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Project NatureConnect
Institute of Global Education
Organic Psychology
Special
NGO Consultant, United Nations Economic and Social Council
Practical distance learning to increase person/planet well being.
| SYNOPSIS: This page contains reviews announcements and articles that describe a DVD film about Dr. Michael J. Cohen. He is an environmental educator who has created an learning, counseling and healing with nature sensory science. His Organic Psychology tools and holistic training programs help us improve health and wellness by helping our thinking and feeling safely tap into nature's grace, balance and restorative powers. Naturally Attracted, Connecting With Michael J. Cohen DVD Video Materials for release or for reference 1. Announcement 2. Articles 3. Reviews 4. Releases 5. Contact 6. Program Description 7. Sensory Science: Natural Attraction Ecology 1. Announcement Learn how anyone can increase personal and global well being through the sensory science of thinking with nature rather than against it. View the online, 45 minute DVD Naturally Attracted, Connecting With Michael J. Cohen. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1357054/ This environmental documentary film explores the life of Dr. Michael Cohen, the award winning maverick genius who created a Web of Life attraction tool for educating, counseling and healing with nature. A free DVD for review is available. Email us a request for it along with an explanation of how or why you intend to review it: nature@interisland.net Information for use in reviews as well as a release about the film is located (below) at http://www.ecopsych.com/kdvdreview.html 1A. Student's Reaction "I have just watched the DVD about Mike Cohen. When I first heard about it, I thought, how could anyone every capture who Mike is and share it with the world? Well, I think this video does a GREAT job of doing that. What a wonderful experience it is to watch this. It is just beautifully done. A pleasure to watch, and what a pleasure to listen to. It had my feet a-dancing. I think my toes were born knowing how to move to that music. The nature scenes were stunning. And then, about Mike. Well, it's so true. There's never been anyone like Mike and never will be another. Watching his life unfold through the video brought to the surface the profound appreciation I feel to have had the honor of knowing him, studying with him and learning to learn nature through him. Like the woman in the DVD said, there is no way to ever repay the value it has brought to me. - Sarah Edwards, L.C., M.S.W, Ph.D. 2. Article Creating Moments That Let Earth Teach: A DVD Explores The Life of a Sensory Environmental Educator No matter to Mike Cohen that some consider him to be a loose cannon, a person who has taken one too many steps beyond normal reality. To the contrary, he insists that if we are to increase personal and global well being before we cause irreparable damage to life, most of us will take the steps he has pioneered. Cohen a nature-connected environmental educator, traditional musician and counselor is nothing if not passionate. Since 1949, he has dedicated himself to outdoor education and traditional music related to it. He has lived, worked, researched and taught in deep relationship with nature throughout his life and was introduced as a "maverick genius" at the 1985 Bureau of Applied Sciences International Symposium on the Promotion of Unconventional Ideas in Science, Medicine and Sociology. There he was also described as "the reincarnation of Thoreau as a psychologist." In 1994, he received a World Peace University, Distinguished World Citizen award for the sensory environmental education programs he had founded, and for the 1985 international symposium Is the Earth a Living Organism? that he conceived for the National Audubon Society. His eighth book, The Web of Life Imperative (2003) contains a potent sensory Webstring Natural Attraction Model. It empowers the world with an organic mixture of education and counseling that couples beautifully with natural systems and their beneficial powers. Keenly interested in the positive effects of Cohen's Webstring Model and his grassroots music, Neuropsychologist John Scull, Ph.D and his son, Anthropologist Charlie Scull, Ph.D. asked “Wouldn't it be worth documenting the background, ideas and relationships that have helped Mike Cohen develop his Model and what he calls the Organic Psychology of its Natural Systems Thinking Process? Armed with a video camera and curiosity, they spent months questioning and filming Cohen's present life and then people and places of the past seventy years that he affected or that influenced him. The result is a warm in-depth film that, ready or not, helps us integrate the process that Cohen has given us for reversing our personal social and environmental dilemmas. "All things are connected," say Cohen, "And this includes our troubles and their source." Charlie Scull's film Naturally Attracted, Connecting With Michael J Cohen helps Cohen show how on Planet Earth nature does not produce any garbage and that the only exception to this rule