Project NatureConnect
Institute of Global
Education:
Special NGO consultant to the
United Nations Economic and Social Council
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A hands-on challenge for educators, environmentalists, counselors and students. Copyright 1996, Michael J. Cohen, Ed.D. Reading time: 15 minutes. SUGGESTION: For best results, follow the trail to its completion without interruption, then repeat it and explore its links and references.
Although we are part of nature, nature does not suffer our disorders. We don't find uncontrolled garbage, war, loneliness, pollution, crime, abusiveness and mental illness in intact natural areas or natural people. As contemporary people, we have become psychologically bonded to a destructive way of life, yet we are still part of nature. How does nature sustain life and avoid producing our problems? As part of nature, doesn't all of humanity inherit this intelligent gift? Why do we learn to disregard it? Discover these secrets by doing this unusual nature trail and game. Learn how to let nature help you build and teach sound personal, social and environmental relationships. Bathed in sunlight, Planet Earth and Mother Nature are the source of survival for life as we know it. Humanity and all of life hold survival and Nature in common. As wars past or present have shown, when our survival is threatened, we unify in ways that previously seemed impossible. Today, the wellness of natural systems is deteriorating. Although this means our survival is threatened it does not unify us as might be expected. This results from our mentality's disconnection from Nature. The disconnection numbs us to nature's deterioration around and within us so we lose a unifiying sensory factor in our lives. This Trail helps you begin to revive and restore that disconnected sensory factor by enabling you to reconnect with it. Therein lies hope. This trail visits rewarding natural areas that flourish in the environment and in hidden natural valleys of your mind. To gain some rewarding insights, try to be open to letting nature help you recycle the destructive ways that Western Civilization has taught us to think. The hidden natural valleys of your mentality do not register in your consciousness because society trains us not to ordinarily respect or value them. Sometimes they hurt so we hide the hurt to avoid feeling it.
An Interesting Phenomenon: As you read these words you register them and their significance. At this moment, however, you neither notice nor register the air that sits between you and the words on this page. At this and many other moments, the value of air lies hidden from your consciousness. Can we afford to continue to overlook air and its importance to our lives and all of life? Historically, the quality of the science we learn has increased
while the quality of air has decreased. This trail reverses
that dilemma. It helps you scientifically discover things we
can learn from air about our relationship with it and nature.
This helps you sustain air and its values in your awareness and
thinking.
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Station 1: A gift to you from nature.In unspoiled nature, clean, fresh air prevails. It is a global phenomenon, a product of, by and from nature's self-organizing, mutually supportive relationships between sunshine and rain and millions of different plant and animal species in the soil and atmosphere. You are a member of humanity, one of those species. We too often forget that when we inhale fresh air, we receive a gift. Air is a nurturing present to our lives from nature's global community. Air supports our ability to live. Let's not overlook that. (Continue to the next station)
Station 2: Your gift to nature.Do you recognize that when you exhale your breath, Earth breathes you? You breathe out carbon dioxide and water vapor into the air. They are food and water that nurture the plant, animal and mineral world. Your breath helps to sustain all other forms of life. It is one of your gifts to them. Let's not overlook that. Notice how you feel right now as you breathe air normally. Would you feel better if you were breathing pure, sunshine-clean, rain-washed air? Why? (Continue to the next station)
Station 3: The gift of life.In earlier times, the word for air was "psyche." Psyche also means spirit and mind. Breathing air is called respiration, originally meaning "re-spiriting." The word inspiration means "bringing air/spirit in." The word expiration means "letting air/spirit leave." Psychological can mean "logic of the spirit." Atmosphere comes from the ancient word for soul. (Continue to the next station)
Station 4: Disconnect from nature:
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Here is a secret of nature: Your sensory desire to breathe is a webstring, a natural love to reconnect with nature. Your love of air insists that you breathe, even if you choose not to. The feeling says "Participate in the natural community that sustains you. Share and enjoy its physical and sensory gifts (Adler, 1995)".
Even if you faint from lack of air, your natural attraction to air will revive and rejuvenate you by making you breathe again. That is nature's loving intelligence in action. That webstring desire to breathe is how nature works. Nature needs and wants you to help sustain the global community so, intelligently, it reconnects you. It also does the same thing for each member of the web of life
Through attraction webstring senses and sensations, nature feelingly tells you its desire for you to participate in life. You belong.
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Begin to breathe normally again if you have not already done so.
