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Accredited Nature-Connecting
Holistic Degree Courses On Line: Natural Career Education
Personal and
Professional Whole Life System Alternative Training Grants, Employment,
Jobs and USA Global Citizenship.
FREE
NATURE-CONNECTION BUTTON
for
communicating with nature's ways, in and around us and others.
Empower yourself to think and relate with nature's grace, balance and
peace.
Project NatureConnect
Friday Harbor, San Juan
Island, Washington, USA
Director M. J. Cohen Ph.D.
Organic
Psychology and Natural Attraction Ecology
Practical distance learning to strengthen meditation and happiness
SYNOPSIS:
This page describes a button that strengthens a funded natural sensory science in
action. The latter is an organic psychology tool that helps us improve health
wellness and counseling by enabling our thinking and feeling to safely
tap into the nature's grace, balance and restorative powers.
Participants benefit from and strengthen
their hope and inborn love of nature as part of the great
turning. They master
alternative therapist coaching, stress release management and holistic
spiritual psychology to reduce excessiveness via natural attraction
ecology activities.
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 well being.
- Add
the self-correcting sunlight beauty and
spirit of the natural world to your life, community and meditation.
Visit our Homepage for
complete information
"Change
will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We
are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we
seek."
- Barack Obama
OBTAIN A FREE BUTTON that helps you gain the joy of living in balance.
Increase your ability to think and relate using the
self-correcting powers of natural systems in and around you.
Synopsis:
-The
world, including humanity, is held together in balance and beauty by the whole of life's natural attractions and their
self-correcting ways.
-To our loss, parts of
ourselves and Industrial Society have learned to tear apart important
natural
attractions in and around us. This dismemberment creates stress and
disorders.
-A free button from Project NatureConnect
enables us to help disconnected natural attractions reunite
in and around us. This
increases personal, social and environmental
unity, happiness and well-being.
At no
cost, folks in the USA may obtain the one inch diameter, pin-on button, below,
simply by sending a self-addressed USA-stamped envelope to:
Button Order
Project NatureConnect,
P. O. Box 1605,
Friday Harbor, WA 98250
360-378-6313 nature@interisland.net
Optional:
if you are so inclined, please include a donation to our
Scholarship Fund or to help cover the costs of making the button
available.
Non-USA residents
and others are invited to download the button, below, and print it out
for use in the activities (or send minimum $10 US currency, to cover
postage overseas.)
You can wear the button
and/or use it to help yourself and others benefit from
natural attraction connections in yourself, others and natural
areas.
Here's
the button:
.
.
.
"GreenWave Felt-Sense Thinking"
A Mimbres culture pottery design, circa 800 A.D., New Mexico
Over two
million people who deeply appreciate nature have visited our homepage,
read our publications
or taken our courses. Each of them has become familiar with
the
image on the button. If you wear it, some extraordinary people may feel naturally
attracted to
say hello and share or exchange wonderful nature experiences with you.
Others
may be curious about the meaning of the image and inquire about it. It
can serve you well
as a conversation piece with folks with whom you hold very important natural attractions in common.
Wearing The
Button:
- identifies you as an individual who respects
and seeks peaceful and balanced natural relationships with people,
places and
things.
- helps you attract and build reasonable interactions steeped in
nature's
self-correcting and nurturing ways.
- gives you the opportunity to discover, explain and explore the beautiful, mutually supportive ways
of nature with people who appreciate and seek them.
- help others get a free button if they
want one.
The image on the button, originally in black and white, was found
on a bowl made about 1000 years ago
by a member of the Native American Mimbres culture in southern New
Mexico. This society led a peaceful existence living
in a valley that supported a rich diversity of wildlife. They
relied on balanced gathering, hunting, and some limited farming.
The button's image appears to fill not only the
human body with nature in the form of a bird, but, in the
image, the bird also fills the
human mind.
This begs the question "As members of Industrial Society we live
excessively nature-disconnected lives. What fills our mind
and
influences our thoughts, feelings and psyche?" The button also brings to mind, "If
we value a peaceful, richly diversified, environmentally sound
existence, how can the grace of nature's restorative and purifying
ways enter our psyche and improve the way we think and act?" These
questions are important because our thinking determines how we relate; it is our destiny.
