The Five Elements: Somatic Intelligence

(This piece is a short introduction to one of the Five Elements I have researched - clinically and experientially - that truly lead to a more rewilded, connected life.)

The body is an expert interpreter of one’s inner and outer world, fluent in many languages the intellect is not. I wholeheartedly believe after years of experience and research that rewilding starts with the body and the nervous system before the landscape of the psyche can truly be integrated. With human paws firmly on the ground, truly and metaphorically, we can attempt to recalibrate our bodies and nervous systems in a healthier response to immediate and common stimuli. When the waking mind meets organismic sharpness, emotions can become recast, something altogether new and real.

Without easy access to the resources of this primitive, instinctual self, humans alienate their bodies from their souls. Most of us don’t think of or experience ourselves as animals. Yet, by not living through our instincts and natural reactions, we aren’t fully human either.

David Abram, Ph.D., cultural ecologist, philosopher, and author, reminds us that to be fully human we must fully inhabit our sensuous animal bodies, our enfleshed forms inextricably embedded in an animate world. By rewilding ourselves in this way, we help will rewild our world as well.

Peter Levine (2008), clinical psychologist and founder of Somatic Experiencing®, noted, “Trauma is primarily physiological. Trauma is something that happens initially to our bodies and our instincts. Only then do its effects spread to our minds, emotions, and spirits”. Moreover, the way in which humans unconsciously carry and continue to be affected by past trauma is one of the costs of dissociation from the body. As such, Bessel van der Kolk (2014), a psychiatrist, trauma specialist, and author of The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma, observed: “In order to change, people need to become aware of their sensations and the way that their bodies interact with the world around them. Physical self-awareness is the first step in releasing the tyranny of the past”.

Ecopsychologist Andy Fisher minced no words in his book Radical ecopsychology: Psychology in the service of life, cautioning, “The price we pay for alienating ourselves from the life of our own bodies is great. First of all, we lose the vitality, spontaneity, and creativity that comes only from being in touch with our organismic being”

Our cells give us the opportunity to be different every day. But our thoughts feed our body and mind to remain the same. Ayurveda says that the whole process of healing is just restoration of memory of who we truly are. We’re going to dive much more into this as a community, and I can not wait.

If you’re engaged in any forms of “healing”, with practitioners or even journeying through your own research, you are likely hearing a lot more about the body and emotions as integral to altering your experiences and coming into a more whole sense of self. This is and has always been true, but Western collective thought has emphasized only cognitive shifts and empathy as the primary modes of “therapy”. Do you have any practices to daily check in with how your body is experiencing the world and your emotional life?