By immersing ourselves in traditional worldviews grounded in connection with the natural world, we can begin to heal ourselves and our planet

Fusion: I am the landscape; the landscape is me. High Atlas, Morocco. Photo: Nejma Belarbi, 2011
From Disconnection to Connection: Healing Ourselves and Our Planet
How is it that, in contemporary Western society, being “connected” to everyone and everything (almost all the time, it seems) produces the opposite: an experience of disconnection?
With the tap of a finger (and, perhaps soon, a mere blink of the eye), we “connect” with people around the world in real time. Similarly, we might “connect” with the latest news, hit song, trend, or online game. Why, then, do we so often experience disconnection in Western society? Might this strange sense of disconnection be the source of our angst and dissatisfaction with life?
And could this sense of disconnection arise from a lack (or loss) of deeper meaning in our lives?
Why do we so often experience disconnection in Western society?
Without a sense of deeper meaning in life, many in the West feel powerless in the face of planetary crises. Though some of us are aware of our malaise, we struggle to heal ourselves. And this struggle leaves us depleted, with little capacity or will to seek to heal the rest of the world.
But it is possible to shift from disconnection to connection and thus regain a sense of hope and meaning. For this, however, we need a radical shift of perspective and an openness to more ancient worldviews.
A Fundamental Difference in Worldviews
In Western society, the prevailing worldview is that we’re apart from — even dominant over — the natural world. As most of us now live in cities nearly bereft of nature, we are physically disconnected from the natural world. Consequently, many of us experience a mental, emotional, and spiritual disconnection from life.
Unsurprisingly, such a lifelong sense of disconnection can lead to profound physical and mental health problems. And, on a global level, this malaise leads to a collective disconnection from the multiple crises facing our planet.
Traditional and Indigenous worldviews are founded on connection with the natural world.
By contrast, traditional and Indigenous worldviews are founded on connection with the natural world. This means they see people as part of a greater whole, a Oneness rich in diversity and meaning.
These more ancient worldviews see inextricable connections between not only humans, animals, and plants (“all our relations,” as many Indigenous people say), but also natural features which the West considers inanimate (mountains, rocks, rivers, etc.). No less a part of this oneness is the unseen world of spirits (deities or forces of nature, ancestors, etc.). Indeed, some Indigenous cultures see the natural world as an “enspirited landscape.”
Six Lessons About Connecting with the Natural World
As you will see in the stories featured below, cultures grounded in reciprocity with the natural worldview life as a journey rich with meaning and abundance. In turn, this view of life brings lasting personal and collective fulfilment to place-based communities. With their ancestral ties to territories of life, these communities can teach us how to go from disconnection to connection.
Each story quenches the spirit by immersing us in the sense of biocultural unity that the West so desperately needs.
By learning from such storytellers, we may begin to heal ourselves of the “disease” of disconnection. As we heal, we will be in a much better position to counter the brutal forces of our globalized economy. And, collectively, we may begin to heal the worldwide social and ecological devastation that this sense of disconnection has caused.
We invite you, then, to explore six remarkable stories that offer transformative lessons about connecting with the natural world. Each story quenches the spirit by immersing us in the sense of biocultural unity that the West so desperately needs. May each and every one of these stories be the start of a personal and collective journey from disconnection to connection!

Knowledge Keeper Danil Ivanovich Mamyev, Director of Uch Enmek EthnoCultural Nature Park, on pilgrimage in the Karakol Valley. Photo: Irina Jhernosenko, 2014
Three Wise Teachers of the Land
Any life-changing shift in perspective starts with the guidance and encouragement of teachers. Most of us, when recounting a turning point in our lives, often think of our encounters with extraordinary people. This story introduces us to three such teachers.
In “To the Golden Mountains of Altai, Southern Siberia: A Journey of Language and Soul,” Joanna Dobson revisits one of her first trips to the Russian republic of Altai, in southwestern Siberia — a region that would become her home for a whole decade.
Specifically, she is struck by her encounters with three exceptional members of the Altai Indigenous People. The first is a knowledge keeper with a profound capacity to listen to the voice of the Earth. Her second “teacher of the soul” is a young poetess with an innate ability to express human kinship with nature. And her third encounter is with a throat-singing storyteller whose voice and music flow and permeate the landscape as if “ceremoniously blessing all that it encountered.”
Each of these three remarkable figures brings us closer to a shift from disconnection to connection.
In Joanna’s perceptive words, each of these remarkable figures brings us closer to a shift from disconnection to connection. Their gift is an emotional understanding of the spiritual link between people and place driven by reciprocity with the more-than-human. “I am left,” she recounts in wonder like one returned from a pilgrimage to a holy site, “with photographic clarity of a few defining moments.”
Indeed, the catalyst for such clarity about the sacredness of the land is dialogue with a special teacher. And as you will see in the next story, dialogue can be the key to an entire culture’s sense of connection to the more-than-human.