Note that when you reconnect with air by breathing, nature rewards you. It gives you a good, satisfying, enjoyable natural sensation. Nature "invented" that fulfilling sensation. Through this natural reward nature expresses its appreciation for your supportive participation . Without using words, the sensation thanks you for reconnecting. It thanks you for your natural gifts of Carbon di oxide and water vapor to the global community. Do you trust or celebrate this rewarding feeling of thanks from nature and the ancient life relationship it brings to mind? It is a webstring connection with all of life. It is with you all your life. Doesn't it deserve your respect, your trust?
It is reasonable for us and the environment to breathe together, to cooperatively connect. That mutually beneficial "love" relationship helps support and sustain all of life. That's why it is intelligent, right and feels good, why it has been called "spirit."
Nature biologically and psychologically created good feelings to reward sensuous forms of life for heeding and fulfilling their natural attraction senses (webstrings).
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The words of Section 4 on this nature trail asked you to stop breathing. Their story message had the power to disconnect you from nature. When you sentiently ignored your connection to nature and disconnected, that is stopped breathing, you became uncomfortable. Nature sensuously signaled you that some vital connection was missing. Isn't that a form of intelligence? Were you frightened, hurt or thankful for that webstring and its reasonable message?
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By Station 6 it was not this trail's words and story that led you to reconnect by breathing. It was an attraction, your feelingful attraction (webstring) to breathe that did this. Nature itself intelligently, feelingly, guided you in a good way, without using words. When you sentiently listened to nature's attraction and reconnected, you felt comfortable and safe. Naturally and safely feeling good can come from being directly connected to nature through natural attractions (Logan, 1995). It is very important to keep this in mind. It's a secret of how nature produces its perfection.
Connective attraction sensations and feelings are nature's way, an intelligent essence of how nature nurtures us. How often do you seek and trust fulfilling experiences in nature?
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Here's something else we often overlook: The natural world is a non-verbal community. In nature the desire to breathe has no name, for nature neither uses or understands words. It is non-literate. However, we sense that air exists and we feel our attractiion to breathe, even though both have no word labels. That's how infants know to breathe when disconnected. That's how your "inner child" or "inner nature" knows it too (Cohen, 1995).
Again, can you learn to trust the breathing experience you just had? When you fulfill your natural attraction for air by breathing, nature within and about you, without using words, rewards you by giving you good feelings. Isn't that a form of intelligence? Doesn't that webstring make sense by creating a reasonable sensation? Do you trust that is nature's way? If so, you can trust thoughtful sensory connections with nature to help you guide and support your daily life in many ways.
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Here is another vital secret of nature that is seldom taught in our society. In addition to the sense of desiring to breathe, nature has similarly created and contains at least 52 other distinct, intelligent, natural attraction sensitivities (Cohen, 1997b) . Each of them is a webstring, a strand of the web of life found in some form throughout the global community (Cohen, 2000). The life wisdom in each strand can produce good feelings in us when we sense the strand. As with your desire to breathe, in conjunction with natural areas, each of these other natural attractions also feelingly, responsibly, guides your relationship with the environment (Bower, 1999). Nature also does this on some attraction level with every other member of the web of life including minerals.
In sentient, non-verbal ways, you may learn to reconnect with nature and enjoy its balance, validate its wisdom and feel good. The 53 natural webstring senses that help you accomplish this include senses of sight, sound and smell; gravity, reason and temperature; nurturing, community and trust; empathy, belonging and place, thirst, hunger and motion; compassion, touch and taste (Cohen, 1995A). Each of these senses offers you enjoyable, trustable feeling signals that blend into a common sense when you connect with nature through them. This includes your connections with human nature, the nature in people, too.
Each webstring attraction is a basic form of love, our love for water, air, sunshine, color, taste etc. We love them enough so that we would not want to lose them.
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Just as we don't exclusively own the air, we don't exclusively own our natural attraction webstring senses and sensitivities either. Rather, we share them with every species and mineral. They attract the natural community to beneficially flow through us and us through it. This is another secret of nature: every five years every molecule in our body becomes part of the environment and is replaced by a similar molecule from the environment. We become it, it become us. Doesn't that makes Earth our other body, a womb of life, our "mother?"
