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.F. (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 existence, alchemized form by human experience: thick with body, then called into the great emptiness. 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?
Corridors
How do I express to you the image of longing, like a heat-flecked desert that sits in my belly, depth like corridors of cool respite. I wait at the entrance, deciding whether to enter or remain, knowing the temperature change will chill my spine.
Looking into the cavern is looking into a mirror of my own soul, breathing. Some unfinished business down there.
I know the desire of water. Sometimes a need that feels so great I spill over my own edges. I follow unseen forces. They call to me.
Walking Away (Virgin Spring Canyon)
About a half mile down, my heart breaks.
“When did you get so boring?” She asks.
“Always an agenda.”
I massage my 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 she sleeps?
Canyonlands
What if—
for all the holes in my life,
shame, hidden and come to light,
trails lost,
careers tried,
romances failed—
what if I am as whole as this rock, larger and more beautiful from the totality of time, weathered water, and other impactful forces?
What if I, too, am solid in my completeness,
these textures not as imperfections but as proof of being an existing being?
What is added by each excavation?
What if my humanity could be such a brave and inspiring thing?
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—
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.
Arizona Trail
Mom asks if I feel safe. I nearly choke.
She must have no idea what it is like to sleep among cactus, sheltered by dancing, protective arms.
Or how it feels 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 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.