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Accredited Nature-Connected Holistic Degree Courses On Line: Natural Career Education Personal and Professional Whole Life System Training Grants and Jobs.
PRESS
RELEASE
.
NEWS APPROPRIATE
FOR:
- Making a Difference, Holistic Health and Wellness, Nature Deficit
Disorders
- Green Education, Psychology, Social Work,
Therapy
and Counseling
- Natural Science Process,
Thought
and Ecology Climate Change
- Outdoor, Experiential and Environmental
Education
NEWS:
Training Grants Offered for an Accredited Green Thinking and Feeling Process that Reduces Stress and Increases Well Being
Training Grants Offered for an Accredited Green Thinking and Feeling Process that Reduces Stress and Increases Well Being
SPONSOR:
Project
NatureConnect
Institute of Global Education
Organic
Psychology and Natural Attraction Ecology
Special
NGO Consultant, United Nations Economic and Social Council
P. O. Box 1605, Friday Harbor, WA 98250 360-378-6313
HOW TO IMPLEMENT THE SUBJECT OF THIS PRESS RELEASE: 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.
RELEASE: Project NatureConnect Institute of Global Education P.O. Box 1605, Friday Harbor, WA 98250 360-378-6313 <nature@interisland.net> FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT: Michael J. Cohen 360-378-6313 nature@interisland.net Nature Training Grants Offered for an Accredited Green Thinking and Feeling Process that Reduces Stress and Increases Well-Being. October 10, 2008, Friday Harbor, WA - Michael J. Cohen, Ph.D., director of Project NatureConnect, today announced a non-competitive grant program for individuals who have had good experiences in nature. The program helps them further green their personal and professional relationships. They, in turn, help the public reverse its destructive personal, social and environmental disorders. Participants in the hands-on program learn how to think and relate through natural attractions, like nature works cooperatively to produce its unpolluted balance and beauty. Cohen, author of The Web Of Life Imperative, and Reconnecting With Nature, insists that the grant program is essential because the prejudice against nature that pervades Industrial Society induces our thinking to excessively conquer and exploit nature's beneficial ways, in and around us. For over 98 percent of our lives, our psyche is detrimentally separated from the self-correcting grace, spirit and restorative powers of nature. This loss leaves us wanting. When we want, there is never enough and we are never enough. This is the root of our greed, stress and lack of self-worth, of our excessiveness and disorders. “There is hope,” says Cohen, “Even a walk in the park demonstrates that we think and feel better when we reconnect with natural attractions.” In his new book, Educating Counseling and Healing with Nature, the science of Project NatureConnect intelligently strengthens our sensory contact with nature, backyard or backcountry. This enables us to increase personal, social and environmental well being as our reasoning interlaces with the genius of nature's peace, spirit and renewing ways. We recycle the garbage in our mind that has contaminated our sensibilities and transform that waste into the happiness of mutually supportive relationships. Cohen says, "Project NatureConnect's ecopsychology training restores 53 natural senses that we learn to neglect. It enables us to think and relate more sensitively and sensibly. This is important for our thinking is our destiny." Dr. Cohen can be reached at 360-378-6313, nature@interisland.net. Project NatureConnect's grants, methods and materials are available at www.SaneEarth.com * * *
Education as if our Living Planet Mattered The Results of Some Anonymous Project NatureConnect Grant Recipients Engaging in an Accredited Green Thinking and Feeling Process that Reduces Stress and Increases Well Being "I wander back in time a bit and was thinking about the approximate period when human connection to nature's mystique separated from primordial practices of wisdom; when science's secular theories attempted to control natural phenomena and religion vacated the connection of our relatedness with universal bio-emergence of life. I'm making a difference by taking an evolutionary glimpse into where we have been as a species as well as reflecting where we are now provided a focus as to what our potential choices of shaping our unified destinies can be. This is helping me to embrace the human race with empathy, just as becoming aware of our newly developed neocortex did. Both can be transformed and re-integrated within the mysterious dimensions of sensory intelligence and holistic health and wellness. I can imagine Einstein would consider webstring science to be an evolutionary necessity to weave into all sectors of society if humans are to evolve into contributing cooperatively as symbiotic members within our ecosystem or dissolve ourselves back into the elements due to our nature deficit disorders." When I incorporated the above brief evolutionary tidbits when talking with some folks about webstring intelligence and NSTP at the Earthday celebration, they said that bringing