A best buy, free, unique, gift idea. Learning With Nature psychology, mental health, art and education courses enable you to improve health, relationships and job opportunities.

Project NatureConnect
Institute of Global Education
Special NGO consultant to United Nations Economic and Social Council

Integrity 101: Learning With Nature (start)

 

 

A "Utopian Community "Description
from Jones 2002

 

In response to our unquestionable need for personal and environmental wellness, in 1959, Dr. Michael J. Cohen founded a camp and school program to deal with destructive addiction by using a nature connected psychology. During the preceding decade, Cohen noted that profound benefits emanated from a wide range of people who were living and learning in natural areas (Lieberman 1931; Cohen 1962). Once established, the National Audubon Society and many others called Cohen's program the most revolutionary school in America. They said it was "utopian" and "on the side of the angels." Participants traveled and thrived by camping in 83 different natural habitats throughout the seasons. They learned to 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 sensory inner nature to its origins in the whole of nature.

Results of the school community success were demonstrable:

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.

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 contact with the recycling powers of the natural world within and around them.

From 30 years of travel and study in over 260 national parks, forests and subcultures, Cohen developed a repeatable learning process and psychology (Cohen,1987 pp57-59). This process unleashes one's ability to grow and survive responsibly with the natural systems within and around us. By documenting that it worked and could be taught, he earned his doctoral degree and his school evolved into a nationally recognized, accredited graduate and undergraduate degree program.

From 1985-92, Cohen translated his nature-connected psychology into the readily available Natural Systems Thinking Process (NSTP) for public use via the internet or on site. Through NSTP, backyard or backcountry, people recover their natural integrity from readings and sharing sensory reconnection activities in local natural areas at home, work or school.

The value of NSTP is exemplified by research regarding its application to a group of at-risk students in an alternative school.(Davies, 1997). Three years of testing before and after the application of NSTP by a caring teacher or counselor showed increases in environmental literacy, academic and social skills, psychological improvement and the lasting cessation of chemical dependencies (Cohen 2002g).

 

 

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Institute of Global Education
APPLIED ECOPSYCHOLOGY / INTEGRATED ECOLOGY

Department Chair Office
Dr. Michael J. Cohen, Lead Faculty
Applied Ecopsychology Director
Akamai University, IUPS, NEEF, PSU

Post Office Box 1605,
Friday Harbor, WA 98250.
(360) 378-6313
nature@interisland.net

Dr. Cohen is the director of
PROJECT NATURECONNECT
at the
Institute of Global Education