Movement towards socioecological change: The case of Ecosomatics

Abstract: Several scholars both within and outside the field of human ecology argue that the perceptual human-nature divide contributes profoundly to patterns of unsustainability and weak sustainability visible in the world today. Deliberately engaging in conscious bodily-felt contact with the natural environment is suggested to uncover appropriate, embodied angles to approaching ecology and the environmental crisis. Herein, ecosomatics represents an exemplifying case of practices meant to evoke a sense of connection with the more-than human. A growing subcategory to the more widely applied and studied field of somatics, definitions and uses for ecosomatics are currently underrepresented in academic literature. Through narrative and thematic analysis of qualitative interviews, it becomes discerned that ecosomatic practice appears to evoke experiences in long-term practitioners which enable perceptions of nature rooted in relationality and aspects of non-dualism to develop or deepen. These are described as leading to changes in behavioural patterns towards the more-than human characterized by values of care and non-violence. They are also described as leading to developments in practitioners' sense of self characterized by non-separateness from the organic world, a trajectory resembling that in deep ecology described as recognition of the ecological self. Ecosomatics is proposed as a method of experiencing an alternative lived experience of interrelatedness with the larger ecosystem, in contrast to cartesian dualism. This is depicted by practitioners as a powerful tool for enabling recognition of agency and responsibility – over simply intellectual conceptualization – in face of the environmental crisis.