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Project NatureConnect |
The Secrets-of-Nature Attractions Trail
A hands-on organic challenge for educators, leaders, counselors and students.
(1-2 CEU education or counseling contact hour credits are available by doing this trail as a part of a course or Psychological Elements of Global Citizenship or
Counseling With Natural Attractions)Copyright 1996, Michael J. Cohen, Ed.D.
SUGGESTION: For best results, follow the trail to its completion without interruption, then repeat it and explore its links and references.
Background
Material that appears on this web site and its links is drawn from articles that have been professionally reviewed and published in The Journal of Humanistic Psychology, Journal of Environmental Education, Interpsych Journal of Mental Health, Greenwich University Journal of Science and Technology, Councelling Psychology Quarterly, Proceedings of the North American Association for Environmental Education, Journal of the Oregon Counseling Association, The Trumpeter, U.S. Department of Education Educational Resources Information Center, Outdoor Communicator, Clearing Magazine, Nature Study, Between the Species, Cooperative Learning, International Journal of Humanities and Peace and others. (see MJCohen personal page)
"Nurture your felt love for nature; never deny it. In our nature conquering society it is an unconquered vestige of your inherent connection with nature's ancient, unifying, essence. For eons this essence has peacefully organized, preserved and regenerated life relationships in balance. The loss of our felt love of nature in our daily thinking produces much of our destructiveness and imbalance.
Michael J. Cohen
Purpose: to think and relate more intelligently
People who do well on apptitude tests usually get advanced job placement, higher salaries and greater prestige. Consider this simple intelligence test question regarding mathematical aptitude.
"If you count a dog's tail as one of its legs, how many legs does a dog have?"
"Five," of course, is the answer. Intelligent people say "five" because it's valid in mathematical systems and thinking. Economics and social standing reward us for giving this correct answer. However, our sense of reason only recognizes five as correct until we additionally validate what we know from our, or other people's, thoughtful contact with a real normal dog. Then, many of our multitude of natural senses often come into play: senses of sight, touch, motion, color, texture, language, sound, smell, consciousness, community, trust, contrast and love. Each of these natural senses help our sense of reason make more sense and recognize that a tail is different than a leg; a dog has four legs, not five .
"Aristotle thought there were eight legs on a fly and wrote it down. For centuries scholars were content to quote his authority. Apparently, not one of them was curious enough to impale a fly and count its six legs."
- Stuart Chase
Aristotle also said we only have five senses. As noted in the previous paragraph, we obviously we have far more that five, and when we think with them we increase our sensibility, sensitivity and intelligence.Most scientists recognize that just as our arm is attracted or "loves" to be attached to our body, all people are biologically, psychologically and spiritually born of, part of, and attached to nature. We each instinctively hold a basic love of nature's "resources," -sunshine, food, water, soil, air- in common with each other and all of nature. Like a refreshing walk in the park, or other good experiences in natural areas, our many natural senses help us benefit from, contact with nature. Like everything else on Planet Earth, our natural senses are parts of natural systems, just as our sensation of thirst is part of the water cycle.
As exemplified by the water cycle, it is well established that nature and its systems are self-correcting and have healing, purifying and regenerative powers. When we use sensory tools that genuinely connect our thinking and feeling to these powers, we benefit from them.
We live very Nature disconnected lives. Over 95% of our time is spent indoors closeted from nature. Over 99% of our thinking is separated from and often out of tune with nature. All our speech and writing in words is disconnected from nature because nature and its systems are a non-literate way of communicating, knowing and relating. Nature is being, not just describing. It is relating, not just abstracting about relationships. It is acts, not facts. It is empirical knowledge, not just "as-if" thoughts. Nature is global or universal integrity in action.
A house built on a faulty foundation produces crooked leanings. We constantly suffer because the crookedness of our nature-disconnected, natural-sense deprived, "as if" world often conditions us to think and live the "as-if" lie that a tail is a leg. We suffer accordingly.
Our thinking has very little genuine 4-leg contact with authentic nature. We are rewarded to mostly learn to think as if a dog has 5-legs. In this limited process we habitually omit critical information.
We desperately need to ground ourselves in a foundation that authentically roots itself with the integrity of our planet and its natural systems. This is easily accomplished. We simply learn and teach each other how to add nature-connecting Organic Psychology activities to our daily life. They help us sensibly combine 4-leg and 5-leg knowledge. Validating this thoughtful contact enables us to benefit from the grace, balance and restorative powers of 9-leg thinking and relationships. We feel better and improve our lives by co-creating with nature's perfection.
This trail helps you learn some enabling Organic Psychology activities. It is a 9-leg tool gives you the opportunity learn more about 9-leg brain functions.
