Intimacy With The Natual World w/Henriette Geber

This episode explores rekindling our innate connection to nature through yoga and sensing practices. Rosalind has an insightful conversation with her friend Henriette Geber, a yogini with a deep love of the mountains, plants and animals.

 

They discuss how yoga helps us become more sensitive, intuit nature's aliveness, and dissolve harmful ways of relating that assume separation. Henriette shares how yoga empowers her natural affinities, from studying art history to living with the German Alps.

 

We discuss removing overlays of ideology to intuitively relate directly with the living world.

 

Key Topics 

 

- How yoga cultivates sensitivity to ourselves as nature 

- Dissolving the illusion of separateness from nature ingrained by society   

- Honoring the aliveness and subjectivity of all creatures and systems

- Henriette’s countercultural move from the mountains to the city and back again

- Following our natural talents and relationships that emerge through yoga

 

Insights

 

- Assumptions of nature as passive or dead prevent us from sensing its aliveness

- Rituals trying to "connect" can reinforce separation if that belief is still there    

- Our bodies intuitively know which plants are healing if we relax our seeking mind

 

Quotes

 

"Yoga has given me this, that I trust what comes out of me. I think I was very outward oriented, like, how do you do certain things? How am I perceived? Always thinking like, oh, my perception might be really wrong or not even feeling how do I relate from the inside to this and giving me the sensitivity to actually feel how is my relationship to this, how is my sensing of this and then the strength to also act upon it and not be afraid."

 

"If you cannot feel your body, you cannot feel the natural world because ultimately it's the same thing. It's totally the same thing." 

 

“It’s always there. It's there. You just need to listen.”

 

Resources

 

- Franz von Stuck's painting "Sin" that Henriette wrote her thesis on

- The Correction by Amy Mindell, a book referenced

 

Timestamps

 

[00:00:00] Introduction  

[00:01:00] Henriette's background in the mountains and move to Berlin

[00:05:00] How yoga enabled tuning into her needs

[00:10:00] Studies in art history and disconnect from life   

[00:15:00] Henriette's return to the mountains from the city

[00:20:00] Painting of a woman and snake Henrietta was drawn to 

[00:25:00] Positive symbolism of the snake across cultures

[00:30:00] Henriette's relationship with animals and plants

[00:35:00] Accessing intuitive knowledge about medicinal plants

[00:40:00] Story illustrating the ever-present relationship between humans and nature  

[00:45:00] Rituals reinforcing separation versus assuming connection   

[00:50:00] Being in relationship versus demanding feelings from nature

[00:55:00] Living creatures acknowledging Henriette 

[01:00:00] Moving to farm not being the happily ever after

[01:03:00] Closing