is humanity's nature-separated thinking. Although we are part of nature, we produce millions of tons of garbage every year. Cohen explains, “We do this because we feel, act and are treated like garbage whenever our socialization irrationally bullies us to disconnect from the perfection of nature and the natural.” His Webstring Model helps us reverse our polluted thinking and feeling by helping them make conscious sensory contact with nature, backyard or backcountry. The Webstring Model is a whole life relationship-building process that enables us to enter it. It encourages nature's self-correcting ways to flow through our psyche, recycle our thinking dysfunctions and improve our sanity. The film conveys how and why we benefit from and enjoy the model's readily available art and science of reconnecting our mind to nature's grace, balance and restorative powers. We discover that inherently, we are them and how to help them safely decompose the garbage in our psyche that produces our excessive stress and its related disorders.” Steeped in Cohen's music, Scull's film is loaded with moments of insight that enlighten and at the same time deepen our bond with the natural world. Through the musical joy of celebrating the efforts of folks over past centuries to deal with society's nature-abusive adversities, we watch Cohen's students become partners in awareness and richer for the experience. As a result, they report that they refrain from unfairly exploiting the natural systems inherent in Mother Earth, the neighbor next door, the landscape, their pet dog or themselves. Cohen has scientifically developed a unique healing and a learning process. As reflected by the plight of the world today, we need both very badly. It was a peak experience in the Grand Canyon in 1966, that taught Cohen a profound lesson that shaped his adult life and his work. In the midst of a thunderstorm, with the red canyons running red with rain and the entire landscape pulsing with thirsty vigor and vitality, Cohen sensed the life in the planet. In the DVD, he explains: "The living planet's biology, geology and chemistry are its metabolism; night-day, night-day, its heartbeat. Warm evaporating inland seas serve as kidneys; air and water are plasma. In congress, all aspects of Earth compose a planet-size intelligence, a wise gigantic self-regulating plant cell whose life approaches perfection. The cell knows how to organize, preserve and regenerate itself and how to create its diverse life without pollution, war or insanity. As part of nature, we inherit this knowledge about life in balance and purity, but our nature-disconnected socialization buries it in our subconscious. In our dreams it calls us to free it so it may help us correct our detrimental thoughts and feelings." Cohen says, "We must learn to find and express our inherent love for this living planet of ours. We have to relearn over and over how to thoughtfully fall in love every day with being here and being part of it, and then we have to name that process, know it, own it and practice it because we most passionately save what we love.” Sure, Cohen goes an easily doable step beyond what we normally think. Fortunately this offers us a scientific, yet sensuous way of knowing that arises from our multiple intelligences in conscious concert with nature. As we learn how to create moments that let Earth teach, the regenerative ways of natural systems help our thinking and feeling support life in balance within and around us. To our great loss, that is a vital missing component of contemporary life" Unexpectedly, nature plays a remarkable role in this film when Cohen introduces a five-sided rock that the cooling of molten lava shaped eons ago. Cohen says that, similarly, his extended contact with the beauty and renewing ways of natural areas have shaped his mind to to think the way nature works. The rock is placed atop a split rail fence and, an hour later, to the amazement of all, when the camera momentarily films the rock, like an exclamation about the importance of contact with nature, we see the rock, on its own, jump off the fence to the ground. In our profit-motivated world of high powered media that exploits our frustration and anger, Naturally Attracted, Connecting With Michael J Cohen may never become a significant classic. However, that does not necessarily mean it isn't one. 3. DVD Review Michael Cohen, psychologist, educator, folksinger, author and eco-renegade, is on a mission. He wants us all to go outside to play-and to stay there until we reconnect our thinking to the nature of our nature. In Charley Scull's documentary film Naturally Attracted, Connecting With Michael J Cohen, Cohen demonstrates that an essence of nature is its attraction to support life through the grace, balance and restorative powers of natural systems within and around us. They shape us, nurture us and develop us into the most naturally perfect human of human beings. As the film explores Cohen's wide-ranged relationship with nature and traditional music, we discover how our socialization to excessive indoor living causes us much distress. We recognize how it addictively insulates our