Nature Speaks

Walk into a forest and notice how your attention shifts. At first, perhaps, you scan for the obvious: a bird darting across the path, the rustle of something in the undergrowth, the outline of a tree against the sky. This is the kind of attention that narrows, selects, and grasps. Useful, yes, but partial.

Then, if you linger, something else happens. Your gaze softens. The details dissolve into a wider presence. You are no longer looking at the trees, but with them. The forest is no longer a scene, but a companion.

This shift, subtle and ancient, is at the heart of what the psychiatrist and philosopher Iain McGilchrist has spent decades exploring. His work on the “divided brain” reminds us that we live in two kinds of attention, two ways of knowing the world.

The Two Hemispheres

The left hemisphere tends to narrow its beam. It grasps, categorises, manipulates, measures. It is concerned with certainty and control. It names the bird, charts the tree’s age, dissects the leaf into veins.

The right hemisphere opens its arms wide. It perceives relationships, context, living presence. It senses the bird as part of the air, the tree as part of the soil, the leaf as part of the unfolding season. It does not try to hold the world, but to meet it.

McGilchrist insists that we need both. But he also warns that when the left hemisphere dominates – when analysis eclipses encounter – we lose the fullness of reality. The world becomes thin, drained of its richness, its voice silenced.

Wildness and Attention

Nature asks for both kinds of seeing. We must know how to identify the plant that heals and the mushroom that harms. But if we stop there, the living essence of the forest is reduced to a field guide.

To reconnect with wild intuition is to allow the right hemisphere to lead the dance. It is to let our attention soften enough that the world reveals itself as alive. When we do, a quiet knowing arises – not the kind of knowledge that can be written in a notebook, but the kind that resounds in the body, in the heart.

Indigenous traditions have long lived from this way of knowing. Their knowledge is not abstracted but embodied, woven through story, song, and ceremony. In McGilchrist’s terms, it is right- hemisphere wisdom honoured and sustained, rather than subordinated.

A Practice of Rebalancing

You can practice this rebalancing anywhere, but the natural world is a gentle teacher.

• Pause before naming what you see. Instead of saying “oak” or “robin,” simply rest with the presence before you.
• Soften your gaze. Allow your eyes to rest not on one object but on the space between.
• Listen for relationship. Notice how wind, water, bird, and branch speak together.

Slowly, something shifts. The chatter of the analytical mind loosens, and a more spacious awareness begins to flow. In this awareness, intuition stirs – the quiet guidance of the wild mind that remembers we are not separate from the living world, but part of its weave.

Iain McGilchrist calls us back to balance, reminding us that the world is not a puzzle to be solved but a presence to be met. The forest, the river, the sky – these are not objects under our gaze, but companions in our story.

To walk with wild intuition is to let both hemispheres of the brain converse again: analysis in service of encounter, precision in service of wonder.

And when we return to that way of seeing, we remember something the wild has never forgotten: that the world is alive, and so are we.

Recommended Reading:

Iain McGilchrist: The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World.

Iain McGilchrist: The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World.

A Gentle Practice for Your Next Walk

Next time you step outside, try this:

1. Begin with the left. For a few minutes, let yourself name what you see: a crow, a nettle, a cloud. Feel the clarity this brings.
2. Then shift to the right. Let go of naming. Let your gaze widen. Instead of looking at the crow, sense how it belongs to the air, the nettle to the earth, the cloud to the season.
3. Close with a question. Ask silently: What is the world showing me right now? Wait. Notice what stirs – words, feelings, images, or silence.

This small practice reawakens the dialogue between the two ways of knowing, helping you walk not just through nature, but with it.

The Wild Remembers. So Do You.