Project NatureConnect Synopsis: An
IGE program in Applied Ecopsychology produces scholarship funds
as students cooperatively reduce administrative costs and receive
donations.*
Welcome to Institute of Global
Education home of the only Organic Psychology degree program
legally established in the United States that presently have
the insight and integrity to help you master the organic psychology
of theNatural Systems Thinking Process (NSTP).
NSTP enables you to make a
distinct, significant, contribution to building relationships
in a supportive balance with self, society and the environment.
If NSTP reflects the truth
of your values and experience, our scholarship program guarantees
that you may attain your degree without financial hardship.
State of the world
Most caring people recognize
that Earth and humanity are in serious
trouble, largely due to the irresponsible demands and impact
of the ways of industrial civilization.
When the effects of a democratic
society are long known to be destructive it means the process
by which the majority in that society thinks is wrong. It also
means their thinking has been unable to identify or correct the
destructive flaw in how it works. The importance of this program
in Applied Ecopsychology or Integrated Ecology is that enables
you to help people let the intelligent perfection of natural
systems help them correct that flaw.
Our cooperatively mentored
program empowers you to teach any person or group how to avoid
being destructive. Through it people discover renewing, constructive
energies in nature that we can use to creatively fulfill our
responsibilities, loves and deeper ideals.
Sensory knowledge
To understand, through experience,
the thrust of the Project NatureConnect IGE degree program, consider
this intelligence test question for advanced standing regarding
mathematical aptitude.
"If you count a dog's
tail as one of its legs, how many legs does a dog have?"
"Five," of course,
is the answer.
Intelligent people say "five"
because it's valid in mathematical systems and thinking.
However, our sense of reason
only recognizes five as correct until we additionally validate
what we know from our, or other people's, contact with a real
dog. Through that experience many of our multitude of additional
natural senses besides mathematical logic come into play: senses
of sight, touch, motion, color, texture, language, sound, smell,
consciousness, community, trust, reason, contrast, and love.
Each sense helps our sense
of reason make greater sense and recognize that a tail is different
than a leg, it makes sense that a dog has four legs, not five
"Aristotle thought there
were eight legs on a fly and wrote it down. For centuries scholars
were content to quote his authority. Apparently, not one of them
was curious enough to inspect a fly and count its six legs."
- Stuart Chase
Aristotle also wrote that we
know, think and learn with five senses. He also believed the
world was flat.
Although we no longer teach
that the world is flat, we still teach and learn that humans
function using five senses and we relate accordingly. However,
we are aware from experience that on many levels that we enjoy,
relate and learn, as with the dog's tail, using many more natural
senses than five.
Survival
Most people recognize that
just as our arm is naturally attracted or loves to be attached
to our body, all people are biologically, psychologically and
spiritually part of, and thereby attached to Nature
We hold a deep, often forgotten,
love of Nature's "resources," -sunshine, food, water,
earth, air, beauty- in common with each other and all of Nature.
The name for that love is survival, the love of life.
However, we live very Nature
disconnected lives.
Our thinking has very little
genuine 4-leg contact with authentic Nature. We desperately need
this contact if we are to be rational and sensibly combine 4-leg
and 5-leg knowledge. Thoughtfully, the connection enables us
to intelligently produce balanced 9-leg reasoning and relationships.
It helps us harmoniously interact with the natural systems within
and around us.
The Natural Systems Thinking
Process is a 9-leg tool that enables you to co-create with nature
as well as give the tool to others for their use.
Disconnection
We seldom engage in the nature
connection process because, on average, we spend over 95% of
our time indoors. This socially and educationally detaches and
desensitizes us to Nature.
Over 99.99% of our thinking,
is 5-legged; it is separated from and sensuously out of tune
with Nature.
We mostly learn to know Nature
from 5-leg, disconnected, "as if," stories about Nature,
rather than from authentic sensory contact with Nature.
Be Astounded! Our Nature-estranged,
5-leg intelligence calls the extreme disconnection of our psyche
from its womb and restorative powers in Nature "normal,"
"progress," and "excellence in education"
rather than "desensitizing psychological and spiritual dismemberment."
As a nature-disconnected society
we emotionally suffer from the dismemberment of our psyche. We
equally suffer from our denial that this dismemberment lies behind
many of our unsolvable problems.
As exemplified by caged animals
or plants blocked from sunlight, when we remove a living thing
from its natural surroundings the disconnection stresses it and
its behavior becomes abnormal. Sometimes it recovers fully when
it returns to its home in Nature. All this also holds true for
our psyche, too.
Reconnecting
There is no known substitute
for Nature's perfection. Most of the substitutes we invent contain
the destructive side effects that now overwhelm us. It is unreasonable
to think that we can resolve our unsolvable problems using the
same Nature disconnected thinking that produces them.
Students who take reconnecting
with Nature courses here find that reconnecting helps them address
their ordinarily unsolvable problems. It has the additional benefit
of helping them and others become more environmentally responsible.
For the past 32 years Dr Michael
J. Cohen and his students have lived, taught and researched in
natural areas, sleeping outdoors year round. From this 4-leg
contact with Nature, unlike the norm, they have not learned to
know Nature as something fearful to be conquered in the name
of progress, safety and economic growth. Instead, as they learn
to treat Nature's peace with respect, they enjoy Nature as a
powerful friend and teacher. This relationship helps them increase
their thoughtfulness and sensitivity. Through the organic psychology
of NSTP it will do the same for you in your home locality. In
addition, you will be able to teach NSTP to others.
