By Jeanine M. Canty
I am a body on the body of the earth.* I come back to these words often as a form of centering and as reminder that I am an embodied being who is living within a larger living system that is home. Humans, particularly those of Western civilization, have forgotten this; we have become alienated from self and earth. The field of ecopsychology views the current ecological crisis as manifesting from our psychological disconnection from the natural world, which parallels and is directly related to a collective pathology within Western civilization. This alienation not only stems from our psychological distancing from nature, but it also is literally our physical, somatic rift with the larger living world. We are born from this earth body and are fully dependent on living systems, yet much of humanity has disengaged from the natural world and is participating in its destruction, which is also a self-destruction. This is a crisis of our homes and our selves. When we re-embed in the somatic intelligence of the earth, including our bodies, we reawaken and reclaim our innate wisdom for wellness, connect with ourselves and each other, and live in life-affirming relationships.
Our direct connection to the sensuous earth occurs through contact with our bodies. Each moment of our existence is an encounter with the living world around us, whether through our continuous breath, the solid ground beneath us, the sunlight that streams around us, or the water we drink. Regardless of whether we spend time deep in the wild, from our birth to our death we are dependent upon the earth for life.
Ecopsychology places heavy emphasis on experiencing the earth through our bodies as a way to wake up to our authentic selves and be in relationship with our true home. This embodied experience of the living world reminds us that we are nature too—we are animals who are dependent upon and have responsibility to living systems. We awaken to the wildness of this world, including the wildness of our bodies. Both ecopsychology and the deep ecology movement address the concept of the ecological self, which is, in essence, the extension of our identity to include the living beings with whom we are in relationship.1 A classic illustration of this type of identification is when one spends time with a particular tree, place, bird, river, or any other living entity and begins to realize the connection to and effect of this organism. In essence, one sees the self within this being. This identification applies not only to the visible world but also extends to more transpersonal domains.
Within a somatic framing, the ecological self is about contact with nature through our bodies. Laura Sewall identifies the ecological self as “a permeability and fluidity of boundaries” where “the division between inner and outer worlds becomes an arbitrary and historical distinction.”2 She advocates employing perceptual practices to gain access to the sensuous experience of nature, and, although her approach emphasizes visual perception and the use of our imagination, these methods require contact and embodiment. Sewall brings an affective view of the role of perception by stating, “The Earth speaks to us through our bodies and psyches. She often cries, and many of us feel her tears and see her pain. Recognizing her voice is perception.”3 This relational view of the individual self, coming into feeling with the earth, pervades ecopsychology. It is not simply about connecting to nature for personal healing; it extends to listening to the earth to gain wisdom for many purposes, including planetary healing.
Our embodied sensory experiences within nature literally change us. David Abram phrases the use of our bodily perception as “spontaneous creativity in adjusting oneself” and goes further in stating that this is the method by which “every animate organism necessarily orients itself to the world.”4 This process illustrates the way of nature. All living beings are in constant relationship through contact and adjustment. The flower turns with the path of the sun; the rock is smoothed by the flow of water; the dandelion seeds take flight with the gush of wind. Living systems function in mutual causation, and humans are no exception.
Two additional concepts that make a connection with our embodiment within earth systems are worth noting. The first is biophilia, which arose from the work of E. O. Wilson, and stresses that humans bond emotionally to other living beings.5 The second is the primal matrix, developed by Chellis Glendinning, which describes humans’ original state of being within the natural world as “the state of a healthy, wholly functioning psyche in full-bodied participation with a healthy, wholly functioning Earth. This is the anima mundi which resides both within us and all around us.”6 The primal matrix has three interwoven qualities: “a sense of belonging and security in the world, trust, faith”; “a sense of personal integrity, centeredness, capability”; and “capacity to draw vision and meaning from nonordinary states of consciousness.”7 These three dimensions translate into the abilities to feel skillfully at home on this planet and to gather emerging insights from the numinous ground of the earth. Both biophilia and the primal matrix stress the deep connection between humans and the larger living world. We are each born from the earth—it is our biological home and our place of being.
Oppression is the urge to deny the body and the urge to dominate the bodies of others, the urge to silence one’s self and the urge to silence others. The urge to exploit. The urge to deny death and the urge to cause the deaths of others—or more accurately, as we shall see, to cause their annihilation.8
If I am to speak of healing, then I must first speak of trauma.9
Since an embodied self in relationship with the living world is the natural human condition, it is pertinent to address how we became disembodied and disconnected from nature. Ecopsychology sees this as an extended process resulting from many developments that formed Western culture. These developments include the shift to large-scale agriculture, the prevalence of the written word and abstract language, large-scale religion, the rise of patriarchy, and the introduction of mechanistic science.10 There are many other factors. Glendinning calls the separation of humans from nature the original trauma11 and is, in essence, the process of our domestication when we shifted from being hunter-gathers to sedentary populations, harnessing power over nature.
