Nature Connected Psychology: creating moments that
let Earth teach
Michael J. Cohen, Ed.D.
Greenwich University
Institute of Global Education
Portland State University
ABSTRACT
Biologically and psychologically people are part of nature, the intelligent, ever balancing, ancient, web of life that communicates within itself through non-verbal attractions. A deep fear generated by our nature conquering society addicts us to live, on average, less than .000022% of our lives in conscious sensory contact with the web. To dispel the anguish this incurs, we make subconscious, our hurt, inherent 53 natural sense way of knowing the web. This results in craving and psychologically bonding to immediate gratifications, often no matter their adverse effects. Through sensory nature activities, the Natural Systems Thinking Process scientifically helps us reconnect our psyche with the web of life's balance. We replace our destructive subconscious bonds with unifying passions that produce unifying attitudes. Our hopes become reality. As documented, responsible personal, social and environmental relationships arise by restoring this missing link in the way we think.
"Oh, what a catastrophe, what a maiming of love when it was made personal, merely personal feeling. This is what is the matter with us: we are bleeding at the roots because we are cut off from the earth and sun and stars. Love has become a grinning mockery because, poor blossom, we plucked it from its stem on the Tree of Life and expected it to keep on blooming in our civilized vase on the table."
- D. H. Lawrence
On average, a person in contemporary society lives over 99.9% of his or her life devoid of conscious sensory contact with attractions in nature. We spend over 95% of our time indoors. We think, write and build relationships while closeted from nature. This disconnected state deludes us to believe that our extreme separation from nature does not influence our intelligence, sanity or ability to relate responsibility. The state of the world says otherwise (9).
Unlike nature connected cultures, our detachment from nature's workings psychologically deprives our thinking of elements that hold life in balance. If our disconnection from nature produces problems, it makes sense to solve them by reconnecting with nature (13).
Purpose:
The purpose of this article is to introduce a process that helps reverse our disconnection from nature and its destructive consequences.
When I ask contemporary people to describe their fondest hopes, they usually include sanity: sustainable peace within themselves, with society, and Earth. Although contemporary society has yet to discover or use a process that produces the sanity we desire, whales use it successfully and, as if to advertise their ability, have demonstrated its power. Biologists say the demonstration was conducted by abnormal whales, that they deserved to die because the were not the fittest for survival. However, Biology is but one of many disciplines, the science of nature connected psychology tells another story.
The whale's demonstration took place in 1989 when two that were trapp
ed in the arctic winter ice bridged the hostility between Communism
and Capitalism. To save the whales, opposing nations united. So did labor
and industry, corporations and environmentalists, spiritualists and scientists,
technologists, peacemakers and the media. Close to a billion dollars was
spent to save two whales by cutting them a path to freedom through the arctic
ice while the world cheered and unified.
The whale's effects demonstrate that the attractions we feel when in contact with a whale, or nature, are but the tip of an iceberg. The hidden portion of the iceberg consists of chains of additional attractions that, like sensory roots, reach every element of our planet including people. Like whales, as part of nature we register and contain the means to live in peaceful equilibrium. What we lack is a process that enables us to think with and use this planetary ability.
Hypotheses:
Since 1951, my hypotheses has been that we can produce hope, sanity, peace and balance by engaging in a process that helps us think like nature works.
Procedure:
My procedure has been to experimentally improve and engage in the hypothetical
process, observe its effects and improve it again. As an outdoor educator
and researcher, for the past 31 years I have camped out 
year-round though
the seasons in 83 different natural habitats while building responsible
human communities. My classroom has been wild America, over 200 national
and state parks, forests, shorelines and historical sites. I still, today,
daily sleep outdoors in a wild area.
The results of my work speak for themselves (10). My references here are original documents that have been reviewed and published academically and commercially. I also reference, for educational purposes, the unpublished raw experiences and thinking of those who have been involved in my process (6).
Like the whales, my teacher has been the global ecosystem as it expresses itself in local natural areas. I seldom use books and the conflicting, limited, theories of those who abstract, speculate and observe nature through machines. They seldom live in, think and build relationships there. I find their words often separate my thinking from truths in natural areas that otherwise register.
