The Second book in the Autonomics Trilogy is now available for preorder
GROUND: How Modernity Disconnected from the Earth, Why It Matters & How to Fix It
Dear Friends-
I have been laboring for several years on the next book in the Autonomics Trilogy, which is at some level a civilization-deep meditation on the progressive loss of human indigeneity, our uprooting from a chthonic (earth-based) sense of self, and the long neurobiological sequelae of this pathway of ungrounding.
For the past twenty or so years I have been grappling with a question about why, given everything that we know about the climate crisis, humans have had so little ability to change our lifestyles in recognition of this. It seems to me that fundamentally the answer to this is one of connection phenomenology. Plainly– That to which we feel a sense of relatedness we take of. What we do not feel connected to, we do not.
This feels aphoristically true across all domains of human relating; be it to another person (who do we include in the sphere of our ‘us’, who is outside it and relegated to a ‘them), or be it to a place.
The simple and profound predicament we are in is that the progression of modern civilization so-called has been a millenias-long denaturing of our roots of relating to the Earth. Cut off from her, unable to feel her, no longer in contact with the GROUND, we are helpless to transform our relating with the Earth because we don’t know her, are not in relationship with her, and therefore do not feel accountable to her. What we do not feel connected to we do not take care of.
Beyond the destruction this wreaks upon the only biosphere in the known universe, it is making modern humans profoundly ill.
This book is focused on the neurophysiology of our GROUNDING SYSTEM; the most ancient unmyelinated sub-diagphragmatic autonomic neurology woven, starfish-like, as a net through your guts, its embryonic center in your umbilicus, it northmost purview the respiratory diaphragm, its southmost edge your pelvic floor.
This is the autonomic neurological system that gives birth to gut feelings, and through which we feel the ground. It is the neurobiological correlate of feeling ‘grounded’. When it is shifted out of safety and connection, from a salugenic (health-creating) to a pathogenic (disease-creating) frame, its action inverts and it becomes the UNGROUNDING SYSTEM, the biolological seat of unmetabolized shutdown, known in the Porgesian world of Polyvagal Theory as the Dorsal Vagal System.
In the book, I am treating fractally upon the civilization-long history of our ungrounding, as it has manifested across millenia (the past 5,000 years), as it has manifested multi-generationally (the past few hundred years), and as it manifests as neurophysiology, as well as what we can do to change this.
The book is long, and deep, and intricate and rigorous. The second child in the Autonomics trilogy; a worthy, fat, robust, rigorously researched and poetic treatment of this crucially important topic.
Like its sister, The Neurobiology of Connection, we are designing everything from typography to layouts to all artwork. It will be worthy as a text and worthy as an artistic statement piece.
Should you feel inspired by what the book is about, and the initiation it portends, your preorders help us continue to produce this kind of cutting-edge, trans-disciplinary, and ambitious work.
Barring complications we anticipate a December 2025 release of the first hardcover printing. From now forward through publication I will periodically publish chapters of the book for subscribers here at The Neurobiology of Connection.
Next Monday, May 12 from 10 am to 11 am PDT, I am conversation with the prodigiously talented filmmaker Nic Askew about a film we created related directly to this project. The conversation is FREE, but you need to register HERE. (the screening is now full but you can join the waiting list and my intuition is that you’ll get in).