continued
from page three
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 and 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 references.html
- 7. COHEN 1995. Counseling
and Educating With Nature, Interpsych Journal. http://www.pacificrim.net/~nature/counseling.html
- 8. COHEN 1993. Well Mind,
Well Earth, Roche Harbor, WA, World Peace University Press http://www.pacificrim.net/~nature/books.html
- 9. COHEN Editor, 1999. The
State of Planet Earth. http://www.webstrings.org/webstzbutnearth.html
- 10. COHEN 1996. Study and
Survey of Participants. http://www.pacificrim.net/~nature/survey.html
- 11. COHEN 1997. Journalized
Findings/ http://www.ecopsych.com/millecopstrand.html
- 12. COHEN 1993. Integrated
Ecology, The Process of Counseling With Nature, The Humanistic
Psychologist, Division Journal of the American Psychological
Association, Vol.21 No.3, Washington, D.C.
- 13. COHEN 1993. Counseling
With Nature: Catalyzing Sensory Moments that Let Earth Nurture.
Counseling Psychology Quarterly, Vol. 6, No. 1, Carfax Publishing,
Abingdon Oxfordshire, England:
- 14. COHEN 1991. Integrating
Nature's Balance. The Journal of Environmental Education, v.22
#4, Washington, DC.
- 15. COHEN 1998. Who Needs
To Be Educated? http://www.pacificrim.net/~nature/infonews.html
- 16. COHEN 1974. Our Classroom
is Wild America, Freeport, Maine, Cobblesmith
- 17. DAVIES 1997. Reconnecting
With Nature: educational self-esteem activities for reducing
drug use and irresponsible relationships in students at risk.
ERIC, U.S. Department of Education. http://www.pacificrim.net/~nature/restore.html
- 18. DEVALL 1986. Deep Ecology,
Gibbs Smith
- 19. FOX 1996. Original Blessing
: A Primer in Creation Spirituality, Bear & Co.
- 20. GERMINE 1996. Reconnecting
to Subconscious Origins http://www.pacificrim.net/~nature/germine.html
- 21. MCKIBBEN 1999. The End
of Nature Anchor Books/Doubleday.
- 22. QUINN, 1993. Ishmael,
Bantam
- 23. ROSZAK 1995. Ecopsychology
: Restoring the Earth, Healing the Mind, San Francisco, Sierra.
- 24. SEED 1990. Thinking Like
a Mountain: Towards a Council of All Beings
- 25. WILSON 1986. Biophilia
Harvard Univ Press
- 26. Fifty Three Sense and
Ecozombie References, see References
located in (6) (7) and Chapter 5 of (5)
The best way to learn the education
and counseling process of thinking like nature works is through
an online Orientation
Course entitled Psychological Elements of Global Citizenship.