We Are Living in an Animate World

In this episode of Root + Rise, we explore animism — not as an abstract concept, but as a living, embodied worldview rooted in relationship. Animism teaches that all life, all phenomena, are ensouled and conscious — from planets and plants to our organs, emotions, and symptoms.

Rohini Walker shares how this ancient, earth-honoring perspective is not only central to Indigenous and ancestral traditions across the globe, but also offers a powerful antidote to the disconnection, fragmentation, and spiritual wounding of modern life. We look at how symptoms can become messengers, how the wisdom of the body speaks in sensation, and how deep listening can begin the work of soul-body re-membering.

This is a call to return — to wholeness, to reverence, to the rhythmic stream of life that runs through all things.

And if you're interested in diving deeper through re-storying your life with embodied imagination, summer enrollment to Rohini's membership space, Root + Rise is open through midnight PST on June 30th.

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Intro & Outro Music: Coniferous Forest by orangery on Pixabay.

Transcript

Before we drop in to the episode, I’d like to share that summer enrollment to my online membership space, also called Root + Rise, is now open for registration through midnight Pacific Time on June 30th. It’s a community where we re-story our lives through embodied imagination. Much of what I explore in this podcast goes deeper through practice, guidance and consistent support in the membership space and online community. You’ll find the link to learn more and register in the show notes.

Welcome to this second episode of Root + Rise, the space where we slow down, go within, and attune to the deeper, vaster rhythms that move through and govern life. I’m your host, Rohini Walker. Thank you for tuning in.

Let’s start with taking a moment to land in the body, with taking a moment to remember to run everything I say by the felt-sense resonance and dissonance filters of your system and your body’s language. Feel and discern what’s true for you, not just here on this podcast, but in all the many ways that you’re taking in information in the world, and in the conversations that you’re having. Stay in your body, stay in your sovereignty. No matter the perceived authority and expertise of the source of the information, if something doesn’t feel true for you, you get to choose whether or not it’s correct and appropriate for you and your body with your unique history, ancestral lineage and ecosystem of subjective experience. 

This is the birthplace of soul-body liberation.

So today, I wanted to share a bit about the animist world view - a core part of my life and my work. The animist worldview is also an essential part of decolonial practice.

At its essence, animism sees all organic life, all phenomena as animate, ensouled, with an indwelling soul, and consciousness. From planets and galaxies, all the way down to plants, soil and the underground networks of mycelium, as well as our psyches and bodies, our cells and organs, our diverse psycho-physiological complexes and complexities - all of this is alive with an indwelling soul and spirit.

The consciousness that infuses all of this is, and is all of this, is the consciousness that moves through Nature, that animates Nature, and governs the larger and subtler processes of evolution - what the Polynesian and Melanesian people call ‘mana’, the Chinese call ‘chi’, the Japanese refer to as ‘ki’ and Indians like myself call ‘prana’.

The movement of this life force can be measured through cycles and through change and through evolution. It can be measured in the passing of the seasons, in the phases of the moon, and in the processes taking place right now in our bodies free from any interventions from the surface layer of our conscious awareness.

This animist worldview is common amongst Indigenous, earth-based, Nature-based traditions from around the globe, including the almost extinct Indigenous, ancestral European pagan traditions. 

Ancient healing sciences such as Ayurveda from India and Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) have worked with these principles for millennia, understanding for instance that the organs and the functioning of the biological systems within a human being reflect a certain state of consciousness that can go on to create specific psychological traits and conditions, as well as corresponding physical expressions. In these traditions, our organs are more than mechanical parts - they’re beings, corresponding to elemental and planetary energies. They hold memory, emotion and consciousness.

Everything is experienced as part of one larger continuum and process. Animism offers a subject-subject world view - in contrast to objectifying and fragmenting. It’s about entering into relationship with the world, and with ourselves. Animism sees all of existence as an expression of the numinous. Of consciousness. Of soul. 

​​This way of seeing and experiencing is radically different from - and an antidote to - the colonial, industrialized worldview that has shaped modern culture — a worldview born from the separation of spirit and  matter, a worldview that has perpetrated a deep psycho-spiritual wounding in the modern human. 

In the West, this separation was codified during the European Renaissance. The 16th century French philosopher & mathematician René Descartes’ conclusion “I think therefore I am”— effectively reduced being to thinking, and excluded all non-verbal life, including Nature, animals and the body, from having an amness,  from being endowed with consciousness.

His widely accepted perspective reduced the function of thought and the expressions of consciousness down to the constructs of human language - and cemented that into the dominant culture, just as European colonialism was beginning its invasive spread across many parts of the globe. 

That split and fragmented world-view became the foundation of empire. Of extraction. Of disconnection. And ultimately, of a mechanized, disenchanted view of life. Those who lived in relationship with the animate world — those rooted in Indigenous, animist ways —  were more or less wiped out, or in our post-colonial era, dismissed as ‘woo woo’ or ‘unscientific' - because they didn’t adhere to the rigid constructs of scientific materialism.

This schism is at the root of our current psycho-spiritual crises — both personally and collectively. And the Earth has borne the brunt of it.

Let me know if you’d like a future episode diving deeper into this historical arc — how the disme

Let me know if you’d like future episodes diving deeper into this historical arc of this — how the dismemberment of animism gave rise to empire, to modernity, and to ecological devastation.

