Project NatureConnect
Basic Element Course Activity Two
The Secrets-of-Nature Trail and Game:
Copyright 1996, Michael J. Cohen, Ed.D.
Although we are part of nature, nature does not suffer our disorders. We don't find runaway garbage, war, loneliness, pollution, crime and mental illness in intact natural areas or natural people. We are psychologically bonded to a destructive way of life, yet we are part of nature. How does nature avoid our problems? Discover the secret by doing this
unusual nature trail and game. Learn how to let nature help you build and
teach sound personal, social and environmental relationships. The trail
visits rewarding natural areas that flourish in the environment and in hidden
valleys of your mind. To win the game, be open to letting nature recycle
the questionable ways that Western Civilization has taught us to think.
..........
Station 1: A gift to you from nature.In unspoiled nature, clean fresh air prevails. It is a product of, by and from mutually supportive relationships between sunshine and rain and millions of different plant and animal species. You are one of those species. We too often forget that when we inhale fresh air, we receive a gift. Air is a nurturing present to our lives from nature's global community. Air supports our ability to live. (Continue to the next station)
Station 2: Your gift to nature.Do you recognize that when you exhale your breath, Earth breathes you? You breathe carbon dioxide and water vapor into the air. They are food and water that nurture the plant, animal and mineral world. Your breath helps to sustain all other forms of life. It is one of your gifts to them. Notice how you feel right now as you breathe air normally. Would you feel better if you were breathing pure, sunshine-clean, rain-washed air? (Continue to the next station)
Station 3: The gift of life.In earlier times, the word for air was psyche. Psyche also means spirit and mind. Breathing air is called respiration, originally meaning "re-spiriting." The word inspiration means "bringing air/spirit in." The word expiration means "letting air/spirit leave." (Continue to the next station)
Station 4: Disconnect from nature:For demonstration purposes here, please exhale and then hold your breath for a few moments. Do this now. While holding your breath, read on: You have stopped breathing and are now disconnected from air and nature. Notice how a sensation is developing in you, a feeling attraction to air that increasingly urges you to breathe again. The desire to connect with air has been part of nature for 400 million years. The attraction for oxygen has been around for over three billion years. Like air itself, the attraction is of, by and from nature. Scientists did not invent it. That sense is nature feelingly urging you to reconnect with the atmosphere and the natural world (Cohen, 1995). Do you trust this attraction feeling and what it is telling you to do? Continue to hold your breath, Don't breathe until you absolutely have to. (Continue to the next station)
Station 5: Nature wants you alive and connected to it.Here is a secret of nature: Your sensory desire to breathe is a natural love to reconnect with nature. Your love of air insists that you breathe, even if you choose not to. The feeling says "Participate in the natural community that sustains you. Share and enjoy its physical and sensory gifts (Adler, 1995)". Even if you faint from lack of air, your natural attraction to air will revive and rejuvenate you by making you breathe again. That is nature's loving wisdom in action. That is how nature works. Nature needs you to help sustain the global community so it reconnects you. Through attraction senses and sensations, nature feelingly tells you it needs you to participate in life. You belong. (Go to the next station)
Station 6: Connecting with natural life feels good.Begin to breathe normally again if you have not already done so. Note that when you reconnect with air by breathing, nature rewards you. It gives you a good, satisfying, enjoyable natural sensation. Nature "invented" that sensation. It expresses nature's appreciation for your supportive participation. Without using words, the sensation thanks and fulfills you for reconnecting. It thanks you for your natural gifts to the global community. Do you trust or celebrate this rewarding feeling of thanks? It is reasonable for us and the environment to breathe together, to cooperatively connect. That mutually beneficial "love" relationship helps support and sustain all of life. That's why it is intelligent, right and feels good. Nature biologically created good feelings to reward some forms of life for heeding and fulfilling their natural attraction senses. (Continue to the next station)
Station 7: Words are your destiny.The words of Section 4 on this nature trail asked you to stop breathing. Their message had the power to disconnect you from nature. When you sentiently ignored nature and disconnected, that is stopped breathing, you were uncomfortable. Nature signaled you that some vital connection was missing. (Continue to the next station)
Station 8: Natural sensations and feelings guide you.By Station 6 it was not this trail's words and story that led you to reconnect by breathing. It was your feelingful desire to breathe that did this. Nature itself feelingly guided you in a good way, without using words. When you sentiently listened to nature and reconnected, you felt comfortable and safe. Naturally and safely feeling good comes from being directly connected to nature. It is very important to keep this in mind. Connective sensations and feelings are nature's way, an essence of how nature nurtures. How often do you seek and trust fulfilling experiences in nature? (Continue to the next station)
