"In contemporary society, a readily available process for building environmentally responsible inner peace, social relationships and global unity has been absent. Now, research shows that a Natural Systems Thinking Process (NSTP) meets this need."
Institute of Global Education
Special NGO consultant to the United
Nations Economic and Social Council
Project NatureConnect
PROGRAM AND PROCESS
From: Project NatureConnect
Department of Integrated Ecology,
P.O. Box 1605 Friday Harbor, Washington 98250
(360) 378-6313
Dr. Michael J. Cohen, Chair
http://www.ecopsych.com
Dear Visitor,
Thanks for interest in our programs.
Project NatureConnect methods and materials enable you, at will, to enjoy and teach the wellness, peace and creativity that sensitive people experience in nature. Our program lets the inspiration nature provides, and your spiritual connection with the outdoors, enliven thinking and relationships.
Below is an overview of our program. Also, for background information, be sure to visit our web site
Owls and Howls,
Michael J. Cohen, Ed.D., Director
THE PROCESS OF NATURAL SYSTEMS THINKING
Scientifically, intuitively and spiritually, more and more people are becoming aware that our lives, along with the global life community, are at risk . Our sense of reason tells us that, irrationally, our civilization asks us to engage in an undeclared, often unseen, war against nature within us and around us. In this war people daily struggle, fight and are injured on the battlefield. Planet Earth is equally as injured as we assault and abuse it. Many are discouraged, angry and in despair. They feel helpless to create a better way of life because their efforts to do so often aggravate their injuries. Think about it. Do you really think and feel secure about the future of our economy? your livelihood? the environment? living safely, avoiding loneliness?
The trauma of our war against nature blinds us from recognizing that in every moment of our lives there exists an alternative window of opportunity. That window opens to us living increasingly friendly, sustainable lives steeped in balanced and responsible personal, social and environmental relationships. No matter your profession, social status or interests, a new science, Applied Ecopsychology, now enables you to discover that window, climb through it, and teach others to do the same. Via self-guiding books and distance learning courses, an alternative, low cost, Ph.D., M.A. and BA independent study degree program, or credit optional individual courses, are available. At your own pace, they empower you with the knowledge and credentials to enjoy that window of opportunity.
In cooperation with the Institute of Global Education, an associate of the United Nations Department of Public Education, cooperating universities and Project NatureConnect let the fun, beauty and wisdom of the natural world enhance our daily lives. They offer home study, hands-on experiences in Applied Ecopsychology and Integrated Ecology. These disciplines let thoughtful sensory connections with nature reduce our stress, recycle our thinking and build responsible relationships. They create moments that let Earth teach.
We are part of nature, yet nature, in its non-verbal wisdom, does not exhibit our runaway personal, social and environmental problems. The verbal, nature-separated way we learn to think and relate, not nature, produces our stressful disconnections, insensitivities and irresponsibility. Society too often addicts us to think and relate verbally, through words and stories alone. We are the only species on Earth to do so. Even though they make up a vast majority of our mentality, we don't learn how to touch, celebrate and think with the 53 inherent, non-verbal, sensory ways and intelligences of nature within and around us, yet that process has creatively let the world, including people, grow in balance since its inception. We seldom honor that nature and Earth are intelligently, beautifully, illiterate. We defame rather than celebrate non-verbal sensory knowledge and process.
Your challenge here is that the very words you are reading right now are registering in your addictively literate mind. They often lead you and others to believe we can invent a substitute for the natural world, we do not need the real thing, so nature is being destroyed. You have been programmed to depend on words, and reasoning based on them, for survival. Your nature-disconnected stories, not consentual citizenship in the global life community, determine your destiny. Neither nature nor nature-centered people have this addiction. They don't exhibit our runaway disorders. They show that there is another, more balanced, way of thinking.
Inherently, over 85% of your mentality knows how to think like nature works. It uses at least 53 natural senses to elect reasonable behavior. Chances are that you do not know your 18th natural sense, or your 34th either. This is no accident. Our nature conquering society has taught you to bury the natural sensory part of you out of your awareness. It lies in what we call our subconscious mind, the part of our mentality we have driven out of our natural consciousness.
Tangibly, consciously reconnecting your subconscious mind to nature through your natural senses revives the subconscious, restores it, and brings its intelligence, beauty and balance into your consciousness. Then you can think with it as in our web site's example of the Scottish farmers and the rats (repeated below).
We psychologically call the feelingful subconscious part of us our "inner child." It is neither. It is the natural attraction love that allows nature within and around us to approach perfection. It is the intelligent process that enables nature to organize, preserve and regenerate itself to produce an optimum of life, diversity and beauty without producing the garbage, pollution, or madness of our uncontrolled wars, abusiveness, and stress. A hands-on natural systems thinking process enables you to use that wisdom as you build or repair your relationships and livelihood.
Nature communicates:
You, no doubt, realize that we cannot solve our problems by using
a nature-disconnected process and thinking that causes them.
Project NatureConnect corrects this short circuit. It lets us
unashamedly sense and enjoy in nature, in backyards or back country,
the natural attractions that have held and hold the world together
in balance. It energizes and injects these attractions into our
thinking. We learn to reason, feel and speak with the intelligence
and love that guides our inner nature, natural people and Earth.
Consider the following example:
In Scotland, farmers were overturning their hay bales to exterminate rats that lived beneath them. A trio of rats tried to flee but, unlike the other fleeing rats, these three stayed close together. This hindered their escape and they were vulnerable. Upon investigation, the farmers found that the middle rat was blind; its companions were guiding it to safety. Deeply moved, the farmers, rather than kill these rats, celebrated them.
