Spring 2006
THE ECOTHERAPY NEWSLETTER
Healing our relationship with nature
Ecopsychology in Action!
Psychotherapy as if the Whole Earth Mattered
© March 2006
Editor: Linda Buzzell-Saltzman, M.A., M.F.T., lbuzzell@aol.com
Founder, The International Association for Ecotherapy
Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, Santa Barbara and Los Angeles, California
OUR WEBSITE: http://thoughtoffering.blogs.com/ecotherapy
ECOTHERAPY BLOG: http://thoughtoffering.blogs.com/ice_seeds every Monday
ONLINE DISCUSSION GROUPS: Join one or both of our LIST-SERVS where you can discuss activist ecopsychology with others interested in this topic:
1. act_ecopsy-subscribe@yahoogroups.com Join by sending a blank e-mail to this address. This group is working collectively to develop ecopsychological resources to assist in The Great Turning from life-destroying society to life-sustaining culture.
2. chat_act_ecopsy-subscribe@yahoogroups.com Join by sending a blank e-mail to this address. This group is a chat group where activist ecopsychological folk can discuss their activities and interests.
Please note: as I’m currently editing a book on ecotherapy with Dr. Craig Chalquist, the Ecotherapy Newsletter will now come out 4 x a year – Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter editions.
Contents:
1. QUOTES OF THE MONTH: David Suzuki Foundation, K. Lauren de Boer, Thomas Berry
2. DEGLOBALIZE YOUR MIND AND RELOCALIZE YOUR SOUL! by Linda Buzzell-Saltzman
3. ECOLOGICAL COLLAPSE AND TRAUMA THEORY by Lisa Rayner
4. BEST BOOKS: THE LEFT HAND OF GOD by Michael Lerner
5. A SUDDEN SHIFT IN AWAKENING ECOLOGICAL CONSCIOUSNESS by Chris Johnstone
6. CHECK OUT THE ECOTHERAPY BLOG AT http://thoughtoffering.blogs.com/ice_seeds
7. ECOPSYCHOLOGY COURSES AND DEGREES: Endicott College offering new M. Ed. Online Course dealing with *The Great Work*
8. ON THE WEB: Cool websites to check out, including our website at http://thoughtoffering.blogs.com/ecotherapy where you*ll find current and past issues of this newsletter, and the International Community for Ecopsychology*s www.ecopsychology.org: the best source of ecopsychology info on the web!
The International Association for Ecotherapy is a virtual organization of psychotherapy clinicians, students and educators who are practicing or teaching in the new field of ecotherapy (clinical/applied ecopsychology). If you'd like to be removed from this list, please just e-mail back. Or if you*d like to send e-mail addresses to add, news to pass along, or your insights, please do so! Joining is absolutely free.
1. QUOTES OF THE MONTH:
At this turning point in our relationship with Earth we work for an evolution from dominance to partnership, from fragmentation to connection, from insecurity to interdependence.
from Declaration of Interdependence, written for the 1992 UN Earth Summit, Rio de Janiero, by members of the David Suzuki Foundation.
Our call now is to move beyond the hubris of the past into our greater promise as a species by creating what cultural historian Thomas Berry has termed *mutually enhancing human-Earth relations.* The Earth, through the human species, is coming into an awareness of its own emergence and that of the Universe. We participate in this awakening of Earth by reinventing the major forms of human presence on the planet.
K. Lauren de Boer, *New Cosmology*, Yes magazine, Spring 2006 www.yesmagazine.org
If the dynamics of the Universe from the beginning shaped the course of the heavens, lighted the Sun, and formed the Earth, if this same dynamism brought forth the continents and the seas and atmosphere, if it awakened life in the primordial cell and then brought into being the unnumbered variety of living beings, and finally brought us into being and guided us safely through the turbulent centuries, there is reason to believe that this same guiding process is precisely what has awakened in us our present understanding of ourselves and our relationship to this stupendous process.
Thomas Berry
2. DEGLOBALIZE YOUR MIND AND RELOCALIZE YOUR SOUL!
Global trade and the internet have turned the world into a global village. It’s a truism, isn’t it?
But what we*re not being told is that this phenomenon of globalism is utterly dependent on abundant, cheap fossil fuels and may not survive much longer. As we enter the era of limits to growth and energy descent, relocalization begins to make more and more sense. And not just physical relocalization, but psychological as well.
Globalization has its good points, of course, as well as its really appalling effects caused by endlessly greedy global corporations, environmental degradation and political/social/military hegemony and empire. It*s nice to connect with other like-minded folks around the planet, just as we are doing right now with this newsletter. And many of us have enjoyed the privilege of abundant, inexpensive travel and the sampling of foods, music and culture from all the wondrous places on our small world. But much of this is coming to an end, for better or worse (and probably much for the better!) Anything that involves the use of fossil fuels for energy will quickly or gradually become more and more expensive, including imported goods and food. Even the internet is coming under new pressures and constraints.