Station 9: Nature has no words.Here's something we often overlook: The natural world is a non-verbal community. In nature the desire to breathe has no name, for nature neither uses or understands words. However, we sense that air exists and we feel our desire to breathe, even though both have no word labels. That's how infants know to breathe when disconnected. That's how your "inner child" or "inner nature" knows it too (Cohen, 1995). Can you learn to trust the experience you just had? When you fulfill your natural attraction for air by breathing, nature within and about you, without using words, rewards you by giving you good feelings. Do you trust that is nature's way? If so, you can trust thoughtful sensory connections with nature to help you guide and support your daily life. (Continue to the next station)
Station 10: Nature is multisensory.Here is a vital secret of nature that is seldom taught in our society. In addition to the sense of desiring to breathe, nature has similarly created and contains at least 52 other distinct natural attraction sensitivities. Each of them is found in some form throughout the global community. Each can produce good feelings when we sense them. As with your desire to breathe, in conjunction with natural areas, each of these other natural attractions also feelingly, responsibly guides your relationship with the environment. In sentient, non-verbal ways, you may learn to reconnect with nature and enjoy its balance, validate its wisdom and feel good. The 53 natural senses that help you accomplish this include senses of sight, sound and smell; gravity, reason and temperature; nurturing, community and trust; empathy, belonging and place, thirst, hunger and trust; compassion, touch and taste (Cohen, 1995A). Each of them offers you enjoyable, trustable feeling signals when you connect with nature through them. This includes your connections with nature in people. (Continue to the next station)
Station 11: The wisdom of natural sensations.We don't exclusively own our natural attraction senses and sensitivities, we share them with every species. They help the natural community beneficially flow through us and us through it. Natural senses balance us personally by balancing themselves and each other. For example, thirst knows how much water we need so it regulates us by turning itself on and off appropriately. And although you may be thirsty, without being told verbally, you probably won't drink water that looks bad or has the wrong smell, taste, temperature, color or texture. These additional senses modify your thirst. (Continue to the next station)
Station 12: It is your choice.We are given the natural ability to reason --it is one of our natural senses. It enables us to reasonably choose or not choose to feel good responsibly by following our natural attraction senses and reconnecting with nature. (Continue to the next station)
Station 13: You belong.In nature, as demonstrated by breathing, we get good feelings by directly giving and gaining support from the global community. In that community, every member, including yourself, is very important. In some way, every member is naturally attractive, loved, and included. That is how and why nature does not produce garbage. One of nature's secrets is that on a macro level everything is needed. Nothing natural is garbage. Alive or dead, each natural being is naturally attractive, wanted and belongs. That is the reason runaway pollution, violence, loneliness, war and mental illness are virtually unknown in nature. It is why it is reasonable to gain good feelings by reconnecting with nature. Reconnecting with nature is a vital, intelligent and responsible way to safely gain fulfillment. By activating multiple natural senses, the reconnecting process helps our sense of reason rebuild our personal relationships as well as our society, economics, and the environment. It helps us establish a communion and partnership with nature. (Continue to the next station)
Station 14: Nature pulls things together.Here is another well kept secret of nature: At every level, the global life community is built upon many mutually beneficial natural attraction relationships. This process is so effective that the greater the creativity, diversity, and differences of each individual community member, the stronger the whole community becomes. Our inner nature inherits and trusts this natural attraction, cooperative natural wisdom. It biologically and emotionally enjoys, encourages and operates from it. Our inner self always expects to be loved and supported by natural attractions simply because that is nature's way. (Continue to the next station)
Station 15: Effects of disconnecting.The value of our natural loves and their wisdom is often hidden from our awareness by stories that tell us to avoid, disconnect from, or conquer nature within and around us. We live over 99% of our lives indoors, in verbal, not sensory, consciousness. In our extremely nature-separated, indoor world our stories make it practically taboo to reconnect with and trust nature. We learn instead to dance to misleading, nature-conquering, labels, stories and acts. Salaries, high grades and prestige reward us for doing this dance. However, the dance separates us from nature's balance, wisdom and fulfillment, thereby promoting our runaway disorders. (Continue to the next station)
