Project
NatureConnect
Millennium Global Community Activity
Archive of Anonymous Responses
Responses have been mailed in or are from the guestbook
"I just started back to work as a psychologist in a large city school district after a long summer vacation. My nervous system tends to over-react to the arousal of the overwhelming demands of the job. When I came home today I sat outside and just opened myself to the tug of the healing strings of the web of life, without expectation and without labels. I asked for support of the total life community of which I am a member. Then I just waited. Within a moment I felt surrounded by a soothing energy which helped bring relaxation to my heart. "
"By identifying a number of attraction strings in the stream area I became aware of a difference between how I felt about this salmon on its way to spawn and die and a salmon I connected with when I first got here. Now as I repeated natural sensory attraction string I felt no pain around the natural transformation occurring in the salmon, in the river, in the birds I had been visiting, in me. (For a fascinating full account of this connection, select here"
"When I changed the name of the work stress I was feeling, I found a welcoming feeling of self. Suddenly I had made nature into a mother that was genuinely supporting its child, me."
"To do this activity, I took my dog outside with me, to my backyard. I sat down and brushed my dog several times. As I brushed her, I noticed how happy she was to get brushed. I also noticed the light breeze and the bright, green leaves that waved to me as they danced amongst the breeze. I also noticed the brillantly blue sky and coolness of the concrete I was sitting on. I labeled all of these as natural strings. They all made me feel whole, as if I was part of something important."
"Considering my concern for the environment to be a sensory web string brought to mind that all of nature needs me as much as I need it. I liked the feeling of connection that I got by doing this activity. I felt like I was an integral part of a wonderful process of attractions seeking each other. "
"When the sound of a bird became a web string, I could hear additional sounds in the park. I felt I was being gifted by many voices. It seems that they were feeling honored by my recognition of them. What a beautiful flow. The amazing thing I learned is that this is so simple! Just recognize your senses are the web of life touching you and, in respect, what a 'love gift' you receive!"
"Rainbows attract me, and not only because they dance across the sky in colors and shades of colors that delight me, but also because my inner-spirit is gladdened, and more. Here is a wordless connection with THAT which balances and renews. Humankind is all to often in a state of*hyperarousal*, too hurried to notice such connections. Thank you Dr. Cohen for sharing your wisdom and giving us an opportunity to re-connect with and empower ourselves with the healing, natural gifts of Nature! Many Blessings,"
HC: I think this activity of labeling positive feelings as strings to the web life community is wonderful!
KT: I look at my negative feelings as strings, too, in that they attract me to finding the healthier, more supportive strings.
LB: Good discovery. Negative feelings can be signals that some strings are being blocked from fulfillment and worth investigating. This link goes further into that.
HC:You make a very good point about negative feelings! After all that I have been through, I now see I had to get through it to grow and become who I am today. Thank you for your comments.
"Last night, I telephoned my sister who lives far away and to whom I feel close. However we had not talked for months. I was able to connect with her and to one of my nephews. After a lengthy conversation with them both, I felt uplifted, relieved, happy. I called the feeling a natural sensory attraction string. I realized that I was feeling my own sense of family, community, sense of belonging being fulfilled. Obviously these senses had been dormant for some time. I am still learning to connect with nature inside people as well as nature outside. I now know it is the same strings, sensations that connect everything, people to one another, people to nature and nature to itself."
"For a few moments I felt like all the lines of longitude that you see going through the North and South poles of Planet Earth were going through me instead. It gave me a lift, my spirit soared as I sensed an indescribable womblike connection with the web of life."
The feeling I chose to look at was why I have such a problem with yellow jackets, wasps, and most bees. I have had very intense negative reactions to them since childhood. I am not allergic as I have been stung a few times in my life and neither one of these times was particularly traumatic. In doing the activity I realized that this is not just a natural sense of fear and pain, but was a thwarting of possibly the aesthetic sense and the sense of appreciation I think I have unconsciously been paying attention to this "string" because we have planted all sorts of native and non-native flowering plants in our yard that have attracted every sort of bee, hornet, wasp, etc. that you can imagine that is either enjoying the plant or the other creatures on the plants (i.e. aphids). I have been trying to think about them differently and FEEL differently around them for the last two years. Now, due to this activity, I have a new way of sensing them and actually found myself attracted to what they were doing in the yard this weekend. I hope to do this with other creatures in the area such as scorpions!
