PROJECT NATURECONNECT

Greenwich University
Applied Ecopsycology/Integrated Ecology
ORIENTATION COURSE 

 

ORT 502

Elements of Global Citizenship:
The Science of Connecting With the Web of Life
The Art of Thinking With Nature

 

The Interact Group Process

One of the most important aspects of this course is the sharing of your experiences in nature with the other members of your group and responding to the parts of their experiences that attract you. Through this supportive group interaction you will discover how nature organizes itself and creates the balanced interspecies world community of which we are part.

Important elements of this method of learning:

1. Commitment

The interact group process takes advantage of the fact that participants are able to learn a great deal from the inner nature of others. Everyone depends upon the other course members for information and feedback, and each participant's interaction become part of the coursework itself. In order for this process to work, group members must make a commitment to maintain participation. Each member's commitment to completing the course and to posting activities in a timely manner helps establish the atmosphere of good will and trust that allows email relationships to form safely. To choose not to participate, or to discontinue in the middle of the program, leaves others stranded who are trying to fulfill their commitment to the program for the betterment of themselves and Earth.

2. Trust

This course uses words to connect the language-reason part of your mentality to the rest of nature in yourself, others, and the natural world. The words in the lessons and email postings, along with the people who produce them, are only trustable if the words accurately convey what is happening, or will happen, or has happened. In our world of words it is our responsibiltilty to accurately and honestly convey our actual experiences--if we are to sense the joy and rewards of trust. Build trust. Please make an effort to have the words you share here honestly report what attractions you sense, think and feel as well as what you will do when.

3. Immediacy

With commitment to supporting the interact group through a process of gaining permission, the interact groups enjoyably organize and maintain themselves and grow. We accomplish this by staying with immediate natural attractions while doing the activities, and then sharing our experiences in our email activity postings. Therefore, when doing the activities and posting your experiences, it is important that you focus on your personal natural attractions to people and places during the activity. Try to refrain from bringing in stories or references outside of your immediate personal experiences as they tend to take you out of the moment and into cultural, sometimes deeply attached, cubbyholes that can trigger arguments, disunity and war. If these stories are part of you, and you "own" them, they are automatically there in the immediate moment along with nature and your interact group. If, for example, some author or institution's dogma has made a statement somewhere and you feel and believe it, share that part of you as you, not as "Dr. Archibald says" or "Cathocrucians believe" etc.

Please keep in mind that many of the stories and beliefs we are attached to come from a different knowledge base, time, place, way of life, technological power, literacy and set of problems that contribute to todays troubles. What seemed appropriate then may not be appropriate now.

"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 impale a fly and count its six legs."
- Stuart Chase

You can always change and grow from the present, especially if you know who and where you are in the present. Stories that share thoughts and feelings about your nature connected moments hold something very special in common with other people and other life forms, including Earth.

 

The Interact Group Process: Particulars

1) When you post to your interact group, briefly indicate the subject and/or person that you are responding to, eg, UCSB OSPREY GROUP, PART 1A, Sue's response to Jan. Always post through email, not through attachments

2) One of the purposes of this sensory connecting with nature course is to help discover your relationship with nature based on the truths of your own conscious, tangible, sensory contacts with the natural world. Try and focus your email communications on:

A) sharing your personal experiences -attractive sensations, feelings, reactions when doing the activities and;

B) parts of the readings that are attractive to your thinking and feeling and that help validate your activity experiences.

Please keep your messages brief. Share thoughts, feelings, and reactions that are important to you. If you appreciate that somebody is sharing themselves with you, let them know that.

3) If you find that you cannot keep a commitment, please let the group know about your need to change the commitment and, if possible, gain consent to make the change. For example, if the assignment says: Part 3, read Article 6, and you're going to be away during the posting period, drop a note to this effect to the interact group and say you'll get that assignment done later. Then be sure and get it done when you indicated you would, or change it again. In this way language promotes trust and integrity rather than misleads you. Nature does exactly the same thing non-verbally, but we have become insensitive to many of these communications.

4) Please note that, unless otherwise requested, we, on occasion, anonymously distribute some postings from the the course to the NatureConnect List, our newsletter, and other interested parties. This contribution helps the course serve its purpose: to have ecopsychology experiences help unify the natural world and people. The distributions enable others to become familiar with the course and to people's potential when they are connected to nature. Those who make this discovery are thankful for your contribution to their experience.