Introduction
Although we are part of nature, nature does not suffer our disorders. We don't find uncontrolled garbage, war, loneliness, pollution, crime, abusiveness, stress and mental illness in intact natural areas or natural people.
As contemporary people, we have bonded to industrial society's nature-disconnected, excessively destructive way of life, yet we are still part of nature.
How does nature sustain life and avoid producing our problems?
As part of nature, don't we inherit this intelligent gift and then learn to disregard or damage it?
Discover these secrets by doing this unusual online nature trail. Learn how to let nature help you build and teach sound personal, social and environmental relationships.
This trail visits rewarding natural areas that flourish in the environment and in hidden natural valleys of your mind, too. To gain some rewarding insights, try to be open to letting nature help you recycle some destructive ways that Western Civilization has taught us to think and relate. These ways hide nature's fertile valleys from our consciousness.
The sensory hidden valleys of our mentality seldom register in our consciousness because society seldom trains us to respect or value their feelingful "4-leg" communications to us. Society often demeans these communications as flakey or fuzzy thinking, as subjective rather than scientific or objective. This degrading weakens or injures our natural senses. They lose the energy, desire or resilience necessary to register in our consciousness. Our devaluing of them teaches our consciousness not to appreciate or validate them when they do appear. Unwanted, rejected or abandoned, they hide and hurt; they and our awareness of them become subconscious. We learn to ignore this omission as we learn that we think and know through only five natural senses, rather than at least 53 of them.
Trail Start:
An Important Phenomenon: As you read these words you register them and their significance. At this moment, however, you probably neither notice nor register the air that sits between you and the words on this page until right no now. Right now these words bring the air to your attention
Too often, the value of air lies hidden from your immediate consciousness.
Can we afford to continue to overlook air and its importance to our lives and all of life?
Does Air have a language that speaks to us and to all of Nature, too?
Why, historically, has the quality of the science and knowledge we learn about air increased while the quality of air has decreased?
This trail reverses that dilemma. It helps you scientifically discover a language that enables us, in 9-leg ways, to learn from air about our important relationship with it and nature.
.....Follow this Trail Marker
.....Natural Attraction
............in Balance..........
Station 1: A gift to you from nature.
In unspoiled nature, clean, fresh air prevails. It is a global phenomenon, a product of, by and from nature's eons of self-organizing, self-correcting, mutually supportive natural system relationships between sunshine and rain and millions of different plant and animal species in the soil and atmosphere.
You and I are members of humanity, one of those species.
We too often forget that when we inhale fresh air, we receive a gift. Air is a nurturing present to our lives from nature's global community. Air supports our ability to live. Let's not overlook that.
(Continue to the next station)
NOTE: the spaces, below, offer thinking and feeling time between trail stops. When they appear see if you can identify what feels attractive to you in the preceding trail stop. Feelingly write down what was attractive. What you write will often prove to be a valuable 9-leg way of knowing.
What do you find attractive in the Station above?
Station 2: Your gift to nature.
Do you recognize that when you exhale your breath, Earth breathes you? You breathe out carbon dioxide and water vapor into the air. They are food and water that nurture the plant, animal and mineral world.
Your breath helps to sustain all other forms of life. It is one of your gifts to them. Let's not overlook that.
Notice how you feel right now as you breathe air normally. Is the air you are breathing stale? Would you feel better if you were breathing pure, sunshine-clean, rain-washed air in an unspoiled natural area? Why?
(Continue to the next station)
What do you find attractive in the Station above?
Station 3: The gift of life.
In earlier times, the word for air was "psyche." Psyche also means spirit and mind. Psychological can mean "logic or study of the spirit."
Breathing air is called respiration, originally meaning "re-spiriting."
The word inspiration means "bringing air/spirit in."
The word expiration means "letting air/spirit leave."
Whe we fully expire, we culturally "die" and biologically transform.
Does it surprise you that atmosphere comes from the ancient word for soul?
(Continue to the next station)
What do you find attractive in the Station above?
Station 4: Disconnect from nature:
For demonstration purposes here, please exhale and then hold your breath for a few moments. Do this now. It is a 4-leg contact activity. While holding your breath, read on:
You have stopped breathing and are now disconnected from the natural system of air and nature in this regard. Notice how a sensation is developing in you, a natural feeling attraction, a consciousness of air, a "webstring" of the web of life to air that increasingly communicates with a 4-leg message that urges you to breathe again (Cohen, 2000).
The desire/attraction for things to connect with atmospheric air has been part of nature for 400 million years. That's when plants introduced oxygen in air. The natural attraction for oxygen in water and minerals has been around for over three billion years.