thinking from the flow of natural systems through the environment, one another and ourselves. Our psyche loses contact with the naturally balanced source of joy and well-being that is our biological birthright. “The self-correcting ways of the great outdoors are our legacy and wisest teacher,” Cohen says and this film introduces his Web of Life nature connection model. We see how its backyard or backcountry activities help us, at will, make thoughtful sensory contact with the natural. Unexpectedly, nature plays a remarkable part of its own in this film when Cohen introduces a five-sided rock that the cooling of molten lava shaped eons ago. Cohen says that, similarly, his extended contact with the beauty and renewing ways of natural areas have shaped his mind to think the way nature works. Later, the rock is placed atop a fence and, to the amazement of all, when the camera focuses on it, like an exclamation about the importance of contact with nature, the rock jumps off the fence to the ground. 4. Press Release A Documentary DVD Helps Us Think With The Grace, Balance and Restorative Powers of Nature. Naturally Attracted: Connecting with Michael J. Cohen a film by Charley Scull "How do we explain this?" asks Dr. Michael J. Cohen. "On Planet Earth nature does not produce any garbage, yet, although we are part of nature, we produce millions of tons of garbage every year and it increases global warming. Why does this happen? Isn't it because as our socialization bullies us to unreasonably disconnect our thinking from nature, we think, feel and are treated like garbage so we act accordingly? To be reasonable don't we have to learn how to increase person and planet well being? Shouldn't we benefit from the art and science of connecting our thinking to our natural legacy, the purity and balance in nature's self-correcting ways?" Connecting with Nature: Since 1959, Dr. Michael J. Cohen has founded and directed outdoor education schools, including the National Audubon Society Expedition Institute of Lesley University. These mixed-age groups traveled all over North America and led Cohen to develop a powerful sensory nature-connecting tool that helps the way we think increase personal, social and environmental well being. Beginning in 1974 with Our Classroom is Wild America, Cohen has written seven books about his experiences and the science of his nature connecting process. With the development of the Internet in the 1990s, Cohen became a pioneer of distance education, offering online courses and graduate programs in Ecopsychology and the organic application of educating counseling and healing with nature. In the new film Naturally Attracted: Connecting with Michael J. Cohen, a Neuropsychologist, Dr. John Scull and an Anthropologist, Dr. Charley Scull, visit Dr. Cohen and explore his unique musical and environmental roots. Viewers may see the film trailer online, or purchase the DVD via http://www.ecopsych.com/DVDvideofilmkey.html Review copies of the DVD are available by email request to <nature@interisland.net>. Online information for reviews is located at http://www.SaneEarth.com. * * * 5. About Michael J. Cohen Recipient of the 1994 Distinguished World Citizen Award, Ecopsychologist Michael J. Cohen, Ed.D. is a Director of the Institute of Global Education, where he coordinates its Integrated Ecology Department and Project NatureConnect. He also serves on the faculty of Portland State University, Akamai University and West Coast University. Dr. Cohen has founded sensory outdoor environmental education programs independently and for the National Audubon Society and Lesley University (AEI), conceived the National Audubon 1985 Conference "Is the Earth a Living Organism," and is the award winning author of Web of Life Imperative, Reconnecting With Nature, Einstein's World, and How Nature Works. He is an accomplished folk song artist and contra dancer who presents traditional music programs for the U.S. National Park Service and Elderhostel on San Juan Island, Washington. Contact: www.ecopsych.com nature@interisland.net 360-378-6313 6. PROGRAM DESCRIPTION: Educating Counseling and Healing With Nature Supportive Degrees, Career Training Courses and Jobs On Line Project NatureConnect offers nature-centered distant learning that enables you to add the benefits of nature-connecting methods and credentials to your degree program and/or your skills, interests and hobbies. We honor your prior training and life experience by providing grants and equivalent education credit for it. You may take accredited or professional CEU coursework and/or obtain a Nature-Connected Degree or Certificate in most disciplines or personal interests. A partial subject list is located at the bottom of this page.
Contact us at 360-378-6313 <email> http://www.ecopsych.comAchieve a Degree or Certificate to strengthen your professional interests, or your hobbies or pastimes, by connecting them with nature. Implement your strongest hopes as you increase personal and global well being. Topics, subjects or leisure pursuits can include those listed below or other areas of interest: |
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