Our Intimate Connectivity with Nature –

personal, planetary and collective resonance

Being Nature

EarthBody - the body of the Earth and the earth of our own Body. We are all connected and each one of us is an integral part of the planetary and collective body – interbeing, as Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh has named it; or participation mystique, a term introduced by Lucien Lévy-Bruhl and developed by Carl G Jung in his approach to depth psychology. This term harks back to an ancient, matriarchal and indigenous way of experiencing our relationship with Nature and the world around us, before the divisiveness of modern and patriarchal ways of perceiving life.

The Greek motto ‘divide and rule’ or the Roman ‘veni, vidi, vici’ – ‘I came, I saw, I conquered’ - express the standard for intentional dividing up of what is whole into parts for personal power and gain. ‘In personal relationships, "divide and conquer" can be a manipulative tactic used to gain control or influence by sowing discord and division’ ¹ In national and global politics we see this played out in the extreme today, as well as tragically in some personal relationships.

Long before these aberrations that have defined the modern world came about, an understanding of connectivity and intimate belonging with Earth and Nature was integral to the world view of indigenous peoples, and today their wisdom is re-surfacing into our conscious awareness as we face the damages we have done, are still doing to the Earth. James Lovelock re-introduced the name of the Greek Earth Goddess Gaia, to refer to the sentient, intelligent and whole body of the Earth and Nature.²

We are made of the elements of Earth, Ocean, Air and Sun – of course, how could it be otherwise? Intellectually we know that this is true – our bones are filled with the minerals of the Earth’s bedrock, our cells bathed in and filled with a tiny drop of the ocean, the oxygen we need for life is gifted to us by the trees, and our life force quickened by the fire of the Sun. But to really, deeply respect and love Earth and Nature perhaps we need to feel this connectivity, our belongingness, in embodied ways.

Practices that invite us into our own embodied experience, into conscious awareness of the cells, tissues and fluids of our body, into caring for and loving our own sentient embodiment, our soma, can open the way to feel more intimately connected with Nature and to fall in love with the EarthBody of which we are an integral part.

A Practice – being with Nature-Beings

Here is a small and very simple practice that you can do anywhere, at any time, to help you feel more intimately connected to Nature. I find this deeply calming and resourcing too.

Take ten minutes or more out of your busy day, or just one or two minutes if that is what feels right and possible for you. Put down your phone, close the computer, take some time out from the incessant demands of life and the stream of information and thoughts that are besieging your mind at every moment – time out to simply be with:

1. Take a slow walk or simply look around you. Choose one, just one nature-being to spend some time with – be open and see where you are called. If you have access to outside space – a garden, park, countryside, beach - all the better, but you can focus on a plant in your house, a view from the window, rain streaking down the windowpane if weather or illness or limited time mean you need to stay indoors.

2. Bring your attention close – one single flower or leaf or seed, a blade of grass – or wider, to be witness to a tree, a cloud. Choose whatever draws you right now. Then simply be with, noticing the colours, shapes, movements, smell perhaps.

3. Try not to think too much, just contemplate and receive this nature-being. What do you receive, what is the essential quality of their being? You might be surprised at how much you can discover - from simply being witness to the physical form of this being - about their innerness, their quality of presence, their individual way of being in the world.

I have met many friends, allies, teachers through this practice. I remember those I have spent time with and witnessed in this way; they continue to be with me, and this feels deeply nourishing. Each resonates within a different part of me, evokes feelings, sensations, a particular way of being. Here are a few I have met this glorious spring!

This way of connecting is also familiar from my practice as a witness in the Discipline of Authentic Movement³. As witness, we learn to attend to the movement expression of another, a mover, without analysing or interpreting, seeking not to judge or project our own experience onto them, but to be present to what arises in us as we receive them and all they bring in this moment. I find the practice with nature-beings is very similar – attending to this being, in this moment, the form and movement they express through, the invisible essence that is revealed through their visible presence.

This reminds me of a poem by the wonderful Mary Oliver⁴, which speaks so articulately to the practice of witnessing the individual, the particular expressed through the details of one unique being:

THE SUMMER DAY

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean —
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down —
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

Mary Oliver

Symptoms in Resonance

When we can feel our connectivity, our participation in the whole a little more fully, we might also feel that what we as individuals do and suffer affects and also reflects some part of what is happening within the collective and planetary sphere; and what is happening to the Earth and the Collective Body is felt and experienced by us as individuals. Our connection is intimate and deeply somatic.

In future posts I would like to explore with you some of the ways that our physical symptoms might resonate with symptoms of the Earth and Nature. For some time now, I have been reflecting on the relationship between personal and planetary symptoms, which must include the actions and effects of our human species too, as collective and environmental symptoms can’t be separated from the ways we humans treat the Earth and Nature.

The questions I hold: what can we learn from our own healing that might point towards what the Earth needs for her healing? And what can the remarkable healing potential of the Earth and Nature show us about what we need for our own healing. Both are intimately connected – we are not truly well if the Earth, Nature, the whole environment we inhabit, is not well.

¹ With thanks to the author from whom AI probably stole this phrase

² James Lovelock, 1991, Gaia. Gaia Books Ltd, London

³ To read about the Discipline of Authentic Movement you can go to my website for a brief description: www.lindahartley.co.uk/authentic-movement - or for more details please visit: www.disciplineofauthenticmovement.com

⁴ Mary Oliver, The Summer Day

Thank you for reading, and I hope to connect again soon

Linda