Water is the creation place of Aymara camelids. Photo: John Amato, 1999
Achieving Connection Through Dialogue with the Cosmos
Amy Eisenberg‘s “Jaqin Uraqpachat Amuyupa: The Aymara Cosmological Vision” introduces us to the cosmological vision of the Aymara people of northern Chile.
Though the Aymara live in one of the most demanding environments, the Atacama Desert, their connections to their territory of life are rich and multidimensional. And their vision is “one in which humans, environment, and the entire cosmos work cooperatively within a network of reciprocal relations.”
Through their agricultural practices and rituals to Pachamama (Mother Earth) and their ancestors, the Aymara achieve something extraordinary. Indeed, they strive to maintain a collective — not merely an individual — connection to the more-than-human.
For people in the West, where loneliness is an epidemic, the Aymara’s example proves that cooperation is connection.
Against the age-old challenges of the desert and the newer challenges of modern “development,” the Aymara maintain a multiplicity of connections. They believe that only through constant dialogue with both humans and the more-than-human can conflict be resolved. In this way, the world be made a good place for all.
Indeed, as Amy suggests, shifting from disconnection to connection is difficult (if not impossible) if we attempt it alone. For people in the West, where loneliness is an epidemic, the Aymara’s example proves that cooperation is connection.

A traditional performance called Honja, which is part of the Tanadui (Seed Saving Festival). A performer is offering a bundle of awa millet to the gods. Photo: Hoshikawa
Reviving Traditional Agriculture, Growing Connections to Life
In another remarkable story about the power of collective shifts, “Yu-ba-na-u-re: Sowing Seeds to Heal the World,” we learn that agriculture can be a key to moving from disconnection to connection.
Kana Koa Weaver Okada tells us about a growing movement among communities in the ethnically and culturally distinct southernmost islands of Japan. These communities have embarked on a revival of traditional agricultural practices, with surprising results. Not only are they protecting native crops and restoring food security, but they are also rebuilding critical connections.
Far from the giant mechanized monocultures of the West, traditional Okinawan agriculture is nothing less than a sacred activity.
Here, each of the 160 islands has a distinct linguistic lineage, stories, and cultural traditions. Most important of all, perhaps, is the place that agriculture held — and in some ways still holds — in these societies. Far from the giant mechanized monocultures of the West, traditional Okinawan agriculture is nothing less than a sacred activity. As such, it entails collaboration with the more-than-human, including seeds, seen as “gifts from the other realm.”
Slowly but surely, communities in Okinawa Prefecture are bringing back agriculture as a sacred activity. This return to traditional agriculture does more than restore traditional foodways and native crops. Indeed, it also revitalizes each community’s connection to its languages, traditional knowledge, and ceremonies.
We in the West also depend on agriculture. But we have become almost completely disconnected from it — and from its spiritual value. The Okinawan renaissance of traditional agriculture, then, is a valuable lesson on and template for restoring our connections to all that sustains us — and finding deeper meaning in life.

The medicinal community: Purple dead-nettle, Cleavers, Ivy, and other plant people on a side street, Vancouver Island. Photo: Nejma Belarbi, 2006
Healing From “Separatism” by Connecting With Plant People
Our next story grounds us yet further into the healing world of plants. In “The Obvious Mirror: How Biocultural Diversity Is Reflected in the Natural World,” Indigenous ethnobotanist Nejma Belarbi tells us about how she first heard “earth’s language.” This, she explains, is the language of tiny “plant people” who reveal themselves to her beside a dirt road.
Musing that nature is the mirror in which human diversity appears as an intrinsic part of the diversity of life, Nejma undertakes a journey. With compassion and insight, she wanders in spirit from her urban driveway back to her mountain childhood. And, eventually, she recalls the timeless teachings of her North African Elders about “our connection to all living things.”
Learning to “see” the plant people triggers a recognition of the web of interconnections between all beings and oneself.
Along her journey, she gently reveals how often people in the West view the natural world through essentially blind eyes. Indeed, learning to “see” these plant people triggers her recognition of “the web of interconnections between all existing beings and myself.” Once she sees clearly, she reaches a deep understanding of how much true wealth that connection holds for humanity.
Although shifting our worldview from disconnection to connection often seems unthinkable to us in the West, Nejma sees in each generation “a growing tendency to claim heritage and connection.” Our ancestral need for biocultural diversity can “connect us and heal us from this painful separation,” she tells us. And if we can learn to affirm once again, as Indigenous Peoples do, our connection to all that sustains us, we can finally abandon, as Nejma calls it, “a separatist perspective that has now run its course.”

