"Re-visioning our personal consumption habits and living in sustainable ways is one piece of the work to be done. Another piece is the revolution in creativity to restore the arts to their proper place in life - the sacred, the celebratory, the participatory, and the magical."

Earthbody-Bodyearth
for ArtHumanNature Conference, Summer Solstice 2001

	Articles: See all Jamie McHugh articles

"Ecopsychologists make the following assumption: if we are a species that has evolved out of the womb of this planet - as all other species have - then there is something in us that has bonded to the planet and that responds to the needs of the planet as directly and as strongly as we respond to the needs of the people we love, as with parents and children. If that bond exists, then the role of psychotherapy is to find it and...awaken it." - Theodore Roszak

I attended a conference in 1999 sponsored by the Institute for Deep Ecology. I was excited to connect with an environmental group with roots in Ecopsychology as I have always felt an affinity with its principles. What surprised me was how the body was left out at this gathering. The conference was held indoors in folding chairs in concentric circles, though the parkland of the Presidio surrounded us. The format was primarily listening to speakers, with room at times for response. Most of the talking was impassioned intellectualism, speaking from the heart about concepts, ideas and statistics. Certainly, an important departure point, yet the body was missing in this dialogue. Where was the energizing communion of non-verbal exchange? It was quite striking to me that in a progressive circle such as this, our sensorial languages, especially the kinesthetic, were absent. It made me realize the great contribution we as body artists and somatic practitioners can make to the world of environmental discourse and activism with participatory inquiry into the nature of the body.

"What's the nature of the place? The proper approach to any kind of land use begins with that question. What is the nature of this place? And then: What will nature permit me to do here?...that way of thinking continues in the work of some modern agriculturists… whose approach is to ask what the nature of the place is, what nature would be doing here if left alone. What will nature permit me to do here without damage to herself or to me? What will nature help me to do here?" - Wendell Berry

You could take almost any quote from Ecopsychology texts and substitute the word "body" for "land". How do we lessen domination, and increase observation and collaboration with the body's wisdom? How do we steward the body? Just as we are learning to re-negotiate land use by bringing more attention to sustainable practices, we can also reclaim the body of nature. The environmental movement is literate about outer sustainability. The somatics movement is literate about interior sustainability. It is important for a dialogue to happen between these two movements. This mutual informing would strengthen and energize us all.

"You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves." - Mary Oliver

Unfortunately, the majority of people in our culture don't know their soft animal. People pay little attention to their bodies until pain or disease incapacitates them. The current ecological crisis is also a pain of the planet and a disease demanding our attention, but the symptoms are not felt as directly as with our own body. We don't have immediate, discernible feedback to grab our attention. Yet, we are all clearly affected. Bill Moyers in 2001 did an investigative report on the chemical industry in the US - Trade Secrets, pointing out there are now 80,000 manufactured chemicals registered with the Environmental Protection Agency. 38,000 of them are high use, with only 43% of them having been rigorously tested for health effects. Most of these chemicals did not exist 100 years ago. Trace residues of many chemicals found in our bodies today would not have been present in the bodies of our grandparents. Since 1972, when public health officials began to compile statistics, there has been a 41% increase in brain cancer in children, and a 68% increase in testicular cancer in young men ages 15-30. We do not know why.

Earth maladies are not only affecting our health now, but also endangering the survival of the next generation. As Americans, we comprise only 4% of the world's population, yet we consume 20% of the planet’s resources, and produce 25% of carbon emissions in the atmosphere. As middle-class Americans, we have the privilege of counteracting the effects of environmental toxicity on our bodies through health foods and dietary supplements. We are able to buy time for ourselves and effectively delay the inevitable. But would the vast amount of money we spend on individual health be better spent on funding a huge mobilization of citizen action groups to curtail ecological catastrophe? All peoples regardless of income, ethnicity, or location equally share the web of life. We all share the same breath, water, and land. The "wisdom of no-escape" that Buddhist teacher Pema Chodron speaks of is a potent reminder: we are a body in relation to all other bodies of life on this planet, and we only escape once we die.

We cannot take the gifts of Creation for granted. We are called to be stewards of our homes, both our body and the larger body of the Earth. There is a need for gratitude to be expressed through action, whether it is in the creation of a compost pile to give back to the Earth or in the prayer of the body dancing at dusk. Gratitude is vital in our daily lives for re-discovering our place in the Creation Story, so that we can wean ourselves from the hazardous fiction of modern, industrialized life.

Each day we are challenged to be a wise body in a body-phobic culture, to breathe, move, wiggle and hum. Each day we are called upon to manage our energy mindfully and treat our bodies compassionately. Each day we are challenged to be a wise consumer of natural resources in an increasingly nature-phobic culture, to make choices about our use of water, autos, paper and plastics. Each day we are called upon to manage our consumptive desires and treat the Earth responsibly.

Without simultaneously advocating for the health of the global body, the value of the work we do as somatic practitioners with the localized body is questionable. How are breath practices affected when there is less oxygen available in the atmosphere? And what good is it to awaken the vitality of our body if we are simultaneously dooming it to extinction through our habits of over-population and over-consumption? Re-visioning our personal consumption habits and living in sustainable ways is one piece of the work to be done. Another piece is the revolution in creativity to restore the arts to their proper place in life - the sacred, the celebratory, the participatory, and the magical. We need more dancing, singing and creating together to mobilize our energies and ignite an engaged citizenry to help counteract personal and collective despair. Embodied arts are critical for casting away the pallor around our hearts, and awakening the deep well of committed and purposeful love for life now, and for generations to come. Can we awaken to the loving bond between our bodies, one another and the planet in time?

“We know enough of our own history by now to be aware that people exploit what they have merely concluded to be of value, but they defend what they love.” - Wendell Berry

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