Living on Life-Force and the Medicine of Trees
Cultivating Inner Vitality Through the Metabolism of Light, Breath & Green Consciousness
“An old-growth forest is … a vast, ancient and intricate society … the trees, understory plants, fungi and microbes … are so thoroughly connected, communicative and codependent that … some scientists have described them as superorganisms.” ~Suzanne Simard, Ecological Scientist and Professor
The Breath of the Living World
Written by Shantree
There is a fundamental vitality that moves through everything that lives. It is the subtle and radiant intelligence that animates cells, guides instincts, orchestrates communication, and holds together the fragile coherence of ecosystems. Every tradition has attempted to name this presence. Some call it prana. Others refer to it as the breath of life, the spark within matter, or the living current that flows through all beings. Yet these names point only toward the surface of a reality that can only be understood through direct experience.
To live on life-force is to experience this vitality as a palpable presence in the body and the world. It is to feel the hum of relationship that flows between tree and atmosphere, soil and root, water and sap, breath and sunlight. Life-force is experienced as the quiet power that holds the living world in intimate harmony. When a person begins to sense this field directly, something begins to change in the interior landscape. Awareness expands and deepens. The body becomes more permeable. The mind becomes more relational. The heart softens. Presence increases.
My own understanding of life-force has been shaped by decades of living close to trees. Forest edges, jungle groves, and sacred stands of ancient canopy all speak in a language older than human language. Trees live in a field of relational coherence that humans can enter when they step out of mental abstraction and into embodied perception. In their company, I began to understand that life-force is the relational atmosphere created when two coherent living beings meet without an agenda. It is a resonance born from deep presence. There were moments, especially in the early mornings when mist drifted through the branches, when I felt the trees adjusting their breathing rhythm to mine, as if welcoming me back into a forgotten kinship.
The ecophilosopher Andreas Weber captured this truth when he wrote, “Life is the ongoing transformation of the world in which every being is continually reshaping relationships.” This description touches something essential. Life-force emerges from interaction. It is the ongoing creation of relational possibilities. To live on life-force is to enter this ongoing creation consciously. It is to feel the body weaving itself into the larger field of life with every breath, every sense impression, and every moment of awareness.
Trees are among the greatest teachers of this relational intelligence. They have evolved to hold enormous coherence inside complex ecological networks. They continually metabolize sunlight into sugars, water into movement, minerals into structure, and microbial partnerships into resilience. Their intelligence is not separate from their biology. It is expressed through it. When a person comes into the presence of trees, they begin to feel this intelligence not as an idea but as a subtle reorganization of their own physiology. The nervous system slows. The breath deepens. Awareness widens. Life-force becomes perceptible.
The forest becomes a living text. The canopy becomes a vocabulary of movement. The roots and the mycorrhizal networks become the syntax through which communication unfolds. And the human becomes a participant rather than an observer.
The Biological Foundations of Life-Force
Although the language of life-force may sound poetic, its foundations are entirely biological. Every living cell on Earth maintains a measurable electrical potential across its membrane. This potential is the necessary pulse that allows communication and coordination to occur. Without electrical gradients, cells cannot signal. Without signalling, tissues cannot function. Without function, life dissolves.
Human physiology is an electromagnetic symphony. Neurons fire through ionic gradients. The heart generates measurable electromagnetic fields. The fascia transmits piezoelectric signals. Cellular communication occurs through bioelectrical and biochemical rhythms. We are electrical beings living within an electrical Earth.
Trees operate within the same principles. They maintain complex voltage patterns through their vascular systems. They regulate sap movement using electrochemical gradients. They sense environmental change through shifts in electrical potential. Forests generate large-scale atmospheric ions that influence weather patterns. This is not mysticism. It is physics.
Neurobiologist Stefano Mancuso writes, “Plants are able to sense and respond to many more environmental variables than animals. Their intelligence is distributed throughout their entire body.” This distributed intelligence allows trees to regulate water transport, sugar allocation, immune defence, microbial communication, and environmental adaptation with stunning precision. A single tree continuously processes information from soil, atmosphere, sunlight, water, wind, and microbial activity.
When humans stand near trees, their physiology responds. Research in forest medicine has documented significant changes in heart rate variability, vagal tone, cortisol, immune function, and brain wave activity. Yet these studies only measure the gross effects. The more subtle electrical and vibrational interactions between humans and trees remain largely unmeasured, though they are deeply felt.
