Coming Home to an Animate World: Embodied Animism
This experiential programme offers a body of work I have developed by bringing together my experience in Eugene Gendlin’s somatic practice of Focusing, Wilderness Rites, and Buddhist practices. Simply put, it is a specific way of applying somatic practices in relationship with the more-than-human world, opening us up to the numinous. These practices bring us into a fuller experience of the world as animate.
Having offered elements of this over the last few years within the context of my Murmurations Mentorship and Buddhist retreats, I now feel ready to offer it as a standalone programme.
This training favours a long, slow, repetitious spiral learning - embodied, living enquiry and deepening understanding - rather than the fast-paced pull of neophilia.
If this way of working speaks to you, then we might be onto something.
Completing this Focusing Introduction felt like being in a space of soft yielding. Focusing has allowed me to deepen into the warrens of the body to uncover and meet the known, the unknown and the yet-to-be. To orient more accurately towards understanding and sensing the mind-body connection. Seeing this unfold in the everyday life has been such a revelatory experience. Like following the invisible thread of something you instinctively recognise as important and, at the same time, being fully aware that there is so much more to it than you currently know. And really wanting to know more. Natasha facilitates this practice with mettle, authenticity and great tenderness.
- Egle
The Three Arcs
Part I - Embodied Presence
Part II - Participatory Perception
Part III - Ecological & Collective Belonging
“ If you wish, you can shift consciousness itself more directly by directly increasing the apertures of your sensory gates, by opening the doors of perception themselves more widely. You can do this a number of ways, hallucinogens are one of them meditation is another habituation to constantly feeling the touch of the world upon you is another”
Sessions
Embodied Presence
Session 1 ~ Integrated Awareness & the Return to Presence
Session 2 ~ The Body as a Field of Intelligence
Session 3 ~ Resourcing & Regulation
Participatory Perception
Session 4 ~ Inner & Outer Worlds
Session 5 ~ Quieting the Storyteller, Amplifying the Sensor
Session 6 ~ The Living World & Participatory Perception
Ecological & Collective Belonging
Session 7 ~ Shared Experience & Ecological Participation
Session 8 ~ Integration: Living in Participatory Presence
Returning to the Wisdom of the Body and Earth:
What Animism and Focusing Share
Animism
An animist worldview perceives and engages with the entire universe as a living, interconnected web of relationships. It is oriented around the belief that perception is not a one-way process where we observe the world passively. Instead, this is a participatory way of being, where humans are just one among many expressive participants in the dynamic, interconnected multiverse of life.
Animism is a deeply relational way of being in the world, encouraging us to remember that we are not separate from the natural world, but are woven into its very fabric. This way of being honours our more-than-human kin.
These living connections emerge and are sensed not through disembodied abstract thinking, but through direct embodied experience - rooted in our presence, sensory awareness, and the cultivation of reciprocal relationships.
We Happen Together
At first glance, Gendlin’s Focusing and Animism might seem worlds apart - the former rooted in contemporary therapeutic practice, the other in ancient spiritual traditions.
Yet, Focusing carries a remarkably similar invitation. It is a somatic practice where we turn our attention inward, tuning into the subtle, unspoken language of our bodies - what Gendlin called the ‘felt sense.’
In his deeper philosophy, A Process Model, Gendlin introduces a radical way of looking at life. Instead of treating the body and the environment as two separate objects, he describes them as a single process: Body-Environment. In this incredible book of philosophy - which I confess I am not even a quarter of the way through - Gendlin speaks of the body as environment. He uses the beautiful phrase "we happen together" to describe how we - environment and self - are generating each other in every moment.
A co-emerging, or what the ecophilosopher David Abram beautifully calls a "co-mingling."
When we follow this kind of body-based listening we find that the path of Focusing can open a doorway directly into embodied animism.
2 MONTH
PROGRAMME
Next iteration in Autumn 2026
TIMES
UK GMT 18:00 - 20:00
Europe CET 19:00 - 21:00
WHAT TO EXPECT
This course is experiential and participatory in nature.
Our group size is limited to 12 to ensure an intimate experience.
“ Your physically felt body is infact part of a gigantic system of here and other places, now and other times, you and other, infact the whole universe.”
The Details
Audio Recordings will be made available for those who miss sessions and for three months after the course end.
Edits from the recording will be used, with permission, for an online course I am designing.
Dates & Times
TBC
UK BMT 17:00 - 19:00 | Europe CET 18:00 - 20:00
This will be scheduled for another iteration in AUTUMN 2026
Cost
I’ve spent my entire life avoiding working for the 'big money' so that I could help ordinary people with few resources to access excellent programmes.
I need to make a modest living. Please do consider paying what is within your financial reach and a fair price for my commitment to small group sizes and my expertise.
I offer this programme at two price tiers - all prices include VAT. If you are well off please do consider paying the higher tier.
I have a number of bursary places available for those in very challenging financial circumstances. Do get in touch if you’d like to apply for this.
My lineage which supports this work includes my 10 years of training in rites of passage and soulcraft, my nine year apprenticeship to Annie Bloom - who was a lead guide at Animas Valley Institute for over two decades, my 26 years of Buddhist practice, and my training in Gendlin’s somatic focusing method.
Art Credits: Tonje Thielsen, Jan Saudek, Mattias Willaerts
“ In the Western tradition there is a recognized hierarchy of beings, with of course the human being on top - the pinnacle of evolution, the darling of Creation - and the plants at the bottom. But in Native ways of knowing, human people are often referred to as ‘the younger brothers of Creation’. We say that humans have the least experience with how to live and thus the most to learn—we must look to our teachers among the other species for guidance. Their wisdom is apparent in the way that they live. They teach us by example. They’ve been on the earth far longer than we have been, and have had time to figure things out. ”