that into the circle of understanding helped them to soften their defenses…that it helped explain the collective 'stupidity' (their take) and why it is difficult to get people to be accountable for massive dysfunction. "Raphael asked herself in all honesty, isn't that what I and the rest of the folks here are doing in our situation.'' Many are aware our re-connection must be within the bio-community. Now it is imperative that an "integral language of being and value emerge," to improve education, psychology and social work. Learning how to teach webstring natural attraction science using NSTP has so much potential to reach the masses at this time in our history as I feel many are becoming more open to seeking understanding of the nature of true sustainability and desiring to find a sense of place with an increased awakening. A time when a more bio-centric attraction is ripening and the webstrings of PNC expand my reach towards fruition of a more peaceful union. "Natural systems are a part of people; they flow through us on webstrings. Excluding webstrings from how we operate has desensitized our thinking. We have lost touch with the global intelligence in nature and our inner nature that purifies, creates, and sustains unity and wellness in local and global systems." This statement speaks for itself in a nutshell. "Webstrings recycle your thinking and produce healthy habits." My thinking once carried the burdens and pain of what I thought being human entailed. The vacillating extremes on an emotional roller coaster was exhausting, and, I felt helpless to bring significant balance to our globe and myself. The natural science process of Webstring reconnection is a freedom and peace that is undisturbed by life's changing waves; an integrity that cannot be challenged by disruptive circumstances. It is a thought and ecology that could reverse climate change. I am flexible and completely present as external situations and internal fluctuations present themselves. Suffering has ceased and stillness breathes. My placement of importance extends beyond my prior ego-limiting perceptions. Life flows as I now choose what I am attracted to experience. For me, this is true simplicity. Simply being. Sunday late afternoon I sat outside--looking to dialogue with a "Breath of Heaven" plant that I had transplanted from a pot on the too shady front porch to the back yard in a much more sun filled area and in the ground. I stopped naming everything and took the time to be with the earth and the plant and something happened that surprised me--I have been going through all these changes in the past two weeks and quite a lot of frustration-- my sinuses were plugged up--this weekend here in Los Angeles temperatures have soared into the 95 to 100 degree range--I just finished shampooing my carpets to reduce the impact of dust and particles of clay from some papier mache pieces I am completing--my mind tense and tight-- I sat there and all at once--I am viewing the soft tendrils of the Breath of Heaven Plant-leaning towards the sun light--it is a bit on the shady side in the morning--I felt my heart open up and my sinuses clearing as I went into a wordless place--"simply" connecting with the tender new stems growing--I am truly surprised and came into present time--I thanked the Breath of Heaven plant--and I became aware of yellow green leaves of a Chinese Elm that droops over the neighbor's fenced yard offering shade from the unremitting heat of today and the word dainty just popped up in my mind--and I thanked the leaves and felt the presence of a humming bird and the smell of fresh earth and felt renewed from the natural therapy and counseling they afforded me. I went out to a small spring with little pool of water located 45 minutes away from home. The water trickles from the rock and is slowly collected to a little pool. A large mulberry tree grows near the spring and shadows the pool. It is quite hot now - 4 days of a heat wave. I went out to walk early in the morning as part of this outdoor and experiential environmental education process. I sat down near the spring. Washed my hands and face with the fresh cool water. I started to tell nature what I like about it. I said I liked the fresh cold water that gives me a feeling of aliveness and freshness. I thanked that shadow of the tree. I thanked the rock cliffs behind me, grey, massive, trickling water. I thanked the people who cleaned, fixed the pool, and planted trees in the area next to the spring. As I looked around to find things I appreciate about nature, I saw more and more details and used more of my senses, flowers, and wind in the branches and on my body, bugs coming to the flowers, the sky, ripples on the water and so on. I felt that nature is unconditional love and as I appreciated nature and found more small detail, I felt better, more alive and especially more relaxed. As I came home from the walk, I approached my kids one by one. I told each of them what I like about them. They just woke up from the night sleep. They were open and accepted what I told them with a happy smile. It felt very natural. I felt very good and it was an excellent start for my day. When I