Station 16: You are in charge of how you feel.You always have the option to safely feel comfortable by reconnecting with nature through natural attractions. You can do this through the basic element even when a story within or around you stresses you by telling you to do otherwise. For example, once you complete this nature trail, do the first part of it again. When you come to Station 4, you now know the story there will tell you not to breathe. You also know that heeding that story will disconnect you from nature and produce uncomfortable suffocation feelings. This time, think with nature. Choose not to pay attention to that disconnecting story. Don't stop breathing. Instead choose to pay attention to what naturally feels safe, attractive and worthwhile to you. Be responsible by choosing to breathe, to cooperate with nature by sustaining your natural integrity, good feelings and the Earth community. (Continue to the next station)
Station 17: Non-verbal learning, relating and knowing.The natural world produces its beauty, peace and balance solely through non-verbal attraction relationships. You can personally learn to choose and reconnect to this form of "higher power". It fulfills you, relieves stress and helps dissolve problems. You can teach others how to do it too. This interpretative nature trail contains only one nature-reconnecting activity. There are an additional 124 published activities you can do and teach at your convenience. Each further reconnects you with nature and empowers you to feel good. Each helps you think more reasonably, to make senses in 53 natural sensory ways, and build friendships in the process. (Cohen, 1993) As we strengthen our natural attraction senses, they become more alive in our consciousness. We begin to think with nature's wisdom, in a way that is more feeling, sensible and sensitive. This helps us feel more alive and make sense of our lives. For this reason, many educators, counselors and leaders advocate and use nature-reconnecting activities. (Continue to the next station)
Station 18: What have you learned here?This nature reconnecting trail is a structured educational tool. It attempts to teach you that you inherit from nature at least 53 natural senses and feelings. They are sensible natural communications that non-verbally but responsibly enable you to connect you to nature's wisdom because they are an essence of it. When connected to nature, they not only feel good, they wisely sustain and balance us just as they balance the natural world. When we fulfill our natural attractions to breathe clean air, drink pure water and eat uncontaminated food, we enjoy worthwhile, healthy fulfillment. Similarly, safely reconnecting with nature through our many other natural sensory attractions is also fulfilling, healthy and responsible. It is what every other species on Earth does. Natural people(s) do it too. The word consensus means "to feel with many senses together." Because nature-centered communities think by consensus, they don't produce our runway personal, social and environmental problems. (Bower, 1995) (Continue to the next station)
Station 19: Something to think about.Nature consists of non-verbal attraction relationships, but we learn to mostly think and communicate in words. That separation divides us from nature and produces our runaway problems. Our inherent natural intelligence, loves and values are often lost to nature-conquering images, stories and labels that demean them. For example, in uncomplimentary ways, our natural attraction senses are often called "subjective," "unscientific," "environmentalist," "imagination," "fuzzy thinking," "immature," "crazy" "non-academic," "flaky," "childish," "unimportant," "spiritual," "foolish" "nostalgia," "fantasy," "unreasonable," "touchy-feely," "drives" or "instincts." Consider this: Isn't our sensory natural attraction to air just as vital as air itself? Just as air is a scientific fact, isn't our natural love to breathe air an equally scientific fact? Isn't it polluted thinking, bad science and limited consciousness to prejudicially value material facts while devaluing sensory facts? Trust your experiences. You can think, learn and know using more than just language and a few senses. You can learn to think in multisensory ways with nature, relate more responsibly, and feel better too. (Continue to the next station)
Station 20: No need to stop now.This trail contains one activity that helps you think and feel with nature. You can continue learning that process. An additional 124 activities are found in the introductory book Reconnecting With Nature and the self-guiding training manual Well Mind, Well Earth. A free, optional, on-line E-mail course accompanies each of these books along with optional professional or academic independent study credit. A good introduction to the books and courses is the interview with Dr. Michael J. Cohen and the remainder of these WWW pages. You may safely, anonymously chat and share attractive nature-connecting experiences with others at our workshops and/or by joining our discussion list. You can request the assistance of a Project NatureConnect guide to share doing the activities with you. (Continue to the next station)
Station 21: Your conclusion?Researchers suggest that nature consists of resonant attraction connections between natural things (Wald, 1985, Langer 1995,). The deteriorating state of Earth and people signals that we and the environment are at risk. We are excessively separated from nature and must reunite. Doing nature reconnecting activities helps make this happen. They offer an urgently needed service and vast economic benefits. Interestingly, the word for breathing and sharing spirit together is conspire. Shouldn't we learn how to conspire to support life and our lives on Earth, rather than dance on the deck of a sinking ship?
