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Blog: Thinking and Feeling With Nature and Earth. This blog offers you an interactive ecopsychology component for well-being that brings nature's restorative powers to the Internet You may proceed to the Blog now, or first consider its context here by continuing on this introductory page. If you read this page, you can skip the Welcome page on the blog as it is identical. |
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TOPIC:The Opportunity of Applied Ecopsychology
Thinking and Feeling With Nature and Earth Organic Psychology and the Natural Systems Thinking Process in Action.
NOTE: The anonymous posts on this Blog, painstakingly edited for accuracy by Michael J. Cohen, recount the backyard, garden or backcountry nature experiences of a wide range of people who emailed them to their online Organic Psychology training course classmates. To read the posts, select topics of interest in the left column under Recent Posts and Categories
Introduction The journal entry quote that appears below is valid and unadulterated evidence for your consideration. It comes directly from the field journal of a person who experienced, first-hand, the events described in the quote. The quote:
Although the journal entry goes against our cultural bias to discredit, exploit or conquer nature (including its natural systems and their intelligence around and within us) the entry conclusively demonstrates how sensuously tapping into natural systems helps the writer reduce his or her sleep disorder. The posts on this blog consist of many similar journal entries from young and old in all walks of life. Significantly, this blog guarantees we can substitute for the writer's sleep disorder any other dysfunction, trouble, disorder, conflict, stress, syndrome or dependency, and, by using any one or more of 130 organic psychology activities, we will produce and enjoy similar, lasting, beneficial effects. On these blog pages, the postings demonstrate that organic psychology activities are tools that help us tap into the grace and restorative powers of natural systems within and about us. They show that this process provides us with potent, cost-free antidotes for many troubles. To our loss and to our cost, these antidotes are missing in our excessively nature-separated lives. Our contemporary consciousness is presently not thoughtful or aware enough to invoke organic psychology into every facet of our existence. This is because, with respect to nature, contemporary thinking is historically be-wildered, meaning: "estranged from wilderness values." Organic Psychology Education helps us address our nature-disconnected consciousness because, being organic, it works with nature, not against it. Haven't we been taught, or aren't we living, the great lie? The lie says we can't increase our well-being and enjoy a greater level of happiness by learning how to connect our thinking and senses to nature. This blog helps us discover and trust strong confirmations from first-hand experiences. The phenomenological evidence it presents conclusively demonstrates the great lie is definitely a lie. Nature-connected thinking does improve our health, spirit and relationships. "Things go better with nature." In addition, this blog offers us the means to learn, enjoy and teach how to connect our mind with the beauty of nature's grace, balance and regenerative powers. This Applied Ecopsychology training can lead to a hobby, job or career in Organic Psychology or nature-connected counseling and education. We can beneficially add this skill to any aspect of our lifes. This blog is interactive. We invite you to respond or add to the experiences it reports. NOTE: All posts are reached through their titles that are listed in the left column; no new posts will appear below this one.
The entries on this blog are by and for people who recognize that the hurtful results from slicing things apart also occur when we slice our thinking from our biological-psychological-spiritual home in nature.
Destructive separation: our loss of integrity Do you recognize that our excessively nature-separated lives hurtfully slice our mind, heart and spirit from our "ball," from our living planet, Earth, and that we suffer accordingly? Our slicing helps explain why, with respect to natural systems around and within us, our thinking is seldom "on the ball;" why the way we think produces most of our great personal, social and environmental dysfunctions. Be alarmed. On average, our psyche is out of conscious contact with nature's life-supportive grace, balance and restorative powers for 99 percent of our lifetime. Although our mind is part of nature, we spend, on average, over 95 percent of our time indoors. We live closeted and estranged from nature. Our nature-separated lives disconnect our mentality from the intelligent ability of natural systems, within and about us, to cooperatively produce unpolluted optimums of life, sanity, diversity and peace, as they do on a planetary level and with practically all species. Results from our dis-integration Our normal, but immense and continually repeated, disconnection from nature builds a bad habit in our thinking. Our mentality becomes conditioned or programmed to remain consciously separated from nature's sensory wisdom. This is true even when we are thinking about other things while in natural areas, even when we become aware that nature's loss in our thinking is destructive, even when we know that our mental omission of nature is unreasonable. We are at a point where most people believe the big lie. They don't think it is even possible to genuinely and beneficially connect our thinking with nature. That idea is considered "fuzzy thinking." However, this blog unquestionably demonstrates that the connection can be made and that it provides us with important benefits. Can you remember a good experience you have had in nature, -with a flower, a pet or the beach- and how it felt? The Natural Systems Thinking Process (NSTP) is an organic psychology tool, a sensory science whose activities help us authentically reconnect our psyche with the grace and balance of nature's perfection. It gives us an antidote to many of our troubles. It connects us with the greater whole of life and its renewing powers so that we can apply them to ourselves and our society Nine-leg thinking and relating: an essence of happiness To understand how NSTP and this blog work, consider the following intelligence test question. It is a type of question whose answer ordinarily helps society determine our mathematical aptitude and qualify us for a better job, more respect or a higher salary:
"Five," of course, is the correct answer on a math examination if you want to pass, get ahead and receive an increase in salary or prestige. Intelligent people say "five" because it is valid in mathematical systems and contemporary thinking, and "that's where the money is." Math is highly regarded and rewarded by our society. It is a core of scientific method, an excellent means to identify truth. However, "A dog has four legs" is neither incorrect nor a lie; it is the right answer if you trust your sensory experiences, and your ability to count, with regard to a real dog. A tail is not a leg. Yet, in too many ways, the truth eminating from this way that we naturally think and feel is not honored or rewarded in our nature-exploitive society. We have a choice. We don't have to solely live our lives or think in stories, in mathematical systems and their 5-leg thinking and relating limits. Our natural sense of reason can consider what we know from our actual contact with a real, normal dog, too. That's when our multitude of 53 natural senses come into play: senses of sight, touch, motion, color, texture, language, sound, smell, consciousness, community, trust, contrast, reason and love. Our many senses together signal that no matter what some authority, story or philosophy logic, like mathematics, might say, our natural self registers and knows that a tail is not a leg; that a dog has four legs, not five. That truth is a whole-life story, not just a separated part of reality. Each of our natural senses is a logical and sensible means to experience natural attractions in the world and the good feelings they produce. Our inherent multitude of natural senses provides us with enhanced information. Each of them helps our sense of reason make more sense, to be more sensible so we may enjoy the value of making more informed decisions. Conclusion: Genuine contact with a real dog informs us it has four legs, not five, no matter what is correct in the "as if" world of mathematical "5-leg" thinking and other theoretical or abstract ways of knowing.