Like air itself, the natural attraction for air is of, by and from nature. Scientists did not invent that attraction, nor did religious leaders. It is a form of communication that could be considered nature's intelligent attraction language that we inherit and register in our consciousness. That sense is nature feelingly urging you, "asking you," to reconnect with the atmosphere and the natural world (Cohen, 1995). Do you trust this natural attraction feeling and what it is telling you to do?
Continue to hold your breath, Don't breathe until you absolutely have to.
(Continue to the next station)
What do you find attractive in the Station above?
Station 5: Nature wants you alive and connected to it.
Here is a secret of nature: Your sensory desire to breathe is a natural attraction love to reconnect with nature. Your love of air, and it of you, insists that you breathe, even if you choose not to. The 4-leg feeling says "Participate in the natural community that sustains you. Give, share, take and enjoy its physical and sensory gifts (Adler, 1995)."
Even if you faint from lack of air, your natural attraction to air will revive and rejuvenate you by making you breathe again. That is nature's loving 4-leg intelligence and voice, Natural Attraction, in action. That desire to breathe is a way nature works and communicates. Nature needs and wants you to help sustain the global community so, intelligently, it reconnects you to it, it is attractive to you. It also does the same thing for every other member of the web of life
Through natural attraction senses, sensitivities, and sensations, nature feelingly speaks. It tells you its desire for you to participate in life. You belong.
Another Secret: another very obvious and important attribute of air that we usually learn to overlook is that it is through the air that we register color, light, forms, scents, sounds, speech, temperature, sunlight, chemicals, clouds, motion, wind and rain. Air is part of our ability to register all these things. Is it any wonder that natural people(s) considered air to be part of spirit and soul?
(Go to the next station)
What do you find attractive in the Station above?
Station 6: Connecting with natural life feels good.
Begin to breathe normally again if you have not already done so.
Note that when you reconnect with air by breathing, nature rewards you. It gives you an attractive, satisfying, enjoyable 4-leg natural sensation. Nature "invented" that attractive, fulfilling sensation (via dopomine et al). It is a form of communication.
Through this natural reward nature expresses its appreciation for your supportive participation . Without using words, the sensation thanks you for reconnecting. It thanks you for your natural gifts of carbon dioxide and water vapor to the global community. They could not survive without this gift from you and others. And you could not survive without their gifts to you. Such mutually beneficial support is an essence of how nature works, from sub-atomics to solar systems.
Do you trust or celebrate this attractive and rewarding feeling of thanks from nature and the ancient life relationship it brings to mind? It is a 4-leg communication and connection with all of life. It is with you all your life. Doesn't it deserve your respect, your attention, your trust?
It is 4-leg and 5-leg (9-leg) reasonable for us and the environment to breathe together, to communicate, to cooperatively connect. That attractive, mutually beneficial "love" relationship helps support and sustain all of life. That's why it is intelligent, right and feels good, why it has been called "spirit."
Nature biologically and psychologically created good attractive feelings to contact, connect with, and reward sensuous forms of life for heeding and fulfilling their natural attraction senses (webstrings).
(Continue to the next station)
What do you find attractive in the Station above?
Station 7: Words are your destiny.
The 5-leg words of Section 4, above, on this nature trail asked you to stop breathing. Their story message had the power to disconnect you from your natural attraction to nature.
When you sentiently ignored your connection to nature and disconnected, that is, you stopped breathing, you became uncomfortable. Then Nature sensuously 4-leg signaled you that some vital connection was missing. It told you to follow that attraction and fulfill it by breathing. Isn't that a form of intelligence? Doesn't it sensibly make sense (sic). Were you frightened, or hurt, or were you thankful for that sense and its reasonable message?
(Continue to the next station)
What do you find attractive in the Station above?
Station 8: Natural sensations and feelings guide you.
By Station 6 it was not this trail's 5-leg words and story that led you to reconnect by breathing. It was a 4-leg natural attraction, your feelingful attraction to breathe that did this. Nature itself intelligently, feelingly, contacted and guided you in a good way, without using words. It helped you connect to the whole of nature through your breath.
When you sentiently listened to nature's attraction "voice" and reconnected, you felt more comfortable, supported and safe.
Naturally and safely feeling good can come from being directly connected to nature through natural attractions (Logan, 1995). It is very 9-leg important to keep this in mind. It's a secret of how nature produces its perfection through its Natural Attraction "language."
Thinking with 9-legs tells us that connective attraction sensations and feelings are nature's way, an intelligent essence of how nature reaches our consciousness and nurtures our thinking. Now consider this: how often do you seek and trust attractive fulfilling experiences in nature?
(Continue to the next station)
What do you find attractive in the Station above?
Station 9: Nature has no words.
