(Companion to “Healing the Shadow of Stolen Land” - Peace in the Outer World Essay)
By Dr Demeter (Emily Samuels-Ballantyne, Magical Farm Tasmania)
The Mirror Turns Inward
For years, I have tended to the outer world, in the soil, the garden, the policy room and public spaces. I knew, theoretically, the importance of the inner world, but never gave myself the time to go deep, not in a true, embodied sense. But now I understand: the way I treat my own body is the way I treat the Earth.
Echinecia - a symbol of balance, peace, patience, moderation, inner calm, perspective, tranquility, harmonious relationships in Magical Farm. Photography by Ness Vandebourgh Photography
Biodynamic practice has been both a signal and a breaking point, revealing the limits of the old way, the burnout of doing without being. It has cracked me open to feel grief, to meet the shadow, and to descend into the inner world where regeneration truly begins. When I move through yoga or Pilates, I’m not striving to improve; I’m learning to inhabit. My body is my first ecosystem, a landscape of weather, soil, and song.
This is what I call beauty without an agenda, the act of moving, creating, or resting not for an outcome but for aliveness itself. It is the essence of Con Viv, to live with life, to participate once more in its living conversation.
The Inner Landscape of Regeneration
Carl Jung taught that healing requires the courage to meet the shadow, the parts of ourselves we deny or overextend. I have often lived in the shadow of the giver: pouring out vision and care until depletion whispered its quiet warning. Jung reminds me that what we do not integrate within will return to us through the outer world.
Rudolf Steiner would see this as an imbalance between the etheric and astral bodies: too much outward giving, not enough inward renewal. He speaks of the need for ‘rhythm’: day and night, work and rest, giving and receiving. Regeneration depends on that sacred breathing of life.
Tyson Yunkaporta would describe this as a “pattern distortion” a break in reciprocity between self and Country. When we move without listening, we step out of pattern. His custodial law asks us to live in right relation, to act as participants in the story of place rather than its authors.
And Joanna Macy offers a way back: her Work That Reconnects transforms burnout and despair into action through gratitude, grief, perception, and practice. She teaches that our pain for the world is proof of our belonging and that thread that reweaves us into community.
The Healing of Over-Doing
Many of us who care deeply for the world have forgotten to include ourselves in the circle of care. We overwork the soul as we have overworked the soil - the industrial and modern pattern is entrenched and the redesign requires us to break that pattern. The medicine and pattern we need in life is greater care and gentleness and part of this revolution is simply just to rest. Beauty without an agenda is how the overextended spirit learns to breathe again. It reminds me that the feminine act of receiving is not passivity, it is participation in the flow of creation.
The Embodied Commons
Our bodies are not private possessions; they are commons - microcosms of the planet itself. When one person slows down, the field shifts - as we are all part of an interconnected life system. When one person moves with grace, the world feels it, ah, how I need to remind myself of this again and again. In the language of our four teachers, this is the crossroads where the inner and outer worlds meet:
Jung’s integration of the shadow.
Steiner’s spiritual ecology.
Yunkaporta’s relational custodianship.
Macy’s collective awakening.
Together, they teach that the Earth feels through us, that every act of awareness in the body is a small awakening in the world.
The Voice of the Body - Chiron in Taurus, Activated by Aries
In my birth chart, Chiron, the Wounded Healer, rests in Taurus in the third house, the realm of communication and connection. It teaches healing through the ‘Beauty Way’: through embodied language and sensory wisdom. Yet as I write, transiting Chiron moves through Aries, lighting up my second house of self-worth and resources. Together, these transits open a deep dialogue between value and voice, how I speak, what I create, and what I believe myself worthy to receive.
For much of my teenage and adult life, I sought peace through words, by explaining, convincing, or teaching. The ‘education’ system took me out of my body and told me it was my mind that needed to navigate. But my heart and Chiron keeps guiding me back to something simpler: that the most profound communication is not spoken, but lived. I am now remembering myself as a child, in my garden, in nature, in my imagination and quite the introvert. This is my happy place.
Taurus teaches that words are most powerful when they are rooted in the body, when the throat, heart, and hands speak together. Every breath, every gesture, every act of care becomes a form of language the world understands. This is the healing of my Chiron wound: learning that true communication is not persuasion, it is presence. And Aries’ fire now reminds me that self-worth is not a concept, it is a practice of being here, fully alive, in one’s own embodied authority.
Yarrow - The Plant of Integration, Presence and Initiation
At my front doorstep and throughout the farm, Yarrow grows freely, one of the first plants to greet visitors, one of the last to fade. She is both delicate and indestructible, soft and strong and a child of Venus and Chiron, and thus a true teacher of the Beauty Way.
Yarrow reminds me what embodied communication looks like in nature. She doesn’t speak, she radiates. In summer, I watch beetles and bees land upon her umbels; she receives them with grace and gives nourishment in return. I love watching this and feel so fulfilled that I have given so much life to the land and all of these beautiful living creatures.
Yarrow on Magical Farm Symbol of integration, new beginnings, creative sparks, finding new passion, starting something, potential, talent … Photography by Ness Vandebourgh Photography
Yarrow, rooted in poor soil, thrives not through lack but through inner sufficiency and her ability to integrate what is around her and alchemise it into nourishment. Oh Yarrow, you beauty. She embodies the principle that Steiner called “etheric intelligence”: the plant’s capacity to mediate between Earth and cosmos and matter and meaning. Through Yarrow, I learn that true healing is about integration, being okay with complexity and ‘letting it be’. Like her, I am learning to root deeply, receive openly, and give back simply by being fully alive. Yarrow is my daily reminder that beauty without an agenda is enough.
Yarrow at Magical Farm’s Herb Drying Cob House by Ness Vandebourgh Photography
Praxis: Returning to Rhythm
At Magical Farm Tasmania, we practice this integration every week. Our Thursday Landcare gatherings begin in stillness, noticing our breath, our bodies, and the land’s quiet pulse before we touch the soil. In my body practice that I share in community which is called YoFence, the fusion of sword and yoga, we embody balance: the sword for boundary, the breath for belonging. Strength and softness meet as a new kind of dialogue, one where courage and compassion co-exist.
In January 2026, our YoFence Immersion at Urdara will offer seven days of this embodied communication: seven days of courage, conviction, and connection lived through the body as a prayer for the planet.
The Inner World Mirror
Jung teaches: integrate.
Steiner whispers: balance.
Yunkaporta reminds: relate.
Macy calls: reconnect.
And Yarrow, growing at my door, simply “is”. Together they form a mandala of inner peace that radiates outward. When we come home to our own embodiment, we are no longer separate from the world we wish to heal.
Conclusion - Living Beauty
Beauty without an agenda is the quiet revolution of our time. To move, rest, or create for no reason other than the joy of being alive is to align with the regenerative intelligence of Earth herself. When I inhabit my body as sacred ground, the land recognises me and in that recognition: soft, wordless, whole, peace begins again.
“When I speak through my body, the Earth understands.”