Enjoy
these activities with the Button:
1. Wear the button in public and see if or how people react to it.
Use it and its history as a conversation piece about relating with respect and support to nature in and around us.
2. Visit
a natural area with the button and imagine that the picture on it is of
your head and body. In the natural area locate
immediate
natural attractions there, shapes, sounds, scents, colors, motions,
feelings that you like. Try doing this with your eyes closed, too. Each
time you discover a natural attraction, in your imagination, or your meditation practices, place that
attraction in your mind and body. Also place that attraction as a substitute of the bird on
the pin.
For example, replace the bird with attractions you may find in a leaf,
brook, tree, flower, star, mountain, or the
wind. Or attractions to a sensation like gravity, temperature, nurturing,
trust,
beauty, or place. After 15 minutes, note how you think and feel.
3. Do the activities at
http://www.ecopsych.com/naturepath.html
http://www.ecopsych.com/giftearthday1.html
When you make attractive discoveries about nature while
doing
the activities place those attractions in
your mind, as
described in 2, above, and place them in the person
on the button, too.
Note how you feel as a result of doing this.
4. Whenever you choose to pin the button to
your sleeve, you can look at
it and re-live some of the renewing values and
connections you experienced while doing the nature-connection
activities.
If you are interested in learning and teaching this process in greater depths with
others and personally or professionally
benefiting from the results,
take our Orientation
Course on line.
Reported
Experiences:
"I took the Mimbres pin drawing outside and obtained nature
community consent to sit and learn through nonverbal
attraction connections. With my eyes closed, I pictured the Mimbres
design in my mind. I heard the steady chirp of a cricket. It wasn't
long before I realized that it was singing at the same beat as my
heart. I grabbed my wrist and felt my pulse. Together we had the same
rhythm. It was a very strange feeling. A jay sang one of their joyful
sounding songs.
- I could feel the wind rise and fall.
- I heard the ocean
sound that the wind and rocking treetops create and felt the wind
tingling and caressing my face.
- When I looked at the Mimbres pin design
with the bird, I felt more than human.
- When I replaced the bird with the
swaying tree tops, I felt comforted.
-When I replaced the bird with a falling
oak leaf, I felt sheltered; with a grape leaf, I felt warm.
- When I
replaced the bird with the purple bracelets of a beauty berry bush, I
felt joyful.
- When I place the wind in the design, I feel the energy of
the zig zags in the design.
- When I put the light of long shadows in the
design, I feel whole and grounded."
^^^
I have to share that the Button has caused quite a bit of stir at my office! Very exciting.
I
have been able to talk about the wonderfull training I am immersed in
and the wonderfull things I have learned from the group and how much is
has impacted the direction of my heart and how I have even stronger
hopes and plans for the earth and my responsibility to the greatest
thing of all: this planet and the direction it can go in.
^^^
I wore the
button all week to work and to several evening meetings in my
community. At work I was involved in a week of training called
primary leadership. It is for Dept. of Corrections staff, mostly
those in mid to upper level management positions plus some assistants
and long time clerical workers. Some tried to interweave the birdlike
object with what they called a human being - comparing it with the
ying-yang illusions we've all seen and trying to switch from the white to the
black image. Several, mostly women, compared it to a woman as being the mother of mankind or humankind.
One
man asked if it was from a SW Native American archeological dig!
He thought he recognized the pattern from somewhere, but he couldn't
quite place it. Some tried to explain the colored designs around
the central figures as mazes and trails attempting to reach the goal of
being united as one (mankind and animals).
The button is so
small I didn't think many would notice, but lots did. It got such
varied reactions I think I'll wear it whenever I'm entering any new
group.