"When I go into a natural area including making contact with a fellow human, I first attempt to move into the energy of openness, as I ask my new brain consciousness to step aside. This is needed so as to allow the natural sensory attraction strings to connect, in order to bring balance to my being. The natural sensory attraction strings know how to do this, because of billions of years of evolution. My new brain is finally beginning to understand this ,and it is therefore logical for the new brain to work with this string wisdom, rather than try to keep it repressed."
"As I follow my attraction strings in a familiar forest today, my sense strings play the "flight of the bumble bee." It would appear that I have spent to much time indoors this week, as my strings seem to have many connections to bring me back to balance. As I continue to connect the strings slow to a "moon light sonata." I feel as if I am standing under a waterfall and the strings of water flow over and through my being. My senses refreshed, I feel as one with the web of life. Thank you sensory strings of balance, and thank you new brain, for your courage and good sense to step aside."
"Last night this same natural sensory attraction string process occurred in my relationship with my wife. As we first connected the strings were taut with vibration, but as they were allowed to flow freely the dance of the strings slowed in a all encompassing embrace. Thank you, Ruth."
"I did this activity in a subalpine meadow in the mountains of central Oregon. This blue-green place has a small glacial lake beneath gentle slopes of pines, and grassy mossy meadow spreads out to meet the lake waters. I sit on the moss on a point of land between the lake and a small creek, and I feel the sun warm on my back. I note how muc my mind keeps talking, labeling the pretty things I see, and I know I want to stop this talk yet it is so difficult to do. As the breeze forms ripples on the lake, this water merges together with the outgoing stream, and the sun makes these beautiful colors and patetrns in the water. I feel so attracted to these forms, and colors, as if I too am moving and flowing. Now, instead of labeling this, I think "web of life strings", and I feel a connection, a "sensory string" connecting me with the water and its movements and colors, connecting me with the graceful waving of the wheat-flowers in the meadow, connecting me with the soft earthy scent of the moss between my fingers, connecting me with the warmth of the sun and the flight of the osprey. I find myself laughing as the strings connect me with the little ducks out on the lake, diving for food with there backsides up in the air. I belonghere...here I am just me and sun and water and duck. I found the sensory string connection image very helpful in getting me out of new-brain labeling and very much into a feeling of oneness with my natural self and nature all around me."
"I found myself feeling profoundly grateful when I called my strong attraction for my wife a sensory string of the web of life. It broadened that feeling. I experienced the sun more warmly, the grass under my feet more gently. My respect for nature in general was enhanced. Changing the name of the feeling made my heart open to my surroundings. To survive, our environment, and people, too, need and deserve this kind of recognition."
"Today, feeling rather blue, I went out to the backyard and laid down under the maple trees and trying to set up natural sensory strings with them began to talk to them, thanking them for everything I 'd ever had from them and the priveledge of walking upon the earth as a guest .I sang them a song ( this is my father's world) a hymn actually and tried to tell them, because of them and the music of the spheres I knew what real music was like.And I told them I didn't much like what was going on the world today and I would much rather be part of and one with them , the natural world,and would they let me join them.Well It got real quiet where before it was noisy from a strong breeze blowing up all the while and then what happened next was magic, Interplay of light and green shadows glittered brightly across my face and the breeze blew up again but this time different ......... it felt very soothing all the sunshine, and warm green colors being showered onto my eyes and face........ these were feelings like a healing dew cool, soft, warm, soft alternating every couple seconds like they were playing gently with me.......... what I had intended to be a few minutes ended up being several hours. Ants crawled up my arms. the moss felt hard and stiff and crinkly underneath my arms and back like crepe paper (we haven't any rain at all this week) When at last I did get up I felt better as if I'd been crying a long time but all cried out and empty.(But I had not been crying)Almost as if all the bad feelings in me had been sucked out............like an aloe salve or something..........."