As did the farmers, we learn, change and act from nature's supportive ways through thoughtful sensory contact with them. We inherently contain, and are attracted to, the nurturing cooperation, community and trust found in nature. Although society conditions us to conquer nature within and around us, Project NatureConnect enables us to think, verbally communicate and relate from nature's enchanting rejuvenation in our soul. An example of this is available on the Web.
Effects of Disconnection
We are born as nature's wisdom and delights. Our stories teach
us to relate while disconnected from nature's nurturance. Unlike
any other natural species or people(s), on average, we spend
less than twelve hours per lifetime in tune with nature's integrity.
Like an arm traumatically torn from a body, we are separated
from nature's wise and lasting fulfillments. This leaves us stressed
and unfulfilled. We substitute for their loss with fixes that
pacify our stress and hurt. Fulfillment from questionable stories
and the technologies they create, not nature, guides and drives
us We bond or addict to these imperfect fixes and to the process
that produces them, no matter their irresponsible effects. They
fixate us. They create apathy and fearfully block our ability
to make reasonable changes. This is reversed when thoughtful
sensory connections with nature teach us how to think like nature
works
Reconnect to wholeness:
Applied Ecopsychology reverses our disconnectedness by utilizing
proven medical procedures. For example, good medical thinking
and research have created surgical techniques that reattach an
amputated arm back to the body. If reconnected properly, the
arm will, in time, function normally. Part of this art is the
surgical technology our clear thinking has devised to bring the
arm back in proper contact with the body. The remainder of the
procedure is trusting that once this reconnection is made, nature
itself has the wisdom to heal the rupture and rejoin the arm
and body as one integrated organism. We don't know how to do
that healing, however nature does it continuously for that is
its way. Good medical thinking respects that nature has this
extraordinary regenerative power. It taps into it. It surgically
provides the proper environment and time for nature to heal,
as only nature can. Applied Ecopsychology activities do the same
thing with respect to our extremely nature-separated psyche and
thinking process.
Outcomes: Our studies show that the methods and materials of applied ecopsychology and integrated ecology work as does the surgeon in healing a separated arm. These disciplines tangibly place people in thoughtful physical, psychological and sensory contact with attractions in natural areas. This sensible reconnection allows nature to catalyze conscious psychological and spiritual healing. It rebinds us to the wisdom and ways of our origins. The process reduces stress and promotes the benefits thereof. In youngsters or adults, participation in sensory nature-reconnecting activities allows us to independently learn and own them. We become empowered to significantly reverse our troubles by becoming naturally fulfilled and thereby independent of their destructive rewards. Your good feelings about nature can work for you this way when you use nature reconnecting activities to nurture them.
Of course, in a society bent on the conquest of nature and it conversion into resources, institutions and leaders fear the nature-reconnecting process. It is controversial, for it replaces the control they are paid to place on our lives and it immunizes us to our society's addictive consumerism, the fuel of irresponsible economics, too. However, the benefits of the applied ecopsychology process speak for themselves to individuals who seek greater personal and global integrity.
The nature-reconnecting process dissolves the stress of our unfilling estrangement from our own biology and nature. In this way it increases creativity, critical thinking and wellness. Environmental literacy, citizenship, and learning ability rise. Nature reconnecting activities have shown to reduce apathy, abuse of people and substance abuse, depression, sleeplessness and loneliness. We also enjoy educational, environmental and economic benefits from sensory reconnections with nature. Our spirit and self-esteem soars. Natural areas are protected for they gain added value.
Data from people's involvement in PNC is significant. For example, a study group of apathetic, run down, low self-esteem, depressed, chemically dependent, at-risk students living 180% below the poverty level, were in a 10 week recovery program that incorporated applied ecopsychology. The results were exciting. Average scores improved dramatically: Beck's Depression inventory reduced from 12.2 to 1.5. Scores on the Stress Test went from 19.8 to 12. The Coopersmith Self-Esteem Inventory changed from 9.5 to 5. Average scores of the Barksdale Self-Esteem Inventory improved from 22 to 36.2. Sleep Inventory scores moved from 9.7 to 7.3. Every student's attendance and academic progress improved as did their environmental awareness, enthusiasm and literacy. Their community relationships soared. No indications of chemical remission were observed 8 months after the program ended. Within 6 months some of the students offered to help the counselors teach applied ecopsychology to other students. They began to restore the trashed natural areas around their school and homes as part of their personal and collective restoration.
Participation:
Project NatureConnect researches and produces practical self-guiding
methods and materials. These tools enable interested people to
learn, use and teach our nature-reconnecting process at home,
work or school. They even work effectively with weeds, potted
plants or pets. MA
and Ph.D. programs are now available for those who desire
to become leaders in this work.
Project NatureConnect's degree and training program offer information, expertise and support through courses and workshops, books, the internet and independent study. Transferable professional or academic credit are an option for those who learn reconnecting with nature skills. Internships are available as are volunteer and professional positions for instructors, facilitators, administrators and ambassadors. An introductory book, Reconnecting With Nature, by the Project's director, Dr. Michael J. Cohen, empowers anybody to enjoy, teach and apply ecopsychology. If you want to enjoy an example of it in action, obtain and do the Global Wellness and Unity activity: In Balance With Earth
If you want to get involved in the natural systems thinking process on a trail basis, take our 4-day Orientation Course, The course entitles you to begin facilitator internships and is a prerequisite to entering our courses at any level.
For complete information read through the web pages and e-mails
mentioned in the first paragraph above. Then call Dr. Cohen at
(360) 378-6313 to discuss your questions and comments.
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