San Juan Island, Washington (MMD Newswire) January 5, 2010 -- A petition to increase sustainability, health and wellness locally and globally has been initiated by Project NatureConnect, a holistic degree program at the Institute of Global Education. The petition is a directive to the UN Secretary General and all people of good faith. Any caring person who wants to stop our madness and create greater sanity on Earth is invited to sign it and promote it.
The petition insists that we begin this New Year and decade by making use of a powerful social technology, one that enables us to eradicate the destructive core of the great challenges that face us. It is an integral ecology tool that offers the international community a strong conflict resolution and stress management process for peace and balance with the whole of life. Its anti-depression art and science helps us increase personal, social and environmental well-being. We accomplish this feat by educating, counseling and healing while our thoughts and feelings are supportively connected to nature's great powers to restore and transform.
The petition's author, Dr. Michael J. Cohen, director of the Akamai University Institute of Applied Ecopsychology claims that we suffer because we deny that our society's nature-conquering bias is a culprit that we are taught to ignore. Our bias makes the nature-separated way we learn to think believe it is superior to, and independent of, the way that nature produces the paradise of its wellness and perfection. Because we are part of nature and its wisdom, our excessive separation from it produces a hurt, ever-wanting void in our psyche. This produces our greed, disorders and abusiveness.
Cohen says, "Conscious sensory contact with nature, backyard or backcountry creates moments that fulfill our psyche and let Earth teach us what we need to know to remedy our discontents. This helps us build mutually supportive relationships with each other and the environment."
The pioneering mission of Project NatureConnect (PNC) is to help individuals genuinely connect their thinking and feeling with the regenerative intelligence of nature's self-correcting flow, in and around them. The online program's low-cost, UNESCO approved, training courses and degrees at Akamai University enable students to make conscious sensory contact with the life nurturing way of the eons. They learn how to appreciate it in themselves and in local or remote natural areas.
During a field study, a PNC student wrote in her journal, "I loved the way Sarah saw herself connected to nature as one whole and complete organism. I still struggle with the thought that nature and people are separate. What helped me re-enforce our connective-ness is when I learned to ask for a natural area's consent to visit it. At first I thought this was a silly idea, and I hoped I wouldn't have to say it out loud but now I see that it gives nature a well deserved recognition of its preciousness and that it makes sense for me to pay my respects as I make contact. Doing this increased this natural area's attractiveness and mine, too, as part of it. Made me feel great. Very cool."
For additional information and free materials:
www.ecopsych.com
The public is invited to sign and promote The petition
360-378-6313
nature@interisland.net
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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
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