PART ONE: Outdoor Attractions
A public school workshop: Monday,
January 30, 1995 11:15 A.M. Vancouver, Washington, U.S.A.
As if the wisdom of nature
has us in mind, the rain clouds part and sunshine-washed blue
sky lets the local park lume in its inherent beauty. In attendance
here are a co-ed group of at-risk high school students along
with their teachers, their counselor and myself, a guest instructor.
Smoking cigarettes and hesitating
to get too close to me or each other, the group gathers within
hearing distance at my request. My challenge is to introduce
some elements of reconnecting with nature to these students as
well as demonstrate the value of the process and its remarkable
effects (Cohen, 1995). The significance of this demonstration
is that this group, with the exception of its teachers, consists
of victims of Western Culture's nature-separated dream; they
are young people fed up with school. They are either chemically
dependent, in grief, unwed mothers, violent, harboring food disorders,
apathetic or a combination of these troubles. Most have low self
esteem. All are traditional school dropouts now attending an
alternative education program that sponsors this nature connecting
hour in the park with me. Many parks are closed at night because
of the threat from the presence of people at risk, people this
group represents.
We gather together around a
picnic table and I ask the students and staff to think about
a conversation that recently occurred. I say:
Last week, a student, named
Bill, told me that he was positive that nature was unfriendly,
dangerous and "a bitch". Bill said he went on a camping
trip this fall, he climbed up a cliff and felt scared of nature
because if the rock crumbled or he made a false move, nature
would injure or kill him. While he climbed the cliff, nature
rained on him and he got wet and chilled. Another day he was
hiking without a shirt and it got so cold and windy he nearly
froze. Oh yes, also he walked balancing on rocks by a rushing
creek, a slime grew on one rock, he slipped on it, fell in the
water and was practically washed away. It reminded him of when
the waves almost carried him away on the beach last summer and
then he got poison ivy too. 'For sure, nature is no friend.'
he said".
Smirking, but concerned, the
students tell me Bill was a either freak or just trying to be
cool or macho. They ask if this "dude" was doing drugs,
"Something is wrong with the dwebe because he put himself
in dangerous situations, and rather than see what a jerk he is,
he blamed his troubles on nature." they conclude. They summarize
that Bill was a danger to himself, it was not nature's fault
that all this bad stuff happened.
I say to these students and
teachers: "The nature connecting activity we will do now
asks you to avoid Bill's nonsense. What I want you to do is be
sensible in nature. Look around this natural area and find a
place that attracts you because it feels like you'll enjoy it
and because it is safe. By yourself, sit in that area, or explore
it for ten minutes, try to really know it many ways, through
touch, taste, smell and sound as well as sight. Then we'll get
together and share what happens during this short solo."
In ten minutes, the group returns.
Changes in them are immediately apparent. Most are at ease, smiling
and not shy about getting close so they can hear each other.
"Is anybody missing?" I ask. They look around and even
though they had never been together as a group before, they somehow
know that Charley and Sarah are not there, As we do a head count,
from different directions first Charley then Sarah come into
view .
"Can you tell each other
how you feel and what you think right now?" I ask the group.
They respond as follows:
- I feel really peaceful, this
little park is peaceful.
- I feel part of something.
- I had a good time.
- It was so beautiful.
- I trust that tranquil place
and nature.
- I felt parts of myself that
have been missing since I was younger.
- I feel happy right now.
- I like being here now with
the group more.
- Right now I feel like I'm
being, simply truly being.
- I think we shouldn't smoke
while going into nature.
- I picked up some garbage,
it was a downer seeing it.
- I feel more alive and like
living.
- I feel centered.
- We should do this activity
further from the city, from the noise and houses nearby.
- I wish I could live like this
all the time.
- I'd like to get a job where
I work outside in nature and help protect it.
- I feel gentle right now, yet
I was uncool when we first got here.
- I feel like doing things that
wouldn't hurt this place, that would respect it.
- It would be less expensive
to live close to nature. I'd be willing to risk it.
- I feel pure and clean even
though I've been sitting in dirt.
- I sense a certain spirit here
that I don't feel elsewhere.
- I sense that how we think
and feel right now is a fact as real and true as 2 + 2 = 4
- There's part of me that feels
like ET, Nell, or Bambi, that feels like an outcast at school
but feels wonderful and right at home here.
The teacher who leads the grief
group at school notices that a pine tree has been planted in
the park as a memorial to someone. It stands by itself in the
middle of a lawn near a plaque. This attracts and saddens her.
