Exploring the Benefits
of Nature-Connected Thinking
A free,
one credit (optional), home study course that can be done alone
or shared with others by email
DESCRIPTION:
Let nature-connected readings and activities help you transform
the destructive energies in your thinking into rejuvenated and
balanced ways of knowing. Strengthen your resilience by learning
how to counteract your education's omission of organic psychology.
Discover how to reconnect your reasoning and senses to their
nurturing origins in nature's restorative vigor, intelligence
and peace.
An optional
$20 contribution to Project NatureConnect is suggested to help
sustain the program and website. Other costs may include the
purchase of the text, Einstein's World, that goes with this and other courses.
Otherwise use a library edition.
Procedure:
Call the Staff
at Project NatureConnect, 360-378-6313 and get the OK to do this
course by yourself or with other students by email. Then:
1. Study
the article Stairway
to Sanity
online
until you are sure you have a working knowledge of the difference
between "4-leg" and "5-leg" thinking and
knowing. Do the Four-Leg
Thinking and Knowing exercise at the bottom of the Stairway to Sanity page.
2. Get 5-leg
information from sources 2A, 2B and 2C:
2A. Send a
blank email to naturequote@aweber.com. You will receive an
email with four nature quotes on it followed by a similar email
every four days for a few months.
2B. Get hold
of the book Einstein's
World
and read at least one chapter each week.
2C. Join this
course's naturequote discussion group by sending a blank email to
naturequote-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
3. Do either 3A or 3B below.
3A. Identify which of the four
quotes in the emails you receive (from 2A) that you find most
attractive
and/or
3B. Put together a short sentence
that you feel combines the most attractive parts of the four
quotes.
4. Go to the most attractive
natural area locally,
backyard or back country, that is convenient to you. First with
your eyes closed and then opened, for five minutes quietly discover
what part(s) of that area during your visit is/are most attractive
to you. Note what you think and feel as you become aware of these
attractions in nature.
5. Thoughtfully consider the contribution your five
minutes with this natural area makes with regard to the statement
you used in 3. What does your contact with natural attractions
do? Does it modify or strengthen your thinking? Write down and
then by email share with others on the course via 2C, the discussion
group, what you discover or learn from combining 3 and 4 above
(9-leg knowing) and save what you write.
6. Repeat 3-5 until you
have done fifteen of the emails that
you receive from 2A. You can skip emails if you don't have time
to do them, but to complete the course you must do a total of
15 of the 57 emails you will receive over a period of five months.
7. Using the 15 writeups
you did from the activities,
write a three page (or more) paper that describes important things
you found attractive from doing 2-6 above.
8. Share your paper with your online classmates (2C) who
will help you assign it a grade, then send your grade to the
staff to register it if you so desire.
9. If you want academic
credit for the course,
contact the staff at 360-378-6313 for instructions as to how
to obtain it.