By adopting lifestyles in which we took control over nature through the large-scale planting of crops, owning of livestock, and building of settlements, we took a radical turn that dramatically altered our way of relating to the living world and eventually led to shifting gender roles, overpopulation, and the desecration of nature. Instead of having to pay attention to both the larger cycles and the momentary awareness of nature, as necessitated within a hunter-gatherer culture, humans could dictate food production and other processes that had previously been unassured. Psychologically, this development created a divide between humans and nature. We no longer saw ourselves as animals—fellow beings within the natural world. Instead we adopted an authoritarian role. Nature became subordinate to human, and this subordination included those aspects of ourselves that were wilder than other aspects, such as our bodies.
Original trauma is the disorientation we experience, however consciously or unconsciously, because we do not live in the natural world. It is the psychic displacement, the exile that is inherent in civilized life. It is our homelessness.12
Within this framing, anyone residing in a Westernized society that is cut off from the living world in its orientation is traumatized. In our globalized world, this includes most peoples who are no longer living within indigenous or earth-based cultures.
While ecopsychology emphasizes the psychological disconnection humans of Western civilization experience, included in the effects of the original trauma is dissociation in which one blocks “mind from body, intellect from feeling, human from natural world,” and disembodiment in which a person actually exits the body “to escape from pain that is literally too overwhelming to bear.”13 The somatic implications for disrupting an earth-based lifestyle for a civilized one have been many. The body not only is seen as less important than the abstract mind, but the body also has less opportunity to be in affinity with the rest of the living world through deep immersion in a nature-based reality.
With the rise of mechanistic science, nature—including the body—became relegated to compartmentalized matter to be studied, probed, and controlled. Living systems, including human bodies, were no longer viewed holistically but instead seen as machines composed of parts. Descartes, the father of mechanistic science, once stated, “I consider the human body as machine.”14 In her classic work, Woman and Nature, Susan Griffin writes extensively about the emergence of the mechanistic worldview as the point of silencing nature and women, including the body.
It is decided that matter is transitory and illusory like the shadows on a wall cast by firelight, that we dwell in a cave, in the cave of our flesh, which is also matter, also illusory; it is decided that what is real is outside the cave, in a light brighter than we can imagine, that matter traps us in darkness.15
The earth was seen as dead matter. The earth was also seen as female, while spirit, which was free from matter, was seen as closer to God and as male. Hence, women were less than. Moreover, the bodies of women were viewed as more sexual and devious. Sexuality was something to be feared and controlled. The body became taboo.
The “progression” of the mechanistic, Western, linear paradigm resulted in a series of views that fostered oppression. The exertion of control over nature extended to women, children, people of color and indigenous peoples, people without wealth, and the body, particularly the bodies of the aforementioned. Carolyn Merchant connects the historic and brutal practice of slavery in the United States with the degradation of soil as “interlinked systems of exploitation” where “deep-seated connections exist between the enslavement of human bodies and the enslavement of the land.”16 Fritjof Capra describes this paradigm as including:
. . . the view of the universe as a mechanical system composed of elementary building blocks, the view of the human body as a machine, the view of life in society as a competitive struggle for existence, the belief in unlimited material progress to be achieved through economic and technological growth, and last but not least, the belief that a society in which the female is everywhere subsumed under the male in one that follows a basic law of nature.17
Numerous theorists correlate these various oppressions with the development of the Western paradigm. Theologian Thomas Berry names four “basic patriarchal oppressions”: “rulers over people, men over women, possessors over nonpossessors, and humans over nature.”18 Glendinning describes “four other social developments” that arose during the same time period of the mechanistic scientific paradigm, which include the “witch-hunts,” “slaughter of indigenous people,” “invention of the mental hospital,” and “slavery.”19 These oppressions are associated with violent treatment of the body—murder, mutilation, beating, rape, lynching, burning, genocide, and imprisonment. These various oppressions go hand in hand because the exploitation of nature can only occur when we see the earth as a nonliving resource to serve human needs. These needs are extended to free labor as well as the silencing of peoples who protect the earth. It is a process of othering and exploitation. Abram states:
Curiously, such arguments for human specialness have regularly been utilized by human groups to justify the exploitation not just of other organisms, but of other humans as well (other nations, other races, or simply the “other” sex); armed with such arguments, one had only to demonstrate that these others were not fully human, or were “closer to the animals,” in order to establish one’s right of dominion.20
These oppressions have not only resulted in a silencing and devaluing of those aspects of our living world that are relegated to the other, but they have also produced a deep fear and demonizing of the other. We see this within manifestations of racism, sexism, and other isms, as well as a deep fear of nature. In contrast to biophilia, ecopsychology draws on the term biophobia, fear of nature, to depict much of our population.21 Many humans are literally afraid of nature—of being outside; of encountering insects, amphibians, and animals; of getting dirty. This fear extends to the fear of bodily functions, sexuality, and even touch. Scott D. Sampson suggests that these fears may be linked to a lack of “place bonding”22—if we no longer inhabit worldviews and experiences that teach us that the earth is our home, we lose our connection. We can extend this idea of place bonding to our physical forms. If we no longer view our bodies as sacred, we become uncomfortable in our own skin, a kind of self-loathing.