Most literature seldom validates the sensory/experiential while connected with nature, nor offers a doable procedure to help us immediately think more responsibly. In contrast, my social invention is a hands-on, easily available process that a person quickly learns and teaches. Its effectiveness clearly demonstrates we may benefit by creating moments in nature that let Earth teach, and then participate in these moments. Significantly, this gives natural areas added value. Through this process, in 1965, thirteen years before Lovelock published Gaia, I was living and teaching a form of Ecopsychology; it included that Earth acts like a living organism (16).
In our excessively indoor society, nature experiences are often suspect. Many people I have personally or otherwise familiarized with my work and its benefits neither incorporate it nor reference my many published materials (6). This includes Capra(4,) Seed(24,) Rozack(23,) Devall(18,) Wilson(25,) Fox(19), Quinn(22,) Abram(1,) Berry(3,) McKibben(21,) and Berg(2,) none of whom published about nature psychology in 1965. Although theoretically correct, not surprisingly, they more trust abstract and mechanical stories about nature (including those spoken by a Gorilla in a zoo and fictional adventures) than a process that necessitates genuine sensory connecting experiences in natural areas. The latter is evidently like having an illicit affair.
Evidence:
My Natural Systems Thinking Process is a nature connected psychology,
a beneficial scien
ce that demands verbally shared, thoughtful,
sensory contacts with attractions in nature to improve personal, social
and environmental responsibility. It connects our psyche with 53 distinctly
unique attractions found throughout nature, including our inner nature (26).
By "attractions" I mean things in nature that draw things together.
This is the opposite of "abstractions," meaning to draw away from
or disassociate.
Nature connected psychology is based on a form of evidence that contemporary society teaches us to ignore. It is "Self-Evidence" as in "We hold these truths to be self-evident." Self-Evidence is a missing link in how we learn to think. Its definition is: to validate what we sense and feel. It critically applies our sense of reason to what we sense and feel while in consensual contact with attractions in Nature. It compares these findings to our Cultural attachments and their effects.
By Nature I mean the non-literate, unadulterated, biological and psychological attraction process that has existed for eons before and during humanity's arrival.
By Culture I mean humanity's abstract, literate, thinking process, its stories, artifacts and effects.
Validity of Evidence:
"At root, ecology is an erotic attitude of closeness, relatedness and care. We have made it into a rational/activist project and lost sight of its heart."
- Thomas Moore
The Natural Systems Thinking Process is super objective in that it welcomes all evidence. It includes sensuous information from non-verbal, transpersonal, connections rather than dismiss this evidence as subjective, unscientific, spiritual, psychotic or fuzzy thinking. The Process enables us to choose to think and relate like whales and nature work (5). For decades it has been taught and accredited in more than 58 Universities and published extensively (16, 6).
Self-Evidence often consists of natural attraction sensations and feelings in natural areas that, to help insure our survival, nature registers in our consciousness. Although often overlooked, Self-Evidence is valid because it is:
- REASONABLE: Mathematics, Archimedes' abstract "Mechanical Theorems,"
is considered to be pure rational fact. However, the self-evident fact
that humanity inherently senses, feels and learns
from natural
attractions is more ancient, true and universal. For example:
The sense of taste: When a natural substance is sweet it is attractive, often edible and digestible, it rewardingly satisfies our sense of hunger so, in time, our sense of reason may validate the substance as food and allow us to eat it again.
The sense of temperature: If the heat from a fire burns a person, he or she may learn to trust that sensation and be attracted to use their sense of reason or fear and keep a safe distance from the fire. - AVAILABLE: For survival, humanity is endowed by nature to continually register attraction sensations and feelings on conscious and subconscious levels.
- TRUSTABLE: For example: If people pinch themselves they register and trust that they feel something. They trust they will feel something again if they pinch themselves again.
- REPEATABLE: For example: If people pinch themselves many times over a period of time, they feel something every time. Other people demonstrate the same attribute.
- GLOBAL: For example: Humanity throughout the world senses and feels as well as trusts that the ability to sense and feel exists in themselves and others.
- TIMELESS: Records show, and we commonly reason that humanity, past, present and future contain and will contain the ability to sense and feel.
- PREDICTABLE: No matter where humanity goes, if people are conscious they will sense or feel attractions. Consciousness itself is an attractive sensation or feeling.
- DIVERSE: There are at least 53 distinct natural attraction sensations and feelings humanity can register and thereby know the world (26).
- EDUCATIONAL: Sensations and feelings provide humanity with a wide range of survival information.
