Resources for ecological embodiment
Books, blogs, and research articles that inform my practice.
Abram, D. (2011). Becoming animal: An earthly cosmology. Vintage.
Coleman, M. (2006). Awake in the wild: Mindfulness in nature as a path of self-discovery. Inner Ocean Publishing.
Childs, C. (2000). The secret knowledge of water. Sasquatch Books.
Loupy, K.M. (2024). Psychedelics for the exploration of self. https://psychiatryinstitute.com/psychedelics-for-the-exploration-of-self/
Loupy, K.M. (2025). We are part of the whole: Remembering the earth–body–mind connection. https://www.somaticnaturetherapy.com/blog/we-are-part-of-the-whole-remembering-the-earthbodymind-connection
Macy, J., & Brown, M.Y. (2014). Coming back to life. New Society Publishers.
Microbes and Social Equity Working Group. https://microbesandsocialequity.com/
Plotkin, B. (2003). Soulcraft: crossing into the mysteries of nature and psyche. New World Library.
Prechtel, M. (2015). The smell of rain on dust. North Atlantic Books.
Robinson, J.M., & Breed, M.F. (2020). The Lovebug Effect: Is the human biophilic drive influenced by interactions between the host, the environment, and the microbiome? Science of the Total Environment, 720, 137626. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.137626
Robinson, J.M., & Breed, M. (2025). Beyond microbial exposure and colonization: multisensory shaping of the gut microbiome. mSystems, 10(10), e0110725. https://doi.org/10.1128/msystems.01107-25
Rook, G.A.W., Lowry, C.A., & Raison, C.L. (2013). Microbial ‘Old Friends’, immunoregulation and stress resilience. Evolution, Medicine, and Public Health, 2013(1), 46–64. https://doi.org/10.1093/emph/eot004
Roviello, V., Gilhen-Baker, M., Roviello, G.N., & Lichtfouse, E. (2022). River therapy. Environmental Chemistry Letters, 20(5), 2729-2734. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10311-021-01373-x
Somé, M.P. (1998). The healing wisdom of Africa: Finding life purpose through nature, ritual, and community. Putnam.
Stuart-Smith, S. (2020). The well-gardened mind: The restorative power of nature. Scribner.
Weller, F. (2015). The wild edge of sorrow: Rituals of renewal and the sacred work of grief. North Atlantic Books.
*If you're interested in learning more about my research, visit https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Kelsey-Loupy
Nature reflections
Fourmile Creek
And the water runs, clearer than my own direction. Hurried to get to the next place, beyond horizon, The End of the World. Water's ineffable existence: thick with body, then called into the great emptiness. Alchemizing form by human experience. Here, gone. Tangible for a time. Liquid, gas, liquid, and so on. Hydrogens and oxygens trading places across molecules and time and space.
In my breath now— a drop of Adriatic Sea, or originations of the Nile? Something from a previous life force,
a cell,
and how old?
Arizona Trail
Mom asks if I feel safe. I almost choke.
She must have no idea what it is like to sleep among cactus, sheltered by dancing, protective arms.
Or what it is like to be greeted with birdsong echoing down canyon.
Can she imagine fitting in among great columns of red earth, pressing her body to the ground to taste cracked and dried antler?
Could she understand the space that the sky holds or the way the sun massages my heart?
Would she hear ancient whispers of sandstone, dripping colors after millennia of water curving out its wrinkles?
Might she embrace the layered dimensions of shadow?
My mind turns over like the windswept night.
How could I explain all this to her?
So I simply reply, “yes, I do.”
River Poem
Life, a river
poem we carve about ourselves to ourselves.
All the while surrendered to a current that falls us down in one direction.
Spilling from, coming to;
Writing waves, singing sediment,
But always down, down, down.
The path of least resistance, says physics.
Meanwhile, we shake the oars and yell out control.
Meanwhile, the water expresses herself,
following universal laws,
down, down, down.
McInnis Canyons
This is why I want to
kiss a poet.
Limbs tangled with dust,
cigarette in one hand, pen in the other.
We romanticize cryptobiotic castles,
drought and dripping vulnerability.
We wonder at the strange sandstone,
making out metaphors.
As if concave cliffs have anything to do with the hollowed caverns of our own hearts—
those quivering chest chambers—
walls worn and exposed by experience.
Life rushes across our chipped faces
to our chapped lips
to our cracked hands
as we grasp for something unnamed under a slivered moon.
Walking Away
About a half mile down, my heart breaks.
“When did you get so boring?” She asks.
“Always an agenda.”
I massage my tight jaw.
So much for the soft animal of my body.
That transient state
as I float between two worlds.
Neither in nor out of myself.
Committed to nowhere.
If I had stayed, would I now be wondering about leaving?
Torn like the cottonwood tree,
stripped and sapping.
And anyway—
what shape does a butterfly’s wings take when it sleeps?
Yucca
How do you relate to the yucca, pulled from the ground and in decay?
What do you make of this dangerously frail and stubborn unraveling?
Why is gold the color of all sunsetting things?
A final burst of energy, a defiant yell, a voice to the last bits of life force.
Death and declaration: “I am here.”
3-Day Fasting Solo
Can you feel your heartbeat thumping existence?
Free flowing with passing time,
a rushing creek gushing truths.
I’ve faced an internal hunger deeper than this:
to be longing, belonging to.
Comfortable darkness, eyes wide open.
Wandering meandering canyons.
Blending into raw, red rock— when does skin end and sand begin?
Where are the edges of capacity?
Who are the dream monsters?
What is grief but a form of life force?
The damp rebirth of rain.
Coy moon watches as I
tend flame, Eros, intimacy.
Weathered bone, gasping firelight, smoking sage.
Embodiment of Earth-soul energy.
Thanksgiving
Traveling home with a suitcase of new memories. Replacing the old narrative— devoid of together and cracked hearts and inquiry and transparent soul— with something I caught, like the scent of wet mushrooms, and gingerly placed at the center of my luggage. It is more nuanced, complicated, a body full of trying.
Chicken
The chicken chased us all the way down the street.
Every time I turned to look back, she'd run faster, neck out, wings askew, legs bounding from beneath her white and feathered body. Cars whooshing by us.
And there I was, contemplating her fragility.
Small beast versus metal tank.
It was a comical display of something each of us has done at one point: a blind and desperate chase toward something, someone, somewhere.