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How
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YOUR NATURAL
SYSTEMS LEGACY: Identify and benefit from fifty-three natural
senses (Webstrings) you have learned to forget to remember.
From Reconnecting
With Nature and The Web of
Life Imperative
by Michael J. Cohen, Ed.D.
Between the years of 1961-1978,
researcher Guy Murchie made an exhaustive inquiry. He painstakingly
scrutinized scientific studies about natural senses, studies
that appeared in many
hundreds of books and periodicals during those 17 years. In 1986
he told me that scientific methodology and research had identified
over eighty different biological senses/sensitivities which pervade
the natural world. He said he additionally verified this through
authorities at the Harvard Biological Laboratories. All these
senses, he said, he clumped together as 31 senses for literary
convenience in his book The Seven Mysteries of Life published
by Houghton Mifflin in 1978. Murchie's dedicated efforts deserve
our applause, thanks and confidence.
From Murchie's original collection,
I identified 53 natural senses that I and my students had experienced
during my 26 years living and teaching outdoors. I have listed
them below. Each is a string in the web of life, a webstring
that helps to hold the world together, including people, through
attraction communication.
There are, of course, many
additional sensitivities found in nature that humans do not register.
Although Ames, Gesell, Pearce,
Rivlin, Gravelle, Samuels, Sheppard, Sheldrake, Spelke, LePoncin,
Wynn and many scores of other researchers
have, since then, further validated our multisensory nature,
the full significance of it has yet to be recognized by contemporary
society. Our prejudicial addiction to our nature-separated lives
and thinking keeps webstring natural
senses and their value hidden from our immediate awareness; for
this reason they and we are frustrated with unfulfillment.
Our economy fuels itself by
keeping our webstrings discontent, further irritating them through
advertising and then selling us products that satisfy the irritation.
However, when unadulterated, our
natural webstring senses are an essence of nature in action.
Each of them attracts us to the whole of the natural webstring
world and its ways and this includes the natural systems in ourselves
and other people.
As our society encourages our
new brain to conquer nature and the natural, we learn to conquer
and subdue our natural senses. Our 5-leg
nature disconnected sense of reason exalts the few senses that
our stories use to  take over our other senses and the natural world.
We exploit and demean the remaining 45 natural senses that 4-leg tell us about how the natural
world works its perfection and enable us to participate in the
process.
Overwhelmed and numbed, our
webstring senses are a vast missing part of a responsible story
about Earth, ourselves, community and about how and when to act
where. Without webstrings registering in consciousness we are
"half vast." As Carl Jung and others have noted, our
abstract thinking is no more reasonable or discriminating, logical
and consistent than are our feelings.
Nature has taught me that our
abstract 5-leg thinking in conjunction with conscious sensory
4-leg contact with attractions in natural areas can be the 9-leg
way we learn to put our natural senses into culturally reasonable
words. Our challenge is recognize that the excessively nature
separated parts of ourselves and our culture are unreasonable.
We desperately need to think
with nature's wise ability to maintain and restore life, without
producing our problems. That wisdom stops our society's destructive
actions against ourselves others and the environment.
The absence of more than 45
webstrings from our consciousness is the mother of our collective
madness, our runaway wars, pollution, dysfunction, disease, mental
illness,  apathy, abusiveness and violence. Without these webstrings,
our consciousness abandons our natural sensory inner child, and
the inner child in other people and species. It disintegrates
the creative passions that normally bring about community, balance
and positive change peacefully. Anybody can choose to help reverse
this destructive situation by choosing to learn and teach how,
via the Web of Life Imperative, to
reconnect with webstrings and nature.
I offer the following list of 53 natural senses with this important
reminder: Each sense is a distinct 4-leg webstring attraction
that in nature has no name for itself, for nature does not use
names. Each webstring can awaken many natural parts of us when
we use it to connect with the natural world in the environment
and people. That touchy-feely, hands-on, connecting experience,
not this list, catalyzes personal wisdom, growth and balance.
This list only provides information in 5-leg language. It brings
it on our screen of consciousness and feeds and guides our senses
of reason and language, our story way of knowing. However, without
passion (apathy), 5-leg reason and language are ineffective when
it comes to enjoying responsible behavior, growth and change.
For example, even though cigarette labels and research show cigarettes
to be harmful, many people smoke them. Reason and language are
only 4% of our inherent means to know and love nature, life and
each other. 51 other 4-leg sense groups complete the process.
Without them awake and well in our consciousness, we experience
apathy, we don't participate and our problems continue.
Nature centered 9-leg thinking uses the list of senses, below,
in conjunction with visiting natural areas and with exposing
our indoor conditioning to the many natural senses awakened in
nature. To do this is reasonable, for after we experience
a sense, knowing and speaking its right name places that sensation
in our new brain consciousness. There we can think with it. This
process non-verbally connects, rejuvenates and educates us. It
extends us to safely reach into the natural world in order to
more fully sense and make sense of our lives and all of life.
It works because once we experience that process and wisdom,
we own it. We never fully return to our former way of knowing.
The Fifty Three Natural Webstring Senses and Sensitivities
The Radiation Senses
1. Sense of light and sight,
including polarized light.
2. Sense of seeing without eyes such as heliotropism or the sun
sense of plants.