"I think the pine must be lonely," she says. "It's
not in a forest of trees, in a community."
I ask the group "If you
were that pine tree, what might you be experiencing at this moment."
Here is what they say:
- I'd like the joy and warmth
of the sunlight
- I'd have the fun of the wind
blowing through me.
- I'd feel close to the soil,
supported, rooted, grounded.
- I wouldn't feel competitive
because I'd be so far away from the roots of trees in the forest.
- I'd be happy that I lived
in a protected park area, I wouldn't worry about being hurt or
cut down.
- I'd enjoy the sound of birds
singing and children laughing here in the park.
- I would be proud that somebody
noticed me and cared about me and thought of me as memory to
somebody they loved.
- I'd dance in the beauty of
all the sparkling drops of water on my limbs.
- I think I would be happy because
I'm not in the shadow of all the large forest trees. I'm a pine
tree and I usually can't grow in the shade of other trees.
Due to my introductory story
about Bill, from this hour in nature we feel attracted to nature
and to each other for we have found something basic in common.
We conclude that our "civilized" way of thinking and
existing, to our loss excessively separates us from nature. We
recognize that we learn to live out society's stories about nature
that do not tell us how to seek, no less lovingly and responsibly
relate to nature in people and places. These stories often stress
us, they devalue natural aspects of ourselves and thereby lower
our self esteem. We observe that getting in tune with nature
by safely enjoying its attractions has a profound positive effect
upon the way we feel and act. We affirm that we trust our moments
connected to natural attractions in the environment and each
other.
The group looks forward to
continuing this nature connecting activity class during the coming
school year. Adult or student, they say they want to learn additional
activities and ways of thinking that would let Earth teach them
how to intensify and preserve the good way they think and feel
in this moment.
Discussion
Not by accident, the right
touch of nature works magic. Throughout the year, participants
of all ages on my e-mail or correspondence Project NatureConnect
NSTP courses respond as these students did. Using a self guiding
training manual, each participant individually, or with a partner,
does one of 107 nature-connecting activities. Then by e-mail,
letters or telephone they validate their thoughts and feelings
from doing it to 6 other people on the course, some of whom may
live in different countries, others just down the street. Participants
complete the activity by sharing with each other what they think
and feel about the letters and calls they receive from each other.
They end up gaining support from nature and each other and teach
the process to others as well.
Recognizing the preventative
potential of this process in a community, in part 2 of the study
we incorporated it as tool in a recovery program, with excellent
results.
PART TWO: Reducing Chemical Use and
Irresponsible Relationships
Introduction
In the spring of 1995, a group
of 8 poverty level drug affected high school "at risk"
students participated in an experimental 10 week nature-centered
multisensory counseling program. Its purpose was twofold: First
to disconnect participants from dependency on drugs and alcohol;
second to reconnect participants' inner nature with the natural
environment to rejuvenate their natural wisdom and resiliency.
One day, during a tag game,
Sara was hit in the face with a nerf ball . She was not hurt,
but immediately started screaming at John, who had thrown the
ball. John yelled back and Sally took his side, joining in the
noise. Jim and Alisha stood and stared, frozen. Kurtland, the
counselor, yelled "STOP!," and gathered all of them
into a circle.
What unfolded was a series
of "stories" that had taken each student out of the
moment and into the past without them being aware of it. Immediately
before the incident, they were enjoying the interactive flow
of their natural senses of fun, community, power, movement and
balance, to name only a few. Then an innocent event disintegrated
that flow in one second.
Kurtland asked Sara what feelings
she was experiencing. She recognized anger, fear, frustration,
humiliation. He asked her if these feelings were familiar. She
quickly realized that she was reliving feelings she had as a
child when she was hit in the face by an abusive family member.
This and similar situations created one of her stories, which
is: "Something is wrong with me. I don't fit in. I will
be punished." She reacted, not to the present situation,
but to the old story, triggering other stories in her friends.
When John became the target
of Sara's attack, he went into his own story. When he experienced
abuse as a child, he learned to survive by fighting back, arguing,
and provoking conflict from his story: "I'll get hurt if
I don't defend myself. No one will help me." Sally soon
became aware that she was playing out her story of rescuing and
codependency: "If I take care of him, he'll take care of
me." Jim and Alisha began to understand that when strong
negative emotions are expressed, their stories tell them: "The
safest thing to do is to hide." Jim felt powerless in the
face of beatings by his stepfather and Alisha learned early to
make herself small and fade into the background in order to survive
in an alcoholic family system.
