"Friday Harbor, WA (MMD Newswire) October 6, 2009 -- In response to the high incidence of mental stress and disorders found in contemporary society, an online training, job, or Ph.D. and Masters degree program has been announced by Project NatureConnect (PNC) at the Institute of Global Education. The financially subsidized program teaches landscape designers and gardeners to become therapists through new patio landscaping ideas and healing gardens. Landscapers learn holistic gardening techniques that include teaching their clients how to use nature-connecting activities to create personal healing garden designs and therapeutic backyard landscapes that increase wellness and spirit.
The program director, Dr. Michael J. Cohen, author of "Educating, Counseling and Healing With Nature," has published important landscape studies at the Project NatureConnect Website. They show that pictures of peaceful relaxing landscapes evoke calm and tranquility in most individuals. In addition, a study in a psychiatric hospital shows that patients there sometimes tear down abstract pictures from the walls, but never remove art that depicts nature.
Significantly, studies on the website also show that people recover better from low level stress by viewing real nature rather than by seeing high-definition television scenes of the same natural area. PNC's process of landscape therapy strengthens these health results. Backyard or backcountry, its nature-connecting activities help people reasonably satisfy and nourish many of their 53 inherent natural senses. This increases their well-being because it reconnects their mind and spirit to its biological and psychological origins in nature.
At Project NatureConnect, to become therapists, landscapers learn, online, how to use and teach as many as147 nature-reconnection activities. They use them to help their clients discover special attractions in nature that peacefully fulfill their natural senses: plants flowers, scents, sounds etc.
By doing the activities with a landscaper, or individually, clients learn how to create a customized healing garden or patio for themselves. It consists of plants, locations and attractions that helped them feel good and think more clearly when they did the PNC activities. Whenever they visit their self-designed garden, it connects them with the restorative experiences they had while making the garden. This enables them to rejuvenate their joy, sensibility and balance.
A landscape field report from one of Dr. Cohen's students says, "I went into the far corner of this 40sq ft area of Earth which has some weeds and grass that needed to come up. I began ramming the shovel in the soil and digging up the grass but after only a moment I had a very unattractive feeling. I felt drawn to hold the soil in my hand. Instantly I wanted to pull the roots with my hands instead. As I pulled the grass roots I began to dig my fingers deeper, feeling of the moisture and coolness of the Earth It didn't hurt my fingers at all, it actually felt quite good. I could feel little particles going in my nose, I began to feel happier, I wanted to continue. My mind became quiet. It was almost entrancing, as if I were acting instinctually. I felt that the Earth beneath me is alive and wants, needs, and loves to live. This was an unfamiliar sensation. And now as I write this, as I did then, I feel good, happy, and full of life. I feel relaxed and excited at the same time."
About Project NatureConnect
Operating online in cooperation with The Institute of Global Education, Portland State University, Akamai University and several additional programs, Project NatureConnect offers low-cost educating, counseling and healing with nature training courses and degrees that are UNESCO approved. Its pioneering mission is to increase personal, social and environmental well-being by helping people genuinely connect their thinking with the sensitivity and intelligence of nature's self-correcting flow, in and around them. This revolutionary process enables our psyche to walk nature's path to socially and environmentally responsible relationships, stress reduction and sustainable livelihoods. The program gives credit for appropriate prior learning and life experience. It offers scholarships, jobs and Reiki internships that strengthen nature-supportive thoughts and feelings.
For Additional Information:
www.ecopsych.com/
360-378-6313 nature@interisland.net
###
Program Founder and Director:
Recipient of the 1994 Distinguished World Citizen Award, Ecopsychologist Michael J. Cohen, Ph.D. Michael J. Cohen, Ph.D. is a Program Director of the Institute of Global Education, where he coordinates its Integrated Ecology Department and Project NatureConnect. He also serves on the faculty of Portland State University and Akamai University. Dr. Cohen has founded sensory environmental education outdoor programs independently and for the National Audubon Society and Lesley University (AEI), conceived the 1985 National Audubon Conference "Is the Earth a Living Organism," and is an award winning author of "The Web of Life Imperative," "Reconnecting With Nature," and "Educating Counseling and Healing With Nature." A video about his lifework may be viewed at www.imdb.com/title/tt1357054/
CONTACT:
http://www.ecopsych.com/mjcohen.html
Email: nature@interisland.net
360-378-6313, Pacific Time Zone
Add this page to your favorite Social Bookmarking websites