"I was enjoying the nice weather we are having and when I called that enjoyment a natural sensory attraction string I soon felt love and beauty, alert and finely attuned to my surroundings. Birds, insects and the leaves all sang distinctive songs. I heard the wind and traveled with it. Strangely, I disappeared, I sensed myself as the environment."
"Calling the coolness of the shade the tree provides a web string led me to thank this resplendent tree for being here and for attracting me to it. In return, the tree seemed to smile through movement in the branches. Everything else faded in my respect for the tree."
"My experience with this activity immediately intensified My feelings of My Connection with the natural beings and senses that I was experiencing!!! As soon as I walked outdoors, I felt a cool breeze on My face. Calling it a natural sensory attraction string resulted in my awareness of My own face feeling the wind - it was My face, My skin, Me sensing the wind! I have always loved the feeling of wind upon me, but this particular experience really did bring into to my awareness a stronger, intensified feeling and experience of connection. I kept my attention on the sensing and the words natural sensory attraction string, and only now am I trying to put my experience into more words to explain and share it. What I experienced might very well be described as: what I felt was my senses of touch and pressure and temperature on my face were at one 'end' of the string and that the wind was on the other 'end', though I didn't think about 'ends' of the strings at the time. I just felt a really strong, real connection. My hands went up to touch my face and appreciate it for sensing the wind, and that extended to an awareness of me having these senses and feeling appreciative of myself for having them. As I continued to walk, I saw and felt the sun, its color and warmth and roundness, and the coolness of the air when i was in a shadow; I heard a chickadee and was aware that I was hearing it and that I felt very connected to it even tho I couldn't see it; I noticed colors and shapes and textures of the grass and trees and so on. Repeating the phrase resulted in the intensified feelings of connection every time, until after only a little while, I noticed that I felt a personal sense of belonging within the natural community that I was experiencing; I really felt a part of it, I felt, and found myself saying to myself, "I BELONG! here with the sun and wind and grass and trees. I am NOT alone!" And with that consciousness, I FELT wonderful and beautiful and happy and relaxed and thankful! Thank you, thank us, Strings!"
"I enjoyed planting a small tree today and that string brought to mind that I am a gardener, both by profession and by avocation. I used to be a psychologist by vocation and a gardener by choice. I followed my attractions and now am surround by nature daily. I use the attractions process with my clients and watch them as they grow with their gardens. Many of them become as involved as I am in the 'attractions to green' process. Being part of the greater whole, both in space and in time makes me know that I am valuable as an integral part of that whole."
"When my fear of being layed off became a sensory web string, I could feel how the office was frustrating my love of nature. It helped me trust that love again. I began to see that just as love starts with self, so does trust. I thought back that as a child - with my 53 senses sensing like crazy to discover all I could about this world, I trusted those bigger and smarter than me when they told stories that reduced my senses to five. This contact is helping me to see that in trusting others, I began to learn to distrust and mistrust myself -- it was them or me. Thanks for the activity. It was great to discover that the full sensing part of me never really did disappear."
"I felt conflicted as I walked by the food counter and remembered how my hunger string has been compensating for injuries I have received to my other strings. I have battled a 14 year eating disorder so severe that it's almost killed me more than once. I tried everything from inhospitalization programs to intensive outpatient therapy in my efforts to get well. In what seemed like just a random event at the time, I stumbled upon a stranger who told me how reconnecting with nature helped ease his headaches. I was attracted to find out more and soon found myself taking the courses offered here. In doing so I have been able to take profound steps towards healing my relationship with food and with my body. I have found a new respect for myself as a vital and loved part of the global life community and I can now recognize my sense of hunger as an attraction string reminding me of it. Whereas I once strived for conformity, I now understand on a feeling level, that the health and magic of nature is found in its infinite diversity. I see myself as belonging to something far greater than I, something which doesn't only exist out in the cosmos after I die, but something vibrantly alive right here and now. Spending conscious time in nature has raised my self-esteem and restored the joy back into my life. I am no longer "starving" for an unnameable something. In hindsight I can see why years of traditional therapy did little to heal me....I couldn't find myself indoors because Myself was awaiting me outdoors."
Contact:
P.O. Box 1605, Friday Harbor WA 98250
(360) 378-6313.
Email: nature@pacificrim.net
Internet: www.ecopsych.com
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