A New Course for Turbulent Times

Sometimes a book lands in your lap at just the right time.I remember, several years ago now, finding Radical Wholeness by Philip Shepherd and just knowing that this was exactly what I needed in that moment.Radical Wholeness and all of Philip Shepherd’s work is an invitation back into embodiment and an invitation back into sensing the world through and as our body.And it’s a damning indictment of our top-down culture, where the head controls everything else.I knew from my own personal journey of recovery from a chronic health condition, and my need for embodiment, that what I was being called to was not just coming into the emotional quality of my heart, but to land much deeper in the body, actually to land in my pelvic bowl.And I’d never really heard anyone before Philip talk so eloquently and passionately about the pelvic bowl as our seat of being.Obviously, he’s drawing on notions of the Hara and the lower Dan Tian from East Asian spiritual practice.But there’s something else going on here.It’s so necessary to become comfortable inhabiting the whole of our body so we can reinhabit our place within the web of Life.And for me, that started by learning to feel safe in the bottom half of the trunk of my body.And when my nervous system began to relax, and I could rest here, I could rest in the seat of my being, the very centre of our bodies.When I became comfortable there, the world opened up to me.It suddenly felt much easier to be in relationship with other people, with the living world, with myself. And that, in turn, enabled me to be more comfortable with my emotional energy.So I’m incredibly grateful to Philip. His work is so rich, so profound, and speaks so clearly to what’s needed in our current culture and this top-down, top-heavy, unwieldy way in which we’re living that I just had to invite him onto the podcast. And it ties in so closely with the work we’ve been developing around finding your ground in turbulent times and the eight-week course we’ve developed.This is part of the series of podcasts that I’m doing where I speak to teachers and mentors and influencers that have shaped our own work and Philip is right up there at the top of the list.To find out more about Philip and his work, please visit his website, embodied present.com, where he teaches the Embodied Present Process with his partner, Allyson Woodrooffe, and where you can find out more about their courses and his excellent books.And if you’re interested in Finding Your Ground In Turbulent Times, we’ve created an eight week, immersive rite of passage to support you to find physiological, psychological, and existential ground.If that sounds like something you are in need of, you can find more details here: https://www.aleftrust.org/finding-your-ground-in-turbulent-times-self-paced-online-course/ Get full access to Being Earthbound at beingearthbound.substack.com/subscribe

It's been a long time in the incubation process. I remember years ago, the vivid feeling of being really ungrounded, of being tossed around on the foamy brine of a culture so fragmented and polarised that it felt impossible to know up from down or truth from fiction. I was awash with tension and a dysregulated storm of static-like nervous system energy.My body had to physically stop me in my tracks and say “no more” for me to listen to the deeper calling that I’d been ignoring or making excuses against for decades previously. Ungroundedness made me unwell, unhappy and unable to connect deeply with myself and the world around me.But thank goodness I listened. I let the calling land me back down into my body, back down onto the Earth and back into Life again. I found my ground. My nervous system relaxed, my conditioning began to loosen and release, my energy returned, my love for my precious human body living this precious life on this precious living planet bloomed. And my capacity to be here for myself and others, even when things get difficult, began to increase. To say this has been transformational would be an understatement. My entire sense of self has unfolded and relaxed and integrated with Life. I feel more able to stay present to the difficulty and the beauty, the loss and the gifts of this crazy whirl we call existence. That’s helped me find purpose, connection, friendships and meaning. And all of this started by finding my ground. At every level. Physiological, psycho-emotional, subtle-energetic and spiritual. It’s our inheritance to belong to the Web of Life and the Field of Being, and it’s our deep wish to help illuminate a pathway back to that inheritance for those people called to do so. To feel a persistent, pervasive sense of embodied safety and to be available to act from that sense of deep ground, is what will facilitate the transformation our nervous systems and our dominant culture so desperately crave. Finding our ground is foundational to everything else. This is deep and rewarding work and it has to start somewhere and at some time. Why not start now with us? We created a course and a rite of passage called Finding Your Ground in Turbulent Times to support you to land again. If this feels important