from leaving stuff behind but from integrating it.

    The trees’ rings hold memory in form. Each ring corresponds to a year in the tree’s life. And in the same way, each year of our life leaves a trace, visible or felt so that our inner architecture is  built incrementally, from the inside out. Bodies and minds archive stories: grief that stretched us wider, joy that softened something brittle, stillness that taught us to listen to our heart. These rings are not always symmetrical, and nor should they be. They reflect how we’ve metabolised experience rather than just survived them. They hold the shape of us, year by year, without needing explanation.