Getting Out of My Head

Deepening Community through Embodied Connections

This is not the post I’d planned to write. While engaged in my morning walk, my mind discovered that my heart wanted to abandon my carefully written draft for a new subject. It’s possible that storyteller and sage Micheal Meade’s podcast playing in my ear might have nudged me in a different direction although I lack awareness of any specific connection. Or perhaps it was a seed of wisdom from one of the amazing Substack writers I follow that started to sprout without conscious tending on my part. But I think it was the walking that encouraged me to adopt a different rhythm. As my body engaged in movement, my mind could wander freely and space opened to hear the whispers of my heart.

I sometimes live in the world as if I am a mind carried around by my body. Alas, I’ve had years of practice in preferencing the mind and being rewarded for it. When my mind is busy thinking, planning, organizing, problem solving, or just plain worrying, the activity overrides more subtle messages.

Of course, I realize that, like all humans, I hold the potential to draw upon a deeper knowing than the mind alone can foster. I am my truest self when I am more fully embodied: mind, heart, soul, senses, intuition, emotions. And from that embodied place, I can more fully connect to others – human and more than human. Indeed, we might say that to live fully alive and deeply connected to this world, we need to open to all our ways of knowing.

And we so desperately need to reweave connections. I wrote about this in Earth & Soul published last year: “We were born for connection, shaped by generations of tribes, villages, and extended families who lived together, sharing work and play. They gathered, grew, and prepared food for all, cared for the young, sang and danced, celebrated and grieved. Bound by history, ritual, and work, the community was essential for survival. Exile from the community was the ultimate punishment because one literally could not live without others. Even though we have the capacity to live much more independently today, the need for connection is still deeply wired within us.”¹

We humans are embodied creatures. For centuries, we forged community because we attuned not only our minds but our bodies to the rhythm of the living world and the ebb and flow of community. Dance, song, drumming, and art gave expression to our collective sense of who we were and who we were called to be. We knew well the ecosystem into which we were inextricably woven. We listened to bird song – or were alarmed by its absence – and understood the messages encoded in the changing patterns. We were able to identify animals that called to us, catch their scents in the breeze, and follow their footsteps. We sensed the call of water. We smelled the coming storms. This capacity for more deeply knowing the world was still true for many of us not all that long ago – and it still resonates for those who live close to the land.

There was a time when I knew that the movement of wind and sky might be read through the senses:

To this day, being unable to see storm clouds gathering in the distance makes me nervous, a remnant memory of the many times I watched with my dad while roiling clouds formed shapes in the distance and the air hung weighted with silent expectation. With no meteorologists reporting from the sparsely populated areas of central Kansas in the 1950s, families who lived here attended to the weather themselves, and life and livelihoods depended upon the accuracy of their predictions. On hot summer afternoons, the clouds sometimes built to enormous cumulonimbus, white becoming gray and then blue-black, shouting their message to those watching that a storm was brewing. When sweat trickled down your back and everything you were wearing stuck to you; the pressure was building. Hot and cold fronts, defined by sharp cloud edges, advanced on each other and assessed whether to engage.

In every storm, Dad was there, watching. I stood next to him, my posture copying his: erect and watchful, eyes scanning for messages in color and shape, feeling the signs in air and wind. You might think that I learned a lot of facts about weather during my early years at my father’s side, but it wasn’t like that. It was a full-on sensory experience; smell, feel, sound, and images weaving a deep connection with wind and sky.²

Perhaps, like me, you once held a more fully embodied connection to the living world before adulthood, changes in geography, and buying into a corporate culture invited a mind-centric worldview. And in becoming less embodied, we fray our connections to each other, to the ecosystem of which we are a part, and to this beautiful, life-giving Earth. From our thinking minds alone, we cannot fully embrace the awe and wonder of blazing sunsets, giant sequoias, or an exquisite purple iris. When I hear of your tragic loss, my spontaneous tears of empathy do not come from a rational mind, but from an open heart. I cannot think my way into responding to the beauty of the dawn chorus of birdsong nor absorbing the healing scent of pines. If we consistently fail to tune into our senses, open our hearts, or allow ourselves to fully feel, we may become disconnected, lonely, isolated shells of the self we were meant to be. And from that disconnected place, we can find ourselves “othering” those who are not like us.

While I was writing this essay, a post arrived in my inbox from Sharon Blackie, author, psychologist, and folklorist extraordinaire. In it she reflected on the importance of embodiment. I was caught by this sentence: “Although it’s an overused word, I believe we need a form of mysticism today that’s embodied – that comes from our lived experience of being part of this beautiful world, that accepts all of the terrors and tragedies of being human, as well as the joys and beauties – and not just from our heads.”³ Coincidence? Hmmm.

Directly sensing the divine feels impossible for me if my thinking mind is the only agent of connection. Glimpsing the sacred that is within and that holds all life is not an intellectual pursuit but an awareness that arises from a fully-embodied engagement of heart, soul, and senses.

Last Sunday afternoon, we met at a beautiful nature preserve for our monthly gathering of Church of the Wild Two Rivers. Every gathering is a new configuration of participants – human and more than human. On this day cardinals flitted around the circle of people, offering their songs and brilliant color. The aroma of cedar wafted through the air. Hardwood trees were freshly dressed in brilliant spring green, their trunks darkened and polished by the recent rains. I fear we humans made a poor showing compared to the rich attire of the broader community, but we offered song, dance, and thanksgiving so perhaps they understood our longing for connection. And then we wandered - silently, open, present - offering our attention and willingness to listen with our whole being.

In this small community of people, we remind each other to tune our senses by focusing on them one by one for who can know how the cedars might speak to us today. We listen with the ears of the heart for the joy of cardinals that surpasses words. We hold the possibility of communion with this land and sky on this afternoon in ways we can never explain. And in these moments, we allow our thinking minds to be led by our compassionate hearts into richer relationships for the sake of our lives and those within this sacred web of community.

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Do you sometimes feel caught by thoughts and plans that supersede other ways of knowing and connecting? How do you alter that pattern? Are there practices that you find particularly helpful to live more fully embodied day by day? Please share in the comments so that we can learn from each other.

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Book Events:

May 18, 2 - 3pm -- WordPlay Bookstore will host Leah, and co-author Beth Norcross, for a book talk and signing on Sunday, May 18th. Join us at this delightful independent bookstore in Wardensville, WV.

June 21, 11am - 1pm -- Authors Leah Rampy and Beth Norcross look forward to sharing a book talk and signing at Winchester Book Gallery, Winchester, VA.

July 10, 6:30-7:30pm -- Curious Iguana Bookstore, in partnership with Frederick County Public Libraries, will host a book talk and signing for Discovering the Spiritual Wisdom of Trees with authors Leah Rampy and Beth Norcross. C. Burr Artz Public Library, 110 E Patrick St, Frederick, MD

Are you hosting a book club? I’d love to join you for a session via Zoom to discuss either of my books: Earth & Soul: Reconnecting amid Climate Chaos or Discovering the Spiritual Wisdom of Trees coauthored with Beth Norcross.

Podcast:

Earthkeepers, April 2025 -- In this conversation, Leah Rampy and Beth Norcross discuss their book Discovering the Spiritual Wisdom of Trees, exploring themes of earth care, spirituality, and the deep connections humans have with nature. Listen

1. Leah Rampy. Earth & Soul: Reconnecting amid Climate Chaos. Bold Story Press: 2024, 55-56.

2. Ibid, 28.

3. Is women's spirituality unique?