Here's a 5-leg story we often overlook: The natural world is a non-verbal community. It does not use words to communicate. It does not know itself or its members by a name or label. It is non-literate. Nature almost entirely knows and relates to itself in 4-leg ways.
Like all of Nature the desire to breathe has no name, However, we sense that air exists and we feel our attraction to breathe, even though both naturally have no word labels. That's how infants know to breathe when disconnected. That's how natural systems in you, your "inner child" or "inner nature" knows how to breathe too (Cohen, 1995).
Can you learn to 9-leg trust these words and the breathing experience you just had? When you fulfill your natural attraction for air by breathing, nature within and about you, without using words, rewards you by giving you good feelings. Isn't that intelligent?
Doesn't air communicate and make sense by creating a reasonable and wise sensation? Do you trust that this is nature's way, nature's intelligence? If so, you can trust thoughtful sensory connections with nature to intelligently help you guide and support your daily life in many ways, for you are part of nature and its supportive gifts to life. Nature can help you validate and take pride in knowing a dog has four legs, not five. Does it help to know that Abraham Lincoln said: "You can not make me believe a tail is a leg."
(Continue to the next station)
What do you find attractive in the Station above?
Station 10: Nature is multisensory.
Here is another vital secret of nature that is seldom taught in our society, but is obvious. From atoms to the solar system and beyond, nature's 4-leg world is held together by attractions. If it wasn't, it and its members would fall apart, and they don't. Instead they are attracted to supportively hold to and flow through each other to help support life.
Attractions of and between gravity, color, motion, rocks, temperature, pressure, plants and atmosphere and hundreds more are each strings of the web of life that bind natural systems together into nature's diverse, balanced unity.
To help us be conscious of and survive in the web of life, at least 53 of these natural webstring attractions register as distinct senses and feelings in us when we are in in their domain, in contact with them. Nature gives us the inborn ability to sense its beauties and ways. No surprise that they register in our consciousness as attractions, for that's exactly what they are, attractive (Cohen, 2000). Our society recognizes this when its say our national parks contain natural attractions, our heritage.
REVIEW: In addition to the sense of breathing, of our attraction to air, nature has similarly created and contains at least 52 other distinct, intelligent, natural attraction 4-leg sensitivities (Cohen, 1997b). Each of them is like a sensory voice of Nature, a strand of the web of life found in some form throughout the global community (Cohen, 2000). Because the life wisdom in each strand of the web of life is attractive, it produces good feelings in us when we sense the strand. (Cohen, 2003)
As with your desire to breathe, in conjunction with natural areas, each of our other natural attractions also feelingly, responsibly communicates with you and guides your relationship with the environment (Bower, 1999).
Nature also does this on some natural attraction level with every other member of the web of life including minerals. Natural Attractions are nature's language and essence.
In sentient, non-verbal 4-leg ways, you may learn to hear nature's sensuous voice, reconnect with nature, enjoy its balance, 5-leg validate its wisdom and sensibly feel 9-leg good.
The 53 natural senses that help you accomplish this include senses of sight, sound and smell; gravity, reason and temperature; nurturing, community and trust; empathy, belonging and place, thirst, hunger and motion; compassion, touch and taste (Cohen, 1995A). Each of these senses offers you enjoyable, trustable feeling signals that blend into a common sense when you connect with nature through them. Remember, this includes your connections with human nature, the natural systems in people, too, for we are each part of the whole of nature.
(Continue to the next station)
What do you find attractive in the Station above?
Station 11: The wisdom of natural attraction sensations.
We don't exclusively own our natural attraction webstring senses and sensitivities. Rather, they are a "voice" that we share with every species and mineral. They attract the natural community to beneficially flow through us and us through it. This is another secret of nature: every five-seven years every molecule in our body becomes part of the environment and is replaced by a similar molecule from the environment. We become it, it become us. That makes Earth like our life-womb or our other body.
Natural Attraction senses wisely balance us personally by balancing themselves and each other. For example, like the sense of respiration, the natural attraction sense of thirst knows just how much water we need so it regulates us by turning itself on and off appropriately. And although you may be thirsty, without being told verbally, you probably won't drink water that looks bad or has the wrong smell, taste, temperature, color or texture. These additional Natural Attraction senses modify your thirst.
The blending of 53 Natural Attraction sensations is the wisdom of the senses and natural attraction sensitivities. It is nature's story as told in its 4-leg sensory language to us and via other forms of attraction and sensitivity to the non-sensuous world.
In summary: Natural attractions in atomic particles, molecules, materials, gases, land, sea and air, and the solar system hold our world together. Our sense of reason recognizes that these natural attractions are real facts of life for if these things were not held together by attractions, they would fall apart and they don't. For this reason, what we call "things" are actually natural attraction relationships manifesting themselves, doing their thing, supporting life.
