Learning presence: The first step to more connection
Joey Clifton | Issue 006: Connection is an Act of Resistance | Sept 30th, 2025
Part 1. Connection is the easy part
If it’s more connection you’re after — and let’s face it, most of us are — I’ve got some good news. Creating connection is actually the easy part. Think of it like a plant. Yes, there’s some skill to it, but ultimately if you water the seed and give it light and air, it will grow. Instead, the challenge is cultivating the fertile soil within which the seed — connection — can grow in the first place. That fertile soil is your presence. In a world where attention is one of the most valuable commodities, with information, notifications, and tasks constantly vying for your energy and time, bringing focused attention — and minimising distraction — is one of the hardest things for us to do.
If you’ve ever experienced feelings of loneliness or isolation — quite literally disconnection — you’ll know only too well why connection matters. To my mind, loneliness is one of the most difficult emotions to bear. For good reason: it goes directly against one of our most primal human needs, the need to belong. So, in a world full of distraction and, by virtue, disconnection, at this time of polycrisis, we need connection more than ever. Connection with ourselves, with each other, and with the natural world around us. Which is exactly what we’ll dive into today: why connection matters, what it is, and how we create it. Stay with me — we’ll explore it all.
Why does connection matter to us as humans?
It’s hard to overstate the importance of connection. As human beings, it feels like an innate and essential part of our tapestry — a thread woven through every fibre of our being. The simple fact is that for most of human history, we have lived in tribes and groups, connected intimately to each other and to the land. Those embodied memories are how we are hard-wired: to live together, as part of an ecosystem and a landscape, is what it has always meant to be human. Connected in every way possible. No wonder the last few decades years have left great swathes of the human population experiencing disconnection like never before.
Unpacking connection: what is it really?
Sometimes the body knows intuitively what the mind has yet to process. This feels absolutely true when it comes to the concept of connection.
The best way I know how to describe what connection is, is through a description of how the body experiences connection, i.e. through embodiment:
As I tune in to what connection is, I see myself turning to face my daughter, my body aligned with hers, my eyes meeting her eyes, my hands outstretched to her hands. I lower myself so I am with her, equal in height, together. In this moment, connection is more than a concept — it is a feeling of truly being with someone. In my body, I sense layers of contact like strings between our two beings — not just physically, but also emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually.
Research supports this whole-body knowing that connection is multilayered and multileveled. When two people are deeply connected, their physiology — i.e. their heartbeats and breathing rates — becomes synchronised. THIS is connection.
How do we create connection?
Truthfully, the idea that we need to create connection is actually putting our attention in the wrong place. We are designed for and orientated full tilt towards connection. What we actually need to learn is the gift of presence. Of being curious with ourselves, present with others, and still with nature. Let me expand.
Part 2. A guide to greater connection:
With ourselves
As ever-evolving human beings, connecting with ourselves is not a one-time thing. The inner work of understanding your values, interests, perspectives, and needs is ongoing work. As with all things connection, it requires intention, attention, and presence. After all, your relationship with yourself deserves your time and curiosity. When you start to connect with yourself, you’ll feel a level of understanding that feels like a sort of internal rightness. The best way I know how to describe these moments, when you see yourself or understand a part of yourself better, is like a lightbulb moment. This is powerful work that is the foundation for all other versions of connection.
Invitation: To build this relationship, channel your inner child’s curiosity. Develop a practice of asking questions like “what do I love about this?” or “what do I need now?” — this will help you connect with your needs and passions.
With others
Following on from our connection with ourselves, building deeper connections with others will start to feel like an extension of the practice you’ve already been exploring above — with one fundamental difference. Being ‘seen’ by someone else is incredibly powerful. If you’ve ever been guided or trained through a process of active listening, or been held in a professional or therapeutic space, you’ll know what it feels like to be truly heard and seen. There’s a big difference between a conversation where you know the other person is simply listening to respond or tell their own story, and a conversation where you feel the other person cares about what you’re saying, wants to know more, and is with you in your experience.
Invitation: There are many ways to create connection with others. What’s true of all of them is that bringing your stillness and full attention to the shared moment will open a door for deep connection. To practice this, remove your distractions and really bring your intention and attention to the person you are with. You will never get this moment again.
With nature
Lastly, connection with nature. For me, connection with nature — with all non-human life — feels dimensionally different. I’m immediately aware of my feeling of awe when I’m in a natural space. Not just with vast vistas or grandeur, but also with pattern, colour, and intricacy. Like the unlikely joy of watching a limpet inch its way across a rock. The wonder of bats flickering like shadows in half-light. Or the brilliant glow of golden light at dawn. To build your sense of connection with the natural world, presence must come first. When we are still awe has space to arrive.
Invitation: Find a space with nature, whether deeply immersed in a natural landscape or simply somewhere you can watch the clouds pass across the sky. Be still and imagine you are with this view, this experience, for the very first time. Allow yourself to be humbled and to connect with the elements. Be still enough for long enough to allow nature’s magic to wash over you. Connection will inevitably follow.
Part 3. Connection is in your hands
What feels true to me is that connection is non-negotiable for humans. It’s who we have always been, and who we will always be. Being connected with ourselves gives us knowledge, being connected with others gives us depth, and being connected with nature fills us with magic.
But it’s not the skill of connection or reconnection that we need to learn. These master skills are not lost — they are merely dulled by the constant onslaught of distraction. Instead, the real challenge — or gift — is in learning to bring our full attention and focus to this moment. Whoever we are with.
This essay was featured in Issue 006: Connection as an Act of Resistance Read the Full Publication
Joey Clifton is a contributing writer for The Sacred Business Writer’s Collective focused on people having the resources and support they need to be powerful agents of change. You can follow her on Substack here.
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