.
Green Accredited Nature-Connecting Holistic Degree Courses On Line: Natural Career Education Personal and Professional Health and Wellness Training Grants, Employment, Jobs and Hope.
ECOTHERAPY - ECOPSYCHOLOGY - NATURAL ATTRACTION ECOLOGY


Thinking, Feeling and Meditating Like the 
Joy of
Nature's Balance Works

health and wellness online nature trail increases 
personal, social and
environmental sanity


Seven secrets for
becoming an Avatar of Mother Earth to help
humanity improve its equilibrium, sensitivity and sensibility





Project NatureConnect
Institute of Global Education
Organic Psychology and Natural Attraction Ecology
Special NGO Consultant, United Nations Economic and Social Council
Practical alternative distance learning to strengthen person/planet well-being



PROGRAM DESCRIPTION:

Educating Counseling and Healing With Nature

Supportive Degrees, Career Training Courses and Jobs On Line

Project NatureConnect offers nature-centered distant learning that enables you to add the benefits of nature-connecting methods and credentials to your degree program and/or your skills, interests and hobbies.

We honor your prior training and life experience by providing grants and equivalent education credit for it.

You may take accredited or professional CEU coursework and/or obtain a Nature-Connected Degree or Certificate in most disciplines or personal interests. A partial subject list is located at the bottom of this page.
  • Improve your economics and satisfaction through independent, interdisciplinary or integrated study and Ecopsychology.
  • Help people connect their thoughts and feelings with the self-correcting and renewing ways of nature.
  • Increase personal social and environmental health and wellness.
  • Add the self-correcting sunlight beauty and spirit of the natural world to your life and community.
Visit our Homepage for complete information 



This Online Discovery Trail sets free your buried and suffocating natural sensory intelligence

Organic learning challenges for educators, leaders, counselors and students. (1-3 CEU education or counseling contact hour credits are available by doing this trail as a part of a course Psychological Elements of Global Citizenship or
Counseling With Natural Attractions)

Copyright 1996, Michael J. Cohen, Ph.D.


"In the beginning of a wide variety of programs or activities participants are required to take a deep breath to center, relax and energize themselves. They then proceed with the rest of the program while it and they have omitted awareness of and thanks for the known source, contribution and value of the deep breath they took. Breathing and air atoms were and are a profound contribution of, by and from Nature and the Eons that continually deserves our attention and respect.  This example along with our many other similar "sin of omission" habits moment by moment deepen the rut we are in.  Project NatureConnect offers this Discovery Trail to help you begin to deal with that "sin."

- Project NatureConnect


SUGGESTION: For best results, follow the trail to its completion without interruption, unless indicated in red, then repeat it and explore its links and references.

The beginning of this discovery trail includes Agreement Index indicators, as below, to help you determine your readiness for the material that follows the Index.  If you are not ready for it, a link is provided to a fuller explanation of the information being offered:

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Background

Material that appears on this web site and its links is drawn from the peer reviewed book Educating, Counseling and Healing With Nature  (see M.J. Cohen personal page)


Nurture natural attraction, your felt love for nature; never deny it. In our nature-conquering society it is an surviving vestige of our inherent connection with nature's ancient, unifying, essence. Over the eons nature's essence has peacefully organized, preserved and regenerated diverse life relationships in balance and purity. The loss of our felt love of nature in our daily thinking produces much of our destructiveness and imbalance.

- Michael J. Cohen

 

Purpose: to think, relate and meditate more intelligently

People who do well on aptitude tests usually get advanced job placement, higher salaries and greater prestige. However, consider this simple intelligence test question regarding mathematical aptitude.

"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 the truth of mathematical systems and thinking. Economics and social standing reward us for giving this correct answer. However, our sense of reason only recognizes five as correct until we additionally validate what we know from our, or other people's, mindful contact with a real, normal dog. Then, many of our multitude of natural attraction senses often come into play: natural senses of sight, touch, motion, color, texture, language, sound, smell, consciousness, community, trust, shape, contrast and love. Each of these natural senses that we inherit help our sense of reason make more sense and recognize that a tail is different than a leg; a normal dog has four legs, not five.

"Aristotle thought there were eight legs on a fly and wrote it down. For centuries scholars were content to quote his authority. Apparently, not one of them was curious enough to impale a fly and count its six legs."

- Stuart Chase


Aristotle also said we only have five senses. As noted in the previous paragraph, we obviously we have far more than five. You know for certain that this is true for you, you've experienced them, it's self-evident.

When we think with our multitude of natural senses we increase our sensibility, sensitivity and intelligence.

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Most scientists recognize that just as our arm is attracted or "loves" to be attached to our body, all people are biologically, psychologically and spiritually born of, part of, and seamlessly attached to nature. We each instinctively hold a basic natural attraction love of nature's "resources," -sunshine, food, water, soil, air, energy- in common with each other and all of nature.

As demonstrated by a refreshing walk in a park, or other good experiences in natural areas, our many natural attraction senses instinctively help us benefit from contact with nature. 

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Like everything else on Planet Earth, our natural senses are parts of natural systems and their cycles, just as our sensation of thirst is part of the water cycle. This is but one of many secrets of nature that Industrial Society seldom teaches us.

 
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As exemplified by how the global water cycle cleanses itself, it is well established that nature and its systems are self-correcting and have healing, purifying and regenerative powers. When we use sensory tools that genuinely interlace our thinking and feeling with these powers, we benefit from them.


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We live excessively Nature-disconnected lives. Over 95% of our time is spent indoors closeted from nature. Over 99% of our thinking is separated from and often out of tune with nature. In addition, all our speech and writing in words is disconnected from nature because nature and its systems don't use words. Nature is a non-literate way of communicating, knowing and unifying.

- Nature's Dance is being, not just describing.
- It is relating, not just abstracting about relationships.
- It is acts, not stories or written facts.
- It is empirical knowledge, not just "as-if" thoughts.
- Nature is global or universal intelligence in action.

A house built on a faulty foundation produces crooked leanings. We constantly endure the warp of our nature-disconnected, natural-sense deprived, "as if" story world. It often conditions us to think and live the "as-if" lie that a tail is a leg. We suffer accordingly.

