Rewilding the Nervous System: A Return to the Limbic Imagination
by Cordula Frei
Rewilding the Nervous System: A Return to the Limbic Imagination
Opening Essay of the Rewildering Series
by Cordula Frei
This piece opens a wider series on what I call rewilding the nervous system: a slow, attentive return to the older intelligences of the body, the senses and the limbic mind. It is part of my long-term research project and a precursor to my forthcoming book *Wild & Wunderbar*, to be published by Phaenomen Edition in February 2026. The ideas explored here also shape the Rewildering courses I teach again in 2026 for Parallax Media, where these concepts become embodied practice.
What follows is an inquiry into how our nervous systems have been bent by acceleration, and how, through small natural rituals, we can coax them back into coherence. The language of Jean Gebser is present throughout this work, especially his sense of mutation—a shift in consciousness that is not a self-improvement project but an evolutionary reorientation. I approach this shift through a biological lens: what it feels like in the body, what the brain reveals, and how we can participate in it.
The price of acceleration has a shape, a temperature, a taste. It is felt in a quickened pulse at three in the morning, in a chest that tightens while the mind rehearses arrangements and apologies, in muscles that cling to exertion long after the will has stopped. We confuse speed with worth. We learn to solve ourselves with plans and lists until the brain that makes plans becomes our only home. That same brain, so exquisite in its talents for language and abstraction, becomes restless when left to rule alone. It keeps us rehearsing, predicting, correcting—caught in ceaseless vigilance. In this state, it pushes aside the older parts of our nervous life where belonging, safety and repair once shaped the rhythm of our days.
Neuroscience is beginning to map the consequences of this imbalance. Persistent fatigue, cognitive fog, chronic pain and the sense of being continually “switched on” reflect changes in neural architecture. Post-viral research has shown alterations in the limbic system and its communication with networks that govern emotion, memory and autonomic regulation. Yet the insight extends far beyond illness. When inflammation becomes chronic, when stress hardens into habit, when attention never leaves the surface of things, the neural pathways that support ease, clarity and rest begin to lose their flexibility. The brain reorganizes itself around vigilance.
Seen within the long arc of evolution, this is less surprising. The cortex—the thinking, planning, language-making layer—is comparatively young. Beneath it lie the older limbic structures, rich with memory, affect, attachment and meaning. Deeper still, the brainstem orchestrates the primal rhythms that keep us alive. Modern culture inflates the cortex into a tyrant: fast, linear, demanding, insistent on control. In privileging it, we reduce access to the limbic register and leave the survival circuits braced for impact. Imaging studies echo the symptoms: disrupted communication between large-scale networks; patterns that mirror the felt world of rumination, overwhelm and nervous systems unable to return from threat.
This is not merely neurobiology; it is phenomenology. Jean Gebser identified the mental structure of consciousness as one ruled by sequence, clarity and separation. What he sensed emerging was a different quality—integral, transparent, a consciousness capable of presence rather than domination. If we translate this into the body, the mutation resembles a rebalancing: the cortical, limbic and somatic intelligences learning to coexist again. Integration does not abolish thought; it contextualizes it. The limbic system becomes a partner rather than a subordinate.
You can feel which part of your brain is speaking by listening through the body. When the thinking mind dominates, time narrows, breath tightens, words move faster than sensation. When the limbic field comes forward, warmth returns to the chest, breathing deepens, and images and intuition move into view. When the survival brain is steering, everything compresses: shallow breath, vigilant muscles, a sense of being braced from the inside. These states are not problems. They are signals asking for relationship.
Certain natural practices help remind the nervous system of its broader vocabulary. What changes is not willpower but sensory input. A soft, horizon-wide gaze quiets the brain’s threat-monitoring centers. Barefoot contact with ground brings the body back into conversation with gravity. The scent of pine, rain on soil, crushed leaves or resin travels directly to the limbic system, bypassing thought and reviving memory. Touching a piece of bark or stone restores interoception. Slowing your pace while walking interrupts the reflex of urgency. These gestures are modest, yet research consistently shows their effects: reduced rumination, calmer amygdala activity, shifts in vagal tone and a re-opened pathway to safety.
Rewilding is not retreat. It is a reorientation—an unlearning of compulsion and a relearning of rhythm. It is the biological counterpart to the cultural mutation Gebser sensed: a movement from acceleration to attention, from vigilance to presence, from isolation to relational depth. The nervous system is capable of change; neuroplasticity remains a lifelong invitation. The limbic system is not a lost continent. It is simply waiting for us to return, slowly enough to hear it.
Wild & Wunderbar
This article and more will unfold into my forthcoming book Wild & Wunderbar, to be published by Phaenomen Edition in February 2026. The book pursues these themes with greater depth, tracing the interplay between neuroscience, mythopoetics and embodied consciousness. It explores how rewilding is not a technique but a shift in orientation—toward sensation, toward ecological belonging, toward the quiet intelligence that precedes thought.
Rewildering Courses for Parallax Media
For those who want to explore these ideas in lived experience, my Rewildering courses at Parallax Media continue in spring 2026 and offer a space to practice sensory, somatic and ecological forms of attention. They provide a grounded approach to nervous system repair and a deeper engagement with the cultural and biological mutation we find ourselves within.
Reading & Resources
A small constellation of works that complement this inquiry:
Jean Gebser —The Ever-Present Origin
A profound exploration of consciousness structures and the idea of mutation that underlies this entire series.
Stephen Porges —The Pocket Guide to the Polyvagal Theory
Accessible insights into autonomic regulation, safety, and the physiology of connection.
Jaak Panksepp —Affective Neuroscience
Foundational work on the emotional systems of the brain, especially relevant to understanding the limbic field.
Lisa Feldman Barrett —How Emotions Are Made
A compelling, research-based look at how the brain constructs emotion and meaning.
Stephen Harrod Buhner —The Secret Teachings of Plants
A lyrical and surprisingly rigorous account of embodied cognition, perception and nature-based sensing.
Ian McGilchrist —*The Master and His Emissary
A sweeping examination of hemisphere differences and cultural imbalance, resonant with Jean Gebser and with contemporary neurobiology.
David Abram —The Spell of the Sensuous
A sensorial philosophy of the more-than-human world, attuned to the bodily nature of perception.
If this resonates, I would love to invite you into conversation—through Parallax—around how story, ritual, and remembering can transform meaning when the world feels adrift. You’re warmly welcome to get in contact : cordula@parallax-media.eu
You can also explore my ongoing work at Parallax (courses such as “Deep Ecology – Rewilding the Soul”, “Voice Dialogue & Inner Expansion”, the writing group & literary salon) which anchor story and ritual in shared practice.