for you right now, please be welcome!Course intro:We live in the most ungrounded times humanity may ever have experienced.Disconnected from the Earth beneath our feet. Overwhelmed by the noise of digital life. Stuck in anxious rumination, fragmented from our bodies and communities.If any of that resonates, this is for you.Finding Your Ground in Turbulent Times is a new self-paced online course we created for Alef Trust — an 8-week embodied journey back to yourself, your body, and the Earth.Through somatic practices, breathwork, meditation, guided reflection, and live Zoom integration sessions, this course offers a genuine rite of passage for our times. Whether you’re a beginner or an experienced practitioner, the path is open to you.Asking yourself:→ How do I move from rumination back into my body?→ How do I find my ground when the world feels unstable?→ How do I re-member myself as Nature, not separate from it?This course is designed to answer those questions — not through theory, but through lived experience.Self-paced | 8 weeks + 1 year of live integration sessions | £197Enrol now or find out more www.aleftrust.org/finding-your-ground-in-turbulent-times Get full access to Being Earthbound at beingearthbound.substack.com/subscribe

We live in the most ungrounded times humanity may ever have experienced. Disconnected physically from the Earth by concrete and steel, psychologically through the dominance of abstract thinking in the age of digital distraction, and spiritually through the deep-seated stories of separation we tell each other from generation to generation. We’re stuck in, or above, our heads in clouds of anxious rumination and feeling disconnected from our bodies, our communities, the places we inhabit and the Earth at large.But there is a simple and profoundly natural path back to connection, coherence, peace and flow. Johanna and I are currently developing a new course for the Aleft Trust called Finding Your Ground In Turbulent Times. It is a course and a rite of passage that will take you through a process of embodied remembrance of your true nature as Nature. We’ll keep you posted when it’s due to go live, but in the meantime, it felt important to check in with some of our most important teachers on our own paths to groundedness, to share their insights and experience in this essential capacity. We’ll be creating a themed series of “grounding” specific podcasts to help flesh out what we mean by the term and its profound implications from the physical, psycho-emotional, subtle energetic and spiritual dimensions. And perhaps most importantly, how to find it again in these crazy times.In this episode of the Being Earthbound podcast, I speak with meditation teacher, Kevin Schoeninger, about grounding, embodiment, subtle energy, and why coming back into contact with the living earth matters so much to a culture artificially insulated from our home.Grounding has been one of the most important threads in my own life. It was one of the first doorways that helped me come back into relationship with my body at a time when my health was really struggling, and I was in need of something to support me to safely descend out of that cloud in and around my head and back into my body. Kevin was one of the teachers who helped me begin that return, so it felt deeply meaningful to have this conversation with him.Together, we explore what grounding actually is, why it matters, and what happens when we lose contact with the body and the earth. Kevin shares how his own path began through Tai Chi, slow walking, and learning to feel the soles of his feet on the ground. From that simple beginning, the conversation opens into a much wider exploration of presence, energy, coherence, and the deeper ground beneath the noise of modern life.We speak about the consequences of being ungrounded, the way modern culture pulls us into abstraction and disconnection, and the importance of restoring direct contact with the living world. We also explore subtle energy, interoception, the light body, and the possibility that beneath all the static, there is already a deeper peace available to us.For me, one of the most important threads in this episode is that grounding is not just a way to calm down. It is a return to reality, to relationship, and to the body as a place of presence and support. Sometimes that return begins very simply, by taking off our shoes, feeling the earth beneath us, and letting the body remember what it already knows.To find out more about Kevin’s work, including his books, courses and his meditation guidance on Insight Timer, please visit his website at https://raisingourvibration.netIf you know someone who would find this interesting, please do share it with them!Thanks for reading Being Earthbound! This post is public so feel free to share it.And we’d love to hear your experiences with groundedness and ungroundedness! What’s your path with this been like? Get full access to Being Earthbound at beingearthbound.substack.com/subscribe