Our thinking has very little genuine 4-leg contact with authentic nature. We are rewarded to mostly learn to think as if a dog has 5-legs. In this limited process we habitually omit critical information. We desperately need to ground our senses, thoughts and feelings in a unifying foundation that authentically roots itself with the integrity of our planet and its natural systems.

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Grounding ourselves is easily accomplished. We simply learn and teach each other how to add nature-connecting Organic Psychology activities to our daily life and meditations. This helps us sensibly unify 4-leg and 5-leg knowledge. Validating this reasonable contact enables us to benefit from the grace, balance and restorative powers of 9-leg thinking and relationships.

We feel better and improve our lives by co-creating with nature's perfection.

This online natural attraction trail helps you learn some enabling Organic Psychology activities. It is a 9-leg tool that gives you the opportunity learn more about 9-leg brain functions.  Visit this 9-leg link now if you want to get the most you can from the online trail that follows.

 


Introduction

Although we are part of nature's dance, nature does not suffer our disorders. We don't find uncontrolled garbage, war, loneliness, pollution, crime, abusiveness, stress and mental illness in intact natural areas or natural people.

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As contemporary people, our thinking and feeling have bonded to the prejudice against nature that produces industrial society's excessive, nature-disconnected, destructive ways of life. However, we are still part of nature. This disconnection from the self-correcting dance of natural attraction energy through ourselves, through our life community and from our origins creates stress and disorders, within and around us.

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How does the dance of nature sustain life in balance and avoid producing our problems? As part of nature, don't we inherit this intelligent gift and then learn to disregard or damage it?

Discover these secrets by doing this unusual online nature trail. Learn how to let nature help you build and teach unifying personal, social and environmental relationships.

This trail visits rewarding natural areas and attractions that flourish in the environment and in hidden parts of your psyche, too. To gain some rewarding insights, try to be open to letting nature help you recycle and compost some destructive ways that Western Civilization has taught us to think and relate. These clouded ways hide nature's healing ways from our consciousness.

The sensory contributions of our mentality seldom register in our consciousness because society seldom trains us to respect or value their feelingful "4-leg" communications to us. Society often demeans these "in the moment" sensory communications as flaky or fuzzy thinking, as subjective rather than scientific or objective. This degrading weakens or injures our natural senses. They lose the energy, desire or resilience necessary to register in our consciousness. Our devaluing of them teaches our consciousness not to appreciate or validate them when they do appear. Unwanted, rejected or abandoned, they hide, frustrated and hurt. To avoid feeling this discomfort, they and our awareness of them become subconscious. We learn to ignore our omission of them as we learn that we think and know through only five natural senses, rather than at least 54 of them (For example, none of the five is thirst or hunger yet they are authentic sensations). However, we feel their anguish and pain whenever a negative story or incident energizes them into our consciousness. Bewildered (separated from the values of wildness,) we have often learned to think there is something wrong with us when this occurs so we don't seek or correct the nature-disconnecting source of our troubles.


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Trail Start:

An Important Phenomenon: As you read these words it is undeniably self-evident that you register them through your senses of sight, color and form. This registration is "empirical," meaning "firsthand." It is the strongest form of fact or evidence for it registers directly on our senses, our information receptors.  At this moment, however, you probably neither notice nor register the air that sits between you and the words on this page, until right now!  Right now these words bring the air to your attention, air with Oxygen that has been part of Planet Earth for over three billion years and sustains life as we know it and Oxygen atoms that originally formed over ten billion years ago in the stars.

Too often, the air and its value lies hidden from our immediate consciousness.

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Can we afford to continue to overlook air and its importance to our lives and all of life?

If all things in nature are connected and we are part of nature, does Air have a language that connects/speaks/registers in our senses, and in all of Nature, too?

Why, historically, has the quality of the science and knowledge we learn about air increased while the natural, pure quality of air has decreased?

This trail reverses this detrimental paradox. It helps you scientifically discover a "Rosetta Stone" language that enables us, in 9-leg ways, to learn from air about our important relationship with it and with all of the dance of nature as well.


Reasonableness

,,,...Follow this Trail Marker  .......................................................
Sensibility Quest
A Mimbres culture design, circa 900 A.D., New Mexico, USA

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Start here:


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Station 1: A gift to you from nature.

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In unspoiled nature, clean, fresh air prevails. It is a global phenomenon, a product of, by and from nature's pulsating eons of self-organizing, self-correcting, mutually supportive attraction relationships in natural systems that connect and hold them together (our Other Body). Inhaling and exhaling is an example of this pulsating attraction Dance.

The homeostatic (self-regulating) dance of natural attraction relationships is an essence of atomic particles, sunshine, rain and millions of different plant and animal species in the soil, water and atmosphere. You and I are members of humanity, one of those species. We are all connected to each other by the attraction that holds us together on sub-atomic to Solar System levels and beyond.

Take a deep breath or two, as in some forms of meditation.  Too often we forget that when we inhale fresh air, we receive a vital gift to our lives from our Other Body, non-literate Planet Earth. Air is a nurturing and unifying gift from nature's global community, a supportive essence of our ability to live. Let's not overlook that any more.

(Continue to the next station)

NOTE: the green spaces, below, offer thinking and feeling time between trail stops. When they appear, see if you can identify what feels attractive to you in the preceding trail stop, what your senses register. With feeling, write down what was attractive. What you write will often prove to be a valuable, empirical way of knowing.

 What do you find attractive in the Station above?

 


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Station 2:  Your gift to nature.

.............................................................

Do you recognize that when you exhale your breath, Earth breathes you? You breathe out carbon dioxide and water vapor into the air. They are food and water that nurture the plant, animal and mineral world and are attractive to them.

Your breath attractively helps to sustain all other forms of life. It is one of your gifts to them. That is attractive, let's not overlook it.

The living, homeostatic, pulse of natural attraction to inhale-exhale, is an example of the ever changing tension-relaxation attraction dance found throughout nature: more attractive-less attractive, night-day, closer-further, stronger-weaker, brighter-darker, faster-slower, higher-lower. All are variations and resonances of the sway of the unifying attraction Dance that we call Earth/Nature/Universe.  

