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Ground: How Modernity Disconnected from the Earth, Why it Matters, & How to Fix It
This initiatory text from ancestral neuroscience pioneer Natureza Gabriel, the Developer of Autonomics, selectively maps 12,000 years of the history of our deviation from the deep ancestral baseline in safety and connection; the way it has been elaborated by imperial agendas; the way it has translated into multi-generational inheritance of traumas; and the way it lives in our bodies, uprooting us from contact with our true Mother: the Earth.
Accreting a modern notion of self is indistinguishable from modern civilization's fundamental alienation from the Earth, upon whom each of us is utterly dependent for survival. This has created a society where, instead of treating the earth with reverence, we blindly & fecklessly degrade her to meet our short-term needs. Not only does this destroy the only biosphere in the known universe; it is making modern humans profoundly ill. The global spike in complex chronic illness is a direct neurobiological sequelae of this embodied alienation.
Gabriel proposes that the genesis of a range of chronic illness is traceable back to the particular manner in which alienation has shifted the neurological baselines of our Grounding System, the most ancient of our three primary autonomic systems. Centered in the deep belly, its purpose is to digest our experiences: when it loses contact with the ground, due to lifethreat, we stop being able to digest what happens, as well as what we eat, and degrade into a spiral of illness that modern allopathic medicine is nearly helpless to reverse. It is impossible, Gabriel suggests, to understand this physiological breakdown, or how to heal it, without understanding the deep ancestral context of empire, and the ways that it has shaped social and familial systems for the past twelve thousand years. This volume provides a cartography of the history of alienation in the modern world, and a pathway to reclaiming our direct embodied relationship with the Living World.
Accreting a modern notion of self is indistinguishable from modern civilization's fundamental alienation from the Earth, upon whom each of us is utterly dependent for survival. This has created a society where, instead of treating the earth with reverence, we blindly & fecklessly degrade her to meet our short-term needs. Not only does this destroy the only biosphere in the known universe; it is making modern humans profoundly ill. The global spike in complex chronic illness is a direct neurobiological sequelae of this embodied alienation.
Gabriel proposes that the genesis of a range of chronic illness is traceable back to the particular manner in which alienation has shifted the neurological baselines of our Grounding System, the most ancient of our three primary autonomic systems. Centered in the deep belly, its purpose is to digest our experiences: when it loses contact with the ground, due to lifethreat, we stop being able to digest what happens, as well as what we eat, and degrade into a spiral of illness that modern allopathic medicine is nearly helpless to reverse. It is impossible, Gabriel suggests, to understand this physiological breakdown, or how to heal it, without understanding the deep ancestral context of empire, and the ways that it has shaped social and familial systems for the past twelve thousand years. This volume provides a cartography of the history of alienation in the modern world, and a pathway to reclaiming our direct embodied relationship with the Living World.
424 pages, Paperback
Published December 15, 2025
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December 19, 2025
This is an absolutely tremendous piece of work. Full of gorgeousness, brilliance, pain, honesty, vitality and Gabriel’s signature hilarity. Poignant, powerful, moving, terrifying, gratifying. It is a memoir, a history, an exegesis, a radical neuroscience text, a social commentary, a cultural critique, a diagnostic manual, and a compelling demand for the defense of Nature and Mother Earth. The only things it isn’t are a novel or a play, but it reads as enjoyably as one.
GROUND is a codebook for understanding how we came to be wearing this heavy cloak of modernity, and a summons to begin the process of peeling it off. As interdisciplinary as it gets, Gabriel explains how we have lost our collective footing, and invites us to reclaim what is natural to us - to walk the earth as if we are of her, part of her, with her, because we are, and because we must. No one else could write about right angles with such profundity! If you’re a lover of all things convenient, consumable, shallow, and stale, then don’t you dare read this book!
GROUND is a codebook for understanding how we came to be wearing this heavy cloak of modernity, and a summons to begin the process of peeling it off. As interdisciplinary as it gets, Gabriel explains how we have lost our collective footing, and invites us to reclaim what is natural to us - to walk the earth as if we are of her, part of her, with her, because we are, and because we must. No one else could write about right angles with such profundity! If you’re a lover of all things convenient, consumable, shallow, and stale, then don’t you dare read this book!
Displaying 1 of 1 review