| ,,,,, |
.
|
|
,,,,, .
.
HELP-WANTED. Nature-Connected Learning and Healing Online: degrees, jobs and accredited training courses enhance your personal and professional goals. Our grant-funded, organic methods and materials help you safely tap into and benefit from the grace, balance and restorative powers of natural systems, backyard or backcountry.
Use the hands-on application of ecopsychology to strengthen your effectiveness and friendships. Help reduce stress and increase well-being in people and the environment. Add the supportive sunlight and beauty of the natural world to your relationships.
Visit our Homepage for complete information
,
Project NatureConnect
Institute of Global Education Organic Psychology
Special NGO Consultant, United Nations Economic and Social Council
,,,,,,.,..,,......
- Practical distance learning that enhances expertise and spirit in all areas of endeavor.
- Benefit from accredited university or college environment-psychology focus CEU online courses training grants and ecologically sound degree programs.
- Earn extra income money online
- Reduce stress. Add the sunlight and beauty of nature's intelligent grace and restorative powers to your professional or personal life.
We Unnecessarily Suffer Stress And Disorders Because We Are Victims Of A Lie Perpetrated by Education, Psychology and Health Leaders.
- Michael J. Cohen
SYNOPSIS/ABSTRACT (This may be published as an announcement)
A newly discovered organic form of Psychology intelligently helps us stop living an environmental lie that we bond to in early childhood. The socialized lie makes us believe that we live on the surface of Planet Earth. But we don't. We live 300 miles deep in our planet, imbedded in and nurtured by its biosphere. Habitually believing the lie leads us to spend, on average, 98 percent of our time, thinking and feeling while disconnected from the self-correcting and purifying ways of natural systems as they flow through the biosphere and ourselves. Our extreme detachment stops the grace, balance and restorative powers of natural systems from recycling contamination in how we think and feel. This causes us to unnecessarily suffer great personal and environmental disorders. To our benefit, thoughtful Organic Psychology sensory techniques genuinely reconnect our thinking and feeling to nature. They enable us to let the powers of natural systems help us remedy our personal and environmental dysfunctions.
See outcomes at:
http://www.ecopsych.com/2004ecoheal.html
ARTICLE
(available for publication)Title: We Unnecessarily Suffer Stress And Disorders Because We Are Victims Of A Lie Perpetrated by Education, Psychology and Health Leaders.
Subtitle: Organic Psychology: A Sensory Science Helps Us Improve Learning, Recovery and Relationships
Author: Michael J. Cohen
The pain from a from a cycling accident head injury prevented Bart, a writer, from writing. For years he suffered constant discomfort that that did not respond to repeated surgical, chemical, psychological and meditation treatment. He sought alternatives from the Internet, discovered Organic Psychology and took an eight week online class in it. He did the course's nature connecting activities with an attractive group of trees in the center of his town. His heightened sensory relationship with them and with his online classmates enabled him to overcome his pain, it transformed into pleasure and he could write again. When the trees were later to be removed for development, Bart passionately rallied the town to protest their demise. The town saved the trees and became more involved with Organic Psychology.
-Reconnecting With Nature
We asked hundreds of individuals, "Don't people live on the surface of Planet Earth?" Most of them agreed that we do.
- Project NatureConnect
We unnecessarily suffer many dysfunctions because contemporary educators psychologists and health professionals socialize us to an extremely dangerous lie.
From the time we first begin to talk we obtain deep rewards (social approval, food, shelter, water, air, light, love, warmth etc.) that inextricably bond us to a false "materialistic life story." It says that we live on the surface of Planet Earth. But we don't. We live in the Earth, 300 miles beneath its atmosphere of air, clouds, rain and snow. In fact, we are imbedded in and nurtured by Earth's biosphere, a 20 mile band that sits above and below the land and ocean.
In 1929 contemporary science and society recognized that the biosphere functions as the central life community of Planet Earth. It is a self-organizing, cooperative integration of atmosphere, sunshine, ocean, soil, plants animals and minerals that supports all of life, including human life.
The essence of the biosphere is its flow of natural systems. Wherever that flow stops, life as we know it deteriorates or dies.
Within and about us, natural systems are self-correcting and purifying. They recycle and renew the natural deterioration of themselves and every molecule on earth. For this reason, nature does not produce garbage, pollution or excessively destructive relationships.