Notice how you feel right now as you breathe air normally. Is the air you are breathing stale? Do you think you would you feel better if you were breathing pure, sunshine-clean, rain-washed, fresh air in an unspoiled natural area? If so, why?

(Continue to the next station)

 

 What do you find attractive in the Station above?


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.Station 3:  The gift of life.

................................................................

In earlier times, the word for air was "psyche." Psyche also means spirit and mind. Psychological can mean "logic or study of the spirit."

Breathing air is called respiration, originally meaning "re-spiriting."

The word inspiration means "bringing air/spirit in."

The word expiration means "letting air/spirit leave."

When we fully expire, we culturally "die" and at the same time biologically transform into other pulsating organic attractions. Life-death is another attraction dance of nature: human life-other life.

Does it surprise you that "atmosphere" comes from the ancient word for soul?

The "breathing awareness" in meditations or prayers that we do
seldom includes the secret that it is Earth's/nature's attraction powers that makes them work.

(Continue to the next station)

 What do you find attractive in the Station above?

 


..


Station 4: Disconnect from nature:

......................................................................

For educational and demonstration purposes here, please exhale and then hold your breath for a few moments. Do this now. It is part of a 4-leg contact activity. While holding your breath, read on:

You have stopped breathing and have now disconnected your attraction to the natural system of air and nature in this regard. Notice how a sensation is developing in you, a natural feeling attraction, a consciousness of air, a connective "webstring," a natural attraction strand of the web of life to and from air. This webstring is increasingly communicating with a sensory 4-leg message that increasingly attracts you to breathe again, your inherent hunger for air sensation. (Cohen, 2000).

The desire/attraction for things to connect with atmospheric air has been part of nature for at least 400 million years. That's when scientists find that plants introduced oxygen in air. In addition, the natural attraction for oxygen in water and minerals has been around for over three billion years.  For example, rust is the attraction between iron and oxygen.  Water is the attraction between two hydrogen atoms and oxygen (H20)

Like air itself, our natural attraction for air is of, by and from nature. Scientists did not invent that felt sense attraction, nor did any religious leaders. It is a form of communication that could be considered nature's intelligent attraction language that we inherit and register in our consciousness. That natural sense of "suffocation" is nature feelingly urging you, "attracting you," to reconnect with the atmosphere and the natural world (Cohen, 1995). Do you trust the good intent of this natural attraction feeling and what it is calling you to do? Do you think that it is acting intelligently?

Continue to hold your breath, Don't breathe until you absolutely have to.

(Continue to the next station)

 What do you find attractive in the Station above?

 




Station 5: Nature's dance wants you alive and dancing with it.

......................................................................

Here is a secret of nature: Your sensory desire to breathe is a fundamental natural attraction "love" to be in connection with nature. Your love of air, and it of you, insists that you breathe, even if you choose not to. The 4-leg attraction feeling says "Participate in the natural community that sustains you. Give, share, take and enjoy its physical and sensory gifts (Adler, 1995)."

Even if you faint from lack of air, your natural attraction to air will revive and rejuvenate you by making you breathe again. That is its "choice," nature's loving 4-leg, unifying intelligence and voice, Natural Attraction, in action. That attraction-desire to breathe is a way nature works and communicates. Nature needs and wants you to help sustain the global community so, intelligently, it reconnects you to it, and makes the connection feel attractive to you. It is emotionally rewarding. Nature also does the same thing in different ways for every other member of the web of life.

We and the universe consist of atoms and atoms consist almost entirely of space filled with natural attraction energies. Through natural attraction senses, sensitivities, and sensations, nature feelingly speaks. It communicates its attraction for you to participate in life. You belong and you are it. Every few years all the atoms that are you now return to the environment/nature and new atoms replace them. You are the personification of the dance and flow of billion year old atoms from the Universe.

Another Secret: another very obvious and attractive attribute of air that we usually learn to overlook is that it is through the air that we register color, light, forms, scents, sounds, speech, temperature, sunlight, chemicals, clouds, motion, wind and rain. Air is part of our ability to register all these attractions. Is it any wonder that natural people(s) considered air to be part of spirit and soul?

What do you think your life would be like if air was black and it did not carry sound or scent?

(Go to the next station)

 What do you find attractive in the Station above?

 


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Station 6: Connecting with natural life
feels good.

..............................................................................

Begin to breathe normally again if you have not already done so.

Note that when you reconnect with air by breathing, nature rewards you for staying alive as part of its life. It gives you an attractive, satisfying, enjoyable "4-leg," good feeling, natural sensation. Nature "invented" that attractive, fulfilling sensation (via dopomine, oxyticin, endorphins et al).

Sensation is a form and part of natural communication. Do you think you trust that your good-feeling sensation from inhaling is real and is valid, that it's existence is a fact, just like the existence of air is also a fact?

Through this natural sensation reward, nature expresses its appreciation for your supportive participation. Without using words, the sensation thanks you for reconnecting. It thanks you for your natural gifts of carbon dioxide and water vapor to the global community. They could not survive without this gift from you and others. And you could not survive without their gifts to you. Such attractive, mutually beneficial, cooperative support is an essence of how nature works, from sub-atomics to solar systems, from the Big Bang to this moment.

Do you trust or celebrate this attractive and rewarding feeling of thanks from nature and the ancient life relationship it brings to mind? It is a "4-leg dog" communication and connection with all of life. It is with you and part of you all of your life, your "Other Body." It is real, an empirical fact. Do you think it deserves your respect, your attention, your trust, your gratitude?

It is 4-leg plus 5-leg (9-leg) reasonable for us and the environment to breathe together, to communicate, to cooperatively connect. That attractive, mutually beneficial "love" relationship helps reduce our "unchangeable addictions,"  well as support and sustain our life and all of life. Although we can't see it, we can sense that it is intelligent, right and feels good. It helps explain why air has been called "spirit."

Nature biologically and psychologically created good attractive feelings to contact, connect with, and reward sensuous forms of life for heeding and fulfilling their natural attraction senses (webstrings).

(Continue to the next station)

 What do you find attractive in the Station above?



Station 7: Words are your destiny.

................................................................