Natural senses wisely balance us personally by balancing themselves and each other. For example, thirst intelligently knows how much water we need so it regulates us by turning itself on and off appropriately. And although you may be thirsty, without being told verbally, you probably won't drink water that looks bad or has the wrong smell, taste, temperature, color or texture. These additional senses modify your thirst. The blending of 53 webstrings is the wisdom of the senses and natural attraction sensitivities.
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We are given the natural ability to reason --it is one of our natural senses. It enables us to reasonably choose or not choose to feel good responsibly and intelligently by following our natural attraction senses and reconnecting with nature. Although this process is rarely taught or applauded in contemporary society, it is also true that contemporary society is stupidly polluting and destroying the natural systems that support it, and does not seem able to stop. That is neither natural nor intelligent. It describes a cancer at work.
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On a personal level, in nature, as demonstrated by breathing, we get good feelings by directly giving and gaining support from the global community. In that community, every member, including yourself, knows it is very important. In some way, every member is naturally attractive, loved, and included. That is how and why nature does not produce garbage . Rather, that is how it recycles garbage back into the community.
On a macro level everything in nature is needed. Nothing natural is garbage. Alive or "dead," each natural being is naturally attractive, wanted and belongs. That is the reason runaway pollution, abusiveness, violence, loneliness, war and mental illness are virtually unknown in nature. It is why it is reasonable to gain good feelings by reconnecting with nature. It is also why some people believe that nature is a good example of unconditional love in action. Nature leaves nothing out; everything belongs and is wanted.
SYNOPSIS: Reconnecting with nature is a vital, intelligent and responsible way to safely gain responsible fulfillment. By activating multiple natural attraction senses, the reconnecting process helps our sense of reason lovingly rebuild our personal relationships as well as our society, economics, and the environment. It helps our thinking establish a communion and partnership with nature, and recognizes that our thinking is our destiny.
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Here is another well kept secret of nature: At every level, the global life community builds itself through many mutually beneficial but vastly different natural attraction relationships. This process is so effective that the greater the creativity, diversity, and differences of each individual community member, the stronger the whole community becomes. It is as if each diverse part of nature knows something special about life so that collectively the web of life is a super intelligence, attraction or love. Our inner nature inherits and trusts this natural attraction, cooperative, wisdom. As with air, it biologically and emotionally enjoys, encourages and operates from it. Our inner self always expects to be loved and supported by natural attractions simply because that is the essence of nature's way.
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The value of our natural attraction loves and their intelligence is often hidden from our awareness by stories that tell us love is not scientific or objective; we should avoid, disconnect from, or conquer nature within and around us. Doing this often gains us money, approval and status. Even in our Bible God tells humanity to subdue the Earth and dominate it. Is that reasonable or a misreading of scripture? Hasn't it mislead us for thousands of years?
We live over 95% of our lives indoors; 99.99% of our thinking consists of verbal, not natural sensory, consciousness. In our extremely nature-separated, indoor world our stories make it practically taboo to sensuously reconnect with and trust nature. We learn (read: "are brainwashed") instead to dance to misleading, nature-conquering, labels, stories and acts. Salaries, high grades and prestige reward us for doing this dance. However, our social dance separates us from nature's balance, intelligence and fulfillment, thereby promoting many runaway personal, social and environmental disorders.
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Just as when you inhaled air, you always have the option to safely feel comfortable by reconnecting with nature through natural attractions. You can do this even when a story within or around you stresses you by telling you to do otherwise. An important example: once you complete this nature trail, do the first part of it again. When you come to Station 4, you now know the story there will tell you not to breathe. You also know that heeding that story will disconnect you from nature and produce uncomfortable suffocation feelings. This time, think with nature. Choose not to pay attention to that disconnecting story at Station 4 if it does not make sense this time. Seek permission from nature and your body to stop breathing. If you don't obtain their consent, don't stop breathing. Instead choose to pay attention to what they tell you, what naturally feels safe, attractive and worthwhile to you as part of the global community. Be responsible by choosing to breathe in connective consent with your body and your planetary mother, Earth. Cooperate with nature by sustaining your natural integrity, good feelings and the Earth community. Heed the natural logic of the psyche. Apply ecopsychology.
SUMMARY: When we ignore or divert our natural attractions to nature, we lose contact with the intelligence in nature that knows how to sustain and regenerate us as responsible citizens of the global life community that lies within and around us, including other people
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Reminder: The natural world produces its beauty, peace and balance solely through non-verbal attraction relationships. You can personally learn to choose and reconnect to this sensory form of "higher power". It fulfills you, relieves stress and helps dissolve problems. You can easily teach others how to reconnect with it too.