^^^
I took button to the city park this morning while I was
out running errands. It was fairly early and there were not many
people around yet. It is getting easier for me to gain consent -
almost a natural thing now. Experiencing the natural attractions
with my
eyes closed is also becoming easier. I felt numerous
natural attractions vying for my attention and I enlisted their
assistance in letting me experience them one at a time. It wasn't
easy at first, but as I relaxed, they seemed to understand my need and
gently connected with me. It had been raining the day or so
before and the moist, earthy, rich dirt and grass scents overwhelmed by
nostrils and olfactory nerve endings. I could sense and feel it
all at the same time!
After I'd spent a few minutes recognizing some of my new friends I tired envisioning one and then another in place of the bird
in
the Mimbres button design. I could add temperature, nurturing and
beauty, but my concentration was broken when I tried to add gravity and
trust. I tried again, thinking I shouldn't force myself or the
connections. Instead of replacing the bird, I ended up replacing
the person in the design. I'm not sure why. I let it go and
noticed an older Mexican lady observing me from next to a tree.
She asked, in broken English with my broken Spanish, what I was doing
and commented that I looked relaxed and free here. I showed her
the
design. Her face lit up, and she said she was pleased, "I
would like such a picture." I could not explain the total
activity, but she seemed to understand that the bird and person were
one being - in one body was how I understood her to be saying. I
think I made a friend and will look for her again in the park.
^^^
Walking on a sunny afternoon, I was led to a path in
the new park. My desire was to complete the summary
exercise although I hadn't completely read it or
understood the directions.
Cold air, warm sun. I felt a bit discouraged at the
view: a meager amount of trees sandwiched in between
new homes everywhere: this was called a park. I felt
inspired by the ability of nature to survive in the
spots we give it. This leftover space between the more
important homes; the potted plants on my kitchen
windowsill, plants growing out of crevices in really
big rocks. I wondered how it could work to plant herbs
and flowers along the path, who would give this
endeavor priority? I felt again a strong pull to
return to a job related to our natural environment.
Almost near the end of the path, I looked across a
thin stand of trees and saw a deer. I paused and asked
permission to be with the deer. I felt acknowledged by
the deer's continue presence and gave thanks. I felt
sad that there was such little space left between the
homes, for the deer to have a home.
Without thinking, I picked up one foot and paused
midair. The deer picked up a front leg and paused
midair, just like me! We both stood, a foot paused in
mid-air. Then I put my foot down, and so did the deer.
I didn't need to imagine, or visualize how the deer
and I were alike and connected. I moved with the deer,
as it moved with me. I was looking at myself.
When I got home, and read the instructions about using
the button, I noticed that my experience this afternoon was
perfect. Rather than consciously visualizing my attractions
to fit the motif of the Mimbres drawing, it just happened
that way. I moved with the deer, we were mirror images of
each other. Earth spoke, consciously answered my intention
to complete the exercise and showed me how wonderful
it is to be with nature, how nature and I are one.
So far one person asked me about the button, "What is
that," she said? "May I have your reaction first?" I
asked. She said, "Is it a bird, or a woman, or a bird?"
It ís both I said, its about our connection to nature.
I felt she got it. The person said, "I really do like
these
things, even though people think I don't." I thought it was
interesting that she mentioned what other people perceive of her nature
connection.
I am going to continue to the wear the button for some
more responses.
I feel like this experience overall has validated my
understanding of how I relate to nature, and also give
me new experiences to enjoy. The validation has given
credibility to my experience, validation I haven't
received anywhere else in the world. I feel some
things have changed about me, with regard to
expectations (world stories) in a way so that I feel
like remaining influences of what they say have been
replaced with the wonder I get from sensing and
feeling. Doubt has taken on a new and fairly limited
place in my life. And I noticed that my own internal
clocks are working beautifully, I feel even more in
the flowî than I ever have before.
^^^
Today
instead of riding, my horse and I decided to just take a long walk with
it alongside each other. I pinned the button on my
shirt.
This became a very powerful experience for me because that button kept
drawing my attention to it ever since I got it several weeks ago.
It was a relief to be able to interact with it.
As we
walked, I was aware of the expansiveness of the fields and the
sky above us....dogs barking....crows calling to one
another...all the beautiful wildflowers swaying among the tall
grasses....the smells of the rich earth....the damp, cool
air....the pressure of
my horse's head leaning on my shoulder as
we watched the other horses playing in their fields....the warmth
of her breath caressing my ear and cheek as she softly blew
through her nostrils....