The 5-leg words in Section 4, above, on this nature trail asked you to stop breathing. Their literate story message had the power to disconnect you from your natural attraction to nature.

When you sentiently ignored your connection to nature and disconnected, that is, you stopped breathing, you became uncomfortable. Then Nature sensuously 4-leg signaled you that some vital connection was missing. It told you to follow that attraction and fulfill it by finding another attraction, by connecting to air, by breathing. Isn't that a form of intelligence? Doesn't it sensibly make sense (sic). Were you frightened or hurt, or were you thankful for that sense and its reasonable attraction message?

(Continue to the next station)

 What do you find attractive in the Station above?

 



Station 8: Natural sensations and feelings guide you.

...................................................................

By Station 6 it was not this trail's 5-leg words and story that led you to reconnect by breathing. It was a 4-leg natural attraction, your feelingful attraction to breathe that did this. Nature itself, your Other Body, intelligently, feelingly, contacted and guided you in a good way, without using words. It helped you connect to the whole of nature through your breath.

When you sentiently listened to nature's attraction "voice" and reconnected, you felt more satisfied, comfortable, supported and safe.

Naturally and safely feeling good can come from being directly connected to nature through natural attractions (Logan, 1995). The connection is attractive. It is very 9-leg important to keep this in mind. It is a secret of how nature produces its perfection through its non-verbal Natural Attraction "language." Everything is unified in attraction based "communication." Nothing is left out. This explains how nature produces no garbage.

Thinking with 9-legs, in story and sensibility, tells us that connective attraction sensations and feelings are nature's way.  They are an intelligent essence of how nature reaches our consciousness and nurtures our thinking. 

Now think about this: how often do you seek and trust conscious, attractive and fulfilling sensory experiences in nature?

(Continue to the next station)

 What do you find attractive in the Station above?



Station 9: Nature has no words.

..........................................................................

Here's a 5-leg story that we often overlook: The natural world is a non-verbal, non-articulate community. It does not use words to communicate. It does not know itself or its members by a name or label, spelled correctly or not. It is non-literate. Nature almost entirely knows and relates to itself in 4-leg attraction ways. Ask yourself, have you ever seen, or experienced, or even heard of a member of the "more than human natural community" reading, writing or talking in a sensibly literate/articulate way? 

Like all of Nature, the desire to breathe has no inherent 4-leg name, However, we sense that air exists and we feel our attraction to breathe, even though both naturally have no word labels. That's how infants know to breathe when disconnected. That's how natural systems in you, your "inner child" or "inner nature" knows how to breathe, too (Cohen, 1995). It is naturally attracted to do it.

Can you learn to 9-leg trust these words and the breathing experience you just had? Are they attractive? 

Again, when you fulfill your natural attraction for air by breathing, nature, within and about you, without using words, rewards you by giving you good feelings. Isn't that intelligent? Isn't it attractive?

Doesn't air communicate and make sense by creating a reasonable and wise sensation? Do you trust that this is nature's way, nature's unifying intelligence? If so, you can trust thoughtful sensory connections with nature to intelligently help you guide and support your daily life in many ways, for you are part of nature and its supportive gifts to life.

Nature and its attractions can help you validate and take pride in registering and knowing that a dog has four legs, not five. Does it help to know that Abraham Lincoln said: "You will never make me believe a tail is a leg."

(Continue to the next station)

 What do you find attractive in the Station above?

 



Station 10: Nature is multisensory.

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Here is another vital secret of nature that is seldom taught in our society, but it is obvious. As mentioned earlier, from atoms to the solar system and beyond, nature's 4-leg world is held together by attractions, moment by moment, since the beginning of time. If it wasn't, it and its members would fall apart, and they don't. Instead they are attracted to supportively hold to and flow through each other to help support and grow life in balance.

Immediate attractions of and between gravity, color, motion, rocks, temperature, pressure, plants, sub-atomic particles and atmosphere and hundreds more are each strings of the web of life that bind natural systems together into nature's diverse and balanced, homeostatic unity, the former being the roots of the latter.

To help us be conscious of and survive in the web of life, at least 54 of these natural webstring attractions register as distinct senses and feelings in us in moments when we are in their natural area "paradise" and in conscious contact with them.  When our words  say in these moments what we are thinking and feeling, they are a nine leg expression of how nature is working.   

Nature gives us the inborn ability to sense its beauties, purity and ways. No surprise that they register in our consciousness as attractions, for that's exactly what they are, attractive (Cohen, 2000). Our society recognizes this when its says that our national parks contain natural attractions and then protect and preserve our attractive national heritage.

In summary:

In addition to the sense of breathing, of our attraction to air, nature has similarly created and contains at least 53 other distinct, intelligent, natural attraction 4-leg sensitivities (Cohen, 1997b). In the moment, the "Now of life" each of them is like a sensory voice of Nature, a strand of the web of life found in some form throughout the global community (Cohen, 2000). Because the life wisdom in each strand of the web of life is attractive, it produces good feelings in us when we sense the strand and are literate about the experience.  (Cohen, 2003)

As with your desire to breathe, in the Now and in conjunction with natural areas, each of our other natural attractions also feelingly, responsibly communicate with you and guide your relationship with the environment (Bower, 1999).

Nature also does this on some natural attraction level with every other member of the web of life including minerals. Natural Attractions are nature's ongoing language and essence.

In sentient, non-verbal 4-leg ways, in any instant, you may learn to hear nature's sensuous voice, reconnect with nature, enjoy its balancing and healing powers, 5-leg validate its wisdom and sensibly feel 9-leg good. 

The 53 natural senses that help you accomplish this include senses of sight, sound and smell; gravity, reason and temperature; nurturing, community and trust; empathy, belonging and place, thirst, hunger and motion; compassion, touch and taste (Cohen, 1995A). In each moment, each of these senses offers you enjoyable, trustable feeling signals that blend into a common sense when you connect with nature through them. Remember, this includes your connections with human nature, natural attractions working in people, too, for we are each part of the whole of nature. We are all attractive.

(Continue to the next station)

 What do you find attractive in the Station above?

 



Station 11: The wisdom of natural attraction sensations.

.............................................................................

