How to Stop Trying to Heal Everything and Actually Matter

Hello and welcome to wild:health.

If for a change you’d like to see a picture in motion: I was life this week with the brilliant

Jim Palmer

, talking about philosophy as a way of life.

If you read only one part of this essay today, let it be the final paragraph.

If concepts, frameworks, and the tension between inner and outer transformation are your thing, read the whole essay.

---

collage by author

One question I see coming up regularly is whether we must heal our inner wounds - trauma, psychological fractures, spiritual voids - before addressing the planet’s crises. Or whether true healing can only begin once we dismantle oppressive systems, abandon toxic industrial practices, and cultivate justice for all beings. Does transformation happen inside-out or outside-in? Is it mostly an individual or a planetary endeavor?

Many rightly reject the narrative that personal salvation lies in green smoothies, meditation apps, or perfect recycling habits - as if systemic collapse could be averted through lifestyle tweaks and moral self-optimization. Equally bankrupt is the fantasy that we can change the system without confronting the inner landscapes that sustain those systems. Both reductionist scripts reduce the problem to blame: one shames individuals for structural failures, the other absolves personal agency in the name of collective action. Neither acknowledges the entangled web linking personal and planetary well-being as well as inner lives to outer worlds.

So where does genuine socialecological transformation towards personal and planetary health begin?

Health, in all its forms, is multidimensional. Complex systems resist silver bullets - I’ve argued this before. Yet action is urgent.

But before rushing to solutions, we need clarity on what these dimensions are.

And before we do that, a note on maps (and why they matter): Any map risks oversimplification. As someone who often critiques reductive thinking, I still find maps, models and frameworks useful - not as dogma, but as for what they are - inquiries and creative acts of worlding.

Maps are especially valuable to those creating them. The act of mapping is itself part of the spiritual journey. So, consider this less a definitive guide and more an invitation to create your own model: What is health to you? What are the different dimensions? How is this picture incomplete for you? How can you make it complete? How could you adapt the model so it can actually be a map for your journey?

And as Vanessa Machado de Oliveira writes about maps:

“Their purpose is not to represent something already visible, but to do work in the world by surfacing what is unconscious, invisibilized, and naturalized, and moving things within and between us. In this sense, maps invite you into an aesthetic experiment where we can un-numb and activate other senses in order to experience reality in a different way-intellectually, affectively, and relationally.”

Mapping Health

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

Some preliminary assumptions that I want to integrate in the map:

• It aims to reflect the full human experience - which is impossible

• It seeks to dissolve false inner/outer divides - while acknowledging that these divides always exist. Dualism is not only harmful, it’s also the source of friction - and thus generative.

• It aims to interweave personal and planetary health while honoring their distinctness. We’re relational beings, yet individual. Denying individuality risks collectivist delusion; ignoring relationality perpetuates WEIRD-world hyper-individualism.

• The earth is not an extension of our body, but our bodies are an extension of the earth.

“Human beings are not in a separate compost pile. We are humus, not Homo, not anthropos; we are compost, not posthuman.” Donna Haraway

This exploration draws from Katja Markelova’s Bodyverse teachings within the School of Somatic Wizardry, who I currently have the privilege to learn from, particularly her multidimensional lens on the PEMSER body (physical, emotional, mental, spiritual, energetic, relational).

What follows is an exploration of health’s dimensions as fractal patterns repeating across individual and planetary scales

• Physical: Physical health is the most tangible dimension. In WEIRD societies, this often translates to doctor visits and lab results - but it’s also about nourishing our bodies with recognizable nutrients and movement that feels alive. On a planetery scale, Earth’s body thrives on regenerative practices. Take soil, for example. Healthy soil is a living microbiome that sequesters carbon and grows nutrient-dense food. Regenerative agriculture rebuilds that microbiome, much like probiotics heal our guts.

  “In the settler mind, land is property. In the Indigenous way, land is identity. It is the locus of reciprocity - a gift we tend in return.” Robin Wall Kimmerer

• Emotional: Emotional health is about how we experience, process, and express our emotions. These emotions aren’t just in our heads, but manifest in our bodies, influence our social bonds, and often arise from shared cultural or communal contexts. Trauma, for instance, literally rewires the brain - the amygdala goes into overdrive, and the prefrontal cortex (the “rational” part) takes a backseat. On a planetary scale, collective trauma, for example induced through colonialism or climate grief, lives on in communities, influencing much of our responses to world events.

• Philosophical: Philosophical health is what a lot of my writing is about. It asks: do our ways of knowing, being and acting resonate with our ecos (our physical home, which is our body, community, planet)? We obviously don’t just have individual philosophies, but also collective ones. On a planetary scale, it’s actually the minority of the WEIRD world that dominates much of the planets collective decision making and events.

• Psychological: Psychological health spans thoughts, beliefs, and mental diversity (e.g., ADHD, anxiety). Much of what we label “disorders” are survival responses to mismatched environments - like a brain wired for novelty trapped in a monotonous job. Planetarily, this mirrors systems that prize GDP over well-being, or cities designed for cars, not conviviality. Healthy societies would design for neurodiversity, just as thriving ecosystems thrive on biodiversity.

