Eco-somatics is a field of embodied research and practice exploring ancestral technologies of animist wisdom. With roots in Indigenous knowledge systems, it combines decolonial theory, somatic practice, nature connection and ecological awareness to create a framework for embodied belonging. Eco-somatic approaches rest on a foundational acknowledgment of interdependence and explores how life moves within and along a relational continuum between bodies, Lands and Waters across space-time. Practices build resilience, restore vitality, and nurture sensory reciprocity between body and earth. This blog will introduce you to some of the key concepts and ideas that we believe are important.
Overview
“We can sense the world around us only because we are entirely a part of this world, because - by virtue of our own carnal density and dynamism - we are wholly embedded in the depths of the earthly sensuous. We can feel the tangible textures, sounds and shapes of the biosphere because we are tangible, resonant, audible shapes in our own right. We are born of these very waters, this very air, this loamy soil, this sunlight. Nourished and sustained by the substance of the breathing earth, we are flesh of its flesh. We are neither pure spirits nor pure minds, but are sensitive and sentient bodies able to be seen, heard, tasted, touched by all the beings around us.” - David Abram, Becoming Animal
Introduction: Eco-Somatics Awakens Animism
It might be hard to imagine that all humans were once Indigenous to place, that our lived experience was fully embedded within the natural world, and our sensory perceptions were suffused in the landscape. As entangled elements interwoven into ecosystems, we were one body. To a devastating extent, this primal embodiment has been strategically severed. Eco-somatics is a field of embodied research and practice that aims to restore this primal connection to life through the wisdom of the body by reclaiming ancestral technologies of embodied belonging - what we also might call animism.
For 98% of human history, 99.9% of our ancestors lived, breathed, and interacted with the world that they saw and felt to be animate, imbued with life force, inhabited by and permeated with forces, with which we exist in ongoing relation. This animate vision was the water in which we swam. It was consciousness in its natural dwelling place, the normative way of seeing the world and our place in it. It wasn't a theory, a philosophy, or an idea. It was felt experience. - Joshua Michael Schrei
Animism recognizes that humans are part of a wider community of beings imbued with spirit or consciousness. It's about acknowledging relationships which emerge between beings that entail gratitude and reciprocity. Indigenous cultures from around the world reflect and embody this acknowledgement through their cultural and spiritual laws, practices, ceremonies, and protocols.
Eco-somatic research and practice seeks to address and heal the root causes of this severing and to support processes of relational repair between body, mind, spirit and place as well as between peoples and their ancestors. Thus it is our perspective that eco-somatics should be grounded in decolonization and support ancestral recovery.
Such healing happens over time, within circles of kinship that deepen through seasons of change and cycles of renewal. These practices nurture wild fluency, embodied awareness, grounded agency, authentic expression, ecological attunement; place-based intimacy and responsibility; relational protocols for healing and repair; and values-aligned action. Eco-somatic practices calls us home to the sensitivity of interdependence awakened through the intelligence of our dreaming earth body.
Eco-somatics seeks to:
nurture ones sense of purpose, vitality and belonging to place (Land/Waters).
expand ones felt sense of self to include the wider ecological web of relationships.
restore ones ecological identity (sense of purpose and place) and intelligence (sense of relational responsibility).
heal the wound of separation (spirit/matter split).
repair disconnection from self (mind/body split).
intentionally engage the senses in relationship to the ecology of place
invite awareness back into the living landscape of the body and slowly call back instinctive ways of being.
support nervous system regulation and re-patterning.
nurture self trust and create space to listen to ones in nature wisdom.
deepen ones sense of belonging, reverence and responsibility to place (Land/Waters).
What is Eco-Somatics? A Pathway to Embodied Belonging
Eco-somatics is all about coming back to life. When we feel authentically alive, we are sensually open, receptive, and responsive to the world around us, to the body of earth, and to other beings. From here our ecological identity unfolds. Practices seek to awaken our multi-sensory perception and expand our sense of self to encompass the relational field by rooting us back into our bodies, back into relationship, and back into our ancestral inheritance. Such an embodied state creates a grounded sense of belonging in the world.