3. Sense of color.
4. Sense of moods and identities attached to colors.
5. Sense of awareness of one's own visibility or invisibility
and consequent camouflaging.
6. Sensitivity to radiation other than visible light including
radio waves, X rays, etc.
7. Sense of Temperature and temperature change.
8. Sense of season including ability to insulate, hibernate and
winter sleep.
9. Electromagnetic sense and polarity which includes the ability
to generate current (as in the nervous system and brain waves)
or other energies.
The Feeling Senses
10. Hearing including resonance,
vibrations, sonar and ultrasonic frequencies.
11. Awareness of pressure, particularly underground, underwater,
and to wind and air.
12. Sensitivity to gravity.
13. The sense of excretion for waste elimination and protection
from enemies.
14. Feel, particularly touch on the skin.
15. Sense of weight, gravity and balance.
16. Space or proximity sense.
17. Coriolus sense or awareness of effects of the rotation of
the Earth.
18. Sense of motion. Body movement sensations and sense of mobility.
The Chemical Senses
19. Smell with and beyond the
nose.
20. Taste with and beyond the tongue.
21. Appetite or hunger for food, water and air.
22. Hunting, killing or food obtaining urges.
23. Humidity sense including thirst, evaporation control and
the acumen to find water or evade a flood.
24. Hormonal sense, as to pheromones and other chemical stimuli.
The Mental Senses
25. Pain, external and internal.
26. Mental or spiritual distress.
27. Sense of fear, dread of injury, death or attack.
28. Procreative urges including sex awareness, courting, love,
mating, paternity and raising young.
29. Sense of play, sport, humor, pleasure and laughter.
30. Sense of physical place, navigation senses including detailed
awareness of land and seascapes, of the positions of the sun,
moon and stars.
31. Sense of time.
32. Sense of electromagnetic fields.
33. Sense of weather changes.
34. Sense of emotional place, of community, belonging, support,
trust and thankfulness.
35. Sense of self including friendship, companionship, and power.
36. Domineering and territorial sense.
37. Colonizing sense including compassion and receptive awareness
of one's fellow creatures, sometimes to the degree of being absorbed
into a superorganism.
38. Horticultural sense and the ability to cultivate crops, as
is done by ants that grow fungus, by fungus who farm algae, or
birds that leave food to attract their prey.
39. Language and articulation sense, used to express feelings
and convey information in every medium from the bees' dance to
human literature.
40. Sense of humility, appreciation, ethics.
41. Senses of form and design.
42. Reasoning, including memory and the capacity for logic and
science.
43. Sense of mind and consciousness.
44. Intuition or subconscious deduction.
45. Aesthetic sense, including creativity and appreciation of
beauty, music, literature, form, design and drama.
46. Psychic capacity such as foreknowledge, clairvoyance, clairaudience,
psychokinesis, astral projection and possibly certain animal
instincts and plant sensitivities.
47. Sense of biological and astral time, awareness of past, present
and future events.
48. The capacity to hypnotize other creatures.
49. Relaxation and sleep including dreaming, meditation, brain
wave awareness.
50. Sense of pupation including cocoon building and metamorphosis.
51. Sense of excessive stress and capitulation.
52. Sense of survival by joining a more established organism.
53. Spiritual sense, including conscience, capacity for sublime
love, ecstasy, a sense of sin, profound sorrow and sacrifice.
This list explains how, sense
by sense, nature 9-leg connects with itself in us, through us
and to people and places around us. It suggests that we can consciously
engage in this process. It validates Dr. David Viscott's proposal
that feelings are the truth, that we don't live in the real world
when we ignore what we are feeling. Our nature-separated lives
disengage and de-energize these senses. Applying the organic
psychology of the Natural Systems Thinking Process allows nature,
the mother of these senses and feelings, to nurture and strengthen
them, to rejuvenate them to normal. The process gives them enough
energy to appear on our nature desensitized screen of consciousness
and green our thinking.
Experiential and Literature Observations
by Project NatureConnect graduate students, for each of the 53 natural
senses, validate the senses, as exemplified in the descriptions of the
three, below, none of which is one of the "five senses." SENSE 18 SENSE OF MOTION
Voluntary
movement separates animals from plants. The ability to quickly detect
and respond to movement determines an animal's survival. Am i attracted
to flee from danger or fight it out? In particular, the directional
aspect of movement is most important. Motion in and of itself captures
my attention and triggers my brain to make a danger assessment. If a
potential of danger is perceived, then the direction of motion of that
danger determines my action. For example, I will move 90 degrees
from the track of a severe storm such as a hurricane or tornado. Or if
a cougar comes my way, I may move 90 degrees straight up a tree. Of
course, to initiate motion, I need some form of motivation. In the case
of potential danger, that motivation is the sense of fear and my
attraction to be out of harms way.
My
direction of movement or lack of in response to the movement of another
animal may trigger a direction of movement in the other animal. If I
move towards an animal, I exhibit predator behavior and the animal may
run away from me. If I'm attracted to run from an animal, I behave like
a prey and the animal may chase me. If I be completely still, I become
invisible and the animal continues to move along a general course.
Animal's visual anatomy often reveals whether the animal is primary a
predator or prey. Predator eyes of moving food sources lie in front of
their heads for precise focus in tracking prey. Prey eyes lie at the
sides of heads for seeing predator moving up from behind. Some animals‚
visual sense is primary motion. Frogs and some small simple vertebrates
only have retina cells that are receptive to motion and therefore only
sees an object if it moves.