• Sensual: Sensual health refers to the degree that our senses are engaged in our experience. Our senses are our portal to the world. How we are able to sense the world, defines our well-being and it also defines how we perceive the world in the first place. For example, some cultures, like the Onge tribe in the Andaman Islands, recognize up to 12 senses. Among them are things such as balance. Modern life bombards us with sensory pollution: fluorescent lights, traffic noise, screens. This isn’t just annoying - it can also spike cortisol, which weakens your immune system and can cause all sorts of ailments. For the planet, sensual health means preserving the senses of the planet, such as natural soundscapes (like bird calls in a forest, whales communicating across the ocean) or reducing light pollution so ecosystems (and our circadian rhythms) don’t get thrown out of whack.

• Spiritual (this is most likely to differ from your ideas about spirituality): While we typically associate spirituality with oneness and the metaphysical, spiritual health bridges individuality and oneness, the metaphysical and the physical. We are spiritually healthy, when we honor our unique embodied soulprint while at the same time recognize our place in the cosmic web - what many traditions call enlightenment. Movements like cosmo-erotic humanism, grounded spirituality or soulcraft make that fusion. Planetarily, Teilhard de Chardin’s noosphere might offer a metaphor. The noosphere refers to Earth's "thinking layer" - a collective consciousness emerging from human thought, culture, and spirituality. Just as the biosphere sustains life, the noosphere evolves through shared knowledge and spiritual growth. A spiritually healthy noosphere could manifest as widespread empathy, ecological stewardship, and collaborative problem-solving, addressing crises through collective wisdom. I sometimes wonder if AI is the physical manifestation of the noosphere.

• Energetic: Energetic health means that the energy in us is constantly and freely moving. Some think of energy as a mere mental construct, our Chi or Prana. But science shows how our energy levels greatly determine our overall health.For example, how well our mitochondria (the powerhouses in our cells) convert food into ATP, the body’s currency of energy, determines how well we feel. For the planet, energetic health is about moving from fossil fuels (which literally take ancient sunlight stored as carbon and burn it) to renewables that align with Earth’s rhythms - solar, wind - which are not perfect, but which biomimic what life has always been doing. Just as chronic stress drains ATP, fossil fuels drain ancient sunlight stored in carbon. At the same time there is likely more to energy on a planetary scale than fossil fuels - the Kogi for example identify black energy lines across the planet - some sacred spaces have more energy than others.

• Relational: Humans are wired for connection - oxytocin, is released when we hug or laugh together. Loneliness, on the flip side, is as deadly as smoking. But relationships aren’t just human. Mycelium networks in forests talk through chemical signals, sharing nutrients between trees. Planetary relational health means seeing diplomacy as ecosystem-building, trade as reciprocity, and cities as living organisms where sidewalks metabolize foot traffic like veins move blood.

“The universe is a communion of subjects, not a collection of objects. To exist is to be in relationship - to feel and be felt.” Alfred North Whitehead

I was very reluctant whether to share any definitions for the different layers at all. Each of these will likely be experienced very differently by your body (your ecos - which encompasses all of those layers, on a personal as well as on a planetary level). A reimagining of health requires that we step away from normativism. So, once again, this is an invitation for your own inquiry, not an answer.

Health in this map is not isolated but fractal - individual and planetary thriving are woven into each other. Healing one thread strengthens the whole.

How to Use the Map

Photo by Wolfgang Hasselmann on Unsplash

When you look at the map, it becomes obvious that healing can’t happen on all levels in all dimensions at the same time. Life’s rhythm demands shifting attention. If we are suddenly confronted with a broken leg, this will likely get a lot of our attention; after a psychedelic experience, the spiritual dimension might get increased attention. And other times, our lives might revolve around co-creating a forest garden or organizing a political protest.

Use this framework as a inquiry. Ask:

• Where is my focus now?

• Does this align with my values, or does it feel incomplete?

• Am I stuck in one dimension, neglecting others - and with them, parts of my interconnected human-planetary existence?

The map reveals possible gaps, not guilt.

What the map also shows is that no one dimension is more important than any other.

Seeing this map - for me at least is overwhelming, humbling, and soothing. Because I see how philosophy (as much as I’d love it to be the most important) is not. I focus on philosophy because it’s what I am naturally drawn to, what I am relatively good at and what I one day found myself doing, not because it’s the answer. Others are much better in organizing protests, designing regenerative urban landscapes or becoming politicians.

I often see activists say something along the lines of “Stop navel-gazing-do something!” But:

“There is no such thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives. Every breath we take is an act of resistance or compliance.” Audre Lorde

“The ecological crisis is a social crisis. How we compost or commute is as political as any ballot. To ignore this is to confuse politics with parliament.” Murray Bookchin

And Meditators retort, “Fix your inner world first!” But:

“The call to ‘fix your inner world first’ is a trap if it demands purity. The wound is the portal. Healing is not a prerequisite for action - it’s the dance itself.” Bayo Akomolafe

“We become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts. Virtue is not a state of mind, but a habit of action.” Aristotle

Both miss the point. Balance within ourselves matters - we’re microcosms of the whole. But as parts of a greater body, we’re also not meant to embody it all.

Fractals within fractals.

A heart cell doesn’t do a lung cell’s role. It pumps blood. Yet without that pulse, the lung fails.

Our pressure to do it all stems from individualism’s lie - the belief we’re separate. Your calling isn’t everything - but it’s enough. Heal where you’re drawn, tend your thread, and trust others to tend theirs.

---

If you know someone who is overwhelmed by trying to do it all, share this and let them know that it’s enough. 🌱