awakening the wild spirit within

Hosted By: Ida Covi, MA, PhD candidate, is an ecopsychologist and the CEO of iRewild Institute. She is the recipient of the Chancellor’s Award for Excellence from Pacifica Graduate Institute, CA.

15 minutes

TRANSCRIPT

“Are there moments when life whispers for you to remember the wild, unbroken spirit that once thrived within you?”

It’s a question that moves through us like wind across the inner thresholds of the human heart . . .
 a question that arrives when the world becomes too loud,
 and something inside us knows
 that the life once felt deeply
 has not vanished—
 only fallen quiet beneath the noise of becoming what the world wants us to be.

There is a longing rising in so many of us—
 a quiet, persistent ache for presence,
 meaning,
 wonder,
 and a sense of the sacred that doesn’t require doctrine,
 only the openness to let yourself feel again—
 to feel what is real within you, fully and honestly.

The wild within has not disappeared.
 It waits beneath the surface,
 listening for the moment we find our way back to the voice of our soul.

As this longing deepens, something begins to stir—
a subtle pull toward whatever helps us remember
the parts of ourselves we’ve misplaced along the way.
For many, that pull leads us back toward the natural world.

For some, it appears as a desire for stillness.
For others, as a yearning for beauty, breath, or simplicity.
But underneath it all is the desire most people share:
to feel like themselves again,
even if they’re not sure what that means anymore.

And in that longing, an inner shift begins—
not a reaching outward, but a turning inward.
A quiet awareness that the soul has been speaking all along,
trying to guide us back to what is real,
what is alive,
what has never been lost.

The natural world often becomes the place
where that inner voice grows clearer.
Not because nature is an escape,
but because it has always been one of the few places
where the inner world becomes audible again.
Not because nature holds the answers, but because its rhythms, its beauty, and its presence create the space for us to hear the answers already within us. 

Nature doesn’t give us our soul.
It gives us the conditions needed to hear it.

In nature, the noise thins enough
for the wild, unbroken spirit within us
to rise toward the surface.

What we seek in nature is the deeper self it helps us remember—
the part that once trusted beauty, intuition,
and the quiet wisdom of a world much older than our to-do lists.

The interior wildness that once moved freely
before the world asked it to be still.
A part that never vanished—
only fell silent,
waiting for the moment we were ready to listen.

And what is this deeper self we keep sensing?
This wildness that rises when the world grows quiet?

The wild within is the untamed, unbroken essence
that no disappointment, no failure,
and no cultural expectation
has ever been able to extinguish.

It appears quietly:

• In the pause after a long exhale
   when the body whispers, “there you are…”

• In the sudden softening of the chest
   at the sound of wind through leaves.

• In the feeling of being out of rhythm
   with the speed of the world
   but in rhythm with something older.

• In the intuitive knowing
   that life is meant to be more than survival,
   more than accomplishment—
   that somewhere inside
   a spark still burns.

Sometimes it appears through longing—
a longing for awe and wonder,
for gentleness,
for the sense of belonging
that modern life has displaced.

Other times, it reveals itself in exhaustion—
when the body has whispered “enough”
for too long,
and the soul begins to rise
to reclaim the space it needs.

And sometimes the wild within arrives
like a forgotten language—
a memory of a rhythm once lived,
calling the heart to return.

And when that memory stirs,
the outer world begins to feel different too—
because nature is often the first place
where we recognize what is rising in us.

Nature does not give us this wildness.
It helps us hear what already lives within,
and then mirrors it back through its aliveness,
its beauty, its presence—
so we can recognize the aliveness we were born with.

And this inner wildness matters more than we realize,
because the longing for it is not a passing feeling—
it is a signal from the deepest part of who we are,
a truth about what our soul needs to stay alive.

This longing for the wild within
is not a romantic impulse.
It is a biological, psychological, and spiritual necessity.  

Human beings are meant to move
in and out of cycles of effort and ease—
but the contemporary world has replaced rhythm
with constant acceleration.

Presence has become rare.
Stillness, almost extinct.
Gentleness, a forgotten art.

And so the inner life contracts—
our breath shortens, our vision narrows,
and our sense of possibility dims.
The senses begin to dull.
Intuition grows quiet.
Even the vagus nerve—
the great river of inner steadiness and restoration within our body—
tightens its flow.

When that happens,
the wild within becomes harder to hear.

This is why people everywhere
feel emotionally fatigued, lonely, overwhelmed,
disconnected from themselves.

 The longing for wildness
 is the longing to feel real again…
 to feel alive…
 to feel connected to one’s soul,
 authentic and unmasked…
 to feel returned to an inner truth
 we drifted away from.
 It is the longing to reclaim vitality, imagination, and presence…
 to rediscover the self that lives beneath all the noise.