To our great loss, due to our extremely nature-separated lives, natural "4-leg" information that comes from genuine multi-sensory contact with nature and life is habitually omitted from the way we normally think. Remember, 99 percent of our daily thinking is out of conscious sensory contact with nature's eons of knowledge, balance and restorative ways and benefits. "Nine-leg" whole thinking and relating is more honest and truthful. It consists of making whole-sense by thoughtfully blending authentic, pure, nature-connected sensory information with our often ingrained and culturally biased, abstract story way of knowing. It helps us come into balance with the totality of life on Earth and the eons. Whole, nature-connected thinking enables us to benefit from the often omitted, life-supportive grace, balance and restorative powers of natural systems within and around us. This improves the ability of our thinking to sustain our health and guide us in more sensible ways. It helps us make more sense of our lives. This blog offers unique value. It helps us counteract the overwhelming majority of our socialization that binds us to inaccurate 5-leg stories and removes us from 4-leg information from nature's creative intelligence.
How this blog works: Remember, natural systems exist around and within us. This blog shares the journaled thoughts, feelings and experiences people have had while doing whole-thinking nature-connecting activities with attractions in natural systems, within and around them. The ecopsychology activities enable us to obtain sensory information from nature that we may add to our cultural stories. In this way we gain the ability to think and relate in more balanced ways. Whole, nine-leg thinking helps us come to our senses and into more supportive and friendly relationships with the environment, individuals and society. Note that from sub-atomic particles to weather systems, nature is held together and produces its non-polluting grace and perfection through binding natural attractions and sensitivities (4-leg), not through our abstract-theoretical story way of knowing (5-leg). However, it is the latter, in isolation from nature, that our thinking uses to manage natural systems globally and within ourselves. It is the limits of this way of thinking that produce our greatest troubles. Because we are conditioned to think and believe in nature-disconnected ways we often see and relate to the world incorrectly, as if it is a dog with five legs. This blog, like nature, is based on consciously connecting with natural attractions. We will add to this blog new, journaled, anonymous experiences of our online students who have made a sensory connection with an attraction in natural systems around or within them, backyard to backcountry. We invite you to visit these posts and react to them by selecting them, by topic, from the left column in the recent posts and archives In the comments or email section of this blog, you are welcome to add to the posted experience, your thoughts, feelings and experiences with attractions you have found in their posting, and/or with attractions in natural systems in places and people familiar to you. To enjoy the greatest benefit
and understanding from this blog, please read the essay at The Organics
of Psychology and the Web of Life The best way to become proficient in obtaining and promoting the rewards of whole life thinking is to take the 'free' online Orientation Course Psychological Elements of Global Citizenship. If you are interested in a job, career, training, courses or a degree in the whole life thinking and relating used in Organic Psychology, visit our Homepage and follow links there. All programs, grants and scholarships start with the Psychological Elements of Global Citizenship Orientation Course. This course has proven so effective that it is a quick, legal and powerful way to dramatically increase the well-being of individuals, society and the environment. An excellent, money-saving goal is for us to petition the Congress, the U.S. Department of Education and other agencies to insist that every high school and college student be required to take and then teach this Course. Schools that refuse would be ineligible for government/taxpayer funding. The Department imposes this strict policy now for the required 24,000 hours of 5-leg, half-truth, K-12 and college courses in our developmental years that have brought us to the crises we face today. To be fair and increase balance, the Department should immediately make this same requirement include 9-leg courses that empower us to repair the damage we have inflicted on the natural systems in ourselves and places. Thanks for visiting the posts in the left column, and for adding your natural attractions in the Comments Section to make this blog more attractive. The links I have posted, above, will answer most of your questions. If you don't find answers there or on our web site, feel free to email or call me. Owls and Howls, Mike Cohen Dr. Cohen can be contacted at 360-378-6313, email http://www.ecopsych.com/mjcohen.html
You may proceed to the Blog now Reminder: if you have read this page, you can skip the Welcome page on the blog as it is identical to this one.
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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 spiritP.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
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