Zach Bush speaks to this relational truth with clarity that bridges biology and ecology. He states, “Health has nothing to do with the individual organism. Health is entirely dictated by, entirely necessitated through and entirely created by biodiversity.” His words remind us that vitality emerges from relationships. Life-force is something we participate in. And biodiversity is the foundation of this participation.
Bush also reminds us, “We have billions of species of viruses. There are too many variations to make the verdant soils that would grow the verdant plants that would grow healthy animals. We will not grow healthy without that verdant life exploding from the soils.” This is the essence of ecological vitality. The soil is a living matrix. Trees root themselves inside this matrix. Humans, though mobile, are entirely dependent on the microbial intelligence of soil for their own health. To live on life-force requires attuning oneself to these microbial and ecological rhythms.
When a person stands near a living tree with openness rather than extraction, the nervous system begins to harmonize with the tree’s field of coherence. This is not imagination. It is entrainment. The human body senses safety, stability, and coherence in the presence of a tree and begins to reorganize its internal rhythms accordingly. This is why people feel more at ease in forests. The trees are teaching them how to inhabit coherence.
Tree Medicine as Ecological Education
Tree medicine is far more than herbal preparations made from leaves, bark, roots, or resins. These remedies carry powerful biochemical signatures that can support the human body. Yet they represent only a small fraction of the medicinal intelligence trees offer.
Tree medicine is first and foremost a relational practice. It is a way of entering the presence of trees with deep listening. It is a discipline of attention. It is a form of ecological education.
Stephen Harrod Buhner speaks directly to this when he writes, “When I approach a plant I am approaching a node of consciousness, an intelligence, that has been growing itself for hundreds of millions of years.” His words reflect the ancient memory held within every tree. These organisms have survived mass extinctions, climate shifts, geological upheavals, and microbial revolutions. Their strategies for adaptation, resilience, and cooperative communication are unparalleled.
Buhner also writes, “Plants are extremely intelligent, even by human standards. They are the planet’s chemists, constantly monitoring and maintaining the homeodynamis of the Earth.” Trees participate in global homeostasis. They regulate atmospheric gases, water cycles, soil formation, and nutrient distribution. They communicate with microbial partners, insects, birds, and mammals. Their intelligence is ecological, chemical, electrical, and relational.
To practice tree medicine is to learn to enter this field of intelligence with humility. It is to approach trees not as resources but as teachers. It is to cultivate perception beyond the analytical mind. It is to allow the subtle language of the forest to reshape one’s internal experience.
Tree medicine teaches humans how to distribute awareness across the landscape. It teaches the body to sense the subtle shifts in temperature, humidity, quality of light, and air density. It teaches the heart to listen. It teaches the mind to soften. It teaches the breath to lengthen. And as these capacities grow, life force becomes more perceptible.
People who learn to live on life-force begin to feel the world more vividly. They sense the presence of trees as a living community. They feel the soil breathing. They notice the patterns of wind weaving through branches. They experience the forest as an evolving conversation. Their own interior life becomes more spacious, more grounded, and more relational.
Bioweaving and the Transformation of Perception
Bioweaving is the practice of perceiving the body and the environment as interwoven. It is a way of sensing the permeability between inner and outer worlds. Bioweaving recognizes that every breath is a weaving of atmospheric intelligence into the bloodstream. Every sip of water is a weaving of hydrological memory into the cells. Every moment of sunlight on the skin is a weaving of photons into biological timekeeping.
To engage in bioweaving with trees is to allow the sensory body to dissolve into the subtle rhythms of the forest. It is to feel the slow movement of sap. It is to sense the exhalation of moisture through the stomata. It is to perceive the chemical conversations between roots and mycelia beneath the soil. It is to let attention become a bridge for relational intelligence.
The philosopher David Abram writes, “Perception is participatory. Our senses are not passive receptors but active participants in the ongoing exchange between body and Earth.” Bioweaving makes this truth visible. The senses become more open. Awareness becomes more fluid. The boundary between self and world becomes more porous. In this state, life-force flows more freely.
Bioweaving invites a transformation of perception. It teaches the practitioner to receive rather than control. It teaches presence rather than acquisition. It teaches curiosity rather than analysis. It teaches the art of listening to the intelligence of the living world.
Over time, a person practicing bioweaving begins to perceive trees as presences rather than objects. They recognize that every tree holds a unique atmosphere. Some trees feel grounding. Others feel uplifted. Some feel spacious. Others feel quietly intense. These atmospheres reflect the tree’s ecological role, physiological condition, species identity, and relational history with the land.
