MMD Newswire: Press Release News Wire

San Juan Island, Washington (MMD Newswire) July 14, 2010 -- A daring psychotherapy article from Project NatureConnect at Akamai University and the Institute of Global Education notes that anybody who has ever had a renewing experience in a natural area knows, firsthand, the unifying spirit and healing power of nature and its love for our lives. The article reports that, to our loss, less than 12 hours of our total lifetime is spent in tune with the perfection of nature's renewing ways and asks, "Is it any wonder that we suffer our unsolvable troubles and discontents?"

Dr. Michael J. Cohen, author of "Educating, Counseling and Healing With Nature (ECHN)" substantiates the online article's ground-breaking thrust. He says, "A lasting natural attraction healing process that offers simple, yet potent, nature-connecting activities, has been available for decades. Sadly, our profit-making conquest of nature teaches us to dismiss it." 

Cohen's work in Applied Ecopsychology shows that its sensory ECHN process helps us benefit from an electrifying way to think and feel that therapeutically includes the way nature's balance and beauty works.

"Don't worry about any destructive side effects arising from educating, counseling and healing with nature," says Cohen. "To the contrary, its side effects are constructive. They heighten our ability to build responsible relationships in conjunction with our innate love of nature. This enables us to increase personal, social and environmental well-being."

Barbara Huning, a psychotherapist who specializes in nature-connected counseling and healing has identified the great challenge we face. She says "We know that our devastating oil spills, global warming and health disorders are rooted in our addictions. Our catastrophes and disorders reflect how our thoughts, feelings and spirit have been socialized in misguided ways.

Huning observes, "We are in trouble.  We hate how we are and we know we need help. We want to change, but we don't know how. We feel lost and ungrounded. The problem is that our destructive addictions are strong within us, with a thousand threads tied to every part of our personal lives."

Along with many other therapy and psychology professionals, Huning reports that fulfilling our deep love for nature's beauty and renewing powers has proven strong enough to reverse addiction and fuel healthy changes in our personal and collective lives. She says, "It is well documented that good experiences in nature uplift our mind and spirit. This is because they powerfully connect our soul with the eons of self-correcting organic energies that sustain the web of life - and that achieve this monumental goal without producing garbage or pollutants."

The pioneering mission of Project NatureConnect (PNC) is to help our thoughts and feelings tap into nature's renewing love that flows in, around and through us.  The online program's subsidized, UNESCO approved, training courses and degrees enable us to activate 53 natural senses that we inherit and thereby make conscious contact with the life-nurturing energy of the ages found in natural areas, backyard or backcountry. The ECHN process gives us the ability to strengthen and apply this purifying and healing power in ourselves and others through ecopsychology connections in natural areas.  Some participants have called ECHN the "Unified Field Theory in action."

For further information visit ecopsych.com. Contacts: Dr. Michael Cohen at 360-378-6313, email .  Barbara Huning at 507-452-0200, email barbhuning@gmail.com

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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