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Our World
Biophilia: our innate longing for the living world
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Smoothing body oil with a satin finish -
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Forest-scent soy wax candle£54.00
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Rich melting balm-to-oil for dry areas£32.00
There's a reason why a walk beneath trees loosens something in our chests and relaxes our shoulders. There’s a reason why the sound of moving water slows our breathing and soothes our nervous system. It isn't sentiment, and it isn't habit. It's written into us and there's actually a word for it: biophilia.
What does biophilia mean?
Biophilia describes the innate, genetically rooted human tendency to seek connection with nature and with other forms of life. It's not a preference we pick up along the way, but an orientation we're born carrying - a pull toward the green, the wild, the trees, the alive.
A brief history
The word was first used by the psychoanalyst Erich Fromm in 1964, who described biophilia as a love of life and of all that is living. Two decades on, the biologist E.O. Wilson brought the idea into the natural sciences with his 1984 book, Biophilia. His argument was simple: because we have spent almost the whole of our existence in close company with the natural world, our affinity for it is a product of evolution - something we carry in our biology, not just our imagination. In 1993, Wilson and Stephen Kellert took the thinking further in The Biophilia Hypothesis, gathering the evidence that our wellbeing is bound up with the living systems around us.
Why does it matter now?
For the first time in our history, we have become a largely indoor species. Cities have grown, we spend a lot of our day looking at a screen and the distance between natural and artificial has widened. The biophilia hypothesis helps explain the human cost of that distance - and the relief we feel the moment we begin to close it again.
It's why hospital patients with a view of trees have been found to recover faster than those facing a wall. It's why the Japanese practice of shinrin-yoku (forest bathing, the simple act of being present among trees) has travelled across the world. It's why architects now build around daylight, plants and natural materials rather than treating them as afterthoughts. The longing for the natural world doesn't vanish when we move indoors.
Biophilia isn't something to be corrected, or one more thing on your list to optimise. It's the opposite. It's a reminder that the connection is already inside you. You don't have to earn your place in the natural world, or become a better version of yourself to deserve it. You belong to it, and you always have...
Where we come in
MIRROR WATER began in the forest. Our founder, Estée Lalonde, grew up near the cold lakes and forests of southern Ontario, Canada. The landscape wasn't just the backdrop to her upbringing, it's the place she felt most grounded, held, present and where she could return to herself when her world felt loud.
At nineteen, Estée moved to London and the further she got from Canadian nature, the more she felt its absence - not just the landscape, but how it made her feel: still and calm.
That relationship with nature is the root that the whole brand grows from. We make moments of return, felt in the body and held in the senses. Forest-dreamed fragrances, considered formulations, rituals built for the everyday. We think of body care not as a task to get through but as a small ritual - a way of answering that innate longing for nature in the middle of an ordinary day. The unhurried pleasure of tending to yourself with attention rather than urgency.
Biophilia tells us that the reach toward nature is already written into us. At MIRROR WATER, we simply try to make a little more room for it - to bring the forest a step closer, and to remind you that you were never separate from it in the first place.
New to our world? Start here...
SMOOTH Body Oil → our bestselling, forest-dreamed smoothing body oil with a satin finish.
The Body Ritual Set → a perfect pairing of our vegan, soft-bristled dry brush and our ultra-nourishing body oil.
Sun Through Trees → Forest-scented soy wax candle - warm, woody, and a little zesty.
-
Smoothing body oil with a satin finish
-
-
Forest-scent soy wax candle£54.00
-
Rich melting balm-to-oil for dry areas£32.00
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