As David Abram asserts, “Sensory perception is the silken web that binds our separate nervous systems into the encompassing ecosystem.” It is in the felt sense of being fully present to "what is" that we learn to “be with” the wholeness of who we are including all threads of existence woven together across space and time. Adrian Harris of the Green Fuse emphasizes the importance of embodied knowledge as key to our ecological understanding:
“If we have a well-grounded, fully embodied self, we will have a full sensual connection with the more-than-human world. This allows us to be fully connected to that world and to be fully empathetic with it… When we have an embodied way of being-in-the-world, the subject/object distinction breaks down. The notion of a 'body' shifts dramatically from an enclosed 'inside this skin' understanding to a more fluid, open understanding of body/self as integrated within the world, as a single point of awareness within a vast matrix of being.” [1]
Sensitivity, which reflects our ability to perceive through our senses, is the embodied inheritance of belonging. It is through our channels of sensitivity that we are able to access our deepest, primal knowing. Attuned sensitivity unsettles binary thinking and breaks down the apparent divide between "self" and “other.” Like two rivers converging, when we can sense both our inner and outer landscape, an awareness dawns that the two are one.
Our human body is a microcosm of earth’s body. That is to say, every being is a mode of the earth and an expression of consciousness in form. We are each but a strand in the relational tapestry of existence spanning the arc of space and time all the way back to the beginning wherein the first moments our universe moved toward creating relationships. Our being here arises from the evolutionary need for connection and relational reciprocity. David Abram, in his book Becoming Animal, beautifully captures this idea:
“Caught up in a mass of abstractions… it is all too easy for us to forget our carnal inherence in a more-than-human matrix of sensations and sensibilities. Our bodies have formed themselves in delicate reciprocity with the manifold textures, sounds, and shapes of an animate earth – our eyes have evolved in subtle interaction with other eyes, as our ears are attuned by their very structure to the howling of wolves and the honking of geese… We are human only in contact, and conviviality, with what is not human.” [2]
As we lie on the cool earth caressing the grass with our toes, we enact our most ancient ancestral inheritance: our hearts beat in unison with the pulse of spring peepers and the flap of wings. Our breath oscillates to the rhythms of the ocean and moon tides, “offering ourselves to the world at one moment and drawing the world into ourselves at the next.” [3] The same forces of gravity (attraction) and expansion that give form to the universe are essential to the nature of who we are. There is no separation from one moment to the next, and there is no separation between the manifold expressions of life.
Grounding Eco-Somatics in Decoloniality
For eco-somatics to be of any value though, it must go beyond notions of individualism. It cannot be about little "me" restoring a primal connection with life so that "I" can live my best life. Nope, that's not it. There must be a grounded understanding as to why coming back into relationship with life is necessary for becoming the kind of people we need to be for greater action to unfold for the benefit of future generations. It's about relational repair and restoring ecological balance. It's about righting the wrongs of the past and returning land to Indigenous people. It's about understanding the historical, economic and social forces that created disconnection in the first place, and how they continue to manifest today. It speaks to the role we play within that and our sacred responsibility to repair.
The whole concept of "eco-somatics” wouldn’t need to exist if history had unfolded differently. The violent process of land enclosures (12th-19th centuries) across Europe severed people from their lands and paved the road to colonial capitalism, an economic system of domination rooted in imperialism, white supremacy and the normalization violence, dispossession, extraction, exploitation and punishment. The genocidal project of settler-colonialism on Turtle Island attempted to do the same thing, that is to dispossess Indigenous people of their land. This process is still ongoing and it inflicts a kind of complex PTSD on the relationships between body, mind, spirit and place. We're witnessing the horror of this today in Palestine.
That is why the field of eco-somatics must be grounded in a radical vision of the future that goes beyond and dispels the mythology of eurocentric, colonial and capitalist worldviews. It must be rooted in decoloniality:
a way for us to re-learn the knowledge that has been pushed aside, forgotten, buried or discredited by the forces of modernity, settler-colonialism, and racial capitalism... Decoloniality reveals "the dark side of modernity" and how it is built "on the backs" of "others," others that modernity racializes, erases, and/or objectifies. Therefore, decoloniality is not a singular thing. It is a method and paradigm of restoration and reparation that depends on context, historical conditions, and geography. [5]
Decolonization is an historical process whereby colonized people break free from the violent structures and rules imposed by settler-colonialism and capitalism. I learned about this concept when I first read The Wretched of the Earth by Franz Fanon who believed that a revolution by the masses was necessary to achieve decolonization. For this to happen, we have to become the people this world needs so that we can collectively break free from the death grip of empire. For white settlers, the term that best describes this process is unsettling. But in order to become those people, we need to share a vision of a liberated future and be able to identify our personal stake in ending systems of oppression that are designed to privilege some (aka. white folks) while denying others (aka. immigrants, disabled people, incarcerated, Black, Indigenous and People of Color) access to life-affirming care and resources, including land.