For now, I want to speak briefly to how the animist worldview relates to symptoms — whether in our psyches, our bodies and our lives.

The animist worldview looks at symptoms as messengers, coming from a deeper rooted cause or entrenched situation within ourselves  - from our physical and energy bodies, and from our psyches -  that require our attention, that need to be connected with and tended to so that they can organically resolve. This is working in a holistic manner - in participation and in relationship with our wholeness.

In the animist view, the way to work with the symptom is not to “shoot the messenger,”  to wage war on it, as is the case with our aggressive post-colonial, hyper-medicalized mindset, where the notion of slowing down, and tuning in and being in relationship with ourselves in this way is considered absurd. Instead, the default reaction is to suppress or silence the symptom or numb the symptom, pushing it deeper into our cells, our tissues and our psyches. And because we’re holistic beings, and not machines with separate and disconnected parts, this also impacts our surrounding organs and body-mind systems in the form of side effects which require further  aggressive intervention. None of this addresses the root cause, or prevents the symptom-as-messenger from returning, louder and more belligerent than ever, because we’re still not listening. This is also the seed of war consciousness - which we continue to see erupting in the world in increasingly alarming ways,

Meanwhile, the animist approach invites the symptom-as-messenger in, makes space for them by the fire with the intention of connecting. Of asking “what are you here to show me?” and being willing to slow down and listen to communication that may be verbal but more often is non-verbal.

 The symptom-as-messenger, when related to in this way, especially through the body’s honest language of sensation, transforms into our guide. We go with the expressions of the symptom, in the direction of the symptom - all the while tending to it, supporting it, and relating to it, listening to it, as it takes us into our depths, to the parts of us that sent the messenger-as-symptom, hoping that we would pay attention to it.

This process of working with the symptom is a core principle in Homeopathy, which, I believe, has ancestral roots in Indigenous European pagan traditions. It’s also central in Ayurveda, in Traditional Chinese Medicine, and in Indigenous healing traditions worldwide. Rather than overriding the symptom, these systems observe it, walk with it, and allow it to lead us towards the root cause. In this process the symptom transforms - from problem to guide. We stop pathologizing the body-mind and learn to relate to it and communicate with it. Especially the body, which we’ve been taught to override, to dominate and control, to regard with suspicion, when in truth it’s always communicating with us, honestly and clearly. We just don’t always like the communications we’re receiving. They’re not always comfortable or pleasant.

Unfortunately, the supremacy of modern western pharmaceutical drugs as the mandated dominant system has pushed many of these holistic sciences to the fringes of culture - even though these days they’re increasingly being considered less fringe. But I still feel like we have a way to go. Don’t get me wrong, pharmaceutical drugs do have their place. But the enforced supremacy of anything is a colonial imprint.​ 

Working with symptoms in this way is what the  archetypal psychologist James Hillman meant when he spoke of mythologizing our pathologies. It’s a sacred act of re-membering ourselves — of reweaving soul back into the mind-body, back into the unfolding narrative of our lives.

​To live from this place is radical inner decolonization and soul-body liberation. It’s a reclamation of relationship — with ourselves, with each other, and with the living world. Our bodies are not broken. They’re communicating with us, honestly.

In my own life, this way of listening and being guided is how I’ve learned to manage and resolve and clear various chronic and fairly debilitating autoimmune expressions from the body, free from any pharmaceutical interventions. Working with the symptoms in this way, revealed to me that the autoimmune expressions had their roots in both childhood and adult trauma and CPTSD or Complex PTSD. And now if the symptoms reappear, I know I’m receiving communication, that I’m being asked to tune in, to listen and to be guided. My body has gone from being a battlefield to being a home for myself, as well as my most trusted friend and guide.

Animism is one way that we can begin to dismantle the systems of alienation and oppression that live in us — inherited, internalized, and often unconscious. And it begins with the body. With listening. With feeling and discerning what’s correct and appropriate for you and your living ecosystem.

Interestingly, quantum physics is now echoing what the ancient Vedic seers in India knew: that all matter is conscious, and is consciousness in motion. Every cell, every sensation, every so-called “symptom” is a living expression of consciousness. And the deepest layers of this knowing are pre-verbal. When we tune in from that place, there’s often a softening — a relief — a sense of being re-membered.

I’ll leave you with these words by the beloved Indian poet, Rabindranath Tagore, who was from my ancestral lands in Bengal. He lived and wrote when the British were ruling India, a time when the ancient science of Ayurveda had been criminalized by the British.

To me, his words capture the soul of animism:

“The same stream of life that runs through the world runs through my veins night and day and dances in rhythmic measure. It is the same life that shoots in joy through the dust of the earth into numberless blades of grass and breaks into tumultuous waves of flowers.”

As we close, I invite you to tune back into the body. Without engaging the thinking mind, allow the wisdom of your system to release anything that’s not correct and resonant for you in this moment. And allow what is resonant for you to settle, to root. If it feels good, you could let that stream of life slowly move the wild, wise body to express its own subjective experience of this episode.

Thank you for being here, thank you for walking this path with me, thank you for your attention, it’s sacred and I appreciate it.

 If you’d like to deepen this journey, I’d love to have you in my membership space, in Root + Rise, or I invite you to join my Substack, The Immateria. Details and links to everything are in the show notes. And if something stirred for you, email me at rohini@rohinwalker.com or message me on Substack - I’d love to hear from you!

Until next time, here’s to alignment.