Discovering the Language of the Ecological Body

This article seeks to explore the voice of the ecological body, through which we can engage with the language of the cosmos. The human being is a living system, composed of numerous dynamic systems which constitute a collective that we call ‘body’. To listen with, and speak from, the core of the complex system that constitutes ‘body’ is to discover a kinetic language that has its own depth, dimension and perspective. This embodied, relational language brings us into alignment with the improvised, interdependent dances that are always going on as part of the wider choreography of the ecology. Dance Therapy, with its tradition of aligning with earth-honouring principles, is just one way that we can learn to attune to other ways of being in the world, and to rediscover those wild parts of ourselves that know instinctively how to speak with the earth. In this writing, this process is illustrated by Kim’s story, as she discovers a deep attunement with the earth through the fleshy substance of the body, and in so doing opens to an empathic resonance with the other-than-human. Kim meets with the spontaneous, aesthetic and symbolic creativity of human potential, and allows a new story to unfold through the raw material of embodied experience. Kim explores ways to straddle the personal, cultural and ecological contradictions inherent in her desire to live ethically and peacefully with the earth and her inadvertent complicity in the hubris of the human species.