Something has been missing from the conversation about nature and wellbeing.
We talk about forest bathing, biophilic design, green spaces in cities. We talk about how good it feels to be outside. But we rarely ask the deeper question: why does the body already know how to be in nature, and what does it cost us when we take it away?
That question is the spine of a chapter I’ve written for a forthcoming Springer publication, Contemplative Ecological Practices in Education. It is the most integrated account I have written to date of why our relationship with the natural world is not optional, not aesthetic, and not a wellness trend. It is biological, psychological, spiritual. And it is architectural.
The chapter is titled Transpersonal Ecology: Bridging the Sacredness of Nature and Ecotherapy. What follows is the heart of it.
We have been asking the wrong question.
For decades, the conversation around nature and human wellbeing has centred on whether spending time outdoors is good for us. The evidence is conclusive: it is. Reduced stress, improved mood, enhanced cognitive function, greater resilience. We know this. And yet the framing has always placed nature in the role of treatment: something we access, consume, and return from.
The chapter argues for a different question entirely. Not “is nature good for us?” but: what happens to the human body when it is cut off from the conditions under which it learned to regulate itself, over hundreds of thousands of years of evolution?
Nature is not a supplement. It is the substrate. Our nervous systems evolved in continuous contact with the sensory, thermal, acoustic and biotic conditions of the living world. The body did not evolve to occasionally visit a park. It evolved in the wild, and it still expects to be there.
What transpersonal ecology actually is
The field that holds this understanding is called transpersonal ecology. Coined by the philosopher Warwick Fox, it brings together three domains that rarely appear in the same room: the spiritual reverence for nature found in indigenous and contemplative traditions; the psychological and therapeutic dimension of engaging with the natural world (what we now call ecotherapy); and the science of how human bodies respond to their environments.
It draws on ecopsychology, the understanding that the human psyche is inherently attuned to the natural world, and that disconnection from it carries real psychological cost. It draws on deep ecology and environmental philosophy, the recognition that nature has intrinsic value, that all life is interconnected, and that our dominant relationship with the Earth must change. And it draws on transpersonal psychology, the study of self-transcendent experience, peak states, and the spiritual dimensions of consciousness.
From Edward O. Wilson’s biophilia hypothesis (that humans have an innate, evolutionary need to affiliate with other living systems) to Theodore Roszak’s concept of the ecological unconscious, the evidence converges: disconnection from the natural world is not a lifestyle inconvenience. It is a source of measurable harm. And it is continuous: it is happening to us now, in the buildings we are sitting in, the cities we are walking through, the indoor air we are breathing.
This is the argument the chapter makes in full. The remainder of this essay sets out what it means in practice: for clinicians, for educators, for designers, and for any of us trying to live well inside the environments we have built.
The body as a site of ecological relationship
The body is not merely a recipient of environmental input. It is in continuous biological dialogue with its surroundings. The autonomic nervous system, the endocrine system, the immune system, the gut microbiome. Each is responding, second by second, to the environment it is embedded in. There is no neutral exposure. There is only relationship: regulating or dysregulating, restorative or eroding.
This is why the chapter’s central claim is so consequential. “The human body is always in relationship with its environment, and that relationship is always transpersonal in the deepest sense: it connects us, biologically and experientially, to the living world from which we emerged and upon which we depend.” That is not a poetic flourish. It is the operating premise of every system in the body that keeps you alive.
And it has implications most of healthcare and most of architecture have yet to integrate.
Nervous System Compliant™ design
If the body is always in relationship with its environment, then the design of that environment is not separable from the design of human health. This is the basis of the Nervous System Compliant™ design framework I have developed: a way of evaluating spaces by their measurable impact on the human autonomic nervous system. Nervous System Compliant™ is where building science, environmental psychology, and transpersonal ecology converge: a practical framework for designing the conditions of ecological relationship into the very spaces we inhabit.
A hospital that is Nervous System Compliant™ supports healing in ways a dysregulating hospital cannot. A school that is Nervous System Compliant™ supports learning, and the development of ecological identity, in ways a physiologically hostile building actively works against. The built environment is not neutral. It is always doing something to the body. The only question is whether we design it with that understanding, or without it.
Three urgent applications
The chapter identifies three places where transpersonal ecology has immediate practical force.
The first is psychological wellbeing. By integrating nature connection into mental health practice (not as an add-on but as a fundamental dimension of healing), therapists, educators and clinicians can access one of the most potent and underutilised resources available. Ecotherapy works. The research is there. What is needed now is the framework to bring it into mainstream care.
The second is environmental stewardship, and this may be the most important of the three. The chapter argues that ecological identity (the deep, embodied sense of oneself as part of the living world rather than separate from it) is the missing motivational substrate for environmental action. Information alone does not change behaviour. A felt, somatic sense of belonging to the Earth does. Transpersonal ecology is, at its root, a theory of why people come to care.
The third is the design of the environments in which we live. If the body is always in ecological relationship, then the design of our homes, schools, workplaces and hospitals is not separate from the design of our health, our learning, or our capacity to act on behalf of the planet. It is the same project.
About the chapter
Transpersonal Ecology: Bridging the Sacredness of Nature and Ecotherapy appears in Contemplative Ecological Practices in Education, published by Springer. The volume brings together researchers and practitioners working at the intersection of education, ecology and contemplative practice, coordinated through the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi (IIT Delhi). It is a rare and genuinely interdisciplinary collection, and I’m honoured to have contributed a chapter that places the body, the built environment, and transpersonal experience in direct conversation with one another.
The full text will be available through the Springer volume on release.
If what you have read here resonates, if you have ever felt that the way a building makes you feel is not imaginary, or that your longing for green space is something deeper than preference, I would love to hear from you. This work is alive. Your experience of it is part of the research.