Moving Language — we can learn from our ancestors

Dear friends,

Imagine you are walking in nature, fresh, pristine nature. You don’t have a phone; maybe you don’t even wear shoes that keep you from directly touching the earth with every step you take.

As you are walking, you come across a big stone, or even a few. You don’t say, “Oh, a stone,” but you observe: standing.

You see a tree, but you don’t call it that, because you don’t see it as a separate object. You just sense being and growing.

You see flowers, but they are not a gathering of little objects; they are just an expression that you call blooming.

There is no river that you separate from the landscape; there is just streaming.

All is one interconnected wholeness coming into existence in one eternal present moment.

Welcome to the mind of our Paleolithic ancestor. Unlike us, our ancestors didn’t fragment their world into separate objects through modern language. They experienced one interconnected, moving wholeness.

Interestingly, many of our words for things in nature are historically related to verbs or processes. In Dutch and German, it’s sometimes easier to see these relationships.

“Steen”, “Stein,” and “stone” are derived from a root meaning “to stand”.

“Boom”, “Baum,” and “beam” are derived from a root meaning “to be, to become”.

“Bloem” and “Blume” are derived from a root meaning “to bloom”.

“Stroom”, “Strom,” and “stream” are derived from a root meaning “to stream”.

Historical linguistics is just another source of inspiration for me to develop Moving Language, alongside talking to speakers of indigenous languages and working with participants during Moving Language weeks.

Let me be clear: you don’t need to be a language person to start with Moving Language—not in the way I am. We are all language people, because we all use language. That’s why I believe it can be such an incredibly powerful key to remembering our true nature and re-experiencing our undivided wholeness.

I’ll be giving a free online talk about Moving Language on 18 March. Join me if you just want to get a taste of it, or if you are considering attending a Moving Language week.

Loving,
Zoë