I
have a sense of motion within and without. I perceive my motion
internally through my kinesthetic sense that gives me an awareness of
my muscle effort, of joint and limb movement and of positions of body
parts relative to each other. Stretch receptors of joints and
muscles respond to movement and position of various parts of the body.
I
perceive motion externally through my brain. The eyes sees a series of
stills and directions of movement of sequential points. The brain fuses
them together as a seamless stream of pictures. It is possible to see
with eyes but be blind to motion without the part of the brain devoted
to analyzing and intergrading directions of movements pickup by the
magnocellular neurons or M-cells in retina (Montgomery, 2006). Motion
in a particular direction activate M-cells that transmits impulses to
the thalamus where the information is then relayed to an area of the
visual cortex. For example, as I drive in my car and view out the front
window, directions of movement steam outward from the center of my
eye's image. Viewing out the rear-view mirror, directional lines of
motion flow inward toward the center. The brain constructs a view of
the world from many bits of information and at the same time triggers a
survival response if so determined, all of this within a very short
period of time that makes the difference of between health or injury.
Thus, neural connections for transmitting motion information are highly
specialized and a dedicated area of the cortex is reserved for
analyzing motion. Like the visual qualities of form, color and depth,
motion corresponds to specific sensory receptors and mental processes.
Therefore, color (sense 3), form (sense 4), depth (sense 6) and motion
(sense 18) are distinct senses. The combination of many senses into the
sense of sight devaluates each of the combined senses. I would define
any unique sense as any sense that have specific receptors and mental
processes. Therefore, the sense of my own motion (kinesthetic sense) is
a separate sense from my visual sense of motion. Distinct senses, while
being independent, join with other senses to help the brain make better
sense of the world out of a greater sense of survival.
The
brain must rapidly process sensory motion inputs of many directions at
the same time and output a perception of motion. When a specific
direction of motion is steadily inputted to the brain over span of a
half minute or more, adapt to that direction of motion occurs and the
outgoing signal is decreased. If the visual focus is suddenly shifted
upon a stationary object, the output of the opposite direction of the
moving object becomes stronger against all other directions and the
stationary object will appear to move for the few seconds in the
opposite direction of the moving object. For example, if I stare
steadily at the falling waters of a waterfall for 20 seconds and then
gaze upon a stand of trees, the trees will momentarily move upward.
This waterfall illusion or motion after-effect was demonstrated at the
Museum of Science in Boston. The audience stared at a rotating wheel
that spiraled inward. After about a half minute, we looked at young man
standing still on the stage and laughed when we saw the illusion of him
expanding upward and outward. I experienced another motion illusion
while parked with the car's motor running. The car next to me started
to back up that gave me the illusion and the unsettling feeling that my
car was moving forward. I instantly hit the brakes.
Within
me, my eyes sense my motion relative to my immediate surroundings, my
inner ears sense my motion relative to gravity and the motion receptor
of my muscles and joints sense specific motion of parts of my body. All
this sensual information is feed to my brain that makes sense of it and
triggers musuosketaltal movements to keep my motion coordinated,
balanced and efficient, quite a large undertaking for my busy brain
that handles 100 million messages every second. I can train my brain to
activate new, specific movements. By repeatedly practicing the same
movements over and over, I condition my body and rewire my brain to
perform exact movements instantly without my conscious awareness. I am
comforted to know that the brain continually changes and develops
throughout life. Not only can the elderly learn mentally, physically
and spiritually but the continual stimulation of the brain throughout
life is the way to long life. The body-mind seems to want to go on with
life when there is a reason to continue. The November 2005 issue of
National Geographic Magazine highlighted cultures with centenarians.
The common reason given by centenarians for long life is having a
strong sense of purpose and doing that which makes life worth living.
The other longevity factors of genes, physical activity and low
caloric, high quality diet follow. However the luck of the genes will
not offset an unhealthy lifestyle. An elder who replaces anticipating
with reminiscing quickens his aging. Movement is captured in the past
by memories and is freed in the present by senses. Life begets movement
and movement beget life. Any change, be it physical or nonphysical, is
movement. Change is not only good but essential to life.
Change
is what gets my attention given that my brain has my conscious
attention to begin with. Is this change something I need to act on or
not? My central nervous system perceives change through numerous sense
receptors. When the change becomes constant, my body-mind adapts and
the sensory stimulus diminishes as my brain now treats the sensory
information as insignificant for further action.
Sense
of motion is a major source of recreation, entertainment and amusement.
Movement, in physical or musical form, is self expression that
transcends all peoples. Movement is very individual yet very universal.
Skillful, beautiful movement portrays the human soul. Movement diverse
people together in peace. Movements can also bring people together for
a common purpose for improving the human condition. Movement is life.
Movement is good. Movement is my joy.
