Welcome to episode 4 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 4: From Masking to Mutuality

What happens when we loosen our need to manage, fix and control, and allow ourselves to meet each other more openly?

In this episode, host Johanna McTiernan explores embodied relating as a pathway from masking and self-protection towards greater authenticity and mutual presence. Participants reflect on how early habits of fitting in, editing themselves, and seeking approval can become so automatic that they feel natural, even when they are rooted in tension and fear.

As the conversation unfolds, we hear how embodied presence can soften these patterns. Participants describe feeling safer in their own skin, communicating more openly, and relying less on external validation. There is a growing sense of permission to enjoy life, to value one’s own voice, and to care for others without disappearing in the process.

The episode then turns toward changemaking in polarised social fields. Rather than meeting opposition with more force, embodied relating offers a way to find common ground beneath positions. By resting in grounded presence, participants describe becoming more available to others and more able to hold difference without losing themselves.

A simple embodied practice returns from the early sessions of the project: “down and in” — bringing attention into the body, softening the face, and settling with the breath before engaging. From this place, listening deepens and connection becomes more possible.

One participant shares how this practice supported him to hold space for his wife and family when war broke out in his wife’s country of origin. Instead of rushing to solutions, he describes a growing capacity to stay present, grounded, and emotionally available.

In the second half of the episode, the focus shifts to control and agency. Through a guided inquiry led by Dan, participants explore what they are — and are not — in control of in their lived experience. Questions arise around fixing, improving, and outcome-attachment, and how much suffering is created when reality does not match imagined futures.

Participants reflect on fear, grief, resistance, and relief, as well as on the difference between power over and power with. The conversation gently opens into the possibility of participation without domination, choice without illusion, and action without guaranteed outcomes.

Throughout the episode, listeners are invited to notice their own relationship with control, agency, and trust, and to sense what becomes possible when effort softens into presence.

Coming up next

In the next episode, we explore what emerges when layers of resistance fall away, and experience is allowed to be as it is, touching into wholeness and deep belonging.

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.

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.

Welcome to Episode 2 of the Embodied Permaculture Project, a 6‑episode podcast series exploring what embodied presence and life-centric inner practice can offer permaculture, changemaking and the culture shift from our current paradigm to alignment with life on Earth. This series is based on a project in which 20 permaculture practitioners from across Europe were immersed in applied life‑aligned embodiment practice for 18 months. The project was funded as part of the Alef Trust’s Conscious Communities Initiative, and it was designed and facilitated by Earthbound. To find out more about our work, please visit earthbound.fi.

Episode 2

In this second episode of the Embodied Permaculture Project podcast, we ask: What is embodiment, really? And how does it support those seeking to live in alignment with the Earth?

Johanna is joined by Dan, lead facilitator of the project, to explore how disconnection from the body mirrors disconnection from the wider living systems we’re part of. They trace how much of modern life draws us up into the head, away from the subtle signals of the heart and gut, and how this internal misalignment is mirrored in our external culture — from infinite growth models to ecological breakdown.

Drawing on reflections from project participants, this episode explores how returning to the body supports resilience, trust, and connection. We hear stories of burnout, illness, and inherited conditioning, and what began to shift when people slowed down, grounded themselves, and tuned in to their felt experience.

Together, we introduce the four principles that shaped the project:

Grounding – creating a felt sense of safety

Attunement – tuning into self, others, and Earth

Opening – softening into connection and flow

Integration – weaving inner work into outer work

These movements support a different kind of change: one that doesn’t push from urgency, but emerges from presence. One that reconnects us not just with ourselves, but with the land, with one another, and with life itself.

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.