Animism

A Living World in Process

At the heart of this work is an animistic worldview. an understanding that the living world is not inert or mechanical, but alive, expressive, and relational. Plants, animals, land, water, and place are not objects separate from us, but beings with their own presence and agency, participating in a shared field of life.

This way of seeing understands reality not as a collection of fixed things, but as a web of relationships in ongoing process. We are not separate observers of the world, but participants within it.

A Living, Relational World

This perspective resonates strongly with the process philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead, who proposed that reality is not made of static substances, but of events, relationships, and processes of becoming. From this view, everything that exists is in some way alive, responsive, and affected by its relations.

Healing, then, is not something imposed from outside, nor a problem to be fixed. It emerges through relationship, attention, and participation: through engaging with the ongoing movement of life itself.

This understanding underpins both Insight Herbalism and the shamanic principles that inform the work here. In Insight Herbalism, plants are approached as living participants in the process, capable of reflecting, responding, and offering insight when met with presence and respect.

Collective Memory

& Morphic Fields

Another way of understanding this relational intelligence comes through the work of biologist Rupert Sheldrake, particularly his theory of morphic resonance. Sheldrake suggests that nature carries memory. that patterns of form, behaviour, and organisation are influenced by collective fields shaped through time.

From this perspective, when we attune to plants, land, ancestors, or the imaginal realm, we are not accessing isolated or purely personal experiences. Rather, we are participating in shared fields of memory and meaning, where past and present inform one another.

This offers a framework for understanding how insight can arise through relationship with the living world, not as abstract knowledge, but as felt, embodied, and participatory knowing.

Philosophy in Practice

These philosophical perspectives are not held here as abstract theory. They shape how the work is approached and how sessions are held:

  • We begin with listening and presence, rather than diagnosis or technique

  • We work relationally, recognising plants and place as active participants

  • We honour embodied, emotional, and imaginal ways of knowing

  • We attend to patterns unfolding across time: personal, ancestral, and ecological

  • We allow meaning to emerge through attention and relationship, rather than force

This approach supports work that is integrative, grounded, and responsive, allowing insight and healing to arise within the living web of relationships we are already part of.

A Philosophy of Participation

Seen in this way, healing is not a product to be delivered, nor a state to be achieved. It is a living conversation: between self and world, body and imagination, human and more-than-human.

offering a way of engaging life that is relational, participatory, and alive.