(Continue to the next station)
What do you find attractive in the Station above?
Station 12: It is your choice.
We are given the natural ability to reason --it is one of our natural attraction senses. It is an attractive thing to do. The sense of reason enables us to rationally choose or not choose to feel good responsibly and intelligently by learning how to heed and consider Nature's voice, our natural attraction senses, our 4-leg contact with authentic nature and its natural systems.
Although this type of "sensory literacy" is rarely taught or applauded in contemporary society and its 5-leg thinking, it is also true that this same "objective" thinking by contemporary society is stupidly polluting and destroying the natural systems that support it and it does not seem able to stop. That is not natural. It is a way to describe a cancer. A cancer overruns and destroys, rather than cooperatively lives in balance with, its environment. It is also a way to describe madness; it is insane to knowledgeably destroy one's own life support system.
(Continue to the next station)
What do you find attractive in the Station above?
Station 13: You belong.
On a personal level, in nature, as demonstrated by breathing, we get good feelings by directly giving and gaining support from the global community. In that community, every member, including yourself, knows that it is very important. In some way, every member is naturally attractive, loved, and included. Everything and everyone belongs.
That is how and why nature does not produce garbage.
On a macro level everything in Nature is needed. Nothing natural is thrown away. Alive or "dead," each natural being is naturally attractive, wanted and belongs and transforms to that state of being. That is the reason
- excessive pollution, abusiveness, violence, loneliness, war, stress and mental illness are virtually unknown in nature.
- It is why nature has the ability to self-correct, restore and heal.
- It helps explain why it is reasonable to gain good feelings by becoming fluent in Natural Attraction and thereby consciously reconnect with nature.
- It is also why some people believe that nature is a good example of unconditional love in action.
Nature leaves nothing out; everything is attractive, belongs and is wanted. Nothing is garbage.
SYNOPSIS: Reconnecting with Nature by becoming literate in Natural Attraction is a vital, intelligent and responsible way to safely gain fulfillment. By activating multiple natural attraction senses, the reconnecting process helps our sense of reason rebuild our personal relationships as well as our society, economics, and the environment. It helps our thinking establish a 4-leg communion and partnership with natural systems and their balanced, supportive wisdom around and within us and others. Being 9-leg reasonable, the process recognizes that our thinking is our destiny.
(Continue to the next station)
What do you find attractive in the Station above?
Station 14: Nature pulls things together.
Here is another well kept secret of nature: At every level, the global life community is built upon many mutually beneficial but vastly different Natural Attraction callings and relationships. This process is so effective that the greater the creativity, diversity, and differences of each individual community member, the stronger the whole community becomes. It is as if each diverse part of nature knows something special about life so that collectively the web of life is an intercommunicating super intelligence, attraction or love, a global brain. Our inner nature inherits and trusts this natural attraction, cooperative, wisdom. It is part of it. As with air, it biologically and emotionally enjoys, encourages and operates from it. Our inner self always expects to be loved and supported by natural attractions simply because that is nature's way. That's what it does, how it operates. It is similar to the concept of "Heaven on Earth"
(Continue to the next station)
What do you find attractive in the Station above?
Station 15: Effects of disconnecting.
The value of our natural attraction loves and their intelligence is often hidden from our awareness by cultural 5-leg stories that tell us love is not scientific or objective and that we should avoid, disconnect from, or conquer nature within and around us, even though we love it. Doing this often gains us money, approval and status. The purpose of Science has long been to conquer or exploit Nature.
The economics of consumerism drives and rewards us to convert Nature into cultural objects. Even in our Bible God tells humanity to subdue the Earth and dominate it. But is all this reasonable considering its destructive effects?
We live over 95% of our lives indoors; 99.9% of our thinking consists of nature-disconnected, verbal, not sensory, 5-leg consciousness. That stops the flow of natural systems and de-energizes our awareness of Natural Attractions.
In our extremely nature-separated, indoor world our stories make it practically taboo to sensuously reconnect with and trust nature. We learn (read: "are brainwashed") instead to dance to misleading, nature-conquering, labels, stories and acts. Salaries, high grades and prestige reward us for doing this dance. However, the dance separates us from nature's balance, intelligence and fulfillment, thereby promoting limited knowledge and many challenging personal, social and environmental disorders.
(Continue to the next station)
What do you find attractive in the Station above?
Station 16: You are in charge of how you feel.
Just as when you inhaled air, you always have the option to safely feel comfortable by reconnecting with nature through natural attractions. You can do this even when a story within or around you stresses you by telling you to do otherwise.