What changes when we stop trying to live from the head alone, and begin to meet life through the body as a living instrument of relationship?In this final episode of the Embodied Permaculture Project, participants reflect on what shifted through 18 months of applied, life-aligned embodiment practice. The conversation gathers the impacts across inner life, relationships, and permaculture and change work, showing how embodiment can reshape not only how we feel, but how we design, facilitate, lead, and collaborate.A central thread is the nervous system. Several participants describe moving out of chronic survival mode and towards grounded calm, trust, and steadier confidence. Embodiment is felt in practical ways: noticing the body without panic, listening to signals rather than overriding them, and finding more capacity to stay present even when the world is intense and heartbreaking.The episode also explores belonging and agency. Participants speak about releasing people pleasing, becoming more able to ask for help, and meeting limits without shame. Fear does not disappear, but its grip changes. There is a growing willingness to step towards the edge, to take evolutionary steps, and to bring more of themselves into groups, teaching, and public situations.As the focus turns towards permaculture practice, the conversation returns to the first principle: observe. Participants describe how embodiment refines observation into something more whole-bodied and intuitive. Designing becomes less about forcing solutions and more about sensing what is already asking to happen. Time on the land changes, too, with deeper listening, greater trust in emergence, and a more tangible experience of being in relationship with the more-than-human world.Relational work is another strong theme. Many permaculture roles involve groups, conflict, collaboration, and community learning. Participants describe becoming less reactive, more spacious, and more able to facilitate from presence. Small acts, such as grounding together at the start of meetings, are described as quiet interventions that can shift culture from the inside.Throughout the episode, nature connection moves from concept to lived experience. Several participants speak about no longer holding “we are nature” as an idea, but recognising it as something felt in the body, with profound implications for how we meet grief, death, responsibility, and our place in the wider ecosystem of life.About the Embodied Permaculture ProjectWelcome to the Embodied Permaculture Project, a six-episode podcast series exploring what embodied presence and life-centric inner practice can offer permaculture, changemaking, and the wider cultural shift towards alignment with life on Earth.This series is based on an 18-month project in which 20 permaculture practitioners from across Europe were immersed in applied, life-aligned embodiment practice. The project was funded as part of the Alef Trust’s Conscious Communities initiative and was designed and facilitated by Earthbound.To find out more about our work, visit earthbound.fi.If this conversation resonates with you, we invite you to go deeper. The Embodied Permaculture online course is a nine-week, self-paced journey rooted in the practices and insights from this project. Hosted by the Permaculture Association Britain, it’s open to anyone — no prior experience needed, just a willingness to reconnect with your body, your land, and the wider field of life. You can find it here. Get full access to Being Earthbound at beingearthbound.substack.com/subscribe

Episode 5: Everything Belongs - Experiencing WholenessWhat happens when we stop trying to “accept” life, and instead recognise that everything is already here?In this episode, the conversation turns towards wholeness, not as an ideal state or something to achieve, but as an embodied recognition of reality as it is. Participants explore what it means to include all of experience, rather than dividing life into what belongs and what does not.A central thread in the episode is the role of preference. Many of us associate wholeness with moments when life feels good, aligned, or comfortable. When things fall outside our preferences, whether internally or in the wider world, we often experience separation. This episode explores how that subtle rejection fragments our sense of belonging and uses up enormous amounts of energy.The discussion introduces the idea of green-lighting experience. Rather than trying to accept, approve of, or manage what arises, participants explore the recognition that everything already present is already allowed. Joy and pain, ease and difficulty, clarity and confusion are all included.For those engaged in changemaking and regenerative work, this inquiry raises important questions. How do we respond to injustice, harm, or conflict without hardening against life? The episode explores how relaxing the inner fight can create more capacity for meaningful action, clearer boundaries, and more relational ways of meeting difference.Throughout the conversation, listeners are invited to sense their own relationship with rejection, acceptance, and effort, and to notice what becomes possible when experience is allowed to be whole.Welcome to the Embodied Permaculture Project, a six-episode podcast series exploring what embodied