We don't exclusively own our natural attraction webstring senses and sensitivities. Rather, they are a "voice" that we share with every species mineral and energy in each immediate moment of time and space.. They attract the natural community to beneficially flow and dance through us and us through it. This is another secret of nature worth repeating: every five-seven years every atom in our body becomes part of the environment and is replaced by a similar atom from the environment. We become it, it becomes us. That makes Earth like our ongoing life-womb or "our other body."  

Conceived in natural love-attraction, for each split second of our lives, we are each the unique personification of a flowing river of dancing webstring attractions around, through and in us.

Natural Attraction senses wisely balance us personally by balancing themselves and each other. For example, similar to the sense of respiration, our hunger for air (sense #21), the natural attraction sense of thirst knows not only when we need water but just how much water we need. It guides us by turning itself on and off appropriately so we know when to let the global water cycle run through us and when to stop. This is nature's intelligent homeostasis in action. And although we may be thirsty at any given time, without being told verbally, we probably won't drink water that looks bad or has the wrong smell, taste, temperature, color or texture. These additional Natural Attraction senses are not stupid, they are sensible, they "intelligently" modify how we react to our thirst.

The blending of 54 Natural Attraction sensations is the unifying 9-leg wisdom of the senses and natural attraction sensitivities, (note that literacy, consciousness and reason are natural senses, too.)  This blend is nature's "now" whole-life story as told in its 4-leg sensory language to us. It is also told to additional forms of attraction and sensitivity to members of the non-sensuous world, too.

In summary:

Moment by moment, natural attractions in atomic particles, molecules, materials, gases, land, sea and air, and the solar system hold our world together in balance and beauty, Good physical and quantum science evidence suggests and has proved that they have done this since the beginning of time. Our sense of reason recognizes that these natural attractions are real facts of life for if these things were not held together by attractions, they would fall apart and they don't. For this reason, what we call "things" are actually natural attraction relationships manifesting themselves, doing their thing, being and supporting life.  

Nouns and verbs are labels, conceived in the past, for natural attraction in action, since all things consist of natural attraction and/or its energy, in the moment.

Questions about Natural Attraction being the true source of time and the singular essence of the universe have long been raised and answered. 

(Continue to the next station)

 What do you find attractive in the Station above?

 



Station 12: It is your choice.

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We are given the natural ability to reason --it is one of our natural attraction senses (sense #42). It is an attractive thing to do. In each new immediate moment, the sense of reason enables us to rationally choose or not choose to feel good responsibly and intelligently by learning how to heed and consider Nature's voice, our natural attraction senses, our 4-leg contact with authentic nature and its natural systems (To recognize that a tail is not a leg and therefore not punish the tail if it does not help the dog walk or have claws). 

Although this type of "sensory literacy" is rarely taught or applauded in contemporary society and its 5-leg thinking, it is also true that this same "objective" thinking by contemporary society is stupidly polluting and destroying the natural systems that support it and it does not seem able to stop. That is not natural. It is a way to describe a cancer. A cancer insensitively overruns and destroys, rather than cooperatively lives in balance with, its environment. Runaway excessiveness is also a way to describe madness. Do you recognize that it is insane to knowledgeably deteriorate or destroy one's own life support system or planetary, lifelong mother?

(Continue to the next station)

 What do you find attractive in the Station above?

 



Station 13: You belong.

.............................................................

On a personal level, in nature, as demonstrated by breathing, or drinking water, we get good feelings by directly giving and gaining support from the global community. In that community, every member, including yourself, knows that "itself" is very important. In some way, every member is naturally attractive, loved, and included. Everything and everyone belongs and is continually transformed into belonging in contributory ways.

Organic community attraction is how and why nature does not produce garbage.

On a macro level everything in Nature is needed. Nothing natural is thrown away. Again, alive or "dead," each natural being is naturally attractive, wanted, belongs and transforms into other contributory forms of being. That is the reason

  • excessive pollution, abusiveness, violence, loneliness, war, stress and mental illness are virtually unknown in nature.
  • It is why nature has the ability to self-correct, restore and heal.
  • It helps explain why it is reasonable to gain good feelings by becoming fluent in Natural Attraction and thereby consciously reconnect with nature.
  • It is why without effort, our quiet time spent in an attractive natural area often increases our joy, thinking and spirit and has healing and balancing benefits.
  • It is also why some people believe that nature is a good example of unconditional love in action.

The word "organic" often conveys that nature leaves nothing out; everything is attractive, belongs, transforms and is wanted. Nothing is garbage.  Organic Psychology simply helps nature help us transform how we think, feel and relate.

 

In summary:

Reconnecting with Nature by becoming literate in Natural Attraction is a vital, intelligent and responsible way to safely gain fulfillment. By activating multiple natural attraction senses in natural areas into our awareness, the reconnecting process helps our sense of reason rebuild our personal relationships as well as our society, economics, and the environment. It helps our thinking establish a 4-leg communion and partnership with natural systems and their balanced, supportive wisdom around and within us and others. When our thoughts are 9-leg reasonable, we recognize that the nature-connection process is important because how we think and feel is our destiny.

(Continue to the next station)

 What do you find attractive in the Station above?

 


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Station 14: Nature pulls things together.

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Here is another well kept secret of nature: At every level, the global life community is built upon many mutually beneficial but vastly different Natural Attraction callings and relationships. This process is so effective that the greater the creativity, diversity, and differences of each individual community member, the stronger the whole community becomes. Each diverse part of nature knows something special about making life more secure and attractive so, collectively, the web-of-life is an intercommunicating super intelligence, attraction or love, a self-organzing, self-correcting global brain or consciousness. Our inner nature inherits and trusts this natural attraction, cooperative wisdom. It is a seamless connection to it and continuum of it. We are part of it. As it does with air, our inner nature biologically and emotionally enjoys, encourages and operates from the whole of nature.

Our inner self always expects to be loved and supported by natural attractions simply because that is nature's way. That's what it does, how it operates. It is similar to the concept of "nature is paradise" or "Heaven on Earth"

(Continue to the next station)

 What do you find attractive in the Station above?

 


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Station 15: Effects of disconnecting.

.........................................................................

