The Cultivation of “Biological Eloquence”

Cultivating‘ biological eloquence’ is vital to well being and may be thought of as equivalent to cultivating the richness of one’s soul. As the psychotherapist Thomas Moore writes, the spiritual self, or soul, “is not a thing, but a quality or a dimension of experiencing life and ourselves. It has to do with depth, value, relatedness, heart, and personal substance.” “Ensouling” of our lived experience in its ‘minute particulars’ (Robert Hobson) is in many ways anordinary rather than extraordinary quality of living. 

Drawing from work on infant development, communicative musicality, the conversational model, neuroscience, hemispheric complementarity, and mindfulness, as well as clinical vignettes, the presentation argues that supporting a client to live with soul – encouraging awareness into the ways they move in their inner and outer worlds –cultivates wellbeing of the human psyche as we learn to live with “the wisdom of the nervous system” (Alan Watts) – or what I call ‘biological eloquence.’ Expressions and nurturing of the spiritual self include ritual, the seeking out and creation of beauty, the enjoyment of trusted community, the telling of valued stories in prose, poetry, music and dance, and a knowing that the self is inter dependent with our surroundings. Above all, it is a consequence of the inter relationship between quality of awareness and the ways the body and mind move through outer and inner environments.