Domei

On contemplating plants

On my 26th birthday, I left the church, resolving never to return. A profound experience transformed me, liberating me from a tradition I found too confining. 

Since then, I have experimented with and explored the practice of 'being present', mainly within Western and Eastern contemplative traditions that highly value direct experience. 

It's why I like Taoism—a slow, quiet, peaceful philosophy of few words. 

After giving interviews on a few podcasts, I realised that although I was invited to speak about foraging, I no longer merely discussed foraging as a means to nourish ourselves with wild ingredients. 

I focused on the deeper meaning of the word fed and what it means to feed oneself.

I am taking the understanding beyond the usual cultural meaning of consuming the necessary nutrients the body requires to function correctly. 

Instead, I wandered off script and down untrodden paths, exploring what 'feeding ourselves' means more profoundly, more contemplatively—beyond just physical nourishment. 

The podcast hosts loved it—it was a breath of fresh air. 

Recently, while exploring the interior of India, I met with some extraordinary people. 

People whose lives embodied much of what I had discovered over the past thirty years exploring what it means to be human in a world we barely understand intellectually, let alone know in a deep-felt way. 

The art of foraging is much more than a plate of food. 

When I teach, I give students a rudimentary toolkit and framework to learn about plants by directly relating to them. 

I usually use the term 'primal sensing' to explain how this happens. I need to be clear that my 'plant work practices' have nothing to do with shamanism or the New Age.

They are rooted in the foundation of all contemplative traditions. In a single word. Awareness. 

An awareness that has nothing to do with chasing the red herrings of 'being spiritual' or 'being enlightened'. 

I find these expressions akin to bad-tasting candy floss. 

No, I mean awareness in the raw sense of enlivening your senses and turning the volume up a few notches. 

If we can get out of our heads and come to our senses, we can start noticing the beauty, wonder, and joy in each moment. 

My plant work is practical, and anyone can experience it. There are no secrets—just you, your senses, and this gorgeous planet you live on. When we can do this, our lives soften, and serenity and serendipity walk us through life.

As a term, primal sensing never sat well with me. It was too clinical and academic, but it was the closest term I could come up with that described the practices and the experiences that followed. 

Then, while visiting India in 2024 and unplugging from most of my digital life, a word emerged that evolved into the perfect summarisation of what happens when we allow ourselves to be 'fed beyond the plate'. 

For many of you, this direction of where my plant work is going will likely leave you scratching your head. 

You might well tune out and leave. 

And that's OK; I'm letting you know now that this is where my work is going. I will still write about the edible and medicinal uses of plants, but interwoven will be the deeper work.

Deep connection with plants and the rest of the non-human world.

I started exploring the word Domei, a neologism (a word I coined myself). 

Words are important to me. They carry energy because a single word can express something precisely. 

I needed a word untarnished by religion, spirituality and all the usual navel-gazing. 

One that expressed the human as a sensory animal, a word that embraced all our senses. 

That word is Domei. 

Domei blends Gaelic "Domhain” (deep) and "Éist" (listen) to signify profound, immersive engagement with our surroundings. 

It embodies deep listening beyond the auditory, urging an embodied, empathetic connection with nature through all of our senses. 

I use the word listening here in its broadest interpretation; listening equates to feeling. 

Together, Domhain and Éist create Domei. 

In this context, Domei becomes an attention practice that involves using our entire body to "feel into" the wildness around us. 

In my work, I immerse myself in the plant kingdom and draw inspiration from what I discover through this immersion. 

It's about tapping into the unspoken language of nature, where every rustle of leaves, every whisper of the wind, and every ripple in a stream communicates something about our existence. 

Nature as metaphor and more. 

This practice of Domei encourages us to step beyond our conventional botanical understanding of plants, inviting us to engage with the plant kingdom with an open heart and a keen sense of creativity and intuition. 

It's a call to experience the world and to attune ourselves to the subtle feelings and shifts as we respond to the world and move through it. 

We start 'hearing' the natural data signals, the feedback loop our environment is continually giving us. 

It is a natural sensory map showing us the right direction for our lives, all revealed through our internal guidance system known as the senses. 

Through Domei, we learn to listen not only with our ears but with our skin and bones, our breath, and the very fibres of our being. 

Engaging in Domei means sitting next to a plant or under a majestic tree and deeply feeling our connection to it. 

This practice is an invitation to dissolve the barriers between the self and the plant world, to become fully present in the moment, and to experience the unity and interconnectedness of all things. 

Domei is not just a practice but a way of being, a path to deeper understanding and harmony with the plant kingdom and the rest of the non-human world.

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