presence and life-centric inner practice can offer permaculture, changemaking, and the wider cultural shift towards alignment with life on Earth.This series is based on an 18-month project in which 20 permaculture practitioners from across Europe were immersed in applied, life-aligned embodiment practice. The project was funded as part of the Alef Trust’s Conscious Communities initiative and was designed and facilitated by Earthbound.To find out more about our work, visit earthbound.fi.Coming up nextIn the final episode, participants reflect on the impact of the 18-month project on their lives and permaculture practice, and the changes they have observed along the way.If this conversation resonates with you, we invite you to go deeper. The Embodied Permaculture online course is a nine-week, self-paced journey rooted in the practices and insights from this project. Hosted by the Permaculture Association Britain, it’s open to anyone — no prior experience needed, just a willingness to reconnect with your body, your land, and the wider field of life. You can find it here. Get full access to Being Earthbound at beingearthbound.substack.com/subscribe

Welcome to episode 4 of the Embodied Permaculture Project, a six-episode podcast series exploring what embodied presence and life-centric inner practice can offer permaculture, changemaking, and the wider cultural shift towards alignment with life on Earth.This series is based on an 18-month project in which 20 permaculture practitioners from across Europe were immersed in applied, life-aligned embodiment practice. The project was funded as part of the Alef Trust’s Conscious Communities initiative and was designed and facilitated by Earthbound.To find out more about the project, listen to earlier episodes and read articles about embodied permaculture, visit beingearthbound.substack.com/t/embodied-permaculture.Episode 4: From Masking to MutualityWhat happens when we loosen our need to manage, fix and control, and allow ourselves to meet each other more openly?In this episode, host Johanna McTiernan explores embodied relating as a pathway from masking and self-protection towards greater authenticity and mutual presence. Participants reflect on how early habits of fitting in, editing themselves, and seeking approval can become so automatic that they feel natural, even when they are rooted in tension and fear.As the conversation unfolds, we hear how embodied presence can soften these patterns. Participants describe feeling safer in their own skin, communicating more openly, and relying less on external validation. There is a growing sense of permission to enjoy life, to value one’s own voice, and to care for others without disappearing in the process.The episode then turns toward changemaking in polarised social fields. Rather than meeting opposition with more force, embodied relating offers a way to find common ground beneath positions. By resting in grounded presence, participants describe becoming more available to others and more able to hold difference without losing themselves.A simple embodied practice returns from the early sessions of the project: “down and in” — bringing attention into the body, softening the face, and settling with the breath before engaging. From this place, listening deepens and connection becomes more possible.One participant shares how this practice supported him to hold space for his wife and family when war broke out in his wife’s country of origin. Instead of rushing to solutions, he describes a growing capacity to stay present, grounded, and emotionally available.In the second half of the episode, the focus shifts to control and agency. Through a guided inquiry led by Dan, participants explore what they are — and are not — in control of in their lived experience. Questions arise around fixing, improving, and outcome-attachment, and how much suffering is created when reality does not match imagined futures.Participants reflect on fear, grief, resistance, and relief, as well as on the difference between power over and power with. The conversation gently opens into the possibility of participation without domination, choice without illusion, and action without guaranteed outcomes.Throughout the episode, listeners are invited to notice their own relationship with control, agency, and trust, and to sense what becomes possible when effort softens into presence.Coming up nextIn the next episode, we explore what emerges when layers of resistance fall away, and experience is allowed to be as it is, touching into wholeness and deep belonging.If this conversation resonates with you, we invite you to go deeper. The Embodied Permaculture online course is a nine-week, self-paced journey rooted in the practices and insights from this project. Hosted by the Permaculture Association Britain, it’s open to anyone — no prior experience needed, just a willingness to reconnect with your body, your land, and the wider field of life. You can find it here. Get full access to Being Earthbound at beingearthbound.substack.com/subscribe