An important example: once you complete this nature trail, do the first part of it again. When you come to Station 4, you now know the 5-leg story there will tell you not to breathe. You also know that heeding that story will disconnect you from nature and produce uncomfortable 4-leg suffocation feelings. This time, think with nature. Choose not to pay attention to that disconnecting story at Station 4 until it makes sense to you. Seek permission from nature and your body to stop breathing. If you don't obtain their consent, i.e., it does not feel attractive to stop, then don't stop breathing. Instead choose to pay attention to what nature's systems tell you, what naturally feels safe, attractive and worthwhile to you as part of the global life community. Be 9-leg responsible by choosing to breathe in connective consent with the Natural Attraction voice of your body and your planetary mother, Earth. Cooperate with nature by sustaining your natural integrity, good feelings and the Earth community. Help your sense of reason heed the 4-leg natural logic of the psyche. This will help your thinking be conscious of, consider and respect the natural truth that a dog has 4-legs.
SUMMARY: When we ignore or divert (socialize) our natural attractions to nature, we lose contact with the natural system voice and intelligence in nature that knows how to sustain and regenerate us in balance as responsible citizens of the global life community that lies within and around us.
(Continue to the next station)
Station 17: Non-verbal learning, relating and knowing.
Reminder: The natural world produces its beauty, peace and balance through non-verbal attraction relationships and callings. You can personally learn to choose and reconnect to this sensory form of "higher power". Like taking a deep breath, it fulfills you, relieves stress and helps recovery from social and medical problems. You can easily teach others how to reconnect with it too.
This interpretative nature trail contains only one nature-reconnecting activity. There are an additional 128 published activities you can do and teach at your convenience. Each further 4-leg reconnects you with nature and empowers you to think and relate in responsible 9-leg ways that feel good.
Each activity helps you seek consent, think more reasonably, and make sense in 53 natural sensory ways, and build friendships in the process (Cohen, 1993). Online, you can take self-help and personal growth courses or obtain BS, MS or Ph.D degrees and scholarships in this Natural Systems Thinking Process (NSTP), You learn how to do NSTP and share it with other people and learn from their experiences, too. This is important because without contact and support, in our nature disconnected society our nature connections often don't have enough energy to remain in our thinking and we revert to destructive ways. The organic psychology of NSTP enables you to you prevent this from happening.
As we strengthen our natural attraction senses, they become more alive in our consciousness. We begin to safely think with nature's intelligence, in a way that is more feeling, sensible and sensitive to people and the environment. This helps us be more sensitive to life, to feel and be more alive and make sense of our lives, to increase personal and global well-being. For this reason, many educators, counselors and leaders advocate and use nature-reconnecting activities. It is why every form of education, counseling and recovery works better when it is in contact with attractions in nature. It is why we bring flowers to sick people and why pets increase our wellness.
(Continue to the next station)
What do you find attractive in the Station above?
Station 18: What have you learned here?
Synopsis: This nature reconnecting trail is a structured 9-leg educational tool. It attempts to teach you that you inherit from nature at least 53 natural webstring attraction senses and feelings. Like the sense of respiration, they are sensible natural 4-leg communications that non-verbally but responsibly enable you to connect your 5-leg thinking to nature's intelligence because webstring are an essence of that intelligence. In our nature disconnected way of life this often sounds very strange, foreign or foolish. However, when connected to nature, like breathing, our natural attractions not only feel good, they wisely 9-leg help us sustain and balance our thinking, psyche and spirit, just as they balance the natural world and sustain its wellness. This is significant because our thinking is our destiny.
When we fulfill our natural attractions to breathe clean air, drink pure water and eat uncontaminated food, we enjoy worthwhile, healthy satisfactions. Similarly, safely reconnecting with nature through our many other natural sensory attractions is also fulfilling, healthy and responsible. It is what every other species on Earth does. Natural people(s) do it too. NSTP reconnecting is organic. it lets nature help us decompose "compost" and recycle our destructive and polluted ways of thinking and relating. It enables us to transform them into constructive relationships..
The word consensus means "to feel with many senses together." Because nature-centered communities think by consensus while in contact with nature, they seldom produce our destructive personal, social and environmental problems. (Bower, 1995)
(Continue to the next station)
What do you find attractive in the Station above?
Station 19: Something to think about.
Reminder: Nature consists of 4-leg, non-verbal, webstring attraction relationships, but we learn to mostly think and communicate in the 5-leg abstract of words and stories. Abstracts are seldom real. They are shortcuts that often subdivide and replace the whole of life. That separation subdivides our thinking from nature's perfections and leads us to produce our many problems.
We have yet to discover or invent a substitute for the perfection of nature's grace, balance and restorative powers.
We need to listen to our natural senses and feelings to discover how nature works. To live and relate more harmoniously it makes sense to reconnect with nature and seek its consent as part of the way we think.
