Institute of Global Education
Special NGO consultant to the
United Nations Social and Economic Council.
P. O. Box 1605,
Friday Harbor, WA 98250.
360-378-6313
Send email
www.ecopsych.comFor further information contact:
Dr. Miichael J. Cohen 360-378-6313
Release continued from Page Two
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS:
Q: How is the reconnecting with nature program easily available to anybody?
A: Through our subsidized website, books and programs.
http://www.ecopsych.com/
Q: Why do you make some of your activities available for Earth Day Celebrations?
A: They add a psychological missing link to the way we think and our thinking produces most Earthday activities.
Q: How do contemporary people become ecozombies?
A: Unlike nature centered cultures, we learn to spend 95% of our time and 99.9% of our thinking disconnected from nature.
Q: What makes the Natural Systems Thinking Process (NSTP) effective in so many wide ranging areas of interest?
A: It reconnects the presently nature disconnected roots of our wide ranging social systems
Q: Why is NSTP based on working with 53 natural senses rather than the five senses we normally use?
A: In the absence of conscious awareness of the 53 senses that pervade and balance nature, our thinking is too often nonsense. This leaves us little choice but to act nonsensically as reflected by the state of the world.
Q: How long has the Natural Systems Thinking Process been in use?
A: I and those I have trained have used it for 40 years. It's been packaged for limited use by the general public use since 1987.
Q: What is the critical difference between contemporary humanity and the rest of nature?
A: We think and relate in words that abstract (subdivide) the reality of how nature works and produces its perfection. We seldom participate in that reality.
Q: What is the major thing that makes NSTP different than most other forms of learning and counseling?
A: The user must make thoughtful, shared, conscious sensory contact with attractions in nature as part of the process, otherwise it does not work.
Q: How can a person use NSTP for self-improvement or in a recovery program?
A: Doing its activities connects an individual to the additional intelligence and higher power found in nature.
Q: Why is NSTP a valuable addition to learning new information or habits?
A: It safely, enjoyably loosens and replaces the destructive psychological bonds that prevent us from thinking and acting responsibly
Q: Where is NSTP formally taught?
A: At the four University distant learning programs I direct, at The University of California at Santa Barbara Environmental Studies Department, and in the many school and counseling programs where my Masters and Doctoral Students work.
Q: Is financial aid available for these programs?
A: Our students have formed an administrative cooperative that cuts costs and thereby produces funding when needed.
Q: How do you reconnect with nature if the NSTP program is online?
A: The online program only helps students coordinate and share the self-evident learning that takes place as they do nature reconnecting activities in their locality.
Q: In what private and professional areas does NSTP make a significant contribution?
A: Any individual, discipline or organization that is aware enough to want to use the process benefits from it.
Q: How and why does NSTP contribute to Peace? Education? Counseling? Environment? Wellness? Mental Health? Stress Management? Conflict Resolution?
A: Each of these areas are part of our society and many of our troubles are caused by our society's excessive disconnection from nature. NSTP empowers these interests to help heal our disconnection from nature by genuinely reconnecting their thinking to it.
Q: How can a person discover if NSTP will help them personally or professionally?
A: Our short Orientation Course: Psychological Elements of Global Citizenship gives a sample of the full scope of the program and they can experience the benefits first hand.
Q: What is an example of an NSTP activity and its significance?
A: One activity is not to visit a natural area until you learn how to sensously obtain its permission for you to visit it. Then you obtain permission to visit it, express whatever appreciation you might feel from the visit, and then note how life feels when you are not acting like an ecozombie. The significance is that every part of nature exists in balance because it has obtained the consent and support of its environment to do so. To our loss, we inherit but omit this aspect of our relationship with nature and each other.
Q: You say that NSTP addresses the psychological point source of what you call our "mental and environmental pollution?" What is that point source?
A: It is our denial that our thinking is psychologically addicted to a story that says we must conquer nature to survive.
Q: How and when did you discover NSTP?
A: I have lived and taught outdoors for forty-two years and during that time became aware that nature and life communicate to survive, that we are inherently part of nature and that communication process, but we deny and suppress the communication.
Q: What is the greatest challenge to participating in NSTP?
A: Independently establishing a social setting where you can constructively and safely learn by sharing with others the results of doing nature reconnecting activities.
Q: How do you define nature?
A: It is the non-verbal world of the eons around and within and us.
Additional questions may be found at
http://www.rockisland.com/~process/5grglobal.html
http://www.ecopsych.com/faq.html
Additional questions may be found at
http://www.rockisland.com/~process/5grglobal.html
http://www.rockisland.com/~process/faq.html
CONTINUED: SUPPORTING CREDENTIALS
CONTINUED: QUESTION AND ANSWERS
PROJECT NATURECONNECT
Ecozombie Rehabilitation Year
Institute of Global Education
Special NGO consultant to the
United Nations Economic and Social Council
Integrated Ecology/Project NatureConnnectDr. Michael J. Cohen, Director
Chair: Greenwich University Applied Ecopsychology
Faculty: Portland State University Extended StudiesP. O. Box 1605,
Friday Harbor, WA 98250
360-378-6313
www.ecopsych.com
nature@pacificrim.net
.