The Six Interact Catalysts

For each Activity and reading combination listed in the course schedule, you are asked to identify one or more natural sensory attraction webstrings that were active in the activity and then write down and post to the group:

1) a general description of how you did the activity and what happened;

2) the three most important things you learned from the chapter 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) your reactions to what you found attractive in the postings you read from the other group members.

6) What value, if any, was there to doing the Summary Option (If you did it.)

The use of the Six Interact Catalysts will enhance your learning experience and that of the others on the course as well.

 

The Interact Group Process: A Scenario

The following scenario will help you understand how to apply the Interact Group Process to the course lessons:

Carol, an e-mail course member, reads her course instructions to learn what activity she and her email partners, who live in many different countries, will to do this day in their local park, backyard, or even with a terrarium.

As Carol begins this day's activity, the delicate sparkle of a water droplet on a fern attracts her (webstrings of color, size, touch, place). She does additional activities that reinforce this nature-connected sensation and she becomes aware of other times she has felt its joy and meaning to her. She also notes her past disconnections from it (get out of the rain, tear drops, ) and the effects of the loss. She discovers the droplet being attractive to her was not an accident. It was subconsciously attractive to parts of her that sought the balanced tenacity, brightness and refreshment it provided. The droplet brought them into consciousness.

Carol goes on-line, and shares her thoughts, feelings and reactions from her nature connecting experience with her 7-person interact group. She reacts to her group's and instructor's posted nature experiences, and to their reactions to her reactions. It's fun. She feels alive and spirited, supported by her email partners and rejuvenating connections to Earth.

Her day brighter, Carol looks forward to further connecting with people and natural places that attract her. They gain new value and she becomes aware of natural self-worth in herself and others. She has new confidence for she has done the activity and known its effects. She owns it, can teach it, and gain its rewards at will. This sounds simple, but discovering and explaining to herself and others how and why it works challenges her intellect and spirit.

 

Interpersonal Commitment

Before the course begins, I would like participants to be aware of the following letter:

June 4, 1995

Dear Mike,

Having finally completed the Reconnecting With Nature course, I consider it very valuable to me and I'm glad I did it. As you know, I had to do it twice because some of the eight participants in my first interact group had little respect for each others needs with regard to taking the course. Even though they had good intentions, they knew that some of us were taking the course for credit or needed it for professional or personal reasons, yet they did not hold up to their end of the bargain very well -some not at all. Some did not keep up with assignments, so it became difficult to continue because I did not receive reactions to my postings to the group, or their assignments were so late that they made things confusing. Two people just quit the course without saying anything, and one did not follow the guidelines and quoted authors all the time instead of sharing what happened when he did the activities, if he ever did them.

Isn't there some way that you can screen those who say they want to take the course so that those that take it keep their participation commitment to the group? I think it was right for Erica, Dan and me to decide to start over with a new group. The second course was terrific, we all learned a lot and had a great time. We still write each other and Morgan actually visited me. I'm really happy things worked out for the best. Actually, I might have had to postpone my graduation if the course did not work out.

It seems to me that you should emphasize that on the course, as in nature, each individual depends upon the cooperation of the others to sustain the E-mail group community. Our lives are usually so disconnected and out of our control that we often lose sight of the importance of what we can contribute and how much we gain from doing it. Also it might be better if the groups were smaller. Our second group of six worked well.

Thanks for offering the course. I'm looking forward to helping guide the next group and taking the second part of the program. Perhaps I'll send the new group a copy of this letter so they have some idea of what is needed to make the course work well.

In Friendship,

Ricki Forbes

 

 

 

Please note that this course is an outreach program of the Institute of Global Education, Department of Integrated Ecology and is subsidized by Project NatureConnect, past course participants and myself.

 

We welcome your support and suggestions for making this course available internationally.

 

NEXT: Take me to the Orientation Course Prerequisite Activities or, if completed, to the INDEX .

 

Link out of order? Use the Index or the link sequence below.

Course Sequence Links:

INDEX | PROJECT | DESCRIPTION | GROUP PROCESS | PREREQUISITES | PART ONE | PART TWO | PART THREE | PART FOUR | SUMMARY | POST COURSE | RESOURCES |