Somatic Mentalizing the Other-than-Human World
What is Somatic Mentalizing?
From my Chrysalis Collective blog originally publisehd on May 13, 2024
In an instant—everything changed.
A few years ago, in my backyard surrounded by a committee of vultures, it dawned on me. This wasn’t an option, it was a calling. An unshakable feeling down to the very last cell in my body that I had to share my passion for re/connecting women to the natural world through relationship - to rebuild the relational bridge to the natural world. As a relational therapist with experience helping women connect to other humans, I had no idea, in that moment, that my life would change forever.
Trained to increase positive attachment outcomes in mothers and infants, and encourage reflective functioning in at-risk mothers, I wondered if we could improve our relationship with the natural world through our capacity to be reflective and curious. In human relationships, this capacity is called reflective functioning or mentalizing. Mentalizing is defined as the ability to understand one's own and others' mental states, thereby comprehending one's own and others' intentions and affects.
While we could certainly be curious and wonder about the intentions and affects of other-than-human beings, how could we understand the mental state of an other-than-human being absent a shared language? To do so makes several assumptions, one of which is that other-than-human beings have mental states? I argue that they do have intelligence, as intelligence means “to choose between” and it is clear that other-than-human beings make choices all the time. On Mother's Day, I spoke to my own mother who told me a story about two doves who were choosing to make a nest in the wreath hung above her front door. While we don't have a shared language to understand the dove's intentions and affect, we could be curious and wonder.
Anyone who has a dog knows that dogs most certainly have mental states. My dog, Clover, makes choices, has moods and swims through various mental states throughout the day. For example, when Clover is chomping at the bit to get outside and chase some deer, she frantically rings the bell to go outside (yes, she is trained to ring the bell when she wants to go outside). Here she is making a choice to ring the bell to chase some deer. She is also in a hurry, as opposed to other times when she is slower moving. I can clearly tell when she is bored, tired, annoyed, happy and hungry.
Still, absent a shared language, mentalizing the other-than-human world is more complicated. I believe we can enhance our wonder and curiosity through the use of our bodies. This is where I came up with the phrase “somatic mentalizing” which may sound strange because somatic means “relating to the body, especially as distinct from the mind” and mentalizing is clearly a process of the mind. So, what am I saying here. I am saying that we use our bodies to be curious and wonder about the intentions and affects of the other-than-human world. Mentalizing is simply a process. Receiving input through our bodies via the senses is also a process. If we start with receiving through the body and end with making sense of it through reflective functioning, we may improve our relationships with the natural world. While we can never fully understand the intentions and affects of the other-than-human without shared language, we can certainly try.
In his introduction to Andreas Weber's The Biology of Wonder, David Abram writes “It's precisely this blend of receptivity and spontaneous creativity by which any organism orients itself within the world (and orients the world around itself) that constitutes the most basic layer of sentience integral to that creature – the inward subjectivity or ‘mindedness’ necessarily called into being by that particular body as it navigates the present moment.” At the risk of being reductive here, I believe what Abram is describing is a kind of somatic mentalizing. I will attempt to write more on this in the future.
My experience with the committee of vultures consisted of a felt sense. I was surrounded by vultures. I did not feel afraid. I felt a kind of peacefulness. They did not seem afraid either. They did not attempt to attack me. They simply allowed me to sit surrounded by them. Through that experience I came to know myself a bit more. In realizing how important vultures are to our ecosystem, I realized how important the regenerative movement is for planetary health. I believe we can increase our attachment to the natural world through the process of somatic mentalizing. Through our programs and retreats, we will attempt to understand ourselves and others through the felt senses and processing of experiences with the natural world. We will unfold in nature and with nature to know ourselves and the world a little more deeply.