A daba (trance medium) from the Mosuo Qiangic people, who allowed me to photograph him on the condition that he imitated a trance-like state. Photo: Dan Meir
Humble Stewards — Not Masters — of the Land
To shift from disconnection to connection, we must rethink how we connect to the land we live on. Indeed, as “Enspirited Landscapes” shows, we are most connected when fulfilling our role as stewards. That is because the land we live on is already occupied or “enspirited.”
In his perspective-shifting story, Dan Meir takes us to the Hengduan Mountains of southwest China. Here, in their homeland of “lofty mountain ranges, deep river valleys, and lush forests,” Qiangic-speaking peoples thrive in an equally rich diversity of dialects. Importantly, they also maintain an ancestral bond with their land, culture, and languages, and hence with the spirit world.
Their worldview is based on the assumption that the physical and spiritual realms are interconnected and their balance paramount. Accordingly, Qiangic people honor earth spirits as masters of the land and see themselves as its humble stewards. Indeed, for them, experiencing connection comes from being entrusted with this “enspirited landscape.”
Decisions are not made by humans based on their own interests but by the spirits of the land.
Contrast this to our modern view of land as inert material to be bought and sold, “developed,” contaminated, and “redeveloped,” all at our sole discretion! In such a worldview, how can one evolve from disconnection to connection?
As Dan points out, “Governance by spirits is a fundamental aspect of Qiangic society.” In such a culture, decisions are not made by humans based on their own interests but by the spirits of the land. This unseen world, and the natural and cultural beauty and diversity which it underpins, demands our respect, reverence and reciprocity. By contrast, Western society views even the visible aspects of nature’s bounty, beauty, and balance as mere “objective” phenomena.
So, can we learn to see what we have been trained and raised not to see?

Traditional-contemporary artist Gyempo Wangchuk adds final touches to a biocultural landscape painting of his native place in Eastern Bhutan and preeminent yul lha (deities of the territory or place) that reside there. Art: Gyempo Wangchuk. Photo: David Hecht
Participatory Mapping: Connecting With the Unseen
In “Painting the Unseen,” we immerse ourselves in the worldview of the Bhutanese people of the Himalaya, who likewise see mountain landscapes as “enspirited.” To them, it is invisible deities, not humans, who own and govern the land. Consequently, humans must respect these deities and protect their earthly dwellings. Indeed, the physical, social, and spiritual well-being of the Bhutanese people directly depends on their reciprocal relationship with the unseen.
David Hecht and renowned painter Gyempo Wangchuk recount, in words and brilliant images, a participatory mapping project in Bhutan’s protected and conserved areas. Awareness of this unseen spirit world, David muses, “suggests a depth of place-based knowing . . . unknown to many outsiders.”
Modern maps, as David points out, replace such knowledge with “points, pixels, and polygons.” With their mathematical focus on geographic features, then, modern maps “erase” the spirit world underpinning the land we live on. In other words, they present a reductionist view of a complex, nuanced reality.
Awareness of the unseen spirit world suggests a depth of place-based knowing unknown to many outsiders.
Could the West’s materialist view evolve “back” to an ancient awareness of the world as populated by both the visible and the invisible? In their fusion of words and images, David and Gyempo show that moving from disconnection to connection really means training our minds’ eyes to visualize (and represent) this unseen world.
In Gyempo’s richly reflective artwork, the Bhutanese people’s place-based knowledge and connection to the unseen regain their full power. (Gyempo’s work graces the cover of Langscape Magazine Vol. 13 and is also accessible here). Clearly, we can find deeper meaning in life by learning to see the true depth of the lands we inhabit.
Finding Deeper Meaning and a Path Through Modern Despair
To achieve a shift from disconnection to connection, then, we must cease to see ourselves as apart, individual, and disconnected.
Alarmingly, the modern world continues to encroach not only on Indigenous lands, lives, and languages, but also on the sacredness of life in all its forms. We in the West are both part of this modern juggernaut and, inescapably, its victims. In other words, our globalized economy, left unchallenged, will swallow us too even as it destroys the very communities who offer us a way out.
By teaching us reverence, respect and reciprocity for nature, these worldviews reconnect us to land, each other, and all that sustains us.
Rather than despair, though, we can turn to traditional and Indigenous worldviews such as the ones presented in this post.
By teaching us reverence, respect, and reciprocity for nature, these worldviews reconnect us to land, each other, and all that sustains us. In so doing, they guide us toward finding the deeper meaning that has been eluding our globalized society for so long.