The value of our natural attraction loves and their intelligence is often hidden from our awareness by cultural 5-leg stories that tell us love is not scientific or objective and that we should avoid, disconnect from, or conquer nature, within and around us, (even though we inherently love it via our natural attraction senses). Doing this often gains us money, approval and status but adverse side effects as well. 

The expressed purpose of Science has long been to conquer or exploit Nature, especially for excessive monetary profits.

The economics of consumerism drive and reward us to convert Nature into cultural objects. Even in our Bible God tells humanity to subdue the Earth and dominate it. But is all this excessiveness reasonable considering its destructive effects?  Doesn't it make us into cultural objects, too?

Once again, think about this: We live over 95% of our lives indoors; 99.9% of our thinking consists of nature-disconnected, verbal, not sensory, 5-leg consciousness. We live in stories, in media-directed life instructions of which nature understands not a word.  That disconnection stops the flow of natural systems and de-energizes our awareness of Natural Attractions.  We spend most of our lives in closets that consist of nature-disconnected stories.  Do you think that makes sense for your life? 

In our extremely nature-separated, indoor world many 5-leg stories make it practically taboo to sensuously reconnect with and trust nature. We learn or are socialzed (read: "are brainwashed") instead to knowingly dance to misleading, fragmenting, nature-conquering, labels, stories and acts. (Infants can identify nouns and their meaning at age 6 months, they bond and socialize to them by 3 years of age.) Salaries, high grades and prestige reward us for doing this dance. However, the dance separates us from nature's balance, intelligence and fulfillments. This promotes limited knowledge and many challenging personal, social and environmental disorders.

(Continue to the next station)

 What do you find attractive in the Station above?

 




Station 16: You are in charge of how you feel.

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Just as when you inhaled air, you always have the option to safely feel comfortable by reconnecting with nature through natural attractions. You can do this even when a story within or around you stresses you by telling you to do otherwise.

An important example: once you complete this nature trail, do the first part of it again. When you come to Station 4, you now know that the 5-leg story there, for educational purposes, will tell you not to breathe. You also know that heeding that story will disconnect you from nature and produce uncomfortable 4-leg suffocation feelings. This time, consciously decide to think with nature. Choose not to pay attention to that disconnecting story at Station 4 until it makes sense to you. Seek permission from nature, in and around you, to stop breathing. If you don't obtain its consent, i.e., it does not feel attractive to stop, then don't stop breathing. Instead choose to pay attention to what natural attraction sensation and sensibility tells you, what naturally feels safe, attractive and worthwhile to you as part of the global life community. Be 9-leg responsible by choosing to breathe in connective consent with the Natural Attraction voice of your body and your planetary mother, Earth. To our loss, this fact is often omitted in the rationale for "breath awareness" in meditation. You can chose to include it and thereby strengthen meditation.

Cooperate with nature by sustaining your natural integrity, good feelings and the Earth community. Help your sense of reason heed the 4-leg natural attraction logic of the psyche. This will help your thinking be conscious of, consider and respect the natural truth that a dog has 4-legs, that its tail is not a leg.

In summary:

When we ignore or divert and bind (socialize) our natural nature attractions to artificial substitutes, we lose contact with the natural system voice and intelligence in nature.  That wisdom knows how to sustain and restore our thoughts and feelings in purity and balance with nature's dance as responsible citizens of the global life community, within and around us.

(Continue to the next station)

 What do you find attractive in the Station above?

 



Station 17: Non-verbal learning, relating
and knowing.

...............................................................................

Reminder: The natural world produces its beauty, peace and balance through non-verbal attraction relationships and callings. You can personally learn to choose and reconnect to this sensory form of "higher power". Like taking a deep breath, it fulfills you, relieves stress and helps recovery from social and medical problems. You can easily teach others how to reconnect with it too.

This interpretative nature trail contains only one nature-reconnecting activity. There are an additional 162 published activities you can do and teach at your convenience. Each further 4-leg reconnects you with nature and empowers you to think and relate in responsible 9-leg ways that feel good.

Each activity helps you seek consent, think more reasonably, and make sense in 54 natural sensory awareness, and build friendships in the process (Cohen, 1993). Online, you can take self-help and personal growth courses or obtain BS, MS or Ph.D degrees and scholarships in this process of Educating, Counseling and Healing with Nature (ECHN), You learn how to do ECHN and share it with other people and learn from their experiences, too. This is important because without contact and support, in our nature disconnected society our nature connections often don't have enough energy to remain in our thinking and we revert to destructive ways. The organic psychology of ECHN enables you to you prevent this from happening. It is a science of Natural Attraction Ecology.

As we strengthen our natural attraction senses, they become more alive in our consciousness. We begin to safely think with nature's intelligence, in a way that is more feeling, sensible and sensitive to people and the environment. This helps us be more sensitive to life, to feel and be more alive and make sense of our lives, to increase personal and global well-being. For this reason, many educators, counselors and leaders advocate and use nature-reconnecting activities. It is why every form of education, counseling and recovery works better when it is in contact with attractions in nature. It is why we bring flowers to sick people and why pets increase our wellness.

(Continue to the next station)

 What do you find attractive in the Station above?

 




Station 18: What have you learned here?

........................................................      ......................................

Overview: 

This nature-reconnecting trail is a structured 9-leg educational tool. It attempts to teach you that you inherit from nature at least 54 natural webstring attraction senses and feelings. Like the sense of respiration, they are sensible natural 4-leg communications that non-verbally but responsibly enable you to connect your 5-leg thinking to nature's intelligence because webstrings are an essence of that intelligence. In our nature disconnected way of life this often sounds very strange, foreign or foolish. However, when connected to nature, like breathing, our natural attractions not only feel good, they wisely 9-leg help us sustain and balance our thinking, psyche and spirit, just as they balance the natural world and sustain its wellness. This is significant because our thinking is our destiny.

When we fulfill our natural attractions to breathe clean air, drink pure water and eat uncontaminated food, we enjoy worthwhile, healthy satisfactions. Similarly, safely reconnecting with nature through our many other natural sensory attractions is also fulfilling, healthy and responsible. It is what every other species on Earth does. Natural people(s) do it too. 