- VALUABLE: Sensations and feelings enhance survival potentials as well as help establish a strong sense of self. "I feel therefore I am," is as true, significant and important as "I think therefore I am."
- HONEST: Sensations and feelings always offer us excellent information about the state of our being.
- WIDE RANGED: Sensations and feelings help humanity register the many attraction sensitivities displayed throughout nature by the plant, animal and mineral kingdoms.
- DEMONSTRABLE: Humanity can often register what other members of humanity are sensing and feeling.
- INDEPENDENT: Humanity can register and reason with attraction sensations and feeling that lie outside the accepted or destructive operants and dogmas of their culture or society.
- SPIRITUAL: Natural sensations and feelings enable people to register and relate to nature connected aspects of spirit and soul that, to our loss, some parts of society omit.
- ATTRACTIVE: Humanity embraces and seeks sensation, it is attractive, we normally never desire to give up our ability to sense and feel.
- INTELLIGENT: The natural world achieves its perfections by relating
through non-verbal attraction sensitivities, many
of which register
as sensations and feelings in humanity and add to our ability to make intelligent
decisions.
- FREE: Sensations and feelings are of, by and from nature, no culture or individual lays claim to inventing or owning them or legally restricting their availability.
- SELF-REGULATING: Sensations and feelings help regulate and guide each other. For example if a person is attracted to pinch themselves too hard, another sense or senses (sense of pain, sense of reason, or both) attract him or her to stop pinching themselves too hard.
Self Evident Thinking:
Our self-evident, non-verbal way of knowing and thinking makes up the large, anciently evolved "Old-Brain" sometimes called the horse brain. In humanity, the Old-Brain registers non-literate tensions, sensations, feelings and emotions. It makes up approximately 90% of our mentality and is the home of at least 52 different sense groups. It enables us to sensuously experience nature as nature operates and knows itself.
The remaining 10% of our mentality, the more recently evolved Cerebral Neocortex or New Brain, consists of a bonding of the senses of verbal language, consciousness and reason to produce and act out abstract stories, be they accurate or inaccurate, constructive or destructive, connective or disconnective (7).
Disuse of Self Evidence
In contemporary society, our New Brain trains itself to habitually avoid
Self- Evidence. We spend over 99.9% of our thinking in abstract New Brain
nature disconnected stories about how the world works and how to implement
our stories. Thus, we know and manage the world with only 10% of our and
the world's capacity to make sense. With respect to ac
hieving personal,
social and global sanity, the questionable results of nature-disconnected
abstracting speak for themselves (9). Our isolated New Brain ego story applauds
itself for its potent conquest of nature. In denial, like a substance abuse
addict, it refutes that with respect to relating responsibly, the nature
disconnected way we think could define addiction, stupidity or madness (20).
As the classic quotes I include in this article testify, the idea that nature
can help us heal ourselves and Earth is not foreign to the New Brain. This
information alone, however, is obviously not enough.
Unlike whales, our extreme severance from our inherent, balanced, attraction fulfillments in nature produces a void in our psyche. We crave our lost sensory support, sanity and gratification in nature. In response, we artificially fulfill our cravings to provide rewards. In the process, we become victims of destructive rewards and greedy, for when we want there is never enough. Our economy often operates by further irritating our natural senses and then selling us something to stop the irritation.
Although our disconnection from nature and its destructive effects disturb our sense of reason, despite excellent evidence to the contrary, few of us think it reasonable for contemporary humanity to satisfy its cravings by thoughtfully reconnecting to attractions in nature (14). Such denial is typical of addiction. Our problems are often psychological addictions but are seldom recognized or treated as such so they continue. We have become so bewildered (wilderness separated) that we try to resolve our problems using the same addictive, nature disconnected, thinking process that produces them.
Rationale: modeling how nature works:
"I go to nature to be soothed and healed, and to have my senses put in order."
- John Burroughs
For the past forty years, I and many experts have tried to meet the challenge of reversing contemporary humanity's disorders. Our goal is to help the public understand and become involved in how unadulterated nature prevents our disorders from occurring in natural systems within and round us. This consists of sensory experiential learning, not verbal information alone, for nature knows and conveys itself non-verbally (6). The warning labels on cigarette packages exemplify the ineffectiveness of verbal information alone.