This is perception refined through presence. When humans engage with trees in this way, their inner landscape shifts. They begin to live on life-force because they are participating in the relational field that generates it.
The Consciousness Shift Invited by Trees
As humans deepen their relationship with trees, they begin to inhabit a different consciousness. This shift requires presence. It emerges from direct experience. When a person stands near a tree with awareness and receptivity, they begin to sense themselves as part of a larger field of life.
Joanna Macy expresses this beautifully when she writes, “The world is alive. It speaks to us in a thousand ways, inviting our participation.” Trees extend this invitation continually. Most humans have forgotten how to listen. But the body remembers. When we slow down, breathe deeply, and open our senses, the invitation becomes clear.
This shift in consciousness is not an escape from humanity. It is a deepening into it. Humans evolved inside forests. Our physiology was shaped by the presence of trees. Our nervous system recognizes this presence as home. When we spend time with trees, the body relaxes because it remembers. A deeper intelligence awakens.
Trees invite humans into a consciousness rooted in patience, relational awareness, and interdependence. They model stability and adaptation. They embody a relationship with time that expands human perception beyond the limits of personal lifespan. When humans align with this expanded temporality, their relationship with their own lives begins to change. There is more spaciousness, more trust, more presence.
To live on life-force is to inhabit this expanded consciousness. It is to recognize oneself as a participant in a vast web of intelligence. It is to feel the living world inside one’s own body. It is to breathe with the trees and sense the atmosphere as a shared field. It is to experience the self as permeable and relational.
This consciousness is essential for the future of humanity. Our survival depends on our ability to return to the relational intelligence that the trees embody. It depends on our willingness to feel again. It depends on our capacity to participate in the living world with reciprocity.
Now, living in the jungle of Costa Rica, this relationship continues to deepen. The trees around me are constant teachers, and each day I practice attuning my breath, posture, and awareness to the living field they generate. Their presence reminds me that enhancing life-force is a way of living with unguarded attention, trust, and reciprocity. In this lush, breathing landscape, the practice becomes simply remembering how to belong.
A Daily Practice for Deepening-Relationship & Living on Life-Force
The most transformative practice is also the simplest. It requires only presence.
Find a living tree. Choose one that draws your attention without effort. Stand or sit near the tree in a comfortable position. Allow your breath to lengthen naturally. Feel the ground beneath you. Relax the muscles of the shoulders and jaw.
Bring your eyes to the tree with a soft gaze. Let your breath follow the rhythm of the leaves. As you inhale, imagine sensing the movement of water rising from root to crown. As you exhale, imagine sensing the release of oxygen and aromatic compounds into the air.
Begin to sense the subtle atmosphere around the tree. Feel the space between you and the tree as a living field. Allow your awareness to expand beyond the boundary of your skin. Sense the presence of the tree with your whole body. Do not analyze. Simply feel.
Remain with the tree for 15 - 20 minutes. Notice how your breath changes. Notice how your heart feels. Notice the quality of your awareness. Over time, this practice recalibrates the entire sensory system. It opens perception. It awakens the capacity to live on life-force.
When practiced daily, this simple ritual begins to weave the body into the living intelligence of the world. It brings coherence. It strengthens intuition. It nourishes the heart. It deepens presence. It reconnects the human to the wider ecological community.
An Invitation to Deepen This Journey
If this essay has spoken to something inside you, it is because you already know this truth. You carry the memory of life force in your body. You carry the memory of forest intelligence in your breath. You carry the desire to live more fully inside the relational field that sustains all life.
In January, I will be offering, with Lorenna, a Living on Life-Force Online 8-Week Series. This series is designed to guide you into direct perception of life-force, to awaken the bioweaving senses, and to support you in grounding these practices into daily life. It is grounded in daily practices of presence, embodiment, and ecological awareness.
In March, we will gather for the Tree Medicine: The Trees of Life 7-Day Immersion Retreat. This retreat is a deeper initiation into the intelligence of the trees and the relational field they hold. Through sensory practices, meristem work, forest sitting, biophysical inquiry, and guided perception, you will enter into a more intimate relationship with the living world. The retreat takes place in the lush tropical ecosystem of Costa Rica, where the trees are ancient teachers and the land itself supports profound transformation.
You are warmly invited to join us. If you feel called to deepen your relationship with life force and to learn directly from the trees, these gatherings will meet you exactly where you are and carry you deeper into the intelligence of the living world. The forest is waiting. The trees are waiting. And your own deeper self is ready to awaken.