I held the button close to my
heart....each time I closed my eyes I could see it clearly on the
screen of my mind....each time tears flowed....I found myself clutching
it as though someone was about to tear it away....not the button so
much as what it represented....I
realized how important all this
had become to me.... and I held that button because it was
sacred....because it represents to me all that is sacred.
Now
that I am at home the button has become a powerful 'trigger'. As I hold
it and close my eyes, I can almost smell the fresh air in the
fields. Best of all, I can still feel those wonderful feelings I felt
when I was close to my horse.
^^^
When I
did the button activity I had a few comments on the pin. When I
asked people what is in their heads they all responded with having to
do a daily task. Only one person was thinking of anything remotely
connected with nature, and that person wished to have snow for
snowboarding.
The most interesting responses came from
children who were quite impressed with the "birdhead." A friend's
daughter said she thought it looked "like a bird turning into a person
or a person turning into a bird." I explained that it came from a
person who lived everyday with animals and in nature and she was very
impressed and said wished she could live that way, too. The adults,
however, who aren't already nature oriented, offered mostly "Oh" and
didn't seem impressed or changed by the meaning or explanation I
offered.
In participating in this course I've felt a return to
wholeness. I feel my activities to be more complete I am aware of
the natural attraction webstring connections (web of life natural attractions) working in everything I
do. My actions and speech have more purpose as I incorporate this
awareness daily. I can use them in nature, as well as in the classroom.
I am attracted to the vibratory life in others and this has affected my
social interactions. I'm drawn to conversation that makes my webstrings
vibrate in a positive way.
My uncomfortable attractions have,
indeed, caused me to seek other webstrings that are attractive. In this
I've found greater depth in my relationships with people and nature.
Things I have sensed now have a new-brain explanation, and this
contributes to this feeling of wholeness.
The button helped me recognize that I honor the roots of human meaning
as
grounded in the same order that’s perceived in nature. I am as much
a part of nature as nature is of me. I interact with the soil, the air,
the climate, the animals, the plants etc., of where I live. I am
grateful for nature’s support that helps create a sustainable
environment of which I live. My heart houses my soul, my spirit,
senses/feelings, emotions, and passions, that motivate me to speak to
understand/know resides in the body of my heart. By respecting sacred
space and understand the validity of each life-form’s right to life . .
. mine is honored.
I love the sweetness each day brings. I open
my heart and connect to the well-spring of natural attraction love every day. How could I
not . . . it is all and everything. Natural love emanates throughout all space,
all conditions, and all things. Love is an ever-present omnipresent,
pervading all things. Letting earth teach is a reservoir of good and
cannot be invaded by any condition of the negative whatsoever. When we
think of this energy, the pristine purity stands there for all time and
the instant we think of the great vibrating, pulsating sense we become
aware of it right within ourselves. We only need to tune into it and
become one with it.
I am a person who understands truth is my
protection and my spiritual, physical, mental, and emotional healings
are understood through life’s experiences. I am strong and this alone
will give me all I need at this time. Disconnected from nature I'd feel well-drained instead of
well-being. This button activity enhances myself worth by remembering my personal
medicine and how to be my full potential."
^^^
When I first pulled out my
button Franke and I sat and looked at it for quite
awhile. I kept saying to myself what is this saying to
me. I finally decided that for me it was saying
that the oneness of man/nature is encircled by and connected
to the webstrings of life. Then I went out to the
bottom part of my garden. I sat down on a wet moss covered
log. At first I found myself thinking nothing is attracting
me here. Then I took a deep breath, asked permission to be
there and learn. Then I smelled mustiness and looked down at
the decaying alder leaves on the ground. Not much to look at,
a pleasant smell and an example of life feeding life. Then I
closed my eyes. The frogs are singing! It's
breeding season. I love the music of the frogs.
Sometimes they get so loud its like listening to a symphony.
We had a dance one year at the community hall. I went outside and the
frogs were louder than the rock band and its
amplifiers!