References:
Montgomery,
G. (2006). How we see things that moves: a hot spot in the brain‚s
motion pathway. Seeing, Hearing and Smelling the World. Retrieved May
16, 2006 from the World Wide Web:
http://www.hhmi.org/senses/b220.html
SENSE 24 HORMONAL SENSE SUCH AS PHEROMONES
On
the top of nature's priority list is the survival of the species. The
principal method to assure species survival is to facilitate mating and
propagation of the species. The pheromone sense is often the trigger to
this process. In the non-human animal world, an adult female emits her
scent into the air that is picked up by nearby male and his receptor
cells lining two sacs of the vomeronasal organ in the upper nasal
cavity. Proteins bind to a specific pheromone, making it soluble to be
transported in the blood. The vomeronasal system is distinct, and
separate from the olfactory system. Activated receptors send signals to
the accessory olfactory bulb that process and relay the information to
the amygdala, preopic area and hypothalamus that in turn trigger
immediate hormonal changes and instinctive sexual behaviors. In the
non-human animal world, mating and reproduction is wired in the brain
to occur automatically. Pheromones carry information between
individuals of same species. Hormones carry information within the
individual. The olfactory bulb mediates between the two.
Nature
abounds with diversity. There is no one way. So it is with the sense of
pheromone and how it is received. For example, in the world of moths,
the males antenna are covered with sensory hairs that receive the
female‚s scent signal and trigger a chain of behaviors. The male
emperor moth can detect just one molecule of the scent of a female
three miles away that immediately sets him flying upwind to her (Bruce,
1997). Now here is a male that listens and responds to a female and
places her ahead of everything else. Both male and female salt marsh
moths send out scent signals that result in a group meeting where the
female makes her choice of mate. Both sexes of cotton leaf moth produce
pheromones, the female using the emitted scent to attract the male and
the male, first on the scene, using his scent to deter other males.
Social
insects such as ants mark trails and some animals mark territories with
pheromones. Some insects when attacked release pheromones that trigger
group flight or fight behavior. Certain plants when grazed upon emit a
pheromone to trigger tannin production in adjacent plants, rendering
them less appealing. Aggregation pheromones bring some species together
such as the Japanese beetles who are drawn by the hundreds to my roses
and chokeberries for feeding and breeding. Odors from the damaged
plants attract even more beetles.
Humans
have a vomeronasal organ system, although not as elaborate as other
organisms, for detecting and responding to pheromones and apocrine
sweat glands for producing pheromones. The apocrine glands open into
hair follicles of axillary, anal and perigental areas. The message of
attraction pheromones bypasses the cerebral cortex for conscious
awareness and goes directly to the area of brain tied to emotions and
feelings. Odorless pheromones reveal their presence by their hormonal
and/or behavioral effects.
The
feminine practice of shaving axillary and pubic hairs for appearance
sake injuries the pheromonal sense or the natural chemical attraction.
Marketing and retailing perfumes with pheromones insults nature and
devalues women.
The
sex pheromone may be the ultimate human match-maker, attracting persons
to their soul mates. Something that is already set in nature does not
need conscious thought and choice. I believe that the perfect meeting
of pheromones produces the amazing Œchemistry‚ and magical feelings
between to strangers destine to live out their lives together.
Pheromones
may help strengthen the human bond between mates for the relative long
years of childrearing. Certainly a very pleasurable feeling of peace
and contentment is experienced by cuddling with one‚s mate. I believe
that couples who sleep together in the same bed as opposed to separate
beds have a much greater chance of staying together.
Mammals
emit a calming pheromone. When Dr. David Berliner of the University of
Utah stored human skin extracts in open vials, people working in the
lab became more friendly and relaxed (Corliss, 1993). When the vials
were covered, the calming effect disappeared .
A
pheromone has only been isolated and named as such only 50 years ago
although the sensing structure was identified 300 years ago. The late
identity of the pheromonal sense may be a result of its unconscious
nature.
References:
Bruce,
A. (1997, February). Chemicals that cause excitement. Micscape
Magazine. Retrieved June 6, 2006, from Micscape main articles
library:
http://www.microscopy-uk.org.uk/mag/indexmag.html
http://www.microscopy-uk.org.uk/mag/art97/pherom.html
Corliss,
W. (1993, November/December). A tale of two noses. Science Frontiers.
Retrieved June 6, 2006, from Science Frontiers online: http://www.science-frontiers.com/sf090/sf090b06.htm
SENSE 33 SENSE OF WEATHER CHANGE
Most
humans in contemporary culture miss the richness and depth of life due
to insensitivity. There is much more to life than what we are conscious
of. This is especially true of weather. Over 95 percent of our lives
are spent indoors and in climate-controlled vehicles. We tune into the
Weather Channel rather than our built-in weather senses to find out
what is going on. Our weather senses are undeveloped like buds on a
plant. The nuances of weather makes each day unique, to be experienced
like no other day. How many ways can you see the rain or perceive the
wind? The Japanese language reflects the culture's high degree of
sensitivity and awareness of weather. A large number of expressions
describe various experiences of rain (Takemura, n.d.). Wind and its
sensual identity has over two thousand versions. Weather in the moment
can be perceived from the macro to the micro. Weather changes in subtle
ways from second to second that adds up to big changes hour to hour.
Significant change captures the attention of the brain as something to
be mindful and responsive.