Nature becomes the companion that opens the door back to our inner wildness—
the place where our truest life begins again.

And once we recognize this wildness in ourselves, the next question becomes how to hear it more clearly—
how to create the conditions where its voice can rise.

The return to wildness
does not require forests or mountains—
only willingness,
attention,
and small openings of the senses.

A. Slow the Sensory Field

One way to welcome the wildness back is to soften our sensory field

Softening the senses is the doorway.
Allow your gaze to rest on one simple thing—
a leaf, a bird, shifting light.
Let the body orient gently to the world.

This small act begins to recalibrate
the vagus nerve,
the guardian of calm and connection.

B. Seek Soft Fascination

You might also let your attention rest on something gentle…
 on movements or patterns that ask nothing of you.
 clouds drifting, shadows shifting,
 a curtain stirred by a soft breeze.
 These subtle rhythms invite the nervous system
 into a quieter state
 without effort.

C. Ground Through Touch

Or perhaps grounding arrives through touch—
 the warmth of your hand on a stone,
 a tree trunk,
 your own heartbeat.
 Let the body feel supported.
 Let it know it is not alone.

D. Invite Beauty Intentionally

And sometimes what we need most is beauty—
 a simple moment that helps us breathe differently.
 because beauty has a way of shifting our entire inner world—

Beauty does something inside us that nothing else can.

Beauty restores us.
 The more we allow it in, the brighter it blooms in our hearts—
 overflowing into the world as wonder, as joy, as love,
 until we find ourselves seeing life
 from a more beautiful place.

A few moments of resting your attention on something beautiful
 is enough to change the shape of a day—
 and to make just enough space within you
 to hear what your inner wildness needs.

E. Ask the Daily Question:

Quite often, the doorway is just a question—
“What is my wild pulse longing for?”

The reply is often simple:

A moment of wonder,
sunlight,
meaningful silence,
a breath taken without hurry.

In listening, we begin to hear more.
The wild within begins to guide us—
whispering the small shifts
that can change our life.
 
And what begins as a quiet shift in awareness
soon becomes something felt in the body.

A return to the wild within
changes the body long before
it changes the mind.

Inside the body, something quiet begins to respond—
a system that listens to every breath,
every sigh,
every tiny shift from tension toward ease.

The vagus nerve is the body’s great river of restoration—
 traveling from the brainstem
 through the throat, heart, lungs, diaphragm, and digestive system.
 It helps regulate stress and emotional tension,
 opening the pathways that allow us to unwind,
 breathe, connect, imagine,
 and feel.

When surrounded by nature—
the quiet dance of leaves in the wind,
the rhythm of waves,
the softness of birdsong—

the vagus nerve begins shifting the body
from stress into relaxation,

And this is where something deeper becomes possible.

The tension inside us begins to dissolve.
Breathing deepens.
Blood pressure steadies.
Our nervous system remembers
the rhythm it was born with.

And as the body begins to find its calm again,
something inside us starts to open—
as if the wild pulse finally has room to move,
and our inner world begins to awaken.

• Intuition strengthens.

• Creativity resurfaces.

• Emotions become clearer and less overwhelming.

• The sense of “I belong” quietly returns.

This harmony is not simply a mental state.
 It is the physical sensation
 of being in rhythm with life again.

As this change settles into the body,
the emotional world begins to change in quiet, unmistakable ways.

When the vagus nerve returns to its natural flow,
 loneliness softens into connection.
 Self-judgment loosens into gentleness.
 Exhaustion turns into grounded presence.
 The wild within rises—
 not as ferocity,
 but as clarity.

A clarity that says:
This is who you are beneath the noise.
This is the pulse you did not lose.
This is the life still waiting to be lived.

These are not small shifts—
they change the way we meet ourselves, and the world.

Nature is not a backdrop
and the wild within is not a memory.
They are the living threads
that weave the human soul
back into coherence.

A return to nature
is never ‘only’ about the Earth—
it is about finding the part of ourselves
lost along the way.

When the senses soften,
the nervous system steadies.
When breath deepens,
intuition rises.
When beauty is witnessed,
the heart remembers.

The wild within was never lost.
It was only waiting for your return—
beneath the noise,
beneath the performance,
beneath the forgotten rhythms—
for the moment
the soul was quiet enough
to hear it again.

So I ask?  What small gesture today would let your inner wildness know
you’ve finally returned to listen?

If this conversation stirred something in you…
and you feel called to explore these practices more deeply,
you’ll find many of them woven into my book, The Sacred Canopy.

But for now . . .
listen for your wild pulse.
It will show you the way.

iRewild would like to acknowledge the contributions of other writers, philosophers, and scientists for their inspiration, words, and research used in our podcasts. For a complete list of sources, please see our eBook, Rewilding The Senses: Bringing The Human Soul Back Into A Conscious Relationship With Nature.