"Friday Harbor, WA (MMD Newswire) October 8, 2009 -- We want to know more about who we are and feel more whole or grounded. A simple means to answer these mental health questions is being explored by Project NatureConnect (PNC) students at the Institute of Global Education. The Project's mission is to enable people to learn how to create moments that let Earth teach us what we need to know about ourselves and about our identity. This helps us know "Who am I? or "What are we-you?" This identity discovery is a form of stress management. In the process, Earth itself becomes a mental health therapist.
One student's recent response, after doing sensory connecting-with-nature activities, helped to make the Institute's holistic education, counseling and healing with nature program more understandable. The student observed, "While doing these activities I began to see that nature consists of optimums of cooperation, purity and diversity that harmonize in life supportive balance. If humans can step into their true natural selves...leaving behind their egos, dramas, and critiques of themselves...they would see and feel themselves as the peaceful balance that they biologically inherit, yet they often find missing from their lives and spirit."
The pioneering mission of Project NatureConnect is to increase personal, social and environmental well-being by helping individuals genuinely connect the psychology of their thinking with the sensitivity and intelligence of nature's restorative flow, in and around them. The online program offers low-cost, UNESCO approved, training courses and degrees. It enable students to make conscious sensory contact with natural areas, backyard or back country.
A field report from the Project NatureConnect student who is quoted above, says, "The moment I sat down to do this activity, I felt engaged with the environment. I asked the various parts of nature that surrounded me "Who are you without labels?" First I was attracted to a network of sagebrush that was obviously home to many forms of intelligent life, as evidenced by the tunnel network fashioned by squirrels, skunks, rabbits and coyotes. Then a hummingbird hovered over the same area. The scene invited me to ask again, 'Who are you without your name?' I stayed in this area for some time, continuing the activity. As twilight set in, I asked myself the same question, 'Who am I without my name or labels?' The answer slowly came into my mind in sequence, 'I am the nameless sagebrush. ' ' I am the voiceless Earth and its thriving root systems. ' ' I am the wordless essence of the hummingbird. ' ' I am the wind on which it so gracefully and timelessly meanders. ' ' I am motion, the flow of the wind.' I began to see that all that is natural is also my intelligent consciousness. We are all intertwined as a collective unity and I am it expressing itself as me. I felt an amazing aliveness and peace in my newly discovered identity." http://www.ecopsych.com/
Project NatureConnect 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 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1357054/
CONTACT:
http://www.ecopsych.com/mjcohen.html
Email: nature@interisland.net
360-378-6313, Pacific Time Zone
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