Anima Mundi and Coming Back to Life

I went recently to a workshop at EarthDance in western Massachusetts. It was called Weave, and was put together by my friends Kay'aleya and Just.

Here's why it was brilliant: they brought together classes on embodiment -- yoga, contact improv, even "primal conditioning" -- with classes on ecology and herbalism. For me, the effect was a rekindled connection to my "anima mundi," or world soul -- the idea that the we, together with the earth, are part of a living being with an innate intelligence. (This is NOT intelligent design, but rather along the lines of Gaia Theory and Hypothesis).

It's easy to forget that we are fundamentally connected to the earth. Put simply, we can't survive without its supply of clean air, food, water, and sanitation. These basic needs, in turn, are dependent upon the interconnections that form the basis of ecology. Anima mundi claims that there is an intelligence in these connections that is available to us if we are willing to experience it. Anima mundi is the embodiment of that experience - the re-membering of our bodies as living connections to the earth.

This is an old view, dating back to Plato and the Greeks (who gave us the term), and more recently through the phenomenology of Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, and Heidegger. Some of my former teachers have written amazing books on the subject, including David Abram's The Spell of the Sensuous, and Stephan Hardin's Animate Earth.

Here are some guided meditations published by Joanna Macy in her book Coming Back to Life that I have found particularly poignant. After all, the only way to understand anima mundi is to experience it.

"Breathe deep. Feel the air flow through the body like a blessing, the oxygen quickening each cell awake. Draw in that air that connects you with all being for there is no one alive in this world who is not breathing like you, in and out..in a vast exchange of energy with the living body of our planet, with seas and plants. Stretch high and wide to let more air in. Then fall forward from the waist with a forceful exhalation, expelling the tensions and toxins of the day. Let the breath cleanse and open us.

Stretch. Stretch all muscles, then release. Slowly rotate the head, easing the neck with all its nerve centers. Rotate the shoulders, releasing the burdens and tensions they carry. Behold your hand, feel the skin. Feel the textures of the world around you, clothing, arm of chair, tabletop, floor. Your senses are real; the connect you with your world; they tell you what it is like. You can trust them. Come to your senses. Come back to life."

from: Macy, Joanna; Brown, Molly Young. (1998). Coming Back to Life: Practices to Reconnect Our Lives, Our World. New Society Publishers: Gabriola Island, BC. Pages 83 and 84.