PROJECT NATURECONNECT
Institute of Global Education
Special NGO Consultant to the United Nations Economic and Social Council
WEBSTRINGS

 


.... Webstrings Orientation Course:
.... The Natural Systems Thinking Process
.... ...... - open to all applicants,
.... .......- transferable to most programs,
.... .......- academic or professional credit optional,
.... .......- financial aid available

.... This Course fulfills the requirements for the following courses:

Greenwich University Applied Ecopsychology/Integrated Ecology Department
ORIENTATION COURSE ORT 502 1 credit

Portland State University Graduate Schoool Extended Studies.
PSYCHOLOGICAL ELEMENTS OF GLOBAL CITIZENSHIP 1 Credit
Educating and Counseling with Nature Prerequisite/replacement Course

Institute of Global Education
PSYCHOLOGICAL ELEMENTS OF GLOBAL CITIZENSHIP
Required for membership in good standing

 

Psychological Elements of Global Citizenship:

The Science of Connecting With the Web of Life
The Art of Thinking With Nature

 

Course Description:

Discover how our excessive separation from nature stresses our sentient inner nature and produces our psychologically bonded "unsolvable" problems. Learn to reverse this destructive process. Master a few thoughtful nature reconnecting activities that dissolve stress bonds by satisfying our deepest natural loves, wants and spirit. This course scientifically teaches lasting, hands-on, education, counseling and leadership skills that feelingly tap the webstrings and "higher power" wisdom of nature's creation process. Its email and telephone contacts let nature nurture warm interpersonal relationships, wellness and responsibility.

Some of the Questions Addressed by the Orientation and Introductory Courses:

    • -How much of our ability to sense and feel do we inherit from nature?
    • - What are the 5 steps to letting nature help you reduce destructive attachments?
    • - Do you deserve to have good feelings? Why?
    • - How can you increase your Globally Balanced Thinking Score?
    • - How many natural senses do you have? Do you think with their intelligence? How?
    • - What is the key factor that makes people different or separate from nature?
    • - What value is there in you safely feeling closer nature?
    • - What is the greatest truth in your life that you can trust? (Clue: the answer is neither ...God, love, honesty nor nature.)
    • - What is the difference between a thought and a feeling?
    • - How many natural senses can you name that you can know and learn from?
    • - Why do we continue to assault nature and people when it doesn't make sense and ...we don't like doing it or its effects?
    • - Is there a relationship between our runaway social and environmental problems?
    • - Does nature within you know how to relate responsibly to nature in others and the ...environment?
    • - Can you be sane if you are a good citizen of an insane society?
    • - Is our innate ability to sense and feel of, by and from nature?
    • - Does our formal education or our leadership competently address the above ...questions?
    • - What is consciousness and who invented it?
    • - Do miracles happen in contradiction to nature?
    • - What is the relationship between nature and the human spirit?
    • - Do our problems result from the difference between how we think and how nature ...works?
    • - Since nature produces no garbage, does nature practice unconditional love?
    • - In nature, does two plus two equal four?
    • - To be part of a system, you have to be in communication with it in some way. We are part of the global life system and vice versa, how does it communicate with us and we with it?

Guaranteed: Your personal, professional or academic life will improve dramatically as, through this course, you develop relationships that answer the questions above.

 

 

 

"In learning how to think with nature is a restoration of our sanity and Earth."

  • Our nature separated lives disconnect our mentality from its fulfilling, sensory, preliterate origins in nature.
  • To replace these fulfillments, too often we psychologically crave and bond to destructive relationships.
  • Learning how to genuinely reconnect our thinking with nature has proven to replace our destructive bonds with constructive, balanced relationships.

- Dr. Michael J. Cohen, Project Director

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.....COURSE OVERVIEW:

  • May be used in Distance Education Degrees via email
  • 8-16 days in length (minimum);
  • Begins to organize on the first and 15th day of each month, or by appointment;
  • Consensus based time schedule is planned by course members;
  • Enjoy a supportive 4-6 person interact study group via email;
  • Credit optional: transferable graduate or undergraduate credit or professional clock hours.
  • Post-course internships available.

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Course Purpose & Information

Background:

This email/correspondence course is part of a subsidized Natural Systems Thinking Process internship training program offered by Project NatureConnect. Optionally, you may use the book "Reconnecting With Nature" in conjunction with the course and get more out of it, as well as be able to continue the program independently. The course starts whenever you would like to proceed with an available interact study group. It is based on using the self-guiding materials found on internet sites.