Moment by moment, natural systems and their grace, balance and restorative powers flow through all of life. This includes flowing through our mind and spirit, through the life of our thoughts feelings and perceptions.
Natural systems are a prime commonality that we share with people, places and things. Most artificial things cause troubles sooner or later.
Our health and happiness ultimately depend upon the streaming of natural systems through, within and around us. But because our biosphere-detached socialization tells us a lie, we blithely separate ourselves from, exploit and conquer natural systems, within and around us.
To our great loss, on average, throughout our lives we learn to disconnect 98 percent of our time, thinking and feeling from conscious sensory contact with natural systems.
Our extreme disconnection from natural systems stops their beneficial flow through our psyche. It becomes unable to recuperate from its deterioration. This numbs clear thinking and feeling and that leads to the disagreements, violence, abuse, stress, hurt, disorders and addictions that mark our lives. We become insensitive or desensiitized "numbskulls" and suffer from "sense-less" relationships. We learn to relate to things in the natural world mostly as "material resources" rather than as supportive family and friends. We turn the world into abstract words and stories that try to describe what "things" are and how the world works, stories that usually fall short of nature's perfection.
We suffer because we don't learn to embrace global life community members as relatives, attractions, self-extensions or spirit kinships. For example, what we call a "tree," "board-feet" or "potential profit," nature-centered people(s) call "treeing," "treeness," "tree person" or "relation."
Nature connected people seldom cause the troubles we produce because they learn to know and relate to Mother Earth as a true nurturing mother that they love and respect, not as a dead third rock from the sun.
Organic Psychology helps us reverse our disorders by giving us the ability to help natural systems and their benefits to flow through and register in our psyche. This tool enables us to preempt or bypass false aspects of our socialization. It empowers us to directly reconnect our disconnected and hurt thinking and feeling with our origins in natural systems and their healing ways. This connection gives us the ability to:
-override or transform the nature-disconnecting childhood lies we learn in industrial society.
-become more intelligent as we benefit from first-hand contact with the truth and regenerative powers of natural systems.
-build relationships based on immediate attractions to natural systems that we hold in common, not on half-truth stories that divide us.
-increase personal and environmental well-being by thinking and feeling with nature rather than against it.
The core of our troubles is that, since Aristotle and before, our most powerful leaders, thinkers and teachers have been victims of our culture's nature-disconnected lies. As infants, our leaders bond us to the half-truth labels and stories they believe. As if brainwashed, we emotionally attach to a way of thinking and relating that distorts and demeans natural systems. It estranges us from them. Our ingrained life story habitually rejects the beneficial flow of natural systems in our psyche so the flow stops.
We suffer because we seldom think, feel and relate to the whole of our world and its gifts for well-being.
Organic Psychology gives us an antidote and preventative for our nature-disconnection problems. Its activities help us make thoughtful sensory contact with the transformative powers of natural systems that our thinking and feeling ordinarily omit. We may easily add this process to our personal and professional lives. It is the responsible thing to do; the outcomes speak for themselves.
For further Information
Dr. Michael J. Cohen, 360-378-6313
Email: nature@interisland.net
Website: http://www.ecopsych.com/
Act Now: funded education counseling and healing with nature online internships, ecopsychology degrees, courses and jobs. Email for information or call 360-378-6313
Experience a nature-connecting exploration activity from Reconnecting With Nature. Discover, hands-on, its value to you. (Bookmark this page first or return here using "back" or "go" in the menu).
.Learn the how and why of Organic Psychology:
Incorporate the values of educating, counseling and healing with natureA LESSON IN LOVE AND OUR NATURAL SENSES
An Organic Psychology Report from an Online Course Participant
"We did this wonderful Organic Psychology exercise at our local Nature Center, my children David and Patricia, and me. We first used the "gaining permission from nature" activity to help our little family group find consensus and discover if this natural area invited us to visit it. It did. It attracted us to a rather open area with many different varieties of trees set out so that each of them had its own little space to show it off.
We started the exercise abruptly as David, while I had my eyes closed, just started spinning me around without warning (he read my body language saying, I'm ready!). After I regained my balance, they led me around what seemed to be a whole new place - was the ground that uneven before? Where did that hill come from? Oh, isn't the grass soft and cushy!