I could feel the springy moss under my butt. Both were wet! Everything was still. No
wind. No breeze blowing on me. Just slightly cool
air. It felt milder today but still cool air on my
cheeks. I could hear some sheep baaing in the
distance. Mothers and lambs calling back and forth.
I opened my eyes and saw swamp grass -the bain of every gardeners
existence. So I chose to look at it as beautiful. It is so
strong, such a survivor. Even the goats don't eat
it. It also shows where it is wet! Then I needed to
pee. Another connection with nature. So I did and
thanked a leaf for its help. Then I saw some moss growing up
a tree. Usually when I see moss it's a blanket of
moss. Here it was sending out the leading shoots up the
tree. So not only the individual leaves were lacey but the
shoots going up the tree also created a lacey pattern. I
tried to put all these wonderful things into the button picture. But
they didn't fit. So I expanded the button in my mind so that it
encircled us all. and we were all within the circle of the
webstrings and connected to the web of life. Then I realised I had
gotten quite chilled and went inside. But I can still sense being
encircled by the webstrings of life.
I am putting
in my memory that the web of life is with me each moment of the
day. I can see it and be in it and use the connections in all
the things I do each day. It is becoming a practise not just
practise.
^^^
I went out to my back yard with he
button and asked the lilac bush, which is now in bloom, if I could sit
next to it. I received the answer that it indeed would like my company.
As I sat I admired the new blossoms of lavender framed by the green
leaves and I thanked it for letting me share its beautiful flowers. When
I closed my eyes I could smell the lilac perfume, not strong but
lightly. It exuded a feeling of serenity which in turn helped me to
become serene after my hectic day at work. The wind rustled through the
bush making soothing music to my ears which also gave me a feeling of
peace. Among its branches a small brown spider was sitting on its web.
I sensed a little anxiety from the spider as it was worried about my
presence. I reassured the spider that I was only there to connect to
nature and not to bother or harm it. I felt that it understood and once
more it felt like unity. I think had I not been able to reassure the
spider that I would have left for a different spot but now it was ok to
stay there.
Clouds were in the sky and it looked as though it
might rain. It brought a dusk-like atmosphere to my surroundings. The
birds were also singing and chattering and winding up their day
looking for a roost for the night. I was thinking about the picture on
the pin and what each of these webstrings would look like in place of
the bird. At first it was hard, but it got easier when I closed my eyes
as I could see in my minds eye rather than be distracted by the view. I
shall list them:
1. Lilac blossoms - for natures beauty
2. Leaves - as leaves take in sunlight- to remind me to be as a leaf and take in nature's offerings.
3.
Lilac Fragrance - To remind me of the importance of my breath to nature
and nature's air to me. (I am not sure how that picture would
look.)
4. Wind - to stay refreshed in nature's ways
5. Spider - To be aware of all the webstrings that connect me to nature and it to me
6. Clouds - That as clouds bring rain, nature can renew me
7. Birds - That being aware of nature's attractions and webstrings can help me soar to new heights of awareness.
I
was truly amazed with how many things that I could picture as being in
the place of the bird. It definitely made me feel very grateful to have
taken this course. I wish I were a graphic artist as all of these
things would make a great composite picture to describe my learning
process and the new way I feel about myself. I sat there a while longer
and thanked the bush and the spider for sharing the time with me and
helping me with my project.
^^^
I think the quote that helped me
in the reading as I did this Mimbres button activity was, "Deep within us we have the
inherent biological ability to creatively think and relate with the
natural balance and beauty of webstrings." I believe we see that in
children before it is choked out of them by sitting in classrooms all
day. Children always see wonder and beauty in nature that we as adults
seem to zone out. We treat the "wonder and beauty" at the discovery of
nature as something we grow out of as we grow up. It is sad to think
that we walk this earth in such ignorance of the wonder around us.
Nature is a part of me that has always been there, the Ying/Yang.
All
parts of nature can serve as a reconnection point as the stresses in
life happen, fragrance, a bird, a flower, etc. Our connection to nature
can help bring us into balance with the earth.