It's important that white folks understand that we are pawns in the game of divide and conquer by the ruling class, a tactic of maintaining power and control that maintains the wound of separation. As long as people are divided along lines of race, class, gender, sexuality, etc. our power will remain greatly diminished. We need to clearly see how colonial capitalism is killing us all, and develop the appropriate analyses and cultural practices necessary for getting free, together. David Dean speaks to the important role that white folks play in his essay Roots Deeper Than Whiteness:
We are people – or, more accurately, peoples – whose identity and cultural center has been manipulated to serve a very specific function within capitalism. When we understand this story, we can more easily divest ourselves of the dysfunctional role we have been groomed to play, and join with people of color in the creation of a life sustaining society. [6]
In an interview on the topic of “Why we need a Decolonial Ecology,” Malcom Ferdinand states that:
“We need to link the exploitation of bodies to that of lands. If we start from the unmodern principle that there are continuities between bodies and ecosystems, we realize that to harm one is to harm the other. This prism helps us to understand anti-slavery revolts also as resistance to this colonial habitation… Eurocentrism and Western-centrism have prevented us from seeing other worldviews… we should let their worldviews challenge us, without forgetting the history of these peoples and what they are asking for. What are the terms that these people use to assert their relationship with the world?... understanding that destruction was possible thanks to the exploitation of indigenous peoples means recognizing these peoples’ need for justice, as well as demands for slavery reparations.” [7]
We must own the truth of our shared history and move through the discomfort it brings up in our systems (especially for white folks) when we acknowledge the ways we continue to participate in a system that is designed to perpetuate division and dislocate us from the very source of our sustenance. We are reminded that:
“Praxis requires a continuous learning/unlearning and critical examination of our thinking and actions, in order to avoid the reproduction of the very colonial systems it is trying to undo. It requires decentring western rationalities and centring other ways of knowing, being and relating.” [8]
Those of us in the fields of nature connection therapies and related fields must be diligent in our commitment to rooting our work in unsettling (decolonizing) ourselves, otherwise we’re just spiritual bypassing and continuing to repeat harmful intergenerational trauma patterns.
Living under the deadweight of a dying world order is suffocating. Trying to pull yourself up by your own bootstraps is exhausting. The normalization of systemic violence is designed to deplete and isolate us. The resulting disembodied state fuels feelings of alienation, apathy, numbness, disconnection and ultimately diminishes our capacity for feeling, sensitivity, and care.
At the heart of it, eco-somatic practices, held communally in the context of decolonization, supports the work of ancestral recovery and and collective healing outside of the mental health industrial complex. It addresses trauma at its roots, what Leah Manaema Avene calls colonial fragmentation. We are called to engage in relational and land-based practices rooted in Indigenous wisdom that cultivate spiritual vision in the face of oppressive systems. As microcosms of earth, we know that change is the only constant, flow is our inherent movement, and power lies in our ability to come together, respond in new ways, adapt to the challenges, and regenerate new life, as we have always done.
Toward a Decolonial Eco-Somatics
Our current working interpretation of eco-somatics is any set of practices that weave together decolonization, somatics and ecology. Let's break this down:
Decolonial Ecology
Decolonial ecology is an approach to ecology that critiques and seeks to dismantle the colonial structures and ideologies that have shaped contemporary environmental practices and policies. It emphasizes the need to center Indigenous knowledge, practices, and perspectives in ecological discussions and actions.
Key aspects of decolonial ecology include:
Indigenous Knowledge: Valuing and integrating traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) from Indigenous communities, which often includes sustainable practices and deep connections to the land.
Critique of Colonialism: Examining how colonial histories have impacted land use, resource extraction, and environmental degradation, and how these legacies continue to affect marginalized communities.
Social Justice: Addressing the intersection of environmental issues with social justice, recognizing that environmental degradation often disproportionately affects Indigenous and marginalized populations.