The cold air on my face was more enjoyable, I noticed, with my eyes shut, though I can't explain that (I don't usually enjoy being cold). My face got tickled by a few branches before my hands were led to a face-high branch to explore. It was fascinating, and it was so very intimate. I asked the tree (David said he had asked when selecting it, too) for it's permission to get to know it in this way, and I felt loved and welcomed.
The tree's limbs were so strong, that was my first impression, solid and strong. As my hands travelled over the bark Patricia pointed out that some of it was falling off as I touched, and she was concerned. I touched more gently, moving to the base of the trunk to explore the structure...its bed was soft, its trunk rose up a bit, just round enough to hug, before it broke symmetrically into 4 limbs. These my hands followed out as high as I could reach, and I was attracted to the grace of its form. One branch ended abruptly, clearly an injury - it felt that way physically and energetically.
After really feeling like I was communicating with the tree, giving and receiving, like we had gotten to know each other well enough that I could identify the tree "in a crowd", I said I was ready and they led me all over the place again before telling me to open my eyes. This was really a great lesson because even though there were so many trees around, "my" tree stood out right away. It was so clear, I just knew that tree. Just for good measure I looked around at all the other trees, but a touch of my tree confirmed that I had the right one.
When Patricia took her turn, I think she may have peeked a bit (which just took a little fun out of it for her) but she did feel her tree all over, finding a soft patch (moss) at the bottom for identification. She counted the limbs, she said, so she could know which one it was. She seemed to be enjoying just touching the tree, and later on she said that she learned that her hands can teach her a lot about things. Next time I think she may choose to keep her eyes shut, as she realized that David and I had so much fun doing it that way. Her focus was more on picking the right tree, like a school test, than just experiencing. So we'll do it again.
Patricia led David, eyes closed, to his tree, which he explored gently and lovingly. He found some little needles (it was a Hemlock) which set it apart a bit, but when his eyes were open he found it much more challenging! He couldn't figure it out for a while, because his hands had not explored the entire base of the tree and missed a whole trunk branch, but when he put his hands on "his" tree, like my experience, he knew he had the right one.
We all felt so connected with the trees, and as a group we gained consent to sit in one together. We let the tree support us as we sent it love and gratitude. It felt like perfect love, to tell you the truth. It is getting to be a wonderful Sunday activity for all of us, and I am so grateful for the course book's guidance for this lesson in love and our many, many natural senses.
In the book's chapter, I was attracted to this illustration of society's madness: "They discover from their personal life experiences how society teaches them to lose their respect and dependency on thirst and water for survival, and how it may be replaced by commercial products, for example, Coca-Cola (The Real Thing?)." Applying Organic Psychology to mental health, this is my soapbox. Use it to what makes you feel good naturally, then try society's medicine. Try sunlight before the antidepressant! Try listening to a babbling brook before taking anxiety meds! Try singing to get rid of voices before introducing antipsychotics into your system. Because Nature will work, and the side effects are pleasant.
Another quote I especially like: "As does everything else in nature, each natural sense and sensitivity plays a role in surviving. Each of our 53 senses signals something special about our relationship with the natural world that exists in ourselves, each other, and the environment. That signal is part of life itself." Often, my thinking turns to survival value - I think about almost everything in these terms, like, how does this behavior (or how did it originally) support the survival of this species, this system, this organism? It makes perfect sense to me that our many senses have evolved to support the whole web of life. Ahhh, it is so wonderful to study what makes sense!
The last quote I'll share is a short one, but it packs a powerful punch for me: "Our natural senses are nature and natural systems in action." It helped me this weekend; at one point I was feeling alone and confused, and after asking for Universal support I suddenly felt the air all around me, holding me up and going in, through, and out of my body. I wasn't alone at all! Then I saw our jar of water holding a favorite rock, and there was a candle with fire on it, and there was a succulent aloe plant...no, I definitely was not alone. I felt so good, so grateful to all of it (especially the air, like a friendly feeling as if it had personality). I've always felt close to all things natural, and I believe that we are all one (I am Earth, I am Air, I am Fire, I am Water, I am Spirit). But this time it was even more, like we were...mutually supportive buddies? Connected by the attraction strings of the web of life, we share and are.