Have you ever noticed that our inherent natural intelligence, loves and values are often lost to nature-conquering images, stories and labels that demean them. For example, in uncomplimentary ways, our natural attraction senses are often called "subjective," "unscientific," "environmentalist," "imagination," "fuzzy thinking," "immature," "crazy" "non-academic," "flaky," "childish," "tree hugging" "unimportant," "spiritual," "foolish" "nostalgia," "fantasy," "unreasonable," "touchy-feely," "drives," "needs,"or "instincts."
Consider this: Isn't our sensory natural attraction to air just as vital and real as air itself? Just as air is a scientific fact, isn't the sensation of our natural love to breathe air an equally scientific fact? Would we have or a sense of respiration if air did not exist; isn't one part of the other. And isn't it polluted thinking, bad science and limited consciousness to prejudicially value material facts while devaluing sensory facts?
Trust your experiences. You can think, learn and know using more than just verbal language and "five senses." You can learn to think and speak in multisensory, Natural Attraction ways with natural systems in people and places, relate more responsibly, and feel better too.
(Continue to the next station)
What do you find attractive in the Station above?
Station 20: No need to stop now.
This trail contains one activity that helps you think and feel with nature. (Note: you can inexpensively obtain 20 CEU credit clock hours in counseling or education for answering some questions about it - or 2 academic credits.) You can also continue learning this process. An additional 127 activities are found in the self-guiding stress management, mood enhancement training books The Web of Live Imperative, Einstein's World, Reconnecting With Nature and Well Mind, Well Earth. Optional, on-line email courses accompany each of these books along with optional professional or academic independent study credit and distance learning degree programs. A good introduction to the books and courses is the interview with Dr. Michael J. Cohen and the remainder of these WWW pages.
You may safely, anonymously chat and share attractive nature-connecting experiences with others at our workshops and/or by joining our discussion list. You can request the assistance of a Project NatureConnect guide to share doing the activities with you.
(Continue to the next station)
What do you find attractive in the Station above?
Station 21: Your conclusion?
Researchers suggest that nature consists of resonant attraction connections between natural things (Wald, 1985, Langer 1995,). The deteriorating state of Earth and people signals that we and the environment are at risk. Our thinking is excessively separated from nature within and around us. We must consciously reunite our mind with natural systems and begin to co-create with nature. Doing nature reconnecting activities helps make this happen. They offer an urgently needed service and vast economic benefits.
Interestingly, the word for breathing and sharing spirit together is "conspire." Shouldn't we learn how to conspire to support life and our lives on Earth, rather than dance on the deck of our sinking ship?
Moving air in play,
breezes bring wild energy
freeing thoughts and moods.- Jean Summral
(Continue to the next station)
What do you find attractive in the Station above?
Station 22: An extra reward.
You can do this nature-reconnecting activity and build some lasting, rewarding relationships:
Part 1: Go to the most attractive natural plant, animal, mineral or place that you can conveniently find. A "weed," potted plant or aquarium will do if a park or sanctuary is not available. Go to nature in reality, not to a story, artifact, picture, video, visualization, spirit, memory or other likeness of nature. Remember, with respect to nature and its balanced eons of life experience, there is no known substitute for the real thing.
Be sure not to get too close to any natural area or thing that may irritate, hurt or be unhealthy for you. In nature, that is not attractive.
Part 2: Find an immediate natural attraction(s) for you at this natural site and for ten minutes get to know them non-verbally. Erase 5-leg labels or other mental chatter that accompanies them or prevent it from occurring by repeating the words "natural attraction" as you do this activity. With your eyes closed become aware of it or them through some of your other inherent Natural Attraction callings, senses and feelings, senses such these 30 of the 53:
sight
motion
belonging
beauty
reasontouch
temperature
place
color
languagetaste
nurturing
reasoning
pleasure
hormonalsmell
community
peace
appreciation
intuitionsound
trust
texture
form
gravitycompanionship
empathy
compassion
respiration
consciousnessKeep the experience nameless so that it remains in Nature's sensory, 4-leg attraction voice.
Then repeat this experience with your eyes open.
Part 3: Now translate into 9-leg English from Natural Attraction. In a total of 400 words or less, write:
- a) What happened.
- b) What you sense, think and feel from doing this activity.
- c) Why you think the activity led you to feel as you do.
Send Part 3 to your course member study group, the Friends of Natural Attractions, or both, along with a note asking people there to share, enjoy and respond to your submission by telling you what they found attractive in it, may have learned from it, how it affected them when they read it. You will make 9-leg contact with a group of people who are unified by the connections with nature that they hold in common.
