Embark on a journey where body, earth and perception weave together into a new ecology of movement and belonging.
Ecosomatics
Embodied ways of sensing, relating, and responding
In an accelerating digital age shaped by endless stimulation, attention extraction, and manufactured needs, the body is increasingly pulled between over-activation and anaesthetization—caught in cycles of consumption that erode presence, relationality, and our capacity to respond to ecological and social crises. This disembodiment mirrors a deeper rupture: the growing gap between our lived, subjective experience of the body and the world in which that body is embedded and entangled.
Ecosomatics emerges as a counter-movement and a field of inquiry that asks: what is the theatre of nature, and how can we attune our senses to this more-than-human drama? How might we read ecological realities not only through scientific quantification, but through the body as a perceptive, relational, and ethical medium? In the face of widespread ecological devastation—such as the ongoing transformation of European forests—ecosomatic practice brings these processes back into the field of perception, allowing them to be felt, sensed, and responded to somatically.
Ecosomatic practice reclaims the body as a living site of perception, relation, creativity, and care. By reconfiguring the ecological through the somatic—and the somatic through the ecological—it catalyses embodied participation and opens transformative pathways of alliance with one another and with the more-than-human world: forests, other animals, landscapes, and vibrant matter. This work engages a profound reversal in the modern human–nature relationship: from nature as an indifferent necessity or a domain of human control, to nature as a vulnerable entity exposed to the effects of technocratic extraction.
Ecosomatic awareness unfolds as a sensory and poetic exploration in movement—a dance with inner and outer ecologies that restores perception and deepens our engagement with the places we inhabit. As a practice-portal, it cultivates listening, attunement, and becoming-with, extending modern ethical and aesthetic frameworks to include the vulnerability of the natural world, and supporting new forms of community, care, and collective response to the ecological crisis of our time.
What is Ecosomatics?
The term somatic (as a quality of bodily experience) and the cognate expression somatics (as a field of study) derive from the Greek word soma, meaning ‘the living body in its wholeness’. These terms were introduced and discussed systematically in the 1970’s by existential philosopher and Feldenkrais practitioner Thomas Hanna. Hanna’s aim was to bring together a broad range of first-person approaches to movement based on the human body as an internally sensed and immediately perceived living process of physical, mental and emotional awareness.
The term ecology derives from the Greek word oikos, meaning household, habitat or dwelling place. Ecology is the study of how organisms interact with one another and with their environments. By focusing on relationality and interdependence, ecological thinking displaces the human from the center of the world and foregrounds the key role of natural elements like water, plants, minerals and gases for our survival. In doing so, it also aims to encourage our responsibility towards the planet. The emerging field of ecosomatics attends to and investigates the relation between the direct experience and knowledge of the body’s sensations and systems, which is central to somatics, dance and other embodiment practices, with the ecological understanding of and dynamic connection with the larger field of living beings and systems in which human life is embedded.
As a response to the ecological crises of our time, ecosomatics is growing as a pluriverse of practices of listening with earth, seeding human-nature reciprocity and learning the art of commoning. Breath and touch are the most vivid and accessible example of how life works through immersion and compenetration of the human within the earth and the cosmos, and of the earth and the cosmos within the human. Ecosomatic practices arise from the embodied connection with the land: when the relationship with body movement as a source of somatic awareness meets the relationship with the territory as a source of ecosocial awareness. They work as ‘gateways’ to a place, embodied in the imagination, and in concrete experience where movement-based artistic, educational and therapeutic practices oriented toward self-expressiom and personal transformation meet ecological, social and cultural knowledges oriented toward community and territorial regeneration. My work draws particular attention to how listening and seeding reciprocity start from confronting the tragedy of our destructive cultural heritage and regaining the ability to grieve for ecological losses. In this sense, ecosomatic practices work as ‘gateway’ to recognise the perceptual roots of ecological crises and seed the (re-)generation of humanity as a form of ecological regeneration.
The practice of ecosomatics is interconnected with the notion of the ‘more-than-human’. We could say that the ‘more-than-human’ is a particular embodied ecological encounter between the human and the nonhuman and it’s ‘more-than’ because of the way this encounter takes places, because of its qualities: they are embodied, they are eco-embodied. This ‘more-than-human’ is not a transcendental entity, it is not something other than the human and the nonhuman. But the qualities of this encounter cannot be categorised as human or nonhuman, that’s what makes it ‘more-than’. It stretches the boundaries of each of the two categories to a point where you have to think anew, sense anew to recognise that which is neither one or the other, both one and the other. So it’s the meeting between the giant snail and the human skin that can be a more-than-human encounter. The ‘more-than’ requires an engagement with the skin, with the body, a vulnerability. And the (tiny) giant snail looks vulnerable on this huge human hand or skin or piece of skin as much as we might feel displaced or defamiliarised from the human in the encounter with the skin, with the body of the snail.