I learned a lot from this chapter, and I am interested in this list of 53 natural senses. I have questions about some of them, a bit of confusion about how they cross over. I love it that Reconnecting With Nature uses science to address these facts, and it seems like schools would have even caught on to some of these senses by now and started teaching them, doesn't it? The list makes me want to be more aware of all of these senses; I think I may post it in a visible place.
My experience in nature shows me that I am a person who gets good feelings from touching this tree with attention and intimacy and as I gain trust and feel trusted, I feel good, too. I feel good from the cool air on my face; when I connect with it with full attention it is no longer an uncomfortable and distracting sensation but its own delightful sensation. I appreciate it when I truly connect with it. Seeing others connecting with trees also gives me good feelings, as I feel deep in my heart that they are experiencing true love and I feel it, too, through our natural attractions. I would never, never want my ability to experience these truths to leave me. I would be un-living at that point. But that must never be. I noticed my self-worth was improved by this activity as I was trusted by the tree and allowed to touch it so intimately. I feel love and loved in this activity!
Thank you for reading this email, dear study group. I love you all."
A response from a study group participant:
Then the delightful part - for me is you say: "But this time it was even more, like we were...buddies? Connected by attraction strings of the web of life," Isn't that the BEST feeling ever? It is for me. I always knew I was connected to nature and knew it was very special to me. It helped me, healed me, taught me, and eased my pain. BUT - I was always grateful to it as one is to the God I learned about when I was a child. Something "out there" and untouchable, and granting me blessings even when I didn't deserve them. Then I started these Organic Psychology courses and went and asked permission and felt that welcome, that acceptance and I was just knocked out! That was the day I learned/experienced that natural senses are two-way connections, and that nature and NIAL and so God aren't untouchable or unreachable, but do in fact enjoy those connections, even need them (although it took me longer to wrap my mind around that one) as much as I do. The only word that fits that feeling is just "WOW!!!"
Act now. Master Organic Psychology by doing it.
Explore it from our homepageLearn the how and why of Organic Psychology
Contact us at 360-378-6313 mailto:nature@interisland.net, http://www.ecopsych.com
RESOURCES:
Online reading: useful online articles and activities
http://www.ecopsych.com/2004artnews.htmlCore web pages with links:
Introduction to Organic Psychology programs
http://www.ecopsych.com/The Core Problem
http://www.ecopsych.com/nineleg.htmlSources and Effects of Dysfunction
http://www.ecopsych.com/halfvast.htmlBasics of Natural Systems
http://www.ecopsych.com/nsd.html#anchorsystemsNature's Essence:
http://www.ecopsych.com/attractionlink.htmlThe Core Model:
http://www.ecopsych.com/webstrings1000.htmlResults of Thinking and Feeling With Nature
http://www.ecopsych.com/survey.htmlCore Activity Online
http://www.ecopsych.com/trailattract.htmlDemonstration Experience Online
http://www.ecopsych.com/giftearthday1.htmlCore Starting Course
http://www.ecopsych.com/orient.htmlMost Complete Overview
http://www.ecopsych.com/insight2005.htmlPublished Professional Articles
http://www.ecopsych.com/counseling.html
http://www.ecopsych.com/natpsych.html
http://www.ecopsych.com/webstrings1000.html
http://www.ecopsych.com/theory.html
http://www.ecopsych.com/trailattract.html
http://www.ecopsych.com/overview.html
http://www.ecopsych.com/interspeciesdemo.html
.....Cohen, (1991). Integrating Nature's Balance. The Journal of Environmental Education, v.22 #4, Washington, DC.