ECHN reconnecting is organic. It lets nature help us decompose "compost" and recycle our destructive and polluted ways of thinking and relating. It enables us to transform these disasterus attachments into constructive relationships.

The word "consensus" can mean "to feel with many senses together." Because nature-centered communities think by consensus while in contact with nature, they seldom produce our destructive personal, social and environmental problems. (Bower, 1995)

(Continue to the next station)

 What do you find attractive in the Station above?





Station 19: Something to think about.

........................................................      ......................................

.............................................................................................

Reminder: 

Nature consists of 4-leg, non-verbal, webstring attraction relationships, but we learn to mostly think and communicate in the 5-leg abstract of words and stories. Abstracts are seldom real. They are shortcuts that often subdivide and replace the whole of life. That separation subdivides our thinking from nature's perfections and leads us to produce our many problems.

We have yet to discover or invent a substitute for the perfection of nature's grace, balance and restorative powers.

We need to listen to our natural senses and feelings to discover how nature works. To live and relate more harmoniously it makes sense to reconnect with nature and seek its consent as part of the way we think.

Have you ever noticed that our inherent natural intelligence, loves and values are often lost to nature-conquering images, stories and labels that demean them. For example, in uncomplimentary ways, our natural attraction senses are often called "subjective," "unscientific," "environmentalist," "imagination," "fuzzy thinking," "immature," "crazy" "non-academic," "flaky," "childish," "tree hugging" "unimportant," "spiritual," "foolish" "nostalgia," "fantasy," "unreasonable," "touchy-feely," "drives," "needs,"or "instincts."

Consider this: Isn't our sensory natural attraction to air just as vital and real as air itself? Just as air is a scientific fact, isn't the sensation of our natural love to breathe air an equally scientific fact? Would we have a sense of respiration if air did not exist; isn't one part of the other? Add this knowledge to your breathing activities in meditation and prayer. Isn't it polluted, irresponsible thinking, bad science and limited consciousness to prejudicially value material facts while devaluing sensory facts?

Trust your experiences. You can think, learn and know using more than just verbal language and "five senses." You can learn to think and speak in multisensory, Natural Attraction ways with natural systems in people and places, relate more responsibly, and feel better too. You can read what people who have gone through this process have to say about it. 

(Continue to the next station)

 What do you find attractive in the Station above?






Station 20: No need to stop now

........................................................      ......................................

This trail contains one activity that helps you think and feel with nature.  An additional 160 activities are found in the self-guiding stress management, mood enhancement training books The Hidden Organic Remedy  The Web of Life Imperative, Einstein's World, Reconnecting With Nature and Well Mind, Well Earth. Optional, on-line email courses accompany each of these books along with optional professional or academic independent study credit and distance learning degree programs. A good introduction to the books and courses is the interview with Dr. Michael J. Cohen and the remainder of these WWW pages.

You may safely, anonymously chat and share attractive nature-connecting experiences with others at our workshops and/or by joining our courses. You can request the assistance of a Project NatureConnect guide to share doing the activities with you.

(Continue to the next station)

 What do you find attractive in the Station above?





Station 21: Your conclusion?

........................................................      ......................................

Researchers suggest that nature consists of resonant attraction connections between natural things (Wald, 1985, Langer 1995,). The deteriorating state of Earth and people signals that we and the environment are at risk. Our thinking and feeling is excessively separated from nature within and around us. We must consciously reunite our mind with natural systems and begin to co-create with nature. Doing nature reconnecting activities helps make this happen. They offer an urgently needed service and vast economic benefits.

Interestingly, the word for breathing and sharing spirit together is "conspire." Do you think we should learn how to conspire to support life and our lives on Earth, rather than dance on the deck of our sinking ship?

Moving air in play,
breezes bring wild energy
freeing thoughts and moods.

- Jean Summral


A remedy for our addiction to misleading information

In our excessively nature-disconnected society most everyone is destructively addicted to something that relieves their pain from being disconnected from Nature (Earth/Nature, their Other Body).

The Project NatureConnect remedy for this addiction is the activity, above, in which a person consciously holds their breath to disconnect from their Other Body to explore and experience the results, including the pain. Finally the pain itself intrinsically attracts/drives/motivates the individual to take a few deep Earth-reconnecting breaths. It then becomes self-evident that they are rewarded by the good feelings from this reconnection with their Other Body.  They recognize that this attractive joy can more sensibly and happily replace the rewards they otherwise demand from their addiction because it does not have destructive side effects. In addition, this joy is strengthened by the social and ecological support the individual receives for peacefully improving their lives and their Other Body, Earth’s web-of-life including humanity.

This Webstring activity with natural attraction sense #21 (appetite or hunger for air, water, food) can be effectively done anywhere at any time by the powerful, rich and famous to the poor, sick and homeless. Part of it is already included in most healing and meditative rituals. To our loss, what is missing in them is the Webstring Model Other Body explanation as to what and why the activity works, its whole-life significance and it contribution to personal, social and environmental well being.  Instead the activity is often used to make the individual or group healthier and stronger to help them increase their resilience and more adequately comply with and support the dogma of industrial society and its destructive effects on our
Other Body that we and our living planet hold in common.    
 

(Continue to the next station)

 What do you find attractive in the Station above?


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Station 22: An extra reward.

......................................................      ......................................

You can do this nature-reconnecting activity and build some lasting, rewarding relationships:

Part 1: Go to the most attractive natural plant, animal, mineral or place that you can conveniently find. A "weed," potted plant or aquarium will do if a park or sanctuary is not available. Go to nature in reality, not to a story, artifact, picture, video, visualization, spirit, memory or other likeness of nature. Remember, with respect to nature and its balanced eons of life experience, there is no known substitute for the real thing. Nature itself is the fountainhead of authority about how it works.

Be sure not to get too close to any natural area or thing that may irritate, hurt or be unhealthy for you. In nature, that is not attractive.