Our
sensitivity to weather is not so much the specific weather conditions
but the change in weather. We can indirectly sense and predict a
significant weather change a few days in advance. Through the sense of
sight, we can observe the types of clouds and know generally when
precipitation will begin, the lower the cloud, the sooner the
precipitation. The high cirrus group of clouds forebodes rain within 15
to 30 hours. The medium alto- clouds foretells rain within 10 to 20
hours. The sense of temperature and its significant increase indicate
passage of warm front, a day or two before the passage of a cold
front/storm system. The visual sighting of wind interaction and its
direction tells whether a storm system is advancing or retreating. The
sense of pressure and the rapidly falling atmospheric pressure predicts
an advancing storm and/or strong frontal system. The sense of feel of
increased wind speeds is an effect of rapidly falling or rising
pressure. The sense of humidity and its significant increase indicate
the likelihood of future precipitation.
We
can also directly sense weather change. The sense of pain and the sense
of mental distress commonly foretell an advancing weather system.
'Human barometers can feel a major storm system as much as three days
away. Nature's purpose for pain is to get our attention to take action,
to follow attractions that may or may not save us from near-future
injury or death. Nature takes us out of our comfort zone and moves us
to seek future comfort and safety. Certainly the sense of weather
changes was more critical to our survival in the past but even today,
persons with chronic illness are most vulnerable to life-threatening
severe and/or bitterly cold weather. As life-loving nature would have
it, the chronically ill are most sensitive to weather changes. The
greater the change in weather, the greater the degree of pain.
Therefore, chronic pain patients know in advance both the day of
arrival and the severity of a storm system. Pain sufferers manage pain
by taking preventive action through medication or therapy in
anticipation of significant weather change.
Sensitivity
to weather changes is real enough for the Weather Channel to produce a
daily Aches and Pains Index Map. Above normal levels of discomfort are
associated with an approaching strong low pressure and/or cold front
and accompanying falling atmosphere pressure, rising humidity and
increase wind speeds. Quiet, dry warm weather bring the least
discomfort. Much colder weather, often with rapidly rising barometric
pressure, can also illicit pain.
Weather
change is a major trigger of migraines. Of 494 migraine patients, 62
percent of migraines were triggered by stress and 43 percent, by
weather changes (Robbins, 1994). Rapidly falling barometric pressure
acerbates vasodilatation in cranial blood vessels that causes migraine
and the inflammation of brain tissue. Falling barometric pressure also
worsens swelling and pain in arthritic joints.
REFERENCES:
Takemura, S. (n.d.). A sense for reading the atmosphere, Retrieved November 8, 2006, from the World Wide Web:
http://www.sensorium.org/linkedsense/library/air.html
Robbins,
L. (1994, April). Precipitating factors in migraine: A retrospective
review of 494 patients. Headache: The Journal of Head and Face Pain, 34
(4), 214.
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Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley Publishing Co.
Sheppard, Paul (1984). Nature
and Madness, San Francisco, CA: Sierra Publications.
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Spelke, E. (1992). Infants Signal the Birth of Knowledge. Psychological
Review, October, 1992 as quoted in Science News, November
14, 1992, Vol. 142 p. 325, Washington DC: Science Service.
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Stevens, W. (1993). Want a Room With a View? The New York
Times, November 30, New York, NY.
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Viscott, D. (1976) The Language of Feelings, New York,
New York: Arbor House.
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Watson, L. (1988) The Water Planet,New York, New York:
Crown Publishers.
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Wynne-Edwards (1991). Ecology Denies Darwinism. The Ecologist,
May -June, Cornwall, England.
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The Nature Of Nine Leg Knowing. How Do
We Belong and Heal?
| |
"Ishi, (the last hunter-gather
Native American) was sure he knew the cause of our discontent.
It stemmed from an excessive amount of indoor time. 'It is not
a man's nature to be too much indoors.'"
- Theodora Kroeber
"It is quite clear to
me after several years in the environmental movement that all
physical problems of man's impact on the environment - pollution
of the air and waters, the desecration of the land, the contamination
of the food chain - all start within the environment of man's
mind."
- Maurice Strong,
Founder or the United Nations Environment Program,
Co--chair of the Commission on Global Governance,
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Because we live in a nature-separated
society, we seldom learn that it is the personal and collective
relationship of our mind with nature that determines our sanity,
our future and the future of the earth. Much has been written
about how we need to help the planet regenerate itself. Too often
we overlook that restoring it is the lasting means to improve
the environment of our mind, our wellness and our destiny.
How conscious are we about
the interactions of our mentality with the natural world? How
do we passionately incorporate nature's intrinsic health and
recuperative powers into our sense of self, other and livelihood?
Do we acknowledge this deep and penetrating partnership in a
renewable path to sustainability that serves people, the environment
and peace?
These are compelling questions
for us as our society is in denial of our mentality's relationship
with nature and we face a most precarious future.
We Lose What We Most Love
As nature's resources are diminished so is the quality of our
lives as part of nature. As the quality of our lives diminish,
we become desensitized and fearful. We further lose touch with
our natural ability to connect to the web of life within which
we are so intricately bound. It becomes a cycle of loss. The
nurturing link between our human lives and our earthly home gets
broken. We are driven to seek more and more satisfaction in the
material world, which means we consume more and more of the resources
we need to sustain natural world and our inborn love of it. We
get further and further away from our innate sense of meaning
and being. We lose what we most love-about ourselves, the world
to which we belong and our sense of the sacred in everyday life.
Nature's Saving Grace
In these difficult times, we are virtually on the edge of losing
our ability to save both ourselves-and our earthly home. Yet
the saving grace is simple: We will save what we love. And when
we learn how to stop long enough to genuinely reconnect to the
nurturing sustenance of nature, we emotionally reconnect to what
is most deeply satisfying in our human experience-belonging.
