PROGRAM
DESCRIPTION:
Educating
Counseling and
Healing With Nature
Supportive Degrees, Career
Training Courses and Jobs On Line
Project NatureConnect
offers
a nature-centered distant learning spiritual science, a new and
advanced Internet technology. It 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 emotional intelligence 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.
- Improve
your income and
satisfaction through independent, interdisciplinary or integrated study
and good demonstration speech topics.
- Help
people connect controversial essay topics with the self-correcting and
renewing ways of
nature.
- Increase
personal social and
environmental well being. Learn what causes attraction.
- Add
the self-correcting sunlight beauty and
spirit of the natural world to your life and community. Be a winner.
Win from
beneficial informative speeches and illustration essays.
Visit our Homepage for
complete information
Winning
in a Good Way: The Nature of
Informative Controversy
Running streams, or still bodies
of water, such as lakes and oceans, are very attractive to most forms
of life,
including humanity.
We seek them for the pleasures they offer. For this reason alone, in
our society waterfront property usually has a higher monetary value
than that of other nearby land.
Many of us naturally enjoy a
wide variety of sensory fulfillments while swimming, or
exploring a
shoreline. We are touched by special attractions there that gratify
us.
Connecting with nature as we swim or enjoy the shore
does not harm these places. In fact, these activities often increase
our love for water-contact areas and they strengthen our desire to keep
them pure and protected.
Tecnological Impact
The popular sport of water skiing
is almost the opposite of swimming, or of other nature-centered
activities. Over eleven million people in the United
States water ski. Motivated by profit, many
industries and their advertising budgets promote it.
Because
natural systems, in and around us, are presently at risk, the
relationship of water skiers to the places where they ski is
controversial and deserves
consideration.
Although water skiing is legal, it is far from innocent.
Rather, it is but one example of a profound personal and global problem
that faces us, one that we rarely recognize or address. Our
greatest troubles continue or grow because they are fed
by this great, but seldom acknowledged, problem.
Along shorelines everywhere, individuals
who engage in nature-connecting activities or who go swimming need
little or
no special equipment, yet some of them report having profound emotional
or spiritual experiences from being in the water or from
sensitively discovering natural attractions by the shore. Ask anybody
who has been swimming with Dolphins.
Most
of us are aware that water skiing is quite the opposite from simply
appreciating nature. This high-tech, sometimes competitive sport
demands focus, discipline and coordination along with risk, physical
strength and practice. It is expensive, requiring a powerful
motorboat and trailer, sufficient fuel, a car to pull them, guides to
help run the boat and mechanical assistance when the boat is in need of
repair. In addition, water skis, rope, a wet suit and life
jackets are necessary.
Nature-Connecting Values
The rewards that we gain from nature-sensitivity activities, or swimming, or water skiing in a
natural
area are, on one level, almost identical. Each helps us find or build
enjoyable contacts and satisfactions that renew us by energizing and
fulfilling our senses.
However,
there are many differences between the environmental, social and
personal impacts of each type of activity. For example,
engaging
in gratifying nature activities, like swimming or meditation
often brings us fulfillment and healing in a good way. (“Good” meaning,
supporting the whole. Note: whole and holy are the same
word.) This is because the activities enable us to connect
our
psyche and thinking with the grace and self-correcting ways of the
natural world and its wholeness.
Many people report that
their sensory contact with natural areas helps them increase their
admiration and support for the web of life and its perfection. They
also gain greater esteem for themselves as constructive, caring
parts and citizens of our planet and its people.
Mental Separation from Nature
Water skiing,
although it can be uplifting, centers around the use of Industrial
technology and it
has detrimental side effects from noise, fossil energy use and
pollution. It also disconnects our psyche from the
quiet and delicate ways of the balance and beauty in a natural area.
To our loss,
the instant gratification obtained from the challenges and thrills of
water skiing tend to attract our attention to it and away from the
rewards of nature's perfection.
Similar to water skiing, most of
our other technologically based social activities tend to mold us into
nature
separated
and highly competitive, profit-making individuals. Sadly, the at-risk
state of the
world already demonstrates the destructiveness this unreasonable
expertise, from gaining
satisfaction by imposing our technological prowess upon the integrity
of
natural systems in people and places.
Unfortunately, as
members of Industrial Society, we, along with many innocents, suffer
because over 99 percent of our time and thinking is not spent in
relationships that support the whole of life including natural
systems. The
deteriorating
state of the planet and its people reflects this aberration.
An Antidote
The
remedy we seek is readily available and doable. We merely need to use,
and teach others to use, nature-connecting activities that enlist
nature's assistance to help our
psyche think, feel and act in a good way, like nature's
balanced perfection works. Although this may be controversial and
politically incorrect, the means to accomplish it have been readily
available for decades. Even today in these last moments that
we can act to reverse our destructive impact on natural systems, in and
around us, we continue not to learn how to think like nature's perfection
works.