This interpretative nature trail contains only one nature-reconnecting activity. There are an additional 128 published activities you can do and teach at your convenience. Each further reconnects you with nature and empowers you to think and relate in responsible ways that feel good. Each activity helps you seek consent, think more reasonably, and make sense in 53 natural sensory ways, and build friendships in the process (Cohen, 1993). Online, you can take courses or obtain BA, MS or PhD degrees in this Natural Systems Thinking Process (NSTP) as long as you do it and share it with other people and learn from their experiences, too. That's a secret of the Process. Without that support, our connections often don't have enough energy to remain in our thinking and we revert to older ways. NSTP enables you to you prevent this from happening.
As we strengthen our natural attraction senses, they become more alive in our consciousness. As in returning to Station 4 and perhaps not breathing as directed, we begin to safely think with nature's intelligence, in a way that is more feeling, sensible and sensitive. This helps us feel more alive and make sense of our lives. For this reason, many educators, counselors and leaders advocate and use nature-reconnecting activities. It is why every form of education, counseling and recovery works better when it is in contact with webstring attractions in nature. It is why we bring flowers to sick people and loving our pets increases our wellness and theirs.
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SUMMARY: This nature reconnecting trail is a structured educational tool. It attempts to teach you that you inherit from nature at least 53 natural webstring attraction senses and feelings. Like the sense of respiration, they are sensible natural communications that non-verbally but responsibly enable you to connect your thinking to nature's intelligence because they are a connected essence of it. In our nature disconnected way of life this often sounds very strange, foreign or foolish. However, when connected to nature, like breathing, our natural attractions not only feel good, they wisely energize, sustain and balance us and our spirit, just as they balance the natural world.
When we fulfill our natural attractions to breathe clean air, drink pure water and eat uncontaminated food, we enjoy worthwhile, healthy fulfillment. Similarly, safely reconnecting with nature through our many other natural sensory attractions is also fulfilling, healthy and responsible. It is what every other species on Earth does. Natural people(s) do it too. NSTP reconnecting lets nature help us recycle our destructive ways of thinking and relating.
Here's another secret: the word consensus means "to feel with many senses together." Because nature-centered communities think by consensus while in contact with nature, they don't produce our runway personal, social and environmental problems. (Bower, 1995)
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Reminder: Nature consists of non-verbal webstring attraction relationships, but we learn to mostly think and communicate in the abstract of words and stories. Abstracts are shortcuts that often subdivide and replace the whole of life. That separation subdivides our thinking from nature and produces our many problems. We need to listen to our natural senses and feelings to discover nature's story. Through how we sense and feel, nature's story says that we should reconnect with nature and seek its consent as part of the way we think.
Have you ever noticed that our inherent natural intelligence, loves and values are often lost to nature-conquering images, stories and labels that demean them. For example, in uncomplimentary ways, our natural attraction senses are often called "subjective," "unscientific," "environmentalist," "imagination," "fuzzy thinking," "immature," "crazy" "non-academic," "flaky," "childish," "unimportant," "spiritual," "foolish" "nostalgia," "fantasy," "unreasonable," "touchy-feely," "drives" or "instincts."
Consider this: Isn't our sensory natural attraction to air just as vital and real as air itself? Just as air is a scientific fact, isn't our natural love to breathe air an equally scientific fact? Isn't it polluted thinking, bad science and limited consciousness to prejudicially value material facts while devaluing sensory facts?
Trust your experiences; they provide excellent self-evidence. You can think, learn and know using more than just language and "five senses." You can learn to think in multisensory webstring ways with nature, relate more responsibly, and feel better too.
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Researchers suggest that nature consists of resonant attraction connections between natural things (Wald, 1985, Langer 1995,). The deteriorating state of Earth and people signals that we and the environment are at risk. We are excessively separated from nature within and around us and must consciously reunite our thinking with natural systems. Doing nature reconnecting activities helps make this happen. They offer an urgently needed service and vast economic benefits.
Interestingly, the word for breathing and sharing spirit together is "conspire." Shouldn't we learn how to conspire to support life and our lives on Earth, rather than dance on the deck of our sinking ship?
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Part 1: Go to the most attractive natural place, plant, animal or mineral that you can conveniently find, the more natural the better. A "weed," potted plant or aquarium will do if a park or sanctuary is not available. Go to authentic nature in reality, not to a story, artifact, picture, video, visualization, spirit, memory or other likeness of nature. Be sure not to get too close to any natural area or thing that may irritate, hurt or be unhealthy for you. In nature, that is not attractive.
