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 Gut
What 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 next
In 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.