We re-learn to love the very essence of who we are as living
breathing perfect beings on a living breathing perfect planet.
It is a generative partnership that happens when we reawaken
and enliven all our senses with the awareness of nature's grace,
intelligence and sustenance. We find and feel that we, too, are
part of the very grace and intelligence we celebrate in nature.
We belong. Because this reconnecting process is often foreign
to contemporary life, an enabling tool has been devised to help
us engage in the process.
Restoring Our Sensory Connections
To Nature's Renewing Powers.
Project NatureConnect, a pioneering process in environmental
psychology and education, has developed an ecopsychology program
that is first of all committed to helping us-as individuals-restore
our connection to our place in nature's transcending grace. Then,
through its sensory nature-connecting, ecotherapy activities,
we learn how to genuinely unite our thinking to the web of life
that is always around us, always nurturing us, always waiting
to help us wake up. We help ourselves bond to living in awareness
and equilibrium with nature, in hope and in love. Living in that
organic awareness we create a lasting future for our loved ones
and for our extended human and ecological family.
The Organic Science of Nature's
Regenerative Ways.
Backyard or back country, the idea and goal of Project NatureConnect
is special because it is doable by choice. It offers a web of
possibilities-for everything from personal growth, stress management
and depression recovery to professional gain. It is based on
the NatureConnect work developed by Michael J. Cohen over a span
of 50 years of studying, teaching, writing about and experiencing
the regenerative power of our natural experience in the natural
world. His work is a science and an art, the result of decades
of practice working with communities of people in natural areas,
all culminating in a process that helps us recover what it is
we have forgotten, what it is we love, what it is we can save.
(www.ecopsych.com)
Healing Our Relationships
It is time for us to come out from behind the addictive socializing
and economic forces that keep the environment of our mind disconnected
from the Earth and each other. It is time to re-learn how to
let the wisdom and renewing energies of nature transform our
destructive patterns into balanced and loving relationships that
can help restore both personal worth and global harmony.
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"The indescribable
innocence and beneficence of Nature-of sun and wind and rain,
of summer and winter-such health, such cheer, they afford forever!"
-Henry David Thoreau, Walden |
- from Janet
Thomas Author, The Battle in Seattle
Act
now: courses, degrees, grants, recovery coaching
The Essence of the Nine-Leg
Equation
This tool offers a powerful
process that deals with the problems of inspiration hope and
integrity through books degrees and courses online
It is a health improvement
formula that strengthens your vote, conflict resolution and nature
healing as well as restores balanced relationships free of stress
and dysfunction to earth, peace and environment workers.
This power equation contains
the genius and support of Albert Einstein and Henry David Thoreau
for use in self-help and supporting hope, cooperation, research
psychologists, naturalists and good government,
It acts as a health and life
experience intelligence that increases resilience, friendships,
love wellness ethics education awareness counseling citizenship
transformation and constructive bonding.
It rejuvenates anxiety burnout
suffering disorder abnormalities that deteriorate mental health
social justice peace community trust economics and cooperation.
Act
now: courses, degrees, grants, recovery self-help
How does the Nine-Leg Balance
of Life Equation help you improve the quality of your life and
all life?
-Enjoy 53 sensory parts of
nature, like thirst, each a distinct way of knowing and relating
that, when intact, helps us sustain the wellness, balance and
resilience of natural systems in us and the environment.
-Transform the abnormal, desensitized corporation economics and
other omissions in the way our nature-disconnected society teaches
us to think.
-Rejuvenate natural life sensitivities and Earth-integrated,
whole ways of knowing
-Master how to reconnect your mentality to its nurturing origins,
to the regenerative vigor, sustainability and integrity of nature.
-Help yourself, and those close to you, benefit from the renewal
that lies in the magnificence of a beautiful day, the wisdom
of an ancient tree and the fortitude of a weed.
-Through life experience discover how to let the "higher
power" in nature's healing energies help your thinking transform
your stress, disorders, suffering and harmful bonds into constructive
personal, social and environmental rewards.
Strengthen your inborn natural genius.
-Use powerful tool and process books, degrees and courses to
tap into potent self-help healing and conflict resolution powers
of nature.
-Research and restore forty-eight inherent sensory intelligences
into your awareness that we normally learn to deny and subdue
so they deteriorate.
-Enjoy community ways of knowing and relating that, when intact,
sustain the wellness, peace, balance. health and resilience of
natural systems within and around us.
-Quadruple the power of your vote.
-Realize more completely your hopes and values.
Increase your resilience, support, social justice and friendships.
-Reduce stress, anxiety, burnout, dysfunction and loneliness.
-Improve your ability to think clearly and implement the power
of love.
-Strengthen personal, environmental, coaching and government
wellness.
-Produce cooperation and responsible professional opportunities
and ethics.
-Discover environmentally sound directions goals and satisfactions
-Enjoy nature-connected education, psychology and healing courses
and degree programs
-Increase personal and global peace and inspiration while reducing
dysfunction.
Add important new self-improvement dimensions to counseling,
healing and citizenship relationships.
Act now: courses, degrees, grants, recovery
coaching
Open Articles and Letters
Nature's Grace: A Nine-Leg
Equation Provides an Answer to Hopes, Prayers and Dreams.