You may also send your paragraphs to anybody else you think might appreciate them. Ask them to respond. Your nature-connected thoughts and feelings may connect you with the natural attractions of others, and vice versa, especially as a letter to a local news editor. This process is a good way to build or strengthen relationships online or in your community and family.
For educational purposes only, we reserve the right to post your entry to our newsletter readers anonymously, or with your name if you so choose.
Save your paper as it may be of use to you in additional coursework.
If learning to master and use the process of reconnecting with nature is of interest to you, the best possible way to proceed is by taking a short, online Orientation Course. You can optionally transfer it into your academic or professional training curriculum. You can use it as part of our cooperatively run, low cost, certification or degree programs, too.
Part 4: Another activity. If you want to do more with the written results you obtained on the trail stops, above, do this activity:
1. Read through your notes that you wrote from the green box attractions on the Trail or repeat the trail and this time make attraction notes. Select the most attractive things you found and make a list of them.
2. Obtain consent from a natural are to visit it and learn from it. Instructions for doing this are found in the Global Wellness and Unity activity
3. Once you have gained the area's consent, read one of your attractions and see if you can find an example of this attraction taking place in the natural area you are visiting.
4. If you find that doing this is rewarding, repeat 1-3 using other green box attractions you have written.
* * * * *
OTHER CHOICES:
Return to the beginning of this nature trail and do it again. You'll find its just as interesting and worthwhile as the first time. Like the air you may still be overlooking as you read these words, there's lots to learn. The best way to learn, though, is through the Orientation Course. where you learn by doing. It will help you and your community come into balance by engaging in and enjoying more nine-leg thinking and relating.
1. Learn more about Natural Attraction. Visit the extensive Organics of Psychology page and the Attractions Principles page.
2. Discover if you are eligible for rewarding personal and professional nature-connected training programs.
3. Go to the Interview With Michael J. Cohen.
4. Go to a book review of: The Web of Life Imperative, Einstein's World, Reconnecting With Nature or Well Mind, Well Earth.
5. Learn how you can, online, inexpensively obtain an online University Degree or Certification that specializes in learning and teaching the Natural Systems Thinking Process
6. Join our NatureConnect Discussion List and share nature experiences there.
7. Follow other links listed below
References
Adler, (1995). Providing the data to protect biodiversity. Science News Vol. 148, No. 21 p. 326 Washington DC, Science Service Inc.
Bower, B. (1995). Return of the group. Science News, Vol. 148, No. 21 p. 328. Washington DC, Science Service Inc.
Bower, B. (1999). Simple Minds, Smart Choices. Science News, Vol. 155, No. 22 p. 348. Washington DC, Science Service Inc.
Cohen, M.J.(2003) The Web of Life Imperative: regenerative ecopsychology techniques that help people think in balance with natural systems. Trafford, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada.
Cohen, M.J.(2000) Nature Connected Psychology: The Natural Systems Thinking Process, GREENWICH JOURNAL OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY VOL 1 NO 1, JUNE 2000, Norfolk Island, Australia, Greenwich University, http://www.ecopsych.com/natpsych.html
Cohen, M.J. (1997) Well Mind, Well Earth: 109 environmentally sensitive activities for stress management, spirit and self-esteem. PO Box 1605, Friday Harbor, WA, Project NatureConnect.
Cohen, M.J. (1997b) Reconnecting With Nature: Finding wellness through restoring your bond with the Earth. (P.O. Box 1605, Friday Harbor WA,) Corvallis, Ecopress.
Cohen, M.J. (1995) Counseling and Nature: The greening of psychotherapy. Interpsych News. Internet, http://www.ecopsych.com/~nature/counseling.html
Langer, W. (1995) Watching a young star eat. Science News, Vol. 148, No. 21 p. 334 Washington DC, Science Service Inc.
Logan, Ron (1995) Healing Ourselves and the World Through Applied Ecopsychology Common Future Magazine, Corvallis Oregon http://www.ecopsych.com/theory.html
Wald, G. (1985) in Cohen, M. J. Proceedings: Is the Earth a Living Organism? Sharon, CT, National Audubon Society.
Strengthen personal and global well-being
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INSTITUTE OF GLOBAL EDUCATION Special NGO consultant United Nations Economic and Social Council
PROJECT NATURECONNECT
Readily available, online, natural science tools
for the health of person, planet and spiritP.O. Box 1605, Friday Harbor, WA 98250
360-378-6313 <email> www.ecopsych.com
ORGANIC ADVANCED ECOPSYCHOLOGY IN ACTION
The Natural Systems Thinking Process
Dr. Michael J. Cohen, Director
send email
All programs start with the Orientation Course contained in the book
The Web of Life Imperative.
9/15/05
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