thought about telling an adult what I like about them so directly - I felt that I'm concerned that they'll think "what happened to her." It didn't feel so natural like to tell these things to my kids. I did lead my first nature-connecting workshop Saturday, and what an amazing experience it was! WOW!!!!! Sunday, I went for about a five mile hike with one of my neighbors. Earl is in his early 40s, has been "diagnosed" as suffering from bipolar disorder (manic-depressive), and he takes 900 mg of lithium twice a day. The wooded preserve above campus is about a mile from where we live, and lies along the north edge of Friday Harbor. The plan was to walk up the labs, through the preserve and over the ridge, and then down to the next bay where his dad lives, so Earl could raid the cupboards, and have his dad give us a ride home. Just walking through the campus was a pleasant experience. Earl had been picking up trash along the road, and as we headed for the recycling containers, we noticed about 8 deer grazing on the lawn. Spring is in the air. About half a mile along the path after entering the nature preserve, Earl stopped, and kinda looked around, then back down the path the way we'd been walking. "Ya know," he said, "it just seems like we have a dog with us, or _something_. I mean, I know we don't, but it sure seems like we do." We started to wonder if one of the deer had decided to follow, but it wasn't a mammal. I started talking about how all of our senses are a natural inheritance, and as real as the path we were on. Earl had said before that he believed in the unity of all things-- their interconnectedness--when we'd talked previously about this "nature stuff" I was involved with. So I said the life we have is just like the life all around us in these woods. This natural area is peaceful, calm, and balanced. If we pay attention, it might teach us something. So Earl, myself, and the unknown presence go for a walk through the woods. I find myself thinking, for just an instant from one of those inner authorities that pop up occasionally, that even though I like Earl and I'm pretty comfortable around him, this is the first time I've gone for a walk through the woods with someone who needs 1800 mg of lithium a day to live amongst the rest of us. I told Earl that I'd like to take advantage of our walk through the woods to do part of my homework assignment, which was to read a quote from someone who was at least nominally semi-famous for something or other. I had this one memorized, since back in my psychology undergrad days. "Insanity is a perfectly rational adjustment to an insane world." What a perfect quote for the day. Earl understood instantly. This was one of a number of times during the hike he mentioned how much better he felt just being out there, walking, feeling like he belonged... without judgment. I guess part of what amazed me was that Earl could still sense this "spirit of the woods" as he finally decided to call it, even through 900 mg of lithium, and not only didn't think it was abnormal, and wonder about his sanity, but enjoyed it and was glad it was there and that whatever it was had... agreeably, is the word we decided on... joined us on the hike. At one point Earl said, "I bet you can't talk to very many people about this stuff, just like us crazy people can't say anything. They give us pills so we don't feel this." For some reason, I just felt like crying. I told Earl that I experienced it as the living essence of the area, and we started talking about how people can tune in to Nature in different ways. We both agreed that there was a feeling of "life", it was a felt presence in the area, a calming, balancing, nurturing energy, that was consciously there with us. About 15 minutes or so later, I'd forgotten about Earl's friend, when he stops and looks around for a minute. I thought perhaps just lost in the quiet beauty of the area, as I was, when he said, "Oh, there he is. I thought maybe he left before the hike was over." As we were getting toward the north end of the preserve, and into a housing development overlooking the bay past Point Caution, Earl stopped and turned around. He looked back up the path, and said, "Hey, thanks for joining us." Then he turned to me and with a very self-conscious laugh said, "Hey, I just said thanks to that... is that pretty funny or what?" I replied, "No, not at all. That's how it's supposed to be." Earl looked at me quizzically for a moment, then got this great big grin on his face, and reached out to shake my hand while saying, "Thank you. We both got what we were supposed to out of the afternoon, didn't we?" Earl and I did the activity together and with the spirit of the woods, but neither of us could even pretend that we didn't have permission, either to be there or to relate to one another. Our responses influenced how we felt, in that they made us both feel more comfortable with ourselves, each other, and the area we were in. This turned out to be another interesting and enjoyable activity on a San Juan Island sunny afternoon near Friday Harbor.
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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