Psyche within the matrix of the natural world: weaving the inner and outer

Abstract

This paper explores a way of relating to self, others, and the land rooted in embodied affectivity. It explores the way in which our emotions are an inherent part of the natural world and why attention to them matters regarding the environmental crisis. Recognizing the parallel between the prevailing attitudes of Western culture towards the Earth and towards our bodies, the paper offers an alternative paradigm through a poem by a Diné woman. The poem expresses how the Diné culture honours the Earth by seeking to cultivate the beauty and wisdom intrinsic to it within the body, mind, and spirit of the individual. Interwoven in the essay are images that express the land's power and its uncanny ability to resonate with emotional states. This resonance can help us come to know and work with those states that, on the one hand, threaten to overwhelm us, while at the same time, potentially infusing us with the wisdom of their terrible and astonishing beauty. Drawing from affective neuroscience's emphasis on the primacy and embodied basis of emotion, the paper discusses how interoceptive awareness enhances emotional discernment as well as consciousness of one's way of inhabiting and responding to the Earth, including the threatening forces of climate change.