Part 2: Find an immediate natural attraction(s) for you at this natural site and for ten minutes get to know them non-verbally. Erase 5-leg labels or other mental chatter that accompanies them or prevent it from occurring by repeating the words "natural attraction" or "unity" as you do this activity. With your eyes closed become aware of it or them through some of your other inherent Natural Attraction callings, senses and feelings, senses such these 30 of the 53:

sight
motion
belonging
beauty
reason
sound
companionship
touch
temperature
place
color
trust
language
empathy
taste
nurturing
reasoning
pleasure
texture
hormonal
compassion
smell
community
peace
appreciation
intuition
respiration
sound
trust
texture
form
gravity
consciousness

Keep the experience nameless and in the present tense so that it remains in Nature's sensory, 4-leg attraction voice.

Then repeat this experience with your eyes open.

 

Part 3: Now translate into 9-leg English from Natural Attraction. In a total of 400 words or less, write in the present tense:

      • a) What happened.
      • b) What you sense, think and feel from doing this activity..

      • c) Why you think the activity led you to feel as you do. 
Send Part 3 to your course member study group along with a note asking people there to share, enjoy and respond to your submission. Ask them to help you by telling you what they found attractive in it, may have learned from it, how it affected them when they read it. You will make 9-leg contact with a group of people who are unified by the connections with nature that they hold in common.

You may also send your paragraphs to anybody else you think might appreciate them. Ask them to respond. Your nature-connected thoughts and feelings may connect you with the natural attractions of others, and vice versa, especially when sent as a letter to a local news editor. This process is a good way to build or strengthen relationships online or in your community and family.

For educational purposes only, we reserve the right to post your entry to our newsletter readers anonymously, or with your name if you so choose.

Save your paper as it may be of use to you in additional coursework. 

If you can see the personal and/or professional benefits of learning to use and teach the process of reconnecting with nature , the best possible way to proceed is by taking a short, online Orientation Course. You can optionally transfer it into your academic or professional training curriculum. You can use it as part of our cooperatively run, low cost, certification or degree programs, too and get a degree in 18 months of this kind of study

Part 4: Another activity. If you want to do more with the written results you obtained on the trail stops, above, do this activity:

1. Read through your notes that you wrote from the green box attractions on the Trail or repeat the trail and this time make attraction notes. Select the most attractive things you found and make a list of them.

2. Obtain consent from a natural are to visit it and learn from it. Instructions for doing this are found in the Global Wellness and Unity activity

3. Once you have gained the area's consent, read one of your attractions and see if you can find an example of this attraction taking place in the natural area you are visiting.

4. If you find that doing this is rewarding, repeat 1-3 using other green box attractions you have written.

5. Note that four additional nature connecting activities that you can do are linked from Global Wellness and Unity activity

* * * * *

 

OTHER CHOICES:

Return to the beginning of this nature trail and do it again. You'll find its just as interesting and worthwhile as the first time. Like the air you may still be overlooking as you read these words, there's lots to learn. The best way to learn, though, is through the Orientation Course. where you learn by doing. It will help you and your course community come into balance by engaging in and enjoying more nine-leg thinking and relating.

The complete history and process of natural attraction ecology, as explored in this online nature trail, is available, free, in the book Educating, Counseling and Healing With Nature by Michael J. Cohen at http://.www.ecopsych.com.ksanity.html or from most bookstores.  

1. Learn more about Natural Attraction. Visit the extensive Organics of Psychology page, the Natural Attractions Principles and Annotated Web Pages

2. Discover if you are eligible for rewarding personal and professional nature-connected training programs. Would you like to become an Earth Avatar

3. Visit the Interview With Michael J. Cohen.

4. Visit a book review of: The Web of Life Imperative, Einstein's World, Reconnecting With Nature or Well Mind, Well Earth.

5. Learn how you can, online, inexpensively obtain an online University Degree or Certification that specializes in learning and teaching the Natural Systems Thinking Process

6. Explore these links and enjoy further information about Organic Psychology and Natural Attraction Ecology:

References

Adler, (1995). Providing the data to protect biodiversity. Science News Vol. 148, No. 21 p. 326 Washington DC, Science Service Inc.

Bower, B. (1995). Return of the group. Science News, Vol. 148, No. 21 p. 328. Washington DC, Science Service Inc.

Bower, B. (1999). Simple Minds, Smart Choices. Science News, Vol. 155, No. 22 p. 348. Washington DC, Science Service Inc.

Cohen, M.J.(2003) The Web of Life Imperative: regenerative ecopsychology techniques that help people think in balance with natural systems. Trafford, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada.

Cohen, M.J.(2000) Nature Connected Psychology: The Natural Systems Thinking Process, GREENWICH JOURNAL OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY VOL 1 NO 1, JUNE 2000, Norfolk Island, Australia, Greenwich University, http://www.ecopsych.com/natpsych.html

Cohen, M.J. (1997) Well Mind, Well Earth: 109 environmentally sensitive activities for stress management, spirit and self-esteem. PO Box 1605, Friday Harbor, WA, Project NatureConnect.

Cohen, M.J. (1997b) Reconnecting With Nature: Finding wellness through restoring your bond with the Earth. (P.O. Box 1605, Friday Harbor WA,) Corvallis, Ecopress.

Cohen, M.J. (1995) Counseling and Nature: The greening of psychotherapy. Interpsych News. Internet, http://www.ecopsych.com/~nature/counseling.html

Langer, W. (1995) Watching a young star eat. Science News, Vol. 148, No. 21 p. 334 Washington DC, Science Service Inc.

Logan, Ron (1995) Healing Ourselves and the World Through Applied Ecopsychology Common Future Magazine, Corvallis Oregon http://www.ecopsych.com/theory.html

Wald, G. (1985) in Cohen, M. J. Proceedings: Is the Earth a Living Organism? Sharon, CT, National Audubon Society


INSTITUTE OF GLOBAL EDUCATION
Special NGO consultant United Nations Economic and Social Council


PROJECT NATURECONNECT
Readily available, online, natural science tools
for the health of person, planet and spirit

P.O. Box 1605, Friday Harbor, WA 98250
360-378-6313 <email> www.ecopsych.com

ORGANIC ADVANCED ECOPSYCHOLOGY IN ACTION
The Natural Systems Thinking Process

Dr. Michael J. Cohen, Director

send email

All programs start with the Orientation Course contained in the book
The Web of Life Imperative.


 


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