It is interesting that some of the religions associated with Western civilization see the earth not as our final resting place but as a stepping stone to an afterlife in a non-earthly realm. This view creates a dualism between the body and spirit in which the spirit ascends somewhere other than the earth while the body dies and decays on the earth plane. The indication here is that neither the body nor the earth is where the sacred lies. In contrast, the oldest human traditions, those of earth-based peoples, are centered on the earth as sacred, the place of the divine, of spirit. The famous Chief Joseph counseled that “the Earth and myself are of one mind. The measure of our bodies are the same.”23
Many religious and spiritual traditions hold the earth, including the body, as divine. Christopher K. Chapple uses the example of Hinduism in which some of the most sacred teachings connect to the body and earth, and “the world exists as an extension of the body and mind; the body and mind reflect and contain the world.”24 John A. Powell reminds us of the practice of embodiment as a pathway to awakening for Buddhists:
. . . all existence can also be drawn from the life of the Buddha: in spite of a practice of many seekers in denying the phenomenal world and the desires associated with it, it was not until Siddhartha Gautama rejected this position and attended to his physical body that he was able to achieve enlightenment.25
The view of the earth and body as sacred has even extended to systems science. In 1969, scientists James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis developed Gaia theory, which views the earth as a whole, intact living system.26 Deep ecologists and ecofeminists gravitated to the term Gaia and further identified Gaia as the feminine body, the earth, the goddess. The notion of Gaia is in harmony with a traditional nature-based reality.27
As we unravel the forms of oppression and worldview that have created alienation from our bodies and the earth, we realize that we have silenced some of the deepest possibilities of experience. Reclamation lies in deconstructing this separation and re-entering into direct relationship with our selves and larger ecological selves. This movement goes beyond a personal endeavor; it is a project of community as we once again ground into the living world we live within. Our body is the first point of entry to the body of the earth, and we each already possess the tools to start the process of reclamation. This is an invitation to come home.
The “body”—whether human or otherwise—is not yet a mechanical object in such cultures, but is a magical entity, the mind’s own sensuous aspect, and at death the body’s decomposition into soil, worms, and dust can only signify the gradual reintegration of one’s ancestors and elders into the living landscape, from which all, too, are born.28
I am a body on the body of the earth.
Abram, David. The Spell of the Sensuous. New York: Vintage Books, 1996.
Berry, Thomas. “The Viable Human.” In Deep Ecology for the 21st Century: Readings on the Philosophy and Practice of the New Environmentalism, edited by George Sessions, 8–18. Boston: Shambhala Publications, Inc., 1995.
Capra, Fritjof. “Deep Ecology: A New Paradigm.” In Deep Ecology for the 21st Century: Readings on the Philosophy and Practice of the New Environmentalism, edited by George Sessions, 19–25. Boston: Shambhala Publications, Inc., 1995.
Capra, Fritjof. The Web of Life: A New Understanding of Living Systems. New York: Anchor Books, 1996.
Chapple, Christopher K. “Hinduism and Deep Ecology.” In Deep Ecology and World Religions: New Essays on Sacred Ground, edited by David L. Barnhill and Roger S. Gottlieb, 59–76. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001.
Davis, John. V. and Jeanine M. Canty. “Ecopsychology and Transpersonal Psychology.” In The Wiley-Blackwell Handbook of Transpersonal Psychology, edited by Harris L. Friedman and Glenn Hartelius, 597–611. West Sussex, UK: Wiley-Blackwell Press, 2013.
Glendinning, Chellis. My Name Is Chellis and I’m in Recovery from Western Civilization. Boston: Shambhala Publications, 1994.
Griffin, Susan. Woman and Nature: The Roaring Inside Her. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1978.
Jensen, Derrick. A Language Older than Words. White River Junction, Vermont: Chelsea Green Publishing Company, 2000.
LaDuke, Winona. Recovering the Sacred: The Power of Naming and Claiming. Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2015.
Merchant, Carolyn. “Shades of Darkness: Race and Environmental History.” Environmental History 8, 3 (2008): 380–94.
Naess, Arne. “Self-Realization: An Ecological Approach to Being in the World.” In Deep Ecology for the 21st Century: Readings on the Philosophy and Practice of the New Environmentalism, edited by George Sessions, 225–39. Boston: Shambhala Publications, Inc, 1995.
Powell, John. A. Racing to Justice: Transforming Our Conceptions of Self and Other to Build an Inclusive Society. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2012.
Sampson, Scott D. “The Tophilia Hypothesis: Ecopsychology Meets Evolutionary Psychology.” In Ecopsychology: Science, Totems, and the Technological Species, edited by Peter H. Kahn and Patricia H. Hasbach, 23–52. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012.
Sewall, Laura. “The Skill of Ecological Perception.” In Ecopsychology: Restoring the Earth Healing the Mind, edited Theodore Roszak, Mary E. Gomes, and Allen D. Kanner, 201–215. San Francisco: Sierra Books, 1995.
Starhawk. The Earth Path: Grounding Your Spirit in the Rhythms of Nature. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2004.
Williams, Angel Kyodo, Lama Rod Owens, and Jasmine Syedullah. Radical Dharma: Talking Race, Love, and Liberation. Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 2016.