Conceptually, we depict nature's web of life by letting people model it. This evokes Self-Evidence. We gather a group of people in a circle and each person is asked to represent some part of nature, a bird, soil, water, etc. A large ball of string then demonstrates the interconnecting relationships between things in nature. For example the bird eats insects so the string is passed from the "bird person" to the "insect person." That is their connection. The insect lives in a flower, so the string is further unrolled across the circle to the "flower person." Soon a web of string is formed interconnecting all members of the group, including somebody representing a person.
Thoughtfully, people lean back, sense, and enjoy how the string peacefully
unites, supports and interconnects them and all of l
ife. This evokes
feelings of belonging, integrity and unity, these are valid Self-Evidence.
Then one strand of the web is cut signifying the loss of a species, habitat
or relationship. Sadly, the weakening effect on all is noted. People tell
of environmental and social trespasses they have witnessed or know about.
Another and another string is cut. Soon the web's integrity, support and
power disintegrates along with its spirit. Because this reflects the reality
of our lives, it triggers Self Evidence feelings of hurt, despair and sadness
in the activity participants. Earth and its people increasingly suffer from
"cut string" disintegration, yet we continue to cut the strings.
Few dispute this model.
Every part of the global life community, from the spaces between sub-atomic particles to weather systems, is part of the web of life. Everything consists of, and is relationships held together by webstring attractions. The intelligent, globally conscious, webstring process by which webstrings interact produces nature's balanced, unified ways without our runaway disorders.
When I ask web activity participants if they ever have visited a natural
area and actually seen strings interconnecting things there, they say no,
that would be crazy. I respond, "If there are no strings there, what
then are the actual strands that interconnect and hold the natural community
together in balance?"
It becomes very, very quiet.
Too quiet.
Are you quiet, too?
That silence flags a significant missing link in our thinking, consciousness
and relationships. Without knowing, sensing or respecting the strings that
make up nature and our inner nature, we break, injure and ignore them. This
is the core of our most tenacious troubles. It is an addictive and destructive
prejudice against the strings that only subsides when psychologically treated
as such.
Until I identify the strings as natural attractions that people can sense, people don't recognize them and their value, they have no idea what they are. Once they experience the strings, people not only acknowledge them, they also acknowledge that since childhood they have always known them as sensations and feelings. Like a little red wagon painted blue, they suddenly recognize that the nature separated way we learn to think hides the strings and their benefits from our consciousness and reasoning.
Webstring Disappearance:
The disappearance of the strings from our awareness and relationships is exemplified by Sharon, an adult woman.
Sharon negatively reacted to a blue piece of wood she selected, sight unseen, from a bag of mixed objects. She blindly choose the wood because its shape and smoothness attracted her when she groped and explored in the bag by touch. At first she did not know why she didn't like the wood when she saw it. In time, she realized it was a subconscious reaction. The wood was painted the same shade of blue as the walls of her room where, as a child, she had been abused.
As with Sharon, in contemporary society's conquest of nat
ure, we hurt
the strings as we conquer and separate them from their nurturing origins.
To escape feeling the pain consciously, our inner nature reasonably places
them in our pre-conscious or subconscious mind (20). Thus the strings seldom
enter our thinking or restrain our destructive conquest of nature around
and within us.
Webstring Attraction Loves:
Webstring are natural attractions, forms of love. Nature consists of wordless webstring loves (7). A bird's love for food (Sense of Hunger) is a webstring. So is the tree's love to grow away from gravity and its root's attraction toward it (Sense of Gravity). The fawn's loving desire for its mother and vice-versa are webstrings (Sense of Nurturing).
"From atoms and molecules to human beings with developed consciousness, all entities feel attraction for one another. . . . attraction is the law of nature"
-P. R. Tarker.
Every atom and its nucleus consists of, expresses and relates through webstring attractions. People inherently experience those we need for survival as 53 or more Self-Evident natural sensations(26). In contemporary society we often learn to control, injure or ignore them. They end up frustrated or hurt in our subconscious until, as with Sharon, associated experiences trigger our hurt back into consciousness. Then we may need psychological assistance.
"Nothing is more indisputable than our senses."