B. Supportive Reading: Read the article Healing Ourselves and the World and consider how the activity above relates to the ponts this article raises. BOOK OPTION: If you have the book Reconnecting With Nature, read Chapter 9 for a stronger understanding about the Natural Systems Thinking Process and community development.
Thoughtful verbalization: Start your post to the group with the subject and your name, so that other course members and readers can identify it, read it, and share their thoughts and feelings about your experiences with this page and vice versa. Submit your experiences, thoughts and feelings from the material on this page to the NATURECONNECT LIST along with the following six Interact Catalysts: 1) a general description of how you did the activity and what happened; 2) the three most important things you learned from the reading and activity; 3) whether or not the activity enhanced your sense of self-worth and your trustfulness of nature; 4) the part of you, if any, the activity identified or re-educated inside or outside of you; 5) How you might feel if somebody took away your ability to have the activity experience and feelings associated with it. 6) Share your reactions to what you find attractive in the postings you may receive from the other list members. The use of the six Interact Catalysts will enhance your learning experience and that of the others in the course as well.
CONCLUSION: This concludes the Invitational Sensory Activty Program. The work you have done here is about 20% of the Orientation Course that is available on the internet. It gives you a sample of the rewards that our other courses hold for you. A major difference between this sample program and our other courses is that the interact group you work with on the regular courses are course members, who, like yourself, make and keep commitments to respond and post interactively so that the help each other learn and grow. They will not have taken the course previously and therefore may often share and delight more in the relationship discoveries made on the course.
Optional Strengthening:
The best way to further gain from this and other natural systems thinking process activities is to enroll in the short, online, Orientation Course
You may read the nature reconnecting experiences of others in our other archives, too.
Thank you for participating. Would you please thank for us the person who invited you to this minicourse or who gave it to you as a gift? MESA members are privileged to engage
in six additional free activities and trails located on the MESA Contents
Page. About the Author: Applied Ecopsychologist Michael J. Cohen, Ed.D. founded and coordinates Project NatureConnect and the Natural Systems Thinking Process. They are continuing education workshops, distance learning courses and degree programs of Greenwich University and the Institute of Global Education, in association with the United Nations Department of Public Education. He chairs the Department of Applied Ecopsychology/Integrated Ecology on San Juan Island, Washington. For 33 years, he has established and directed degree granting environmental outdoor education programs for the Trailside Country School, Lesley College, and the National Audubon Society. His 8 books and numerous articles include the award winning Connecting With Nature: Creating Moments that let Earth Teach which is included in his 1997 self-guiding book Reconnecting With Nature and Well Mind, Well Earth: 97 Environmentally Sensitive Activities for Stress Management, Spirit and Self-esteem. Dr. Cohen is the recipient of the Distinguished World Citizen Award. Contact: P.O. Box 1605, Friday Harbor WA 98250 ReferencesAdler, (1995). Providing the data to protect biodiversity. Science News Vol. 148, No. 21 p. 326 Washington DC, Science Service Inc. Bower, B. (1995). Return of the group. Science News, Vol. 148, No. 21 p. 328. Washington DC, Science Service Inc. Cohen, M.J. (1997) Well Mind, Well Earth: 109 environmentally sensitive activities for stress management, spirit and self-esteem. PO Box 1605, Friday Harbor, WA, Project NatureConnect. Cohen, M.J. (1997) Reconnecting With Nature: Finding wellness through restoring your bond with the Earth. (P.O. Box 1605, Friday Harbor WA,) Corvallis, Ecopress. Cohen, M.J. (1995) Counseling and nature: The greening of psychotherapy. Interpsych News. Internet, http://www.pacificrim.net/~nature/trail.html Langer, W. (1995) Watching a young star eat. Science News, Vol. 148, No. 21 p. 334 Washington DC, Science Service Inc. Wald, G. (1985) in Cohen, M. J. Proceedings: Is the Earth a Living Organism? Sharon, CT, National Audubon Society.
|
For further information on Project NatureConnect contact:
nature@pacificrim.netP.O. Box 1605
Friday Harbor, Washington 98250
(360) 378-6313
.....Follow this Trail Marker
For previous
pages use the BACK or GO of your browser
..........ALTERNATIVES