Dear Editor
The lack of finding inner peace,
sustainable economics, trust, social justice and personal and
environmental wellness had alarmed me. I sought and finally found
a tool that transformed my depressing stress and anxiety into
responsible stability. I thought I was stressed because the more
I became aware of the destructive things happening to Earth and
to people and places I loved, including myself, the greater became
my lack of hope and feeling either mad, sad or depression. This
divorced me from both my spirit and partner. I felt anger with
God and beauty, a fear and disrespect of God for letting so much
war, suffering and environmental deterioration occur that I was
powerless to change. In time, I became aware that I was in denial.
I denied that I, like many others, had an addiction to immediate
rewards from my dysfunctions. They robbed me of the resilience
to tolerate what I could not change. In fear, I came upon the
description, on this page, of an amazing equation that combines
the genius of Albert Einstein and Henry David Thoreau. Lost in
depression, I only paid attention to it because it received super
positive reviews from many conferences, spiritualities and publications
that I respected, especially Psychology Today, Humanistic Psychology
and the Journal of Environmental Education. In retrospect, it
was a love answer from nature's grace and beauty to my hopes,
prayers and dreams.
Mr. Editor, Does writing about
this make sense to you? Isn't it something your readers can benefit
from?
Charles Drew, Acton
Act
now: courses, degrees, grants, recovery self-help
The Equation for Personal Growth and
Self-Improvement
A Sensory Education and Counseling
Tool Strengthens Holistic Health, Inner Peace and Sustainability
Although we are part of nature,
we are normally educated to spend, on average, over 95 percent
of our time and 99 percent of our lives thinking and feeling
while separated from nature's grace, beauty, and restorative
powers. Our mentality's profound loss of nature divorces us into
apathy through denial. We deny that we are rewarded for fearing
and exploiting, rather than embracing, the supportive ways of
our planetary mother and her kingdoms. We deny that we are psychologically
addicted to nature-disconnected thinking that creates our personal,
social and environmental dysfunctions.
Contemporary society has taught
us to be experts in conquering nature, including the balanced
ways of our natural self and its love of nature. The result:
because we don't protect what we don't love, nature, our collective
sustainability and our personal wellness suffer. To stop this
insanity the Einstein-Thoreau Equation makes readily available
the means to genuinely connect our thinking and feeling to Mother
Nature's recuperative powers, perfection and love of us as her
children. Using the Internet as a learning tool, we tap our psyche
into nature's beautiful sane and balanced web of life that produces
an optimum of diversity and benefits without producing garbage,
a web some people call God (www.ecopsych.com).
Through easily learned, nature-connected
Organic Psychology methods and materials, the Internet makes
it possible for any individual, or 600 million people, to think
in ways that invigorate resiliency and spirit and that reduce
our addictive trespasses, denial and apathy. By genuinely reconnecting
our thinking to natural systems we restore and trust more than
forty-five natural senses that have been numbed out of our consciousness
by our extreme disconnection from nature. The self-improvement
renewal of these senses increases our sensitivity, sensibility
and love energies. This ecopsychology helps unbalanced parts
of our minds and hearts benefit from nature's ability to rejuvenate
and balance itself, including us, for we are part of nature.
We reduce our stress, depression and abusiveness. We transform
our apathy into constructive participation. Backyard to back
country,-we strengthen our life, our organizations and global
society.
Act
now: courses, degrees, grants, recovery coaching
An Equation Helps Us Meet Our Great Challenge
"Our body, mind, spirit
and ability to love come into the world through nature. They
are part of nature's beautiful perfection, wisdom and restorative
powers. However, the extreme disconnection of our thinking from
nature injures these attributes. Like tearing a leg from a live
rabbit, we wound and damage our ability to think clearly. Its
dysfunction deteriorates our wellness, our inner peace and the
environment.
Our bonding and denial present
us with great challenges. To replace our lost gratifications
from nature, our socialization rewards our disturbed psyche to
attach or addict to contemporary ways along with their destructive
side effects. Our greatest challenge is that we learn to deny
that the self-improvement means is available to reconnect our
thinking with nature's regenerative powers and thereby co-create
ourselves and the world in a peaceful balance that eliminates
these side effects."
- Michael J. Cohen
Mood Disorders: Are You Suffering from
Denial of Your Separation from Nature?
| |
Excessive separation
from nature produces the discomforts of fatigue, apathy, stress,
anxiety, depression, hopelessness, anger, mood swings, mistrust,
loneliness, broken relationships, destructive dependencies and
sleep, eating, learning and attention disorders |
1. Contemporary society
and its citizens are in denial. We are aware that we are part
of nature and that although we are disconnected from nature,
we deny that this separation bears ill effects upon our physical
or mental health and inner peace. We are also in denial if we
know our separation from nature is producing destructive personal,
social and environmental disorders but we don't use readily available
nature-reconnecting tools to help us treat these disorders.
2. Because we are members of
a nature-disconnected society in denial, we are psychologically
bonded to our society's ways and we each suffer from and perpetuate
the dysfunctions, insanity and discontents of our society.