- Jean Le Rond d'Alembert
Webstrings feelingly register in our consciousness as senses or natural love (attraction, attachment, affinity, desire,) for being reasonable, love for sight, touch, and sound; for water, color and community; for nurturing, belonging and trust; for sex, contact with nature, and wholeness and love for 41 other attractions including consciousness and verbalization (26). When supportively, safely, connected in nature, each webstring attraction is energized and fulfillingly enters, registers and plays in our awareness (5). Each becomes Self-Evidence, a truth of ourselves and the environment. The Sense of Thirst, our love for water, is a fact as correct as 2 + 2 = 4, as real and true as water, even though it is not one of the five senses that in 1500 BC Aristotle posited during the cradle of our nature disconnected civilization.
"The senses (webstrings), being the explorers of the world, open the way to knowledge."
- Maria Montessori
Each webstring inherently attracts to and blends with other strings forming
a common sense, a globally balanced consciousness and unity as depicted
in the web of life model. When we don't recognize Self-Evidence, we can't
recognize that what we call Nature is a process that creates, recycles and
wisely guides ecosystems and their inhabitants through more than 53 a
ttractions in concert. To our loss, our separation from nature leaves
us to think and relate using less than eight webstring senses.
Verbal language communication is a webstring enjoyed by humanity alone. The stories our literacy webstring produces are a great asset to human survival when used to help sustain sensory contact with the web and its intelligent ways. However, literacy becomes a source of our problems when we psychologically bond to nature- conquering, demeaning or disconnecting stories. Whenever we are aware of nature as a non-sensory label or story, we lose contact with sensory Self-Evidence. To our loss, this disassociates us from our biological origins and attractions in the web of life, its balance, wisdom and rewards (7).
Source Of The Strings:
"There must be the generating force of Love behind every effort that is to be successful"
- Henry David Thoreau
Webstrings are biologically of, by and from nature's proclivity to consummate attractions. Profound disbelief registers on many faces when I tell the web of life activity participants that since they are part of nature, the strings are in them and they can learn to relate to and with them through a psychological, nature reconnecting, self-improvement process. They disbelieve this because webstrings have prejudice, hurt and fear attached to them. They are often as alien to us as were the "Indians" to many frontiersmen and for similar reason: they are to be conquered along with the rest of nature. Indeed, if we did not conquer the strings, they would prevent us from conquering natural systems simply because it would not feel right.
"We cannot live for ourselves alone. Our lives are connected by a thousand invisible threads, and along these sympathetic fibers our actions run as causes and return to us as results."
- Herman Melville
Self-Evidence suggests that natural systems organize themselves through webstring attractions. Moment by moment they create additional webstrings and connections that increasingly weave, balance and repair the web of life. This is not done haphazardly, rather it forms a intelligence that produces nature's optimum of life, diversity, cooperation, regeneration and beauty. The process is inclusive and caring enough to globally give rise to the web of life without creating garbage, death, violence and destructive dependencies as we know them. Everything transforms to the betterment of the whole. Nothing is left out, unattached or unwanted, a way to define unconditional love. Any person who could build sustainable relationships this way would be considered to be extremely intelligent. However, in many nature-disconnected New Brain circles, calling nature intelligent is considered blasphemy.
Reconnection Methodology:
The Natural Systems Thinking Process is effective because it identifies the source of our troubles to be our thinking's disconnection from Self-Evident webstrings in nature (10). The Process scientifically addresses this problem by
A. Having our New Brain reasonably engage people in sensory nature reconnecting webstring activities via the internet or in person.(6, 8, 12).
B. Thoughtfully obtaining consent in a natural area to sense and enjoy Self-Evidence webstring attractions there. This psychologically reattaches the webstrings in our Old Brain to their nurturing origins, the strings and wisdom in the web of life (7).
C. Enabling us to feel, enjoy and trust Self-Evidence. It produces joy and rewards us to continue the process.
D. Validating the connection experience by safely translating our webstring attraction feelings in nature into accurate, reasonable, verbal language, the New Brain way we culturally think and communicate.
E. Verbally sharing our webstring connection experiences with other people, and growing from what we learn in the process as they share their experiences. We are rewarded by further establishing gratifying, supportive relationships with people and the environment.
F. Thinking with Self-Evidence through the thoughtful words and feelings that illuminate our psyche.
G. Bringing our rejuvenated webstring energies safely into consciousness and thereby overcoming apathy by motivating further participation in life. We begin think and relate responsibly, like nature works.