Welcome to episode 3 of the Embodied Permaculture Project, a six-episode podcast series exploring what embodied presence and life-centric inner practice can offer permaculture, changemaking, and the wider cultural shift towards alignment with life on Earth.This series is based on an 18-month project in which 20 permaculture practitioners from across Europe were immersed in applied, life-aligned embodiment practice. The project was funded as part of the Alef Trust’s Conscious Communities initiative and was designed and facilitated by Earthbound.To find out more about the project, listen to earlier episodes and read articles about embodied permaculture, visit beingearthbound.substack.com/t/embodied-permaculture.Episode 3: Tuning in to the GutWhat happens when we stop trying to hold life together from the head and allow ourselves to land more fully in the body?In this episode, host Johanna McTiernan turns us towards the gut as a place of grounding, intuition, and deep trust. The conversation explores what it means to rest in not knowing, to loosen our grip on control, and to sense life from a deeper, quieter place within.For many of us, a lack of grounding shows up as anxious energy, overthinking, or a sense of disconnection from meaning and belonging. How does that affect our work as changemakers, activists and permaculture practitioners? Project participants reflect on how tuning into the body, and particularly the belly and pelvic bowl, can bring a felt sense of safety and stability that allows experience to move through without overwhelming us. From this place, boundaries become clearer, and there is more space to meet what is happening without needing to manage or fix it.The episode invites an exploration of intuition. Intuitive or inner knowing is described as something subtle, embodied, and relational. It often emerges through movement, time on the land, or moments of stillness, arriving not through effort, but through listening.This way of knowing has implications beyond the individual. As the conversation unfolds, questions arise around collective work, decision-making, and changemaking. How do we stay true to inner guidance while working with others? What changes when we stop pushing upstream against life, and instead learn to move with its currents?A recurring image in the episode is that of turning the boat downstream and allowing oneself to be carried, making small, responsive adjustments rather than forcing direction. This becomes an invitation to consider activism, leadership, and agency from a place of presence and relationality rather than oppositional struggle.Throughout the episode, listeners are gently invited to reflect on their own relationship with control, trust, and grounded knowing, and to sense what might become possible if they allowed themselves to soften their inner grip and listen more deeply.Coming up nextIn the next episode, we explore embodied relating, moving from self-protection and masking towards mutual presence, authenticity, and holding safe space for others.If this conversation resonates with you, we invite you to go deeper. The Embodied Permaculture online course is a nine-week, self-paced journey rooted in the practices and insights from this project. Hosted by the Permaculture Association Britain, it’s open to anyone — no prior experience needed, just a willingness to reconnect with your body, your land, and the wider field of life. You can find it here.We’d love to hear how this work lands for you, so please do leave a comment or share it with someone you feel would be interested. Get full access to Being Earthbound at beingearthbound.substack.com/subscribe

Welcome to Episode 2 of the Embodied Permaculture Project, a 6‑episode podcast series exploring what embodied presence and life-centric inner practice can offer permaculture, changemaking and the culture shift from our current paradigm to alignment with life on Earth. This series is based on a project in which 20 permaculture practitioners from across Europe were immersed in applied life‑aligned embodiment practice for 18 months. The project was funded as part of the Alef Trust’s Conscious Communities Initiative, and it was designed and facilitated by Earthbound. To find out more about our work, please visit earthbound.fi.Episode 2In this second episode of the Embodied Permaculture Project podcast, we ask: What is embodiment, really? And how does it support those seeking to live in alignment with the Earth?Johanna is joined by Dan, lead facilitator of the project, to explore how disconnection from the body mirrors disconnection from the wider living systems we’re part of. They trace how much of modern life draws us up into the head, away from the subtle signals of the heart and gut, and how this internal misalignment is mirrored in our external culture — from infinite growth models to ecological breakdown.Drawing on reflections from project participants, this episode explores how returning to the body supports resilience, trust, and connection. We hear stories of burnout, illness, and inherited conditioning, and what began to shift when people slowed down, grounded themselves, and tuned in to their felt experience.Together, we introduce the four principles that shaped the project:Grounding – creating a felt