What do we experience in ecosomatic practice?
We work mainly outdoor in rural, naturalistic, archeological and urban settings and experiment with the sensations and perceptions of movements and matter in an embodied relationship with the presence, influence and responsiveness of other human beings as well as of non-human beings and living systems. We explore pathways to reconnect with our indigenous and wild roots and reactivate our sensory somatic systems with the goal of enriching proprioception and reshaping embodied self-image through an individual and collective journey. We explore the awareness that emerges through movement when the senses and the sensible are ‘decolonised’ from the anthropic distortion of confining perception only to those phenomena that exist within the limits and interest of human cognition, agency and activism. We work on suspending the codes of human supremacy and judgement on what matters and of what should be valued. This expands the field of the possible reality you can come in contact with in meaningful and constructive ways. You open up to the new possibilities of being touched and shaped by the encounter with other forms of living, sentient, and vibrant matter in transformative and (re-)generative ways.
How do we experience ecosomatic connection?
We start with exercises and rituals of listening to and with the body and observing the becoming of movement inside and outside through conscious breath, touch and movement. We work on the roots of sensing to feed the imagination with memories of place and matter that dwell in our tissues and cells to rediscover new movements and improvisational gestures and transform our habits and our self-image. Working with a collaborative approach and in a relaxed and welcoming atmosphere, and starting with impulses and intuitions, participants are guided to practice listening and attention to consciously connect with the elements (earth, water, fire and air) and with the forms, textures, smells and textures of the plant, animal and mineral world (barks, leaves, roots, branches, insects, birds, stones, rocks, trees ...). We work both with ordinary movements and with personal and collective improvisational dance and choreographic embodiments, as well as with voice and sound. Explorations are integrated with improvisational scores to weave ritualistic practices of collective dance responsive to others as well as to place and landscape. Through a process of improvisation we are in search of kinesthetic synchronicities and choreographic formations that develop the ability to notice where and how the attention of the group is moving and to respond to the offering of others in ways that support the ritualistic experience.
Slow Study Course (Online)
Slow Study Course (Online)
Engage Ecosomatic Workshops
Ecokinetics: Embodying reciprocity with plants
Challenge the comfort zone of our urban bodies to witness and respond to the sensory presence of trees, shrubs, reeds, and other plant creatures.
Rituali di Pa(e)ssaggio (Shifting landscapes)
Reclaiming the ritualistic dimension of human experience and reconnecting with our indigenous and wild roots.
Reclaiming the metamorphic imagination
Explore the relation between place and passage and the creation of ‘gateways’ between matter and the imagination.
Read more about ecosomatics (articles by Raffaele Rufo)
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Rufo, Raffaele (2025, ‘Ecosomatic Mutants: Calling for a New Paradigm of Ecological Transformation in a More-than-Human World’, key note speech presented at the Genius Loci Simposium of Ecosomatic Arts, Spazio Rossellini, Rome, 18-19 September 2025.
Abstract: This article examines ecosomatic practices as gateways to embodied knowledge, interspecies alliances, and new forms of perception and care. To imagine liveable futures, we must reembed human life within a more-than-human world. Thomas Hanna’s “second wave” of somatics foresaw harmony between reason and sensation, yet nature became vulnerable, not irrelevant. The “third wave”—ecosomatics—responds to this vulnerability, transforming grief into ecological responsiveness and fostering regenerative, participatory cultures of embodied knowledge.
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Rufo, Raffaele & Or, Yari (2025, forthcoming), ‘Decolonizing Perception: Mourning the Loss of Ecological Connections through Ecosomatic Dance Practice’, in: Or, Yari. (Ed.), Transformation Decolonized: Ecosocial Transformation in Social and Educational Practice, Bloomsbury Publishing: London.
Abstract: This in-depth interview describes and discusses the lived experience and evolving methods of ecosomatic dance practice and artistic research in relation with the growing interest in new approaches to decolonize the dominant paradigm of transformation in social and educational fields. Through autobiographical narrative, field reflections and documentation of solo and group practice in urban forests and natural reserves, the interview reveals how the ecosomatic approach is conducive to a synesthetic and relational experience of perception. The interview is complemented by a guided ecosomatic exploration with trees and a list of guiding questions for practitioners, publications, links to projects and audiovisual resources on ecosomatics.
