Integrity 101: The Remarkable
Benefits of Thinking and Learning With Nature
The destructive
secret of natural attraction desensitization and how nature-connected
thinking improves health and relationships.
A free, distance learning,
online, Learning
With Nature course uncovers
important surprises in mental health, psychology, art, health
and education.
Authors
Mardi Jones,
Ph.D.,
is an environmental educator, writer and counselor who has pioneered
the use of NSTP in her private practice in Washington State,
USA.
.
Michael
J. Cohen, Ed.D.,
is an award winning author who directs several university programs
in Applied Ecopsychology. He conceived and developed the 1985
International Symposium "Is the Earth a Living Organism",
and is the recipient of the Distinguished World Citizen Award.
Course Synopsis
The art of
this free Learning With Nature course enables you as part
of nature, to connect with attractions in natural systems and
expand your thinking and intelligence. The course empowers you
to improve your personal and professional relationships and teach
others to do the same.
FREE COURSE
OVERVIEW: We suffer our greatest troubles because the contamination
of our thinking prevents us from finding solutions for our problems
even when they sit right before our eyes. Learn about an enabling,
nature connecting process that transforms our contaminated thinking
and its destructive mental heal effects into constructive art,
health, education and psychology relationships. Discover your
53 inborn intelligences and how you can restore them. Advance
your reasoning, health and spirit. Increase your contribution
to the wellness of yourself, society and the environment.
SECTION ONE Course Description
and Process
Sherlock Holmes and his sidekick
Dr. Watson, an accomplished expert in science and speculation,
went on a camping trip. They pitched their tent in an open area
and turned in for a good night's rest. In the middle of the night
Holmes awakened the good Doctor.
"Watson," Holmes
queried, "What do you see and what do you deduce?
Watson rubbed his eyes and
looked at the open sky and replied. "I see the sky and I
deduce that among all the planets and stars in the heavens there
must be some planets like earth. And if there are planets like
earth there is a high probability that there is life out there."
Holmes replied, "WATSON,
YOU KNUCKLEHEAD! Somebody stole our tent! "
For the same
reason as the unnoticed loss of the stolen tent by Dr. Watson,
in contemporary society far too much of our integrity has similarly
disappeared.
While we excellently
learn to concentrate on science, economics and technology, we
have been robbed of much integrity by a seldom recognized but
easily curable mental health disorder known as Natural Attraction
Desensitization Syndrome (NADS). NADS causes our quality of life
to suffer and our state and national budgets to soar yet few
of us even recognize we suffer from the disorder. Why? Because
it is normal.
Through the
"Watson Disappearing Tent Effect" NADS produces contemporary
humanity's most challenging personal, social and environmental
troubles.
As demonstrated
by the state of the world, yet without us noticing its activity,
the Natural Attraction Desensitization Syndrome prevents our
consciousness from registering the traumatic loss of our innate
ability to register the intelligence and emotional rewards of
the natural attractions that pervade nature and ourselves. Their
loss, however, causes our inborn biological and psychological
selves to want.
To compensate
for our great loss most people strive for the substitute economic
and social gains obtained by conquering natural systems within
and around us. However, when we want there is never enough. We
become excessive and psychologically addicted to these rewards
and numb to their destructive side effects. Although many signals
warn us of their danger, the signals tend to disturb us so we
continue or increase our wanting and excessive ways under the
flags of progress, normalcy and economic growth. In
turn the quality of our personal art, health, psychology and
education deteriorate.
As demonstrated
in Dr. Cohen's class in the Introduction, just a short visit with attractions
in nature productively begins to address NADS. That class has
been repeated hundreds of times with the same results. I find
very few people, however, who have had such learning required
as part of their education nor seek it.
COURSE DESCRIPTION
This professionally
designed and reviewed course introduces an easily accessible
nature connected psychology, the Natural Systems Thinking Process
(NSTP). It is a hands-on, learning with nature program created
by Dr. Michael Cohen and his workers at the Institute of Global
Education. NSTP counteracts NADS by empowering people to genuinely
reconnect their thinking with local and global natural systems,
backyard or back country. This enables nature's intelligent healing
qualities to interact with our psyche and help us resolve our
many addictive, often unsolvable problems. It has shown to improve
our mental health, psychology, art, health and education as well
as the environment.
NSTP works
because Nature contains intelligent, unifying, attraction powers
that recycle, regenerate and purify contaminated aspects of itself.
That is an intelligent thing to do. When genuinely connected
to authentic nature, as part of nature our psyche benefits from
these restorative energies. It is intelligent to want to make
this connection as well as make it.
NSTP is a social
technology, a tool we can use to transform our destructive bonds
and addictions into constructive relationships and mental health.
This course
describes NSTP but does not teach it. Sample activities are offered
and their results considered. A ten day, online, Orientation Course is shown to effectively
teach NSTP and help people begin to counteract NADS.
I suggest you read some of
the questions this course addresses or, better still, give yourself
a before and after evaluation regarding your familiarity with
this material. To do this go to the questions
page and then return to this page
To help insure
accuracy, this Course links to an additional
164 references in a companion article.
The article documents extensive research that shows that in most
situations nature connected thinking improves health and relationships.
COURSE INSTRUCTIONS AND PROCESS
"It made perfect sense
to me. Cost benefit studies showed that countries whose thinking
allowed natural systems to remain intact enjoyed greater economic
and social health than countries that had allowed these systems
deteriorate. For example: the benefits of letting an intact wetland
recycle contaminated water from a town far exceeded the economic
and environmental cost of developing that wetland into a shopping
mall and then building an electrically operated water purification
plant to deal with the water contamination.
This same principle applies
to most other areas of contemporary life including the contaminated
process by which we are educated, socialized, and learn to think."
- Michael J. Cohen
This short, free course is
self-guiding. Simply read its statements and respond to the questions
concerning them as honestly as you can.
Empirical
Evidence and Thinking
This course
stems from a "utopian community"
experience in nature and online. Nature-connected thinking theory
and system models have been constructed to explain why this community
works.
To help improve your or our
health and relationships it is well worth taking two minutes
to read about and become aware of the workings and outcomes of
this community; select here
to do so then return to this page.
Most of this Integrity 101
course material comes from parts of the Orientation
Course "Psychological Elements of Global Citizenship."
However, the learning process here is not the same as there.
There, knowledge is gained from direct, empirical, sensory contact
with natural systems within and around us, not just from reading
words that abstract these systems. The difference between the
two courses is like the difference between just seeing a picture
of the ocean and additionally wading in the water and waves to
learn more about them. To our loss, the latter process is omitted
in most education. What results is natural systems within
and around us are only partially known and understood, and
often misunderstood. What we don't understand we usually relate
to incorrectly. This causes the systems and us to suffer
our troubles.
This course offers you responders
that present quoted different views of the material presented.
They allow you to notice and further explore what you think and
feel regarding the view they present.
Here is an example of a responder
that concludes this introductory section of the course