As the group members shared
the feelings that were stimulated by their old memories, they
saw how we all carry unresolved "life stories" that
have pain attached to them. They learned how we hide these stories
in our unconscious to avoid feeling their pain. When a situation
reminds us of a similar past one, our unconscious mind trys to
protect us by reacting to an old story. Our reactions are fixed
and automatic. Even when we are involved in a supportive situation,
unexpected stress triggers similar stress stories. We relive
the unresolved pain attached to these memories until we move
into new stories that assure us of the safety available in the
present moment.
Framework
This nerf ball incident occurred
during a project designed for "students at risk." The
goal of Project Reconnect was to disconnect participants from
drug use and reconnect them to the natural world, their own true
nature and their natural sense of community. The theoretical
framework of Project Reconnect was taken from Dr. Michael Cohen's
Applied Ecopsychology model, which suggests that intimate contact
with nature puts people immediately in touch with an innate wisdom
that effects a deep healing of self (Cohen, 1995).
The stories carried by the
students in Project Reconnect, like all stories, are carried
in their new brain, the more recently evolved neocortex. In the
new brain, we become conscious of the world through the senses
of language, reason and consciousness, senses that produce our
spoken and written stories. Our oldbrain consists of the reptilian
and limbic systems, the sensory and emotional centers of the
brain. The old brain in people and the rest of nature operates
within the same parameters. Both are bound by and function through
attraction energies. These attractions are sensory natural loves,
--for example thirst, the love of water-- that not only operate
through individual organisms but are finely woven into a global
ecology web that connects all of life as a living system. (Cohen,
1995A)
All creatures express their
attractions through their natural sensitivities. We are not limited
to the five senses we learned about in school, such as our perceptual
senses of touch and taste. Cohen and others have identified at
least 48 more sensations, from the primary drives such as hunger
and thirst, to feeling senses such as trust, play and nurturing,
to mental expressions of senses such as logic and language (Cohen,
1994). In a natural state, these senses flow back and forth in
a vibrating balance, both within and between organisms. The ecological
web of life is based on consensus. The word means "a general
agreement," and it comes from Latin words meaning "to
feel with." In consensus, every being in the system agrees
at some deep level to participate fully in the process of community
survival, growth and consent through their natural senses. For
example, in mammals a fox may sense thirst so he moves to water
and quenches his thirst. Attractions from a nearby rabbit intervene.
Motions, smells, and hunger attract the fox toward food. Senses
of distance, gravity, sight, place, community, belonging to a
greater organism and others come into play. These interact and
blend with similar attraction senses in a rabbit, and they eventually
arrive at a consensus. This time the stressed rabbit may run
out of immediate support energies and consents to join the survival
of the fox; next time the rabbit may have more immediate support
and outrun the fox. The fox eats the rabbit, after which perhaps
attractions to rest, safety, and belonging come to him. All of
these attraction sensitivities move to ensure the survival of
the fox and the rabbit population. Through continual multisensory
interactions, both animals are part of Earth's ecosystem, an
attraction system that wisely produces an optimum of life, diversity
and beauty, without producing garbage, war or insanity.
Theory
The difference between people
and the rest of nature is that humanity has learned to create
and live by new brain stories about relating, whereas nature
creates and lives through direct sensory attraction relationships.
Civilized humanity evolved
from the same perfection of consensus attractions found in nature,
yet we produce toxic garbage, addictive cravings, excessive violence,
stress, depression and harmful dependencies. What has happened
in society is similar to what happened to the students in Project
Reconnect. In our civilization, a painful story was created that
goes against the natural flow of life. The flawed story of "civilized"
humans started when we embarked upon agriculture and the domestication
of animals on a large scale. We created a story that says the
stories our new brain makes up are the source of human survival:
that nature is undependable and dangerous; we must conquer nature
instead of living in interconnected harmony with it. In conquering
nature we also conquer our own inner nature. We lose much of
our sensory support and identity, and this causes us much pain
(Cohen, 1993). As Michael Beckwith put it in a recent speech,
"Modern man says, 'Something is wrong with the world. How
do we fix it?' Indigenous people say 'Something is right with
the world. How do we connect with it?'" (Beckwith, 1995)
This "Conquer Nature Story"
puts the new brain at war with the old brain and its sensory
connections to nature. Today, people in the United States excessively
enact our story of living indoors away from the rest of nature.
Over 95% of our time is spent indoors or in cars. This separates
us from the natural world and causes us to become further bonded
to and dependent on the accouterments of our indoor existence.