H. Enjoying good feelings and greater sense of self that promotes mental health (11). Our grounding in nature replaces destructive competition, dependencies and greed as it rewardingly restores global consciousness.
Cultural Results:
"It is difficult to get people to understand something when their salary depends upon them not understanding it."
- Upton Sinclair
Contemporary society teaches us to fight an undeclared war against nature.
We get paid to conquer ecosystems for profit (9). For this reason, conscious
multisensory contact with nature's lifeweb becomes controversial or taboo,
like cavorting with the enemy. Our thinking loses contact with the webstring
truths that it needs to recover from the absence of these truths (13). For
this reason the Natural Systems Thinking 
Process operates
through activities that enable us to let nature, not culture alone, teach
and reward us (7). This increases our sensibility, balance and wellness.
Stress fades, we feel better, and our outlooks and relationships improve
(7). Part of us reattaches to nature. We become empowered as individuals
for once you learn how to do a nature reconnecting activity you own it and
can teach it (4).
Today, globally, via the internet and local training sessions, the Natural Systems Thinking Process enables people to enjoy and promote lifeweb connected consciousness, individually, or through distance learning activities, courses and degree programs. They have shown to improve the wellness of our mentality, being, and ecosystems (10).
"We are nature, long have we been absent, now we return."
- Walt Whitman
Along with empirical studies, thousands of email journal entries, such as the following, validate the webstring reconnection process (11).
"This morning I was battling the remnants of some depression I had been feeling about my family and life "stuff". I was doing the webstring attraction activity, looking around enjoying the day, the breeze, the sun, the beautiful trees and the sounds of singing birds. In a flash of good feeling, I realized that these feelings are what is so good about living on earth at this time. It was enough, if for no other reason, to be here, to experience and protect the beauty of this planet. This was a major breakthrough for me, because I battle the reason for being here quite a bit in my recovery work. This happened before noon, and it is now 6 p.m., and I still feel great!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I wanted to share this because I am so happy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
Measured Results:
The potential of knowing the world through Webstrings and the Natural Systems Thinking Process can be seen in counselor Larry Davies 1996-98 results from offering them to people who were considered almost impossible to reach. A study was undertaken with students who were "uneducatable," because they could not handle regular school programs (17). Each had been physically or sexually abused, were 180% below the poverty level, drug or alcohol addicted and suffered poor self-esteem, suicidal tendencies, and behavioral disorders. Some were homeless or in correctional settings.
The results were overwhelmingly positive. The students' growth was reflected in improved psychological test scores and analysis, which showed reduced stress, depression, sleeplessness and drug use along with higher self-esteem (10, 17). Every student's attendance and academic progress improved, no indications of chemical remission were observed 60 days after the program ended. The students now personally own the activities and rationale for their continued improvement by reconnecting with webstrings in each other and the environment.
Through awareness of their webstring connections the students bonded as a community. They also bonded to a trashed natural area near their forthcoming new school. To protect this area's integrity and availability for future webstring activities, these "incapable" youngsters successfully cleaned up, weeded and restored it, successfully wrote environmental protection grants, and effectively presented their work to Education Boards and Administrators who were intent on paving the natural area as a parking lot (15).
The student's sensed that the natural area, like their nature, wanted
to recover from the abuse it received from society. They said that, like
them, it had been: "hurt, molested, invaded and trespassed," "It
wanted to become healthy or die." "It felt trashed and overwhelmed."
"It had no power, it needed a fix or help to recover." They wrote:
"This wilderness community is being choked by alien plants and stressed
by pollution, abandonment and major loss. We, too, are being choked by drugs
and alien stories that pollute our natural self. We feel abandoned by our
society, treated like garbage, and cut off from nature which fills us with
grief. By protecting and nurturing this ecosystem we find the strength to
open our minds, hearts, and souls for the survival of our Mother Earth and
ourselves (20)."
Davies' webstring-based study concluded: "The applied ecopsychology story is not to conquer nature, but to flow, dance and balance with nature and each other, as do all other species. It says that nature consists of attractions, that pain, fear and stress are natural attractions, part of nature's perfection. These natural discomforts are nature's way of telling us we don't have sensory support in this moment. They attract us to follow our other immediate natural attachments. In wilderness settings, our discomforts in nature intensified our natural attractions to nurturing, community and trust. They supported our fun and survival."
