| Nature connected education and counseling is a missing link in the way we learn to think. It enables people to peacefully restore 53 natural senses that improve our reasoning, wellness and relationship with the environment, other people, and ourselves. |
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APPLIED
ECOPSYCHOLOGY |
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The Natural Systems Thinking Process: how our attractions in Nature are intelligent, healing, and promote peace.
Consider this intelligence test question: "If you count
a dog's tail as one of its legs, how many legs does a dog have?" "Five," of course, is the answer. Intelligent people say "five" because it's valid in mathematical systems and thinking. However, our sense of reason only recognizes five as correct until we additionally validate what we know from our, or other people's, contact with a real dog. Then, many of our multitude of natural senses come into play: senses of sight, touch, motion, color, texture, language, sound, smell, consciousness, community, trust, contrast, and love. They each help our sense of reason make more sense and recognize that a tail is different than a leg; a dog has four legs, not five .
Be amazed! On average, we spend over 95% of our time indoors.We socially and educationally become detached and desensitized to nature. Be more amazed! Over 99.99% of our thinking, is 5-legged;
it is separated from and out of tune with nature. We mostly learn
to know nature from 5-leg, disconnected,, "as if,"
stories about nature, rather than from authentic sensory contact
with nature. For the past 32 years my students and I have lived, taught
and researched in natural areas, sleeping outdoors year round.
From this 4-leg contact with nature, unlike the norm, I have
not learned to know nature
My forty years in natural systems show, and research agrees, that we inherit and contain not just five, as Aristotle said, but at least 53 inborn senses, natural loves through which we can relate sensibly to the environment and each other. Since 1952 I have researched, applied, and taught people how to incorporate parts of a Natural Systems Thinking Process (NSTP) into their personal and professional lives. NSTP enables people to rejuvenate their 53 natural senses and restore them in their thinking and relationships. NSTP is presently part of several advanced, accredited, University training courses and degree programs. It has been reviewed and published in professional science and technology, psychological and environmental education journals. It helps us to reattach our dismembered psyche to its origins in Nature in exactly the same way that a surgeon reattaches a dismembered arm to a person's body. The surgeon brings the arm and body together. This allows Nature to biologically heal the separation as only nature can. The history of NSTP. In 1959, I founded a camp and school program based on reconnecting with nature. The National Audubon Society and many others called it the most revolutionary school in America; they said it was on the side of the angels. Participants traveled and thrived by camping out in 83 different natural habitats throughout the seasons. They learned to live out their commitment to have open, honest relationships with the natural environment, each other and with indigenous people(s), researchers, ecologists, the Amish, organic farmers, anthropologists, folk musicians, naturalists, shamans, administrators, historians and many others close to the land. The experience deeply reconnected their 53 sense inner nature to its origins and self in the whole of nature. As a result of the participants' romance with educating themselves this way, in the school community:
All this occurred simply because every community member made sense of their lives by sustaining supportive, multisensory relationships that helped them restore contact with the natural world within and around them. The 4-leg secret to each participant's success was to learn how to learn through natural sensations and feelings that arose from their newly regrown sensory roots in ecosystems. This freed the participants' 53 senses from their bonding to questionable 5-leg stories and re-bonded them to the 4-leg sense of reason in congress with 47 other rejuvenated natural senses. From 30 years of travel and study in over 260 national parks,
forests and subcultures From 1985-92, I translated my nature-connected psychology program into a readily available Natural Systems Thinking Process (NSTP) for public use via the internet or on site . Through NSTP, backyard or backcountry, people recover their natural senses from readings and sensory 4-leg reconnection activities at home, work or school. We can't resolve our unsolvable problems using the same nature disconnected thinking that produces them . The critical contribution of NSTP is that it empowers individuals to create moments that let Earth teach. It helps us responsibly unify 5-leg and 4-leg thinking.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Recipient of the 1994 Distinguished World Citizen Award, Michael J. Cohen is a director of the Institute of Global Education -a special NGO consultant to the United Nations Economic and Social Council- where he chairs the Integrated Ecology Department and Project NatureConnect. He also serves on the faculty of Greenwich University, Portland State University and the International University of Professional Studies. Dr. Cohen is the author of a number of books, including Reconnecting With Nature (Ecopress, 1997), and Einstein's World (Institute of Global Education Technical Bulletin, 2000). You are welcome to visit his personal homepage |
as something fearful
to be conquered in the name of civilization, safety and economic
growth. Instead, as I learn to treat Nature's peace with respect,
I enjoy Nature as a powerful friend and teacher. It helps my
students and me increase our thoughtfulness and intelligence;
it will do the same for you. Significantly, the major problems
our society faces seldom exist in intact natural systems or genuinely
nature connected people. As a twig is bent, so grows the tree.
, I developed a repeatable learning
process and psychology. It unleashes our 4-leg ability to grow
and survive responsibly with the natural world. By documenting
that it worked and could be taught, I earned my doctoral degree
and the school became a nationally recognized graduate and undergraduate
degree program.|
Institute of Global Education P. O. Box 1605, www.ecopsych.com
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