As a response to our dawning awareness that the peak oil party is almost over, many of us have embarked on the relocalization adventure. Here in Santa Barbara we’re working on relocalizing energy and food systems, hoping to be less dependent on places far away for basic necessities of life.
But there is also a psychological and ecotherapeutic aspect to relocalization. I call it deglobalizing our minds.
When I was at the height of my globalized mental attitude in the early 1990s it all seemed so exciting. My mind began to disconnect more and more from local people and local problems and to focus on what was going on in far parts of the planet that I saw every day on TV. I knew more about the troubles in South Timor than the difficulties in South Central LA, which was only a few miles from my house. My consciousness was floating out there in space with the satellites, totally ungrounded in the real, the local, the tangible. I reveled in imported everything. I disdained the merely close.
And like so many of us, I succumbed to the *star from afar* syndrome, rushing to lectures by eminent personages who spent their time jetting from place to place on wings of cheap fossil fuel, inspiring the natives. And I learned a great deal of value from these peripatetic prophets and sages. But at the same time I seldom spoke or listened to my immediate neighbors or my local community. Up and up we went with the stock market and then the real estate market and the credit bubble, reaching new heights and our feet barely touching the ground!
All this was utterly unsustainable, of course. This was all part of the late-fossil-fuel-era *party*, as peak oil guru Richard Heinberg calls it. The last blow-out of rising energy supply and the expanding oil-dependent economy.
The new millennium has certainly been sobering and already has a kind of *morning after* feel. Contrary to expectations, the expansion, like the planet earth, has real-world limits and our task is to learn to live in nature, with nature, be part of nature and respect those limits and the rights of other beings with whom we share not only this planet but our local land. In other words, it*s time to deglobalize our minds and our lives.
The process of doing this, of course, is far easier to describe than to do. My hope is that ecotherapists around the world will embark on the task of relocalizing their own minds, hearts and psyches and helping their neighbors do so as well.
3. ECOLOGICAL COLLAPSE AND TRAUMA THEORY by Lisa Rayner
The March 2006 issue of Permaculture Activist magazine (www.permacultureactivist.net) includes an important ecotherapy article, *Ecological Collapse and Trauma Theory: Research into Nature and Healing* by Lisa Rayner. Raynor is an author and the founder of Flagstaff Post-Carbon Outpost, a local chapter of Post-Carbon Institute, a nonprofit that educates the public about peak oil and the creation of a post-carbon world (www.postcarbon.org) She connects the dots between our current experience of ecological collapse and psychological research and knowledge about the treatment of psychological trauma.
She states the obvious truth: *Ecological trauma precipitates human trauma*. She adds: *Peak oil and climate change…will likely lead to multiple political, social and economic crises*. She is concerned that *our debt-based economic system requires continual, exponential growth to function* and warns that we’re reaching the point of *diminishing returns on societal investments in complexity.*
Raynor also encourages her Permaculture colleagues to become aware that *successful Permaculture design must incorporate an understanding of human psychology. At the same time that society will be coping with a declining availability of energy and the collapse of important ecosystems, we must also cope with the psychological disintegration of human beings and the collapse of human societies. Healing one requires healing the other, too.*
Rayner also points out that *the healing of both psychological trauma and ecological trauma is remarkably similar.* She sees that the *accumulation of stressors* has a breaking point. *Just like ecosystems, people have the ability to endure years’ worth of trauma before showing visible signs of stress. Dr. Judith Herman, author of Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence (1997) calls this form of PTSD *Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.* But whatever we call it, this psychological condition is now reaching epidemic proportions within late Oil Era Western culture.
*Ecological overshoot and collapse can be seen as a large-scale experience of trauma leading to Complex PTSD of Gaia herself,* says Raynor.
*Those of us living through this era must experience a life-long unfolding of ecological decline before our eyes. Every year, we get to watch as one more patch of forest is turned into another big-box store and parking lot. There are more traffic noises and fewer bird songs…We read the newspaper and learn that the glaciers are rapidly disappearing and that more species have become extinct. Trauma research indicates that bystanders to trauma can get PTSD simply from the exposure to others* suffering.*
Rayner believes that *when people are severely stressed, their social relationships become strained, leading to further stress. Trauma creates a *positive* feedback loop…When whole communities suffer from trauma, people develop a sort of mass-PTSD aat the social level…Alcoholism, domestic violence and other problems become rampant.* She addresses *intrusive thoughts, feelings and images alternating with emotional numbing*, dissociation and withdrawal.
She sums up our challenge: *We are trying to heal the Earth and heal our own psychological and political trauma at the same time. This is not an easy task. It has never been tried before on such a large scale. We don*t know if it can be done.*
Rayner recommends applying Dr. Herman’s three steps to healing from PTSD on a mass scale: Safety, Remembrance/Mourning and Reconnection. She quotes Herman *Recovery can take place only within the context of relationships… Survivors cannot heal in isolation. Ecopsychology extends this context to the need for human beings to reconnect emotionally and spiritually with the rest of nature.*
There is much more of value in this article that I can quote here. It points the way towards undertaking the huge work of the psychological and social healing as well as ecological healing that must take place in the coming decades.