3. Many people display mood
disorder symptoms or other discontents that are not normally
found in nature-connected people. These individuals are usually
in denial that they suffer because they are, or have been, excessively
separated from nature and its regenerative healing and restorative
powers. The symptoms these individuals endure include the discomforts
of fatigue, apathy, stress, anxiety, depression, hopelessness,
anger, mood swings, mistrust, loneliness, broken relationships,
destructive dependencies and sleep, eating, learning and attention
disorders.
4. Contemporary society consciously
and subconsciously socializes us to believe that nature is an
enemy to overcome, conquer or develop.
| |
- We are in denial
that we mistakenly consider it progress and economically sound
to subdue natural systems within and around us and thereby lose
the resilience and immunity provided by the recuperative powers
of these systems.
- We deny that if disconnection from nature produces discontents,
that authentic reconnecting with nature enables nature's renewing
powers to help us transform our discontents into happier, more
reasonable, ways of being and relating.
- We deny that nature-reconnecting tools are readily available
to us and that we that can use them to help ourselves reverse
our disorders. |
.
5. An individual that only addresses their personal dysfunctions
without addressing the nature-disconnected roots of these dysfunctions
too often furthers their and our problems as time passes.
Act
now: courses, degrees, grants, recovery self-help
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Although each of us is part
of nature, our socialization erodes our personal, social, spiritual
and environmental relationships because it excessively separates
us from the recuperative qualities of nature. This disconnection
causes us to lose the benefit of the purifying powers in nature
that would ordinarily help us rejuvenate and regenerate our presently
deteriorating thinking. Our relationships with ourselves, others
and the environment would improve.
We live over 95 percent of
our lives indoors, separated from nature; over 99 percent of
our thinking is disconnected from how nature works to produce
its non-polluting perfection. To our great cost, we omit nature's
grace from our personal, social, spiritual and environmental
lives.
At www.ninelegs.com a spectacular
nature-reconnecting tool gives us the nine leg ability to tap
into the unifying recuperative aspects of nature that sustain
its balance and beauty.
Nine leg thinking and relating
restores our power to co-create and sustain ourselves in balance
with all of life.
The nine leg tool helps us
reconnect ourselves to the nurturing biological and psychological
origins of our mind over the eons. This improves our ability
to think sustainably and improve our health and integrity. We
raise our consciousness and can produce more rewarding, cooperative
life-supportive relationships.
In as little as fourteen days
most people can learn how to enjoy the benefits of thinking like
nature works. Surely, this is as important and revolutionary
as Einstein's e=mc2 or the discovery by Copernicus that Earth
and we are neither the center nor most important thing in the
Solar System.
"Even though I'm a nincompoop,
I'm not very special at all. Any dumbell can see the reason our
major problems don't subside. It's because our leaders don't
resolve conflicts or issues by using the extraordinary unifying
and strengthening powers of nine-leg thinking and relating. I
don't use them because I'm an idiot. But, what's their excuse,
or, dare I ask, what's yours?"
- Alfred E. Newman.
over
OTHER SIDE
"I find that being stupid
makes me really feel left out and different all the time. I just
can't register all the wonderful things that technology and the
media provide for the normal person. For example, I'm so retarded
that I couldn't even understand that E.T. was an extraterrestrial
like Spielberg and the movie and the stories said. To me, the
powers E.T. had were the same as those of Earth, he was just
like the plant animal and mineral community. Llike them, he was
very vulnerable to technology. But I'm so dumb that I thought
then, and I still think today, that E.T. was a terrestrial; he
was Planet Earth. He was in no way so special as to become a
movie star. After all, doesn't Earth all the time do what he
did if we let it? Nine leg thinking lets us do that, too.
- Alfred E. Newman.
QUESTION: What is so important
about nine-leg thinking?
ANSWER: Nine-leg thinking is
a supportive, therapeutic key to creating personal happiness
through a rewarding and sustainable future for all people and
the planet.
To understand the momentous
significance of nine-leg thinking, consider this intelligence
test question regarding mathematical aptitude:
"If you count a normal
dog's tail as one of its legs, how many legs does a dog have?"
"Five," of course,
is the correct answer.
Intelligent people answer "five"
because it is valid in mathematical and scientific reasoning.
Society applauds and economically rewards us for giving correct
mathematical or technological answers. But something is radically
wrong with this answer; something is missing. Because, somehow,
even a dog knows that a dog has four legs.
Our sense of reason recognizes
five as correct only until we are greeted by our friendly family
dog, or the mean mutt down the street. Five legs only works in
theory. When we experience a real dog, or a wolf, or a centipede,
or any other natural being, many of our inherent natural senses
come into play: our senses of sight, touch, motion, color, texture,
language, sound, smell, fear, consciousness, community, trust,
contrast, love, reason and recognition. Are you aware we have
53 natural senses?
No matter how conceptually
clever we are with our five-legged thinking, it is our four-legged
sensory awareness that grounds our experience in the true nature
of reality. That reality knows any normal dog has no more than
four legs and no matter how you look at it, a tail is not one
of them.
When it comes to supportively
relating in balance to nature and its systems around and within
us, we rarely think in 9-leg (4-leg plus 5-leg) ways.
We can kill or hurtfully stress a dog if we make it run too fast
or too far because we think that it has five legs. Isn't that
what we are doing to ourselves and the environment?
Nine-leg thinking and relating
helps us come back into personal and environmental balance by
revitalizing our multitude of natural senses through genuine
contact with authentic nature.
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