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Raffaele Rufo (2024), ‘Somatic Arts and Liveable Futures. Engaging Ecological Connections’, Lagoonscapes. Venice Journal of Environmental Humanities vol. 4(1), pp. 199-218
Abstract: The article reflects on the possibility to re-activate our eco-consciousness through embodied practices of interconnectedness with nonhuman living beings and systems. Then it discusses the cultural conditions shaping the growing field of ecosomatic practices and evaluate their political implications as acts of caring, collaboration, and cultural resistance. The importance of awakening the memory of the body and grieving for anthropogenic ecological losses is foregrounded as a key passage towards regeneration.
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Raffaele Rufo (2023), ‘Humans, Trees, and the Intimacy of Movement: An Encounter with Eco-Somatic Practice’, European Journal of Ecological Psychology, vol. 8, pp. 88-113.
Abstract: This essay takes the reader into a synesthetic landscape to explore the possibility of relating with trees as intimate companions of movement and becoming. David Abram's ecophenomenology of perception is brought into dialogue with Kimerer LaMothe's philosophy of dance and with other voices in the growing interdisciplinary field of ecosomatics. Based on the author's inquiries as dancer-researcher, encounters with trees are staged as slow improvisational rituals of listening and attunement. In opening the senses and the imagination to the presence of trees, ecosomatic practice exposes the porosity and permeability of bodily boundaries and reveals the possibility of a perceptual shift into a heightened experience of embodiment. We are not only touching, witnessing, and dancing with trees, we are also being touched, witnessed, and danced by them. In these in-between spaces the soma is reached sensorially by ecological wounds and dance is reclaimed as a healing force.
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Raffaele Rufo (2022), ‘Sensing with Trees: Explorations in the Reciprocity of Perception’, VENTI Journal: Air, Experience, Aesthetics, vol. 2(2)
Abstract: This essay weaves together reflexive discourse and conceptual discussion on the reciprocity of perception with textual, photographic, and audiovisual materials from the author’s somatic explorations in nature. Drawing on Natasha Myers’s studies of plant sensing and David Abram’s eco-phenomenology of perception, “sensing with trees” is engaged as a slow improvisational dance of listening and attunement through which the human sensorium is imbued with arboreal attention and trees are recognized and honored as intimate companions of becoming. In opening the senses and the imagination to the bodily earthly ground, reciprocity emerges through the awareness of a deep perceptual shift: we are not only sensing and witnessing trees, we are also being sensed and witnessed by them
Listen to public lectures on ecosomatics
For a critical introduction to the field of ecosomatics, you can listen to Raffaele Rufo’s public lecture on ‘Somatic Arts and Liveable Futures: (Re-)Embodying Ecological Connections’, part of the programme (Re-)Gaining Ecological Futures - Ecosomatics, curated at Floating University Berlin by Berit Fisher and funded by Senatsverwaltung für Kultur und Europa, 23-25 June 2022. (The lecture was broadcasted live by THF radio Berlin).
For a discussion of the role of ecosomatic art practices as a vehicle for embodying personal and cultural processes of grieving and regeneration, you can listen to Raffaele Rufo’s public lecture on ‘Ecosomatic Seeds of Reciprocity: Uncovering the Perceptual Roots of Ecological Crises’, presented at the Italian Cultural Institute of Bucharest on 26 March 2024 and part of the ROOTS Dance Residency Project by AREAL Space for Choreographic Development.
Watch Videos of Ecosomatic Practices
Explore More Ecosomatics
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Ecosomatic Dance Practice
VEGETALIZING THE SENSES AND REAWAKENING THE ANIMAL BODY
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Ecosomatic Artistic Research
HUMANS, TREES AND THE RECIPROCITY OF PERCEPTION
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Ecosomatics: Roots & Trajectories
URBAN ENCOUNTERS AND BROADER ALLIANCES FOR LIVEABLE FUTURES
Raffaele Rufo, ‘Danced by the Tree’
“To stay here is to become a witness: of my heart, of my breath, of this earth, of this tree. To stay here is to be witnessed: by the layers of broken branches, pieces of bark, bits of leaves of different kinds and colors, pebbles, worms and insects, moisture, and dried matter.”
For references and quotes from the text of this page, cite Raffaele Rufo, 2025, ‘Ecosomatics: Introduction’, www.raffaelerufo.com/ecosomatics/introduction