(Cohen, 1993)
As our separation from nature
has increased, so has our destruction of the planet and consequently
our sensory nature connected selves. Our indoor story has little
regard for what is happening to our planet for it has lost sensory
contact and empathy with it. When we do notice the problems we
cause ourselves, the Conquer Nature Story assures us that our
new brain stories of technology and science will come up with
ways of restoring the damage in time, so that our indoor world
will not be disturbed.
To summarize, the new brain
stories of our indoor society assault nature and our sensory
old brain. Because of this separation, we do not sense multisensory
fulfillment as do the fox and nature centered people. Instead,
we experience sensory shutdowns that produce wants that lead
to excessive stress, pain, feelings of disconnection and emptiness.
We unsuccessfully seek relief through insensitive violence, child
abuse, suicide, greed and addictions of all kinds.
The students who entered Project
Reconnect were "Indoor Sapiens", which means that they
were cut off from the natural world and the many sensory attractions
that could nurture and balance them. Reared in this atmosphere
of stress and internal war, the students create and live in their
stories of survival, which remove them from enjoying their multisensory
lives.
The solution is to call a truce
between the old and new brain and begin a natural multisensory
communication process. The process teaches the new brain to respect
the sensory integrity of the old brain and nature. The way Dr.
Cohen suggests we do this is to go into a natural area and use
special nature reconnecting activities he developed. They put
our new brain stories on hold and make immediate non language
contact with the sensory attractions of the old brain in contact
with nature. Then, to integrate the old and new brain, we thoughtfully
talk about the sensations and feelings brought to us through
this connection.
Activities
Project Reconnect students
experienced many of Dr. Cohen's activities, and as their old
and new brain communicated, their stress seemed to melt away.
They particularly enjoyed the guided nature walk activity. One
student closed his or her eyes, eliminating dependency on the
sense of sight, while another acted as "nature guide."
Neither could speak, which prevented new brain communication,
so the guide had to direct by touch only. The guides led their
partners into the world of smell, touch, taste, moisture, and
many other senses of nature. If the guides wanted their partners
to see something, they squeezed their shoulder. The "blind"
partner opened their eyes for only a second and then shut them.
After ten minutes, the students switched roles. The numerous
natural sensations that this activity awakened began to bond
the partners to each other and to nature. They rediscovered their
many hidden natural senses.
Because we learn to think in
language, it was important to talk about each activity afterward.
The new brain validated the sensory attractions of the old brain,
which added greatly to each experience. From this process, old
abuse stories were exposed and the seeds of new stories were
planted in the enjoyment of nature- connected moments. In one
activity, the students went into a natural area to find a specific
attraction such as a brook, tree, flower or stone. When they
found the attraction, they completed the following sentence.
"I like _______ (the attraction) because _______."
As they shared their sentences with each other, they were reminded
that they, too, are nature. They were asked to repeat the sentence,
changing it to say, "I like myself because ________,"
using the same list of attributes. At first, they resisted, not
believing their own words, but they soon began to see the truth
in their statements since they were nature too. Each statement
they made about themselves felt good. In the above activity,
Eileen was attracted to a delicate wildflower "because it
is beautiful and perfect." When she said "I like myself
because I am beautiful and perfect," she quickly added,
"and no one tells the flower that it's ugly and a drug addict."
Nature was telling her that she was beautiful and perfect, but
her old story was telling her she was ugly and defective. As
she talked about this old story and allowed herself to feel the
hurt it had caused her, a space was made for a new healthy story
to grow within her. She became more aware of, energized and supported
by the natural environment.
Often, the stories of "students
at risk" block their natural senses of trust, power, community,
nurturing, boundaries, grief and pain, among others. This triggers
the natural empathy, community and nurturing attractions of the
staff to enable these students to responsibly participate in
our local community. We developed a program specifically designed
to work with and recover these natural senses.
The design of Project Reconnect
incorporated three phases. Phase One involved three weeks of
play. There was no pressure to do; rather, only encouragement
to be --to be creative and playful. In this safe and supportive
environment, many story-blocked natural senses were unleashed
and rejuvenated. Stronger senses of trust and community began
to develop. Also, a sense of grief was opened up as the students
felt the pain of frequently abusive childhood experiences and
the loss of the childhood fulfillment of their many natural attractions.
Our challenge was to get the students into the present moment
where they could rejoice because they could now choose to feel
these multisensory attractions and then actually fulfill them.
Phase Two helped students to
reconnect to their old brain ways of knowing, to begin to make
peace with them and integrate them with their new brain indoor
stories. Dr. Cohen's activities were formally introduced during
this phase and continued to be used throughout the rest of the
program.
