Finding your sense of belonging in more than human world
Sometimes, when I look into the eyes of an animal I can feel something familiar staring back. Not just affection, or curiosity—but something deeper. A kind of presence I recognise in myself.
And I think: we’re not so different, are we?
While it’s easy to forget, the human body, for all its stories and complexities, is still an animal body. In fact, we share the origins with frogs, birds, whales, and trees. When you look at the evolutionary diagram that represents the origins of all organisms, you can trace a shared ancestry between us, humans and all living beings. In fact there is a common anatomical blueprint between mammals, birds, amphibians & reptiles. When you look at an arm of a human and that of a turtle, they are strikingly similar.
And somehow, I find that comforting.
Because there’s a loneliness in modern life that comes from our belief that we are separate. From each other. From animals. From the land.
Through our modernity, culture and rationalism, we have severed ourselves from nature and more-than-human world. We’re taught to override our instincts, straighten up, and polish our rough edges. We bio-hack our bodies to be more productive. We believe we live in the mind, and the body is just a meat suit - preferably looking a certain way, well behaved, tamed. We’re thought frown upon that what’s savage, uncivilised.
But what if the truth is that the body is not a project? What if it is already perfect in its mess and softness, in its cravings and cycles, in its tenderness and uncontainable wildness? What if it is not separate from nature—but nature itself?
This has been coming up for me lately: remembering myself not just as a woman, or a writer, a therapist—but as a part of the natural world. A vertebrate. A mammal. A wild creature. One with instincts that, when honoured, bring the deep sense knowing and belonging.
And when I let myself soften into that knowing, something shifts.
I start to move differently. I start to see the world differently. I stop needing to perform my humanity and start inhabiting it. Even the silly parts. Especially the silly parts!
In a recent course that I led, we explored and excercise where we embodied wild apes. Monkeying around, making silly sounds, jumping laughing. For a moment we were un-selfconscious, playful bodies, moving without and agenda. It felt ridiculous but at the same time liberating!
For that short moment of play, we were without limitations and all of the conditioning that keeps us imprisoned in social norms and rules of behaviour. Somewhere along the line, we forgot that we are still animals. We forgot how to play, to crouch, to howl, to move without the constant self-judgment.
But we can reconnect and find our kinship with natural world. Our belonging.
And it is as simple at looking into the eyes of other creatures—a cat, shark, lizard, and feel that connecting feeling of sameness. Their consciousness, not so different than ours. And even though our shapes are different, we can look through their window to the soul and in an instant recognised some shared awareness.
That’s what I mean when I say “we are not separate.” It’s not a metaphor. It’s anatomical. Evolutionary. Spiritual.
But we are not just same with animals. When I look at the hills, I see my own curves. When I trace a stream, I think of my own bloodstream. When I feel the wind, I remember my breath.
We are elemental beings.
Let remind ourselves of that!
My invitation today is simple:
Let yourself be a little more creature.
Jump around like an ape. Lie down like a mossy rock. Look into the eyes of another being, a dog, cat or a cow and notice what softens in you.
Let yourself remember: you are not a machine. You are not a project. You are not a list of goals.
You are a living, breathing, animal body.
And you were never separate to begin with.
With tenderness and wildness,
Aleksandra