For a course application form select here.

The following article explains how and why we offer this course (updated from Psychology Today, May-June 1994):

 

THE ECOPSYCHOLOGY OF EDUCATING

AND COUNSELING WITH NATURE

From the druids of the Celtic forests to the great tribes of American Indians, people have sought balance, peace and wisdom by living according to the laws of Mother Nature.

Unfortunately, this century will be remembered for unprecedented exploitation of nature--and widespread psychological disturbance of individuals.

No coincidence to Michael J. Cohen, Ed.D., pioneer of what he calls integrated ecology or applied ecopsychology. A synthesis of ecology and psychology, integrated ecology proposes that both the destruction of the Earth's environment and people's isolation, stress and dysfunction stem from a fundamental denial of our connection to nature. And by psychologically reconnecting with nature, we reverse our psychological disorders.

Western civilization emphasizes only the faculties of sight, reason, and language, forcing most of us to suppress our natural senses --all 53 of them, by Cohen's reckoning. Among them: hunger, thirst, compassion; color, sex, place; community, nurturing and motion. They sentiently connect us to the world, we think with them to make sense. Spending over 95% of our lives cloistered and indoors leaves these natural sensory connections excessively wanting; human dysfunction and evils --cigarette smoking, greed, dependencies, violence --naturally follow to help fill the void.

Cohen is not a lone hunter of the bond between man and nature. According to Pulitzer-Prize winning sociobiologist Edward O. Wilson, Ph.D., of Harvard, people have an inherent biological need to be in contact with the out-of-doors. He calls it "biophilia", and believes that nature may hold the key to our aesthetic, intellectual, cognitive, and even spiritual satisfaction. Our childhood love of animals and natural myths and fairy tales may be early evidence of our basic affinity for nature and its instructive and healing properties.

Counseling and building responsible relationships by reconnecting with nature? Cohen has devised therapeutic home study training manuals, workshops, on-site and e-mail/correspondence courses, discussion groups and degree programs whose activities, in backyards or back country, re-create many beneficial relationships enjoyed by earlier hunting, gathering, and communal living peoples. In the American Psychological Association Journal "The Humanistic Psychologist" (Vol. 21, No. 3) and other professional publications, he reports that while on these education programs community spirit and responsibility grows, participant's personality and eating disorders subside, learning and other cognitive abilities improve, and violence and prejudice dissolve. His participants learn to do, own and teach unforgettable nature connecting activities that produce these results throughout their lives. Gradually, a deep environmental literacy evolves that rejuvenates their natural senses, balance and joy, along with the environment.

From his home base at Greenwich University and the Institute of Global Education, Cohen offers books, workshops, training and degree programs and information about ecologically oriented education and therapeutic methods.

Course Procedure:

This is a generic course for use by anybody interested in the Natural Systems Thinking Process. Because people from various settings enter this course at different places on it, you may encounter material you have already read or done. When this happens, note if there are new or additional attractions in it for you. Note, too, if you know how to locate that material again for use as a teaching tool. Then proceed with the remainder of the course.

A vital aspect of the course is learning how to trust our experiences with nature in places and with people's inner nature. For this reason the course uses outdoor natural areas as well as communication by email between the course participants .

The course starts when we have a minimum of 3-4 participants committed to doing it. They put together and post to a private list of 5 people including an experienced guide/instructor. Posting your experiences and responding to others is a very important part of the course.

Course Prerequsites

The prerequisites of this course are located here on the web. Do them now while you are waiting for the course to start. For some questions and answers about the the course process select here. (Remember, return to this page by selecting BACK, GO, or bookmarking the page)

 

...Course Fees and recommended financial contributions

A donation of $35.00 is requested to help cover Course organizational, administrative and instructional costs. It includes eligibility for facilitator internships, participation in the next level (Introductory) Course, a Certificate of Completion and registration of the participant's GBT score improvement. NOTE: payment terms, work study and financial aid are available.

A Textbook is recommended but not required. The basic text for the course is on the website.

A course fee of $35.00 is required from students receiving credit for the course. (This fee is refunded to Greenwich University students when they complete this course, ORT 502, on their Greenwich transcript.)

The course is a prerequsite for additional Portland State University School of Extended Studies courses.

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Course Application

For a course application form select here. Once you have completed the application, you will be given instructions on how to proceed with the course.

 

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