Phase Three consisted of five
days on a challenge course (known as the "Ropes Course"),
where the students learned team work, problem solving and how
to release stress and fear to find power and joy. In this phase,
one of the biggest challenges for the group was the five foot
trust fall. Not many groups take on this initiative because of
its high challenge to each individual's hurt senses of trust
and its requirement for a well focused, efficient and trustworthy
team. The task is for each person to climb up to a five foot
platform, turn and face away, and, on a signal, fall backwards
into the arms of his/her teammates. This was a particularly productive
initiative. Each student was taken out of the moment by their
new brain story which produced fear by telling them they would
be injured. Stories of past betrayals flooded their consciousness.
They spoke their fears out loud. Their teammates responded to
their own natural attractions to nurture and support them by
allowing them to feel their emotions fully and reassuring them.
They also spoke these outloud. Each student was eventually able
to get back into the immediate moment of natural attraction to
their senses of safety, trust and belonging and fell into the
support of their community. As with the fox and rabbit, everyone's
natural senses gave consent to cooperatively fulfill themselves
by and through everyone involved in the community. Afterwards,
each participant, including the instructors, felt a sense of
exhilaration and personal power.
On the last day of the ropes
course, each student consented, to their own level of personal
challenge, to complete certain activities on the "high elements."
Some walked poles and wires suspended 25 to 30 feet in the air.
Some jumped off the top of a 25 foot pole onto a trapeze. During
these activities, fears were induced by stories that block fulfillment
of many senses, such as distance, place, gravity, community and
trust. Their new brain was attracted to reason in order to guide
them safely. It created new stories to make sense of the situation
by relying on their restored old brain natural senses of community,
trust, belonging, consciousness, balance and self as well as
those of their reconnect group.
The final phase of the project
was a three day wilderness outing. Because of unexpected weather
and terrain, the outing became a huge challenge, and each student
was forced to go inward to find natural attractions for survival,
strengths they did not know they had. They functioned like a
healthy ecosystem. When one student got into trouble, another
student was eager to help them through the crisis. They carried
each others' packs, encouraged each other when tired and gave
each other a hand over steep parts of the trail. Every student
later said that they did not want to let the group down. Their
natural attractions to being in nature, community and nurturing
the group pushed them onward when they wanted to quit. They felt
closer as a group and stronger as individuals.
Discussion
Many outdoor education models
teach students to manage stress by pushing through it, conquering
it. For example, if you have a fear of heights, you face the
fear by walking a cable high in the air. If you fear abandonment
and injury, you dare to fall backwards into the arms of your
teammates to establish trust. These are stressful experiences
which can help build teamwork, trust, community and self-esteem.
However, if these experiences are not put into the proper context
or do not include sufficient emotional support, they encourage
the "Conquer Your Fear" story.
When the Project Reconnect
students experienced severe weather conditions and tough terrain
on the trip and had to keep going, it could have reinforced their
idea that nature is dangerous and hard and it is necessary to
push through it and conquer it. It could have reinforced the
dominant cultural stories of "just do it", "no
pain/no gain", "winner takes all," "nice
guys finish last," "don't cry out loud," etc.
We create pain, fear and stress from our old cultural and family
stories that push through our natural bonds, that separate us
from our true nature rather than respecting them. This tends
to perpetuate our painful separation from nature and our continued
abuse of the environment and each other. This is why we added
the energy of Dr. Cohen's Applied Ecopsychology. Without this
nature centered psychological element, outdoor education has the potential to add
to our problems rather than ameliorate them.
Results
Dr. Cohen's ecopsychology story
is not to conquer nature, but to flow, dance and balance with
nature and each other, as do the fox and rabbit. 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. On the trip, our discomforts in nature intensified
our natural attractions to nurturing, community and trust. They
supported our fun and survival.
Findings
The results of Project Reconnect
were overwhelmingly positive. The students' growth was later
reflected in the improved psychological test scores and analysis
(Figure 1), which show lower depression and drug use and higher
self esteem. The students now personally own activities and rationale
for reconnecting with each other and with nature in the environment.
Their challenge, and ours as instructors, is to continue to support
each other and the environment as part of our daily lives.
The state of Earth and its
people indicates that mentally and environmentally, we are distressed
(Golman, 1993). This suggests that Project Reconnect used in
conjunction with daily stress situations, instead of artificially
programmed stress activities, could serve as an ecologically
sound citizenship education preventative for chemical, food,
social and environmental abuse.
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