Holistic Understanding: Promoting a holistic view of nature that recognizes the relationships between people and ecosystems, emphasizing the importance of cultural identity and community well-being.
Decolonial ecology seeks to create more equitable and sustainable environmental practices by challenging dominant narratives and power structures that have historically marginalized Indigenous voices and knowledge systems.
Decolonial Somatics
Decolonial somatics is an approach that combines somatic practices with decolonial theory, focusing on the ways that bodily awareness and experiences can help resist and heal from the impacts of colonialism. It emphasizes the importance of recognizing and addressing the historical and ongoing effects of colonialism on Indigenous and marginalized bodies, cultures, and environments.
For white folks this includes an understanding of how privilege and power dynamics play a role in these relationships. This approach encourages white individuals to engage in somatic practices with a focus on accountability, learning, and transformation.
Key aspects of decolonial somatics include:
Embodied Resistance: Using somatic practices to explore and express resistance to colonial structures and narratives, fostering a deeper awareness of how these systems affect individual and collective bodies.
Indigenous Knowledge: Centering Indigenous perspectives and traditional practices that honor the body, land, and community, integrating them into somatic work to create a more inclusive and culturally relevant practice.
Healing and Reclamation: Focusing on healing practices that reclaim bodily autonomy and cultural identity, addressing trauma and disconnection caused by colonial histories.
Interconnectedness: Emphasizing the relationship between personal and collective healing, recognizing that individual somatic awareness can contribute to broader social and environmental justice movements.
Somatic Awareness: Using body awareness to recognize how colonialism has shaped personal and collective experiences, fostering a deeper connection to the land and its histories.
Accountability and Action: Promoting actions that support decolonization efforts, such as advocating for Indigenous rights, supporting land reclamation, and participating in restorative justice initiatives.
Community Engagement: Building relationships with Indigenous communities through respectful collaboration, recognizing the need for reparative practices that acknowledge past harms.
By integrating decolonial frameworks with somatic practices, this approach seeks to foster a deeper understanding of the body’s role in both individual healing and collective resistance, promoting a more just and equitable relationship with the land and communities.
Decolonial Eco-Somatics
Decolonial eco-somatics therefore can be understood as an embodied exploration of our relationship to home (the relationships that make up home) and the ancestral legacies that continue to inform and shape our collective field.
It is an interdisciplinary approach that merges decolonial theory, ecological awareness, and somatic practices. It focuses on understanding and addressing the interconnectedness of the body, land, and the effects of colonialism on both. This framework aims to promote healing, resistance, and awareness of how colonial histories and structures impact our bodily experiences and our relationship with the environment.
Decolonial eco-somatics unsettles notions of individualism and binary thinking which serve to uphold systems of oppression that desensitize us from our bodies and from the greater body of earth by rooting us within specific place-based, cultural, and relational contexts. It invites us to expand notions of self to include all the relationships that make up who we are, both human and non-human, from the micro to the macro, from the past into the present. It awakens whole systems thinking, imaginal play, sensual aliveness, and erotic intelligence.
Somatic activist and practitioner, Satu Palokangas, frames it this way:
“The shared aspects of ecology and somatics are awareness of relationships, patterns and change. The small shift from somatics to eco-somatics is to extend our perspective from human life to all life, from human movement to all that moves, breathes, lives.” [9]
Eco-Somatic Practices
Eco-somatic practices are practices that support individuals to reconnect with their body, land, and ancestral wisdom. Here are some categories of practice:
Embodied Movement: folk dance, intuitive or primal movement, and martial arts can help with embodied reconnection. These movements often draw on traditional forms that carry ancestral significance and help reclaim bodily autonomy and expression.
Nature Immersion: Spending time in nature encourages a deep sensory engagement with Land. This can include walking, foraging, or participating in rituals that honor the natural world, fostering a sense of belonging and connection to Indigenous or ancestral landscapes.
Mindful Observation: Engaging in practices like deep listening and mindful observation of nature helps individuals develop a heightened awareness of their surroundings. This can cultivate a sense of place and connection to ancestral knowledge about local ecosystems.
Rituals & Ceremonies: Participating in or creating rituals that honor ancestors and the natural world can be a powerful reconnection practice. These may include seasonal celebrations, ceremonies for healing, or practices that acknowledge the spirits of the land.