I wouldn't like
to lose this connection with nature. It truly has brought a change in
my life and the way I think about myself and my responses to the world
around me. Placing my natural attractions to substitute for the bird has definitely enhanced how I feel about myself
and my ability to interact with nature. It has connected me even more
strongly to nature as I did not know what I was experiencing or how to
enhance it until I took this course.
The Mimbres Pottery
Design button helped me visualize the ways nature was important to
me. How the connectedness might look in picture form. It was very
helpful to visualize each part of nature that attracted me in the
activity.
^^^
One
reason I live at 6000 ft is my non-attraction to hot weather, clear
sunny, stunning blue skies somewhere around 300 days a year,
rarely over 85, rarely under 0; nearly perfect for this
body/heart/mind, but 95+ at over a mile high is hot! After
today's "session" I realize the value of this heat; it pushes me into
the water; Clever, this earth! Here at Juni Creek I know there is
a place to sit, but do not know where that might be. I begin to
walk up the middle of the easy flowing creek, not long ago a
swollen torrent, remembering how exploring pool to pool in the
chilly water on a hot summer day still ranks with my most enjoyable days.
Looking
upstream I see my sitting place, a small hole, 18 feet
across at full flow, and now a mere 6 feet across.
Cottonwoods canopy the rocks and other stream beings; the place I've
come to sit, an easy chair size boulder at the pools edge.
Easy chair not only in size, but also shape, the dance of time and
water have sculpted this stone into a fine place for sitting.
With a little imagination, this stone seat could easily furnish the
home of the "Flintstones." A recliner, with big deep arm rests
and just the perfect height that my feet dangle in this cold
mountain stream. Ahhhh!!! This is where I was meant to
be! Who else might have sat here? Other humans? Perhaps. A
human sized gnome king? I hope so! The temperature experiment:
feet, dangling - cold; back pressed to stone throne - hot; in
between - well, in between.
In the button experiment, the stone chair becomes
the button center - present, rugged, enduring, truth in silence, truth
in silence, truth in silence! The old cottonwood becomes center -
standing leafless, now a snag, 100 years to detritus. Exposed roots in
its undercut bank - dark, tangled, gnarled roots shift to button
center - mysterious, penetrating, anchored in the nourishment of
darkness; fearlessness evoking fear. Butterflies take the button -
light, free, flitting, alluring fragility. Towering thunderheads
seize the button - evolving, expanding, silent
power, invisibly holding Thor's charged electric hammer. I close
my eyes and everything deepens. Far in the distance an
ancient chorus sings through Juni Creek, no words, just sound,
drawing me deeper, deeper, somewhere???
Continued:
Act
now.
Master
Organic Psychology by doing it.
Explore it from our homepage
Read
Additional Student Reports
Contact us at
360-378-6313 <email>
Achieve
a Degree or
Certificate to
strengthen your professional interests, or your hobbies or pastimes, by
connecting them with nature. Implement your strongest hopes as you
increase personal and global well being.
Topics,
subjects or leisure pursuits can include those listed below or other
areas of interest: |
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"Human
behavior is rooted most deeply in nature's intentions and desire. The
rhythms of nature underlie all of human interaction: religious
traditions, economic systems, cultural and political organization. When
these human forms betray the natural psychic pulse, people and
societies get sick, nature is exploited and entire species are
threatened."
-Stephen
Aizenstat
In
industrial society our excessively nature-separated lives mold us to
betray the natural psychic pulse. We learn to block from our thinking
over 98 percent of the wise sensory callings and fulfillments we
normally share with natural systems and their eons of experience. Our
subconscious hurt and frustration from the severed disconnection of
these senses underlies our greatest troubles.
-Michael
J. Cohen
..................................
Benefit
from learning to enhance the natural psychic pulse within and around
us. Add the sensory ecoscience of Organic Psychology to
your life and livelihood.
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"Scientific
research is based on the idea that everything that takes place is
determined by laws of nature, and therefore this holds for the action
of people."
.
"Truth
is what stands the
test of experience."
-
Albert Einstein
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