Read the whole article at http://www.ecopsychology.org/journal/ezine/archive2/ecological_collapse.html
4. BEST BOOKS: THE LEFT HAND OF GOD: Taking Back Our Country From the Religious Right by Michael Lerner
Rabbi Michael Lerner holds 2 Ph.D.’s in addition to his theological training. He has a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of California, Berkeley, and another in clinical psychology from the Wright Institute. He also edits Tikkun magazine (www.tikkun.org). In his new book The Left Hand of God he diagnoses the psycho-spiritual illness in Western (especially U.S.) culture and offers a prescription for recovery. There is much in his book to interest ecotherapists, ecopsychologists and folks who are involved in ecospirituality:
We live in a world in which a technocratic rationality has replaced an awareness of spirit, flattening the way we experience nature and each other. Social theorists from Max Weber to Zygmunt Bauman have described the disorientation and desperation that this has caused to people in the modern world. In the United States this process has reached its fullest development in the form of a bottom-line mentality that judges every activity, every institution, every social practice as rational, productive, or efficient only to the extent that it produces money or power.
This way of organizing our society promotes selfishness, materialism and disconnection. We are encouraged to live on the surface of things, to deal with other human beings as though they were mere material objects to be manipulated for the sake of our own self-interest and to relate to the physical universe as though it is nothing more than a resource to satisfy our personal needs. Nature becomes another commodity to be bought and sold.
Lerner points out the irony of the fact that *the only voice (many Americans) encounter that is willing to challenge the despiritualization of daily life, to call for a life that is driven by higher purpose than money, and to provide actual experiences of supportive community for those whose daily life is suffused with alienation and spiritual loneliness* is often the Religious Right and he challenges the Left to reclaim its own spiritual values and offer people a viable alternative spirituality. *There is a real spiritual crisis in American society,* he says, * and the Religious Right has managed to position itself as the articulator of the pain that crisis causes and as the caring force that will provide a spiritual solution.*
He believes that people in bottom-line-oriented, crass materialist society have a * yearning for a world based more on love than on domination… for a world in which people respond with awe and wonder rather than with a purely utilitarian attitude toward other human beings and toward nature,* and this * is the core of a religious and spiritual tradition that I call the Left Hand of God. Those who belong to this tradition see God as the Force in the universe that makes possible transformation from a world based on pain and cruelty to a world based on love and generosity…*
Lerner weaves together spiritual, social justice and environmental issues in his *Left Hand of God* spirituality. His goal is to bring together militantly secular leftists, *spiritual but not religious* folks, and progressive people in the religious world in a new alliance toward forging a better world. He hopes this new Network of Spiritual Progressives he is founding will *successfully challenge the most destructive aspects of global capitalism* and come up with *the most effective alternative to the globalization of selfishness.* He calls for *a new relationship to nature that not only fosters ecological sustainability and a massive effort to repair all the environmental damage we have done to the planet but also encourages awe and wonder and joyous celebration at the grandeur of creation.*
For more information about the Network of Spiritual Progressives, go to www.spiritualprogressives.org A Spiritual Activism Conference will be held in Washington D.C. May 17-20. For more info on the conference, go to http://www.tikkun.org/community/spiritual_activism_conference/dc-conference.html
5. A SUDDEN SHIFT OF AWAKENING ECOLOGICAL CONSCIOUSNESS by Chris Johnstone
Could we help trigger, and participate in, a *true surprise* that has a positive effect? Non-linear responses are those that don’t follow gradual trends. They involve sudden shifts that are difficult to predict. How about, for example, a sudden shift of awakening ecological consciousness. That is the sort of thing that is needed for a Great Turning towards a life sustaining society. And if something like this were to happen, self-amplifying loops would play a role. The good news is that self-generating cycles of positive change can be relatively easy to set off. Here is an example.
At the end of last year, about a dozen people gathered in my front room. This was the first meeting of a study-action group on The Great Turning. We’ve met again since, and plan to every four to six weeks over the next six months. What drew us together was a shared concern about the state of our world, as well as a shared determination to support each other in responding. I’d been much inspired by hearing Joanna Macy talk about the study action groups she’d been part of, and of how these had helped support her in addressing difficult issues like the use of depleted uranium. Here’s how it works.
You can have a study action group on any area. All you need is up to a dozen other people who share your concern and are willing to meet regularly with the aim of deepening understanding and confidence in addressing the issue. Joanna talked about the three S’s of study, strategy and spirituality. In order to face challenging issues, we need to learn about them. So members of the group take on to research particular areas and present their findings at the meetings. However study should not take up more than a third of the time, otherwise, it could become boring abstract or laboured. The strategy part involves looking at constructive responses. It can also involve taking action together, or engaging in joint projects.
A third of the time also needs to be devoted to the last S: spirituality. This word is used