sense of safetyAttunement – tuning into self, others, and EarthOpening – softening into connection and flowIntegration – weaving inner work into outer workThese movements support a different kind of change: one that doesn’t push from urgency, but emerges from presence. One that reconnects us not just with ourselves, but with the land, with one another, and with life itself.If this conversation resonates with you, we invite you to go deeper. The Embodied Permaculture online course is a nine-week, self-paced journey rooted in the practices and insights from this project. Hosted by the Permaculture Association Britain, it’s open to anyone — no prior experience needed, just a willingness to reconnect with your body, your land, and the wider field of life. You can find it here.We’d love to hear how this work lands for you, so please do leave a comment or share it with someone you feel would be interested. Get full access to Being Earthbound at beingearthbound.substack.com/subscribe

Welcome to the Embodied Permaculture Project, a 6-episode podcast series exploring what embodied presence and life-centric inner practice can offer permaculture, changemaking and the culture shift from our current paradigm to alignment with life on Earth. This series is based on a project in which 20 permaculture practitioners from across Europe were immersed in applied life-aligned embodiment practice for 18 months. The project was funded as part of the Alef Trust’s Conscious Communities Initiative, and it was designed and facilitated by Earthbound. To find out more about our work please visit earthbound.fi.Episode 1In this opening episode of the Embodied Permaculture Project podcast, we introduce the journey that brought this series to life - an 18‑month exploration with 20 permaculture practitioners from across Europe, diving deeply into life-aligned embodiment practice. Designed and facilitated by us at Earthbound and funded through Alef Trust’s Conscious Community initiative, the project asked: What might become possible in permaculture, changemaking, and cultural regeneration when we root ourselves more fully in embodied presence?We share why we believe embodiment is essential for the cultural shift we long for - a move from disconnection and burnout toward grounded, relational ways of being that are aligned with life. Through powerful reflections from project participants, this episode surfaces the tensions between inner and outer change, between head and body, and between working with nature and working as nature.Together, we explore the invisible conditioning we carry from industrial cultures, how burnout shows up even in nature-aligned spaces, and what begins to shift when we slow down, reconnect to the body, and rediscover our belonging in the wider web of life. We also speak to the importance of trust, community, and the deeper qualities that enable transformation, not just in our systems, but in ourselves.We created this podcast to share what we learned as fellow travellers and to invite you into this conversation about how real change happens.If this conversation resonates with you, we invite you to go deeper. The Embodied Permaculture online course is a nine-week, self-paced journey rooted in the practices and insights from this project. Hosted by the Permaculture Association Britain, it’s open to anyone — no prior experience needed, just a willingness to reconnect with your body, your land, and the wider field of life. Join us in exploring what it truly means to live as nature. In Episode 2, we ask: What is embodiment?We’d love to have you with us for the journey. This post is public so please share it with those you feel would be interested. Get full access to Being Earthbound at beingearthbound.substack.com/subscribe

Earthbound is excited and proud to be facilitating the embodiment work in this important new Alef Trust project and I wanted to take a few minutes to explain why we are offering it to farmers, growers and agricultural students at this time of uncertainty and challenge for the agricultural sector. Calmer Farmer – Supporting Food Producers’ Inner Wellbeing in Service to Food Systems Transformation 🌱Feeling stressed or overwhelmed by the demands of farming in the UK?Looking for a different approach to your wellbeing?Discover how you can:Cultivate greater calm and presence, even in challenging timesFeel more connected to your body, relationships, and the landRediscover deeper joy and flow in your work📅 Join Calmer Farmer – a FREE 10-week online embodied wellbeing course for farmers and growers across the UK!This new UK-wide pilot research project explores how inner embodiment practices can support the wellbeing of farmers and their farm work.By participating, you’ll:Connect with farmers across the countryRecognize that caring for yourself is just as vital as caring for the land.Receive FREE, evidence-based embodiment practices (just 10-20 minutes a day!)📅 Enrolment open now!📅 Course starts February 23rd 2025!🔗 For more information visit www.calmerfarmer.orgPlease share this post with anyone you feel would benefit! Get full access to Being Earthbound at beingearthbound.substack.com/subscribe