.....Cohen, (1993) Counseling With Nature: Catalyzing Sensory Moments that Let Earth Nurture. Counseling Psychology Quarterly, Vol. 6, No. 1, Carfax Publishing, Abingdon Oxfordshire, EnglandBooks:
The Web of Life Imperative
Reconnecting With Nature
Einstein's World
Well Mind, Well Earth
http://www.ecopsych.com/books.htmlAll books are subsidized and available by priority mail
http://www.ecopsych.com/orderbooks.htmlAccredited Academic and Professional CEU Online Courses
http://www.ecopsych.com/courses.htmlGet Involved: Degree Program Procedures
http://www.ecopsych.com/iupsprocede.html
REFERENCES:
1 Cohen, Michael, Editor (2001) The State of Planet Earth: Results of Ecozombie Thinking (http://www.ecospsych.com/zombie2.html)
2. Cohen, Michael, Education and Counseling With Nature: A Greening of Psychotherapy. Interpsych Journal of Mental Health. March, 1995, Vol 2 No. 4 (http://www.ecospsych.com/counseling.html)
3. Cohen, Michael, Nature Connected Psychology: Creating moments that let Earth teach Greenwich Journal of Science and Technology Vol 1 No 1, June, 2000 (http://www.ecospsych.com/natpsych.html)
4. Cohen, Michael, How to Treat Natural System Dysfunction (NSD): The Restorative Powers of Organic Psychology. (http://www.ecospsych.com/articlensd.html)
5. Cohen, Michael, An Introduction to Organic Psychology (http://www.ecospsych.com/2005organicintro.html)
6. Cohen, Michael, The Organics of Psychology (http://www.ecospsych.com/insight2005.html)
7. A Survey of Participants: Reactions to NSTP and Studies of Effects, The Web of Life Imperative, Victoria, B.C. Trafford.
(http://www.ecospsych.com/survey.html)8. Friends of Natural Systems (http://www.ecospsych.com/organization.html)
9. Thomas, Janet (2005) On All Nine Legs - Teaching Outdoor Love to an Indoor World, Taproot, SUNY Cortland, NY, Journal of the Coalition for Education in the Outdoors. (http://www.ecopsych.com/2005taproot.html)
10. Cohen, Michael, books: The Web of Life Imperative and Reconnecting With Nature, Minneapolis, MN. Ecopress http://www.ecopsych.com/books.html
For additional information contact Dr. Cohen at 360-378-6313 mailto:nature@interisland.net, http://www.ecopsych.com
Webmaster/Editor: To help your community overcome Natural System Dysfunction, you may publish or link to two additional free NSD articles .
http://www.ecopsych.com/articlensd.html
http://www.ecopsych.com/attractionlink.html
Let us know if you use either of them or the article here and we will place a link to you from our link page.
INSTITUTE OF GLOBAL EDUCATION Special NGO consultant United Nations Economic and Social Council
PROJECT NATURECONNECT Accredited New York nature career holistic education and job courses, organic learning degrees and alternatives; earn extra income money and increase wellness, spirit and hope.
P.O. Box 1605, Friday Harbor, WA 98250
360-378-6313 <email>
www.ecopsych.com
ORGANIC, ACCREDITED, APPLIED ECOPSYCHOLOGY IN ACTION
The Natural Systems Thinking Process
Dr. Michael J. Cohen, Director
send email
All organization programs start with the Orientation Course contained in the books
The Web of Life Imperative and Reconnecting With Nature
. ,
Results of the application of Organic Psychology to a wide range of disciplines and interests:
In the center section of the pages, below, you will find reports from other online Course Participants about the application of Organic Psychology to:
Alarm! Alarm!
Well-being at risk
Help turn the tide!
www.SaneEarth.com
"Human behavior is rooted most deeply in nature's intentions and desire. The rhythms of nature underlie all of human interaction: religious traditions, economic systems, cultural and political organization. When these human forms betray the natural psychic pulse, people and societies get sick, nature is exploited and entire species are threatened."
-Stephen Aizenstat
In industrial society our excessively nature-separated lives mold us to betray the natural psychic pulse. We learn to block from our thinking over 95 percent of the wise sensory callings and fulfillments we normally receive from natural systems and their eons of experience. Our hurt and frustration from the severed disconnection of these senses underlies our greatest troubles.-Michael J. Cohen
Benefit from learning to repair the natural psychic pulse within and around us. Add the sensory ecoscience of Organic Psychology to your life and livelihood.
................................................... ..................
.
Project NatureConnect
Homepage
Organic Psychology Search EngineContacts
360-378-6313
Grant-funded, social and environemntal science accredited courses, career training and holistic organic learning degrees: alternative adult education and sustainable career training jobs online for personal and global health.
Act now: student grants, scholarships loans for college online
"Scientific research is based on the idea that everything that takes place is determined by laws of nature, and therefore this holds for the action of people."
- Albert Einstein.
....................
