GROUND

Accreting a modern notion of self is indistinguishable from modern civilization's fundamental alienation from the Earth, upon whom each of us is utterly dependent for survival. This has created a society where, instead of treating the earth with reverence, we blindly & fecklessly degrade her to meet our short-term needs. Not only does this destroy the only biosphere in the known universe; it is making modern humans profoundly ill. The global spike in complex chronic illness is a direct neurobiological sequelae of this embodied alienation.

Gabriel proposes that the genesis of a range of chronic illness is traceable back to the particular manner in which alienation has shifted the neurological baselines of our Grounding System, the most ancient of our three primary autonomic systems. Centered in the deep belly, its purpose is to digest our experiences: when it loses contact with the ground, due to lifethreat, we stop being able to digest what happens, as well as what we eat, and degrade into a spiral of illness that modern allopathic medicine is nearly helpless to reverse. It is impossible, Gabriel suggests, to understand this physiological breakdown, or how to heal it, without understanding the deep ancestral context of empire, and the ways that it has shaped social and familial systems for the past twelve thousand years. This volume provides a cartography of the history of alienation in the modern world, and a pathway to reclaiming our direct embodied relationship with the Living World.