Body And Soil Are One

We have stoneage nervous systems. We are born expecting a rich and sensuous relationship with nature.

And when we don’t have it, when we spend all day in offices, looking at screens, disconnected from the Earth, we feel a sense of loss, a vague ache that something is missing — often, something that we cannot name.

For years, I forgot my connection to the Earth and with this came a feeling that I did not belong — an ever-present anxiety about my place in the world.

But these past few years have been a time of reconnecting, of remembering, of wild swimming and wandering through forests and getting my hands in the dirt to grow our own vegetables — giant butternut squashes, mountains of peas, hundreds of courgettes and broad beans and candy cane beetroots and kilos and kilos of tomatoes.

And yes, this stuff takes time (I reckon we spend 5-10 hours a week nurturing the vegetables!) but it reminds you, in a way deeper than words, that you belong.

‘Shin to bul ee’ is a Korean proverb meaning ‘body and soil are one’. Because we are not separate from the Earth, we are part of it. We come from it. We belong to it.

ॐ