Unstructured Application: congruent abstraction
"The beginning of wisdom is calling things by their right name."
- Confucius
Each of us can easily begin to make psychological contributions to personal and global sanity. From this moment on, thoughtfully call each sensation and feeling you or others experience a "webstring attraction". Note how this helps stretch your New Brain thinking into a global frame of reference. Note, too, how your inborn webstring attraction to nature may have been disconnected from nature and attached to artifacts or stories. Note how it may have been stressed, or can reattach to the web of life in a natural area.
Calling webstrings by their right name helps produce a global consciousness and enables us to further discover and support nature's perfection within and about us. Additional activities and courses strengthen this skill (6).
Guided Application: a step beyond abstraction
To begin think more harmoniously with whales and the global ecosystem, any individual or group may discover and teach the Natural Systems Thinking Process by doing the following introductory webstring activity:
1. Go to the most attractive natural area that is accessible to you 
and find something natural there that calls to you, that you find attractive,
a flower, rock, scene, sensation or animal (Non-verbal Self-Evidence).
2. If it seems reasonable to you, somehow thank that webstring attraction for being attractive and giving you some joy (New Brain validation).
3. Wait ten seconds and see if the attraction remains attractive. If it doesn't, or another attraction interrupts it, simply follow the new attraction or find a new natural attraction there that remains for ten seconds. (This helps offset Sharon's blue wood experience)
4. If it seems reasonable to you, somehow thank this new webstring attraction for being attractive and giving you some joy (New Brain validation).
5. Note how you feel in comparison to how you felt when you started the activity (Self-Evidence). Does what you know and feel now have value?
6. Ask this attraction to consent to help you discover why it is reasonable to do this kind of activity and why you might resist doing it. Wait and see what comes to mind immediately, and after a good night's sleep (Whole Brain thinking).
7. Share your experience with people who are attractive to you, who care for you or seem trustable (Whole Brain thinking). Invite their reactions. Be aware that you can benefit from using this same activity in connection with webstring attractions you sense in another person, for people are nature, too (4).
Conclusions:
1. Multisensory Webstring attraction intelligence exists within and around us as Self-Evidence that we too often learn to deny.
2. Contemporary society disconnects us from nature's ways, demeans them, and teaches us to think without them thereby limiting our ability to resolve the problems caused by nature's absence.
3. By learning and teaching the easily available Natural Systems Thinking Process we may reverse destructive thinking by letting nature itself help us bring webstrings and their integrity back into our consciousness, reasoning and relationships.
4. As demonstrated by counselors, educators, students, businesses and environmentalists, anyone can beneficially use and teach webstring reconnecting activities. One only needs to apply the process and thereby begin to let nature recycle our mental pollution.
5. Contemporary society's historic conquest of nature has trained the New Brain to prejudiciously view and fear the sensual and nature as an enemy, villain or child. We are taught that nature within and around us must be developed, improved or managed, similar to a weed or wildlife. Reversing this prejudice is a challenge similar to dealing with our prejudice against Afro-Americans, Indigenous People and other close to nature people, including children.
6. As demonstrated by counselor Davies, extensive research is warranted in implementing the Process in various settings and measuring its effects.
7. Any individual or community that uses a
nd teaches the
Process will enjoy the benefits that I have found and reference here. If
introduced globally, the Process will help us fulfill our, and a whale's,
fondest hopes for personal, social and environmental sanity and peace.
REFERENCES
- 1. ABRAM 1997. The Spell of the Sensuous : Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World, Vintage Books.
- 2. BERG 1995., Discovering Your Life-Place : A First Bioregional Workbook, Planet Drum Foundation.
- 3. BERRY 1990. The Dream of the Earth, Sierra Club Books.
- 4. CAPRA 1997. The Web of Life : A New Understanding of Living Systems, Doubleday.
- 5. COHEN 1997. Reconnecting With Nature: Finding Wellness through restoring your bond with the Earth, Ecopress, Corvallis, Oregon. http://www.pacificrim.net/~nature/newbook.html
- 6. COHEN 1994, The Natural Systems Thinking Process http://www.webstring.org/references.html
- 7. COHEN 1995. Counseling and Educating With Nature, Interpsych Journal. http://www.pacificrim.net/~nature/counseling.html
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- 26. Fifty Three Sense References, see References located in (7) and Chapter 5 of (5)