Part 2: Find immediate natural attractions and sensations at this natural site that register in your awareness. For five minutes or longer, get to know them non-verbally. With your eyes closed become aware of them, let them register on your inherent natural sensitivities and feelings, senses such as touch, taste, smell, sound, color, motion, temperature, nurturing, community, trust, empathy, belonging, place, reasoning, peace, texture, compassion and others. Then repeat this experience with your eyes open.
Part 3: Repeat Part 2, with this addition. For each thing or sensation that registers in Part 2, or for new things that register:
1. One at a time conscientiously call the sense or feeling you experience a "webstring,"
2. Think about this webstring in the web of life model described in the article that precedes the activity. Do this with your eyes closed and then open. When open, look at the whole natural area and recognize it as a materialization of part of the web of life.
3. Wait a moment and note the effect of 2 above, then continue with the next sense or feeling.
4 Note if 1-3 helps you connect with and feel more part of nature and vice versa. Does it guide you to think or know yourself or Nature better or differently?
Part 4: In a total of 300 words or less, write:
Send Part 4 to your course member study group List along with a note asking people there to share, enjoy and respond to your submission by telling you what they may have learned from it, how it affected them when they read it. You will make further contact with a group of people who are unified by the connections with nature that they hold in common.
You may also send your paragraphs to anybody else you think might appreciate them. Ask them to respond. Your nature-connected thoughts and feelings may connect you with the natural attractions of others, and vice versa. This process is a good way to build or strengthen relationships online or in your community and family.
For educational purposes only, we reserve the right to post your entry to our newsletter readers anonymously, or with your name if you so choose.
SUGGESTION: Return to the beginning of this nature trail and do it again. You'll find its just as interesting and worthwhile as the first time. Like the air you may still be overlooking as you read these words, there's lots more to learn.
IMPORTANT: Do not proceed with another activity on this course until you have had at least one night's sleep. Much integration of this trail will automatically improve your thinking as you sleep.
If learning to master and apply the process of reconnecting with nature is of interest to you, the best possible way to proceed is by taking a short, online Orientation Course. This Trail is part of that course. You can optionally transfer it into your academic or professional training curriculum. You can use it as part of our cooperatively run, low cost, degree program, too.
Adler, (1995). Providing the data to protect biodiversity. Science News Vol. 148, No. 21 p. 326 Washington DC, Science Service Inc.
Bower, B. (1995). Return of the group. Science News, Vol. 148, No. 21 p. 328. Washington DC, Science Service Inc.
Bower, B. (1999). Simple Minds, Smart Choices. Science News, Vol. 155, No. 22 p. 348. Washington DC, Science Service Inc.
Cohen, M.J.(2000) Nature Connected Psychology: The Natural Systems Thinking Process, GREENWICH JOURNAL OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY VOL 1 NO 1, JUNE 2000, Norfolk Island, Australia, Greenwich University, http://www.ecopsych.com/natpsych.html
Cohen, M.J. (1997) Well Mind, Well Earth: 109 environmentally sensitive activities for stress management, spirit and self-esteem. PO Box 1605, Friday Harbor, WA, Project NatureConnect.
Cohen, M.J. (1997b) Reconnecting With Nature: Finding wellness through restoring your bond with the Earth. (P.O. Box 1605, Friday Harbor WA,) Corvallis, Ecopress.
Cohen, M.J. (1995) Counseling and Nature: The greening of psychotherapy. Interpsych News. Internet, http://www.pacificrim.net/~nature/counseling.html
Langer, W. (1995) Watching a young star eat. Science News, Vol. 148, No. 21 p. 334 Washington DC, Science Service Inc.
Logan, Ron (1995) Healing Ourselves and the World Through Applied Ecopsychology Common Future Magazine, Corvallis Oregon http://www.ecopsych.com/theory.html
Wald, G. (1985) in Cohen, M. J. Proceedings: Is the Earth a Living Organism? Sharon, CT, National Audubon Society.
Institute of Global Education
PROJECT NATURECONNECT
The Natural Systems Thinking Process
P.O. Box 1605 Friday Harbor, WA 98250
360-378-6313
www.ecopsych.com
www.webstrings.org
Dr. Micheal J. Cohen, Director
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