Storytelling & Oral Traditions: Sharing stories that reflect laws of nature, ancestral wisdom and teachings can foster a sense of identity and continuity. This practice emphasizes the importance of oral history in connecting individuals to their lineage and cultural narratives.
Gardening & Land Restoration: Engaging in gardening or land restoration projects can be a way to reconnect with Indigenous or ancestral agricultural practices. This includes using traditional methods and plants that are culturally significant, promoting a sense of responsibility for the land.
Art & Creative Expression: Using art, music, or crafts rooted in cultural traditions allows individuals to explore and express their ancestral identities. Creative practices can serve as a means of healing and a way to honor one’s heritage.
Somatic Therapy: Techniques such as breathwork, body-centered therapy, and trauma-informed practices can help individuals process and heal from intergenerational trauma, fostering a deeper connection to their bodies and ancestral histories.
Community Engagement: Participating in community gatherings, workshops, or intergenerational dialogues can enhance connections with others, promoting collective healing and knowledge sharing.
Land Justice: Restoring land to communities that have been displaced or dispossessed due to colonialism, capitalism, or other forms of oppression is an important form an ancestral repair. This includes respecting traditional land stewardship practices and ensuring that Indigenous communities have a say in land use decisions.
By incorporating these eco-somatic practices, individuals can create pathways for ancestral recovery while fostering a deeper connection to the natural world.
Conclusion
There was a time in history when all humans were Indigenous, when we lived in full relationship with the more-than-human world, when we respected Land and Waters as kin, and honored the myriad manifestations of life with reverence and wonder. We knew our place among our relatives, we knew their names and learned their ways. We knew our responsibilities and recognized the sacred laws of Nature. We listened. There was a knowing and necessity to take care of all life. The embodied wisdom was that when you thrive, we thrive; when you suffer, we all suffer.
There are places where this land-based knowledge still exists and even more where it’s being revived and remembered. The term Rematriation is a powerful word that Indigenous women across Turtle Island are using to describe how they are restoring balance to the world. It means ‘Returning the Sacred to the Mother.’ The Sogorea Te’ Land Trust is a beautiful example of this.
Eco-somatics is a growing field of study and practice that is also contributing to land-based remembrance by supporting people to come back into a grounded relationship to their own bodies so that they can live in reciprocity with Land and Waters. This is so important because the trauma of separation runs deep and creates modes of relating, patterns of being, and habits of behavior that perpetuate norms and values that are violent against and incongruent with nature’s intelligence.
Eco-somatic practices can help us to counter a culture of desensitization if they are rooting into Indigenous futurities and strengthening our relational and ecological capacities for deep engagement, attunement and care. Spending time in the healing presence of Land and Waters is co-regulating, soothing, and enlivening. It re-orients our nervous system toward natural rhythms which stimulates sensitivity, curiosity, wonder, and embodied aliveness. It’s all about coming back to life, coming back into connection with our sensual self, coming back into relational reciprocity and embodied ways of being that dissolve our sense of separation and isolation.
Our feeling at home and belonging in a living world requires a dramatic shift in our cosmological understanding and invites a radical commitment to uprooting the violent systems that have severed our relational bonds with each other and the earth. By engaging with eco-somatic practices we can foster a stronger connection with nature, enhance our mind-body-earth-spirit well-being, and develop a more attuned, empathic, intelligent and harmonious relationship with the world around us.
References
Harris, S. (n.d.). Embodied ecology. The Green Fuse. Retrieved November 3, 2024.
Abram, D. (2010). Becoming animal: An earthly cosmology. Pantheon Books.
Abram, D. (2010). Becoming animal: An earthly cosmology. Pantheon Books.
Abram, D. (2010). Becoming animal: An earthly cosmology. Pantheon Books.
William & Mary. (n.d.). Decoloniality. Retrieved November 3, 2024.
Dean, D. B. F. (n.d.). Roots Deeper Than Whiteness.
Haraway, D. (2020, September 30). Why we need a decolonial ecology. Eurozine.
Pashby, K., Costa, M. da, Sund, L., & Corcoran, S. L. (2021). Resourcing an ethical global issues pedagogy with secondary teachers in Northern Europe. In Teaching and learning practices that promote sustainable development and active citizenship (p. 47).
Satupalokangas. (n.d.). Ecosomatics.
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