The following should not be controversial: "Our
troubles begin when we bond to sensory fulfillments obtained from
flawed substitutes for nature." "Even an Atheist might admit that
in this Universe, god actualizes his/herself as unadulterated natural
attraction that pervades the natural world."
For those of us to whom genuinely connecting with
authentic nature makes sense, subsidized training, careers,
jobs
and degree programs are available. Their organic and therapeutic ways
help our
personal
and professional life increase individual, social and environmental
well-being.
To become involved, visit Educating, Counseling and Healing With Nature
at:
http://www.ecopsych.com
*
* *
BELOW: Email and Journal Reports
from
Anonymous Participants Engaged in Educating, Counseling and Healing
With Nature Activities.
Solid Earth
I
went to a favorite park to do the activity in the morning -- sat on
bench near the lake, closed eyes... felt the warmth of sun, light and
shadow, cool of breeze coming and going, souind of wind in the trees,
geese cackling/honking calling all around and flying in and over head;
sounds of children laughing; water sounds; smells of fresh air, earth
and water smells, people laughing in the distance, relaxation,
contentment, warmth, increasing sense of fullness and
allright-with-the-world-ness, peacefulness, in response to laughter of
children - lightheartedness and gaiety -- feeling texture of bench,
warm and rough and natural, solid, deeper breathing, sighs, softness of
ground under feet, trust in day, belonging, sense of safety, in the
flow, at home, ok, goodness. Eyes open again: sparkling of
water,
light dancing on water, interactions of geese- seeming to be
conversational honking; relatedness, beauty/soft-silkiness of ducks
approaching perfectly silently gliding on the water with silver v trail
behind passing all of the way across pond to geese, ripples going out
endless, light, gentle swaying motion of trees in delicate spring
budding green.
The activity caused me to slow down and
finally BE with the moments/experience of being there, listening and
'soaking' it up, receptive rather than doer mode. How
different
from later when a friend arrived and we walked and talked and in the
conversation the world completely disappeared for large expanses of
time. Gone Replaced by the world of the discussion. Left for
a
while the 'separate' and sometimes troubling world of life with only
humans and human concerns with humans at the center, and merged with
the flow of a much larger life with different concerns.
concerns
melted away into less significance and 'life' became foreground and
light and sun-sound-breeze.... very gentle soothing motions sounds and
sensations. didn't analyze was just taking in wholly, silenced
'committee' in head... connected with naturalness ...
bird/cackle/laughter/tree sway - timeless/wise presence solid earth.“
Share with
the world
I
strolled through a birch grove, with mossy ground and blueberry
plants. I walked to a rocky hill overlooking a
lake. I
traversed a meadow with colourful wildflowers. I felt so very
connected to mother earth and recalled the feeling of "being in love"
with the earth that I experienced last summer in Zion National Park in
Utah. It was as if I wanted to embrace and hold tightly our
world in order to protect it and keep it safe, as one does
with
loved ones. It was a profoundly loving feeling
within my
heart, and felt deep within my body, my guts.
On my walk
I smelled the fragrant air, heard the birds and the wind rustling
through the leaves, I tasted blueberries and raspberries. I
hugged silver birch trees and put my ear to the trunk and heard sounds
that reminded me of water passing through a pipe.
The birch
trees, rocks and lakes in the Sudbury region all feel like they are a
part of me and I am a part of them. In some ways it goes back to my
Finnish roots as well. Each time I consciously focus on my
experiences in this typically northern nature, I feel very grounded and
seem to connect to my own inner strength as well the powerful wisdom of
my ancestors. I also remember feeling a similar sense of
connectedness with my natural environment when I was a child growing up
on a farm in Finland.
I was reminded how important it is
for me to make a conscious effort to make time to go into nature and
then actively seek out natural attractions. I am able to
enjoy
being passively in a natural setting, but my relationship with nature
seems to be deeper and more healing when I become mindful of natural
attractions.
If
I am not careful, I can become easily a victim allowing society to
injure my natural senses. I need to consciously
take
responsibility for healing and preventing injuries to my natural senses
by regularly taking time to "re-connect and rejuventate"
them. I need to be alert to the language and stories
I use
in my daily life. I could ask myself frequently whether my language and
stories are connected to natural wisdom."
I see how this
activity definitely helped me connect with my sense of trust and
feelings of self-worth. When the pressures of life get to
me, I know that I need to get into nature, yet, sometimes,
even
taking that healing step can seem to be overwhelming. This activity
re-educated a part of me that was starting to feel quite alienated and
separate from the web of life. There is a sense of strength
that
I gain by realizing that I am an integral part and have my unique
creativity to share with the world.
Act
now.
Master
Organic Psychology by doing it.
Explore it from our homepage
Contact us at
360-378-6313 <nature@interisland.net>
Achieve
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: |
Project NatureConnect