San Juan Island, WA (MMD Newswire) February 23, 2010: Because healing arts practitioners have observed that greater benefits result when they add sensory nature-connecting activities to their disciplines, an authentic contact-with-nature online degree and training program will commence on or before Earth Day, April 22, 2010.
The program's accredited academic and professional education courses will be sponsored and funded in part by Project NatureConnect at the Akamai University Institute of Applied Ecopsychology. The holistic training is designed for teachers and students of Reiki Energy Healing Touch, Tao, Qigong, Tai Chi and other forms of whole life therapy.
The Director of the program, Dr. Michael J. Cohen, author of "Educating, Counseling and Healing with Nature" says, "Our new nature-connected healing arts component makes a vital contribution to health and wellness. Our society unnecessarily suffers destructive stress and many disorders because we seldom make immediate contact with the restorative and corrective powers of nature's flow, in and around us."
"On average, our time, thoughts and feeling are in tune with nature for less than twelve hours of our total life on Earth," says Cohen. "As reflected by the deteriorating state of nature, in and around us, this profound removal of our psyche from nature habituates our thinking to omit nature's purifying means to achieve personal, social and environmental health."
A Reiki practitioner in the
ongoing pilot program said of an activity, ""I knew from how my distress had subsided that I had received a healing gift from this forest. It was not simply another story about things, a story that my many non-literate senses could not comprehend. I could feel the gift was from the forest itself, like the forest was alive and could speak or embrace me. It loved me like I loved it, it was in my heart. It attracted my gratitude without me having to think about being grateful and It remains part of me. I feel it now as I write this while at home."
Project NatureConnect activities help create backyard or backcountry moments that let Earth teach and that invite nature to help us heal. The project's pioneering mission is to enable individuals genuinely connect their thinking and feeling with the restorative wisdom of nature's renewing flow. The program's low-cost, UNESCO approved, training courses and degrees empower students to make conscious sensory contact with the life-nurturing way of the eons. Participants learn how to find and appreciate that way in themselves and in local natural areas.
Read a description of the Nature Connected Healing Arts program
www.ecopsych.com/reiki.html
For additional information and free materials:
www.ecopsych.com
360-378-6313
nature@interisland.net
Contact
Email: nature@interisland.net
360-378-6313
###
Program Founder and Director:
Recipient of the 1994 Distinguished World Citizen Award, Ecopsychologist 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 Ecopsychology 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). He conceived the 1985 National Audubon Conference "Is the Earth a Living Organism," and is an award winning author of "Educating, Counseling and Healing With Nature," "The Web Of Life Imperative"and "Reconnecting With Nature." A video about his lifework may be viewed at http://www.imdb.comtitle/tt1357054/
"We cannot win the battle to increase the well-being of the web of life, that includes our life, without strengthening our natural senses, our emotional bonds with nature - for we will not fight to save what we do not love."
- Michael J. Cohen
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