Sensory knowing
Significantly, the major problems
our society faces seldom exist in intact natural systems or genuinely
Nature connected people. As a twig is bent, as we are conditioned,
so grows the tree.
"It is difficult to get
people to understand something when their salary depends upon
them not understanding it."
- Upton Sinclair
Dr, Cohen's forty years in
contact with Nature show, and research agrees, that we inherit
not just five senses, as Aristotle said, but at least 53 inborn
natural attraction senses, binding energies, forms of love and
unity, through which we can relate sensibly to the environment
and each other.
Since 1952 Cohen and his students
have researched, applied, and taught people how to incorporate
parts of NSTP into their personal and professional lives. NSTP
enables people to rejuvenate their 53 natural senses and restore
their sensibility into their thinking and relationships. This
is very important because in a democracy, the discovery of something
worthwhile must be accompanied by a readily available process
that enables people to implement the discovery.
The Organic Psychology of NSTP
is verifiable. It is presently part of several advanced, accredited,
training courses and degree programs. It has been reviewed and
published in professional science and technology, psychological
and environmental education journals.*
NSTP helps you to reattach
our dismembered psyche to its intelligent origins in Nature in
exactly the same way that a surgeon reattaches a dismembered
arm to a person's body. The surgeon brings the arm and body together.
This allows the natural attractions in Nature to biologically
heal the separation as only Nature can.
NSTP History
In 1959, Dr. Cohen founded
a camp and school program based on reconnecting with Nature.
The National Audubon Society and many others called it the most
revolutionary school in America. They said it was on the side
of the angels.
School participants traveled
and thrived by camping out in 83 different natural habitats throughout
the seasons. They learned to cooperatively live out their commitment
to have open, honest relationships with the natural environment,
each other and with indigenous people(s), researchers, ecologists,
the Amish, organic farmers, anthropologists, folk musicians,
naturalists, shamans, administrators, historians and many others
close to the land.
The experience deeply reconnected
their 53 sense inner Nature to its origins and self in the whole
of Nature.
As a result of the participants'
romance with educating themselves this way, in the school community:
Chemical dependencies, including
alcohol and tobacco, disappeared as did destructive social relationships.
Personality and eating disorders
subsided
Violence, crime and prejudice
were unknown in the group.
Academics improved because
they were applicable, hands-on and fun.
Loneliness, hostility and depression
subsided. Group interactions allowed for stress release and management;
each day was fulfilling and relatively peaceful.
Students using meditation found
they no longer needed to use it. They learned how to sustain
a Nature-connected community that more effectively helped them
improve their resiliency to stress and disease.
Participants knew each other
better than they knew their families or best friends.
Participants felt safe. They
risked expressing and acting from their deeper thoughts and feelings.
A profound sense of social and environmental responsibility guided
their decisions.
Participants creative thought
and expression in art, music and writing improved.
When vacation periods arrived,
neither staff nor student wanted to go home. Each person enjoyably
worked to build this supportive, balanced living and learning
utopia. They were home.
Students sought and entered
right livelihood professions.
All this occurred simply because
every community member made sense of their lives by sustaining
supportive, multisensory relationships that helped them restore
conscious contact with the intelligence of the natural world
within and around them.
How it works
The secret to each participant's
success was to rationally learn how to learn through natural
attraction sensations and feelings that arose from their newly
regrown-grown sensory roots in natural systems. This freed the
participants' 53 senses from their subconscious bonding to questionable
5-leg stories. It rebonded-bonded their sense of reason to conscious
4-leg contact with 47 other Nature connected, rejuvenated, natural
senses. They operated remarkably well by means of 9-leg thinking
and relationships.
From 30 years of travel and
study in over 260 national parks, forests and subcultures, Dr.
Cohen developed a repeatable learning process and psychology.
It unleashes into our thinking our inherent 4-leg ability to
grow and survive responsibly with the natural world. By documenting
that it worked and could be taught, he earned his doctoral degree
and the school became a nationally recognized and accredited
graduate and undergraduate degree program.
From 1985-92, Cohen translated
his Nature-connected, small group, expedition learning program
into a readily available Natural Systems Thinking Process (NSTP)
for public use via the internet or in locale. Through NSTP, backyard
or back country, people recover their natural senses from readings,
sensory Nature reconnection activities at home, work or school
and email communication with supportive study friends.
The secret
The critical contribution of
NSTP is that it empowers individuals to create genuine 4-leg
contact with authentic Nature and thereby produce natural attraction
moments that let Earth teach. It empowers our soul, spirit, and
sense of reason to responsibly unify 5-leg and 4-leg thinking.
It helps our our mind and heart benefit from the renewing powers,
balance and beauty of nature.
We invite you to lean and teach
NSTP to improve the welfare of people and our planet. It will
personally and professionally honor you with responsible rewards.
Apply
To apply for this program,
please use its special application
and scholarship form
For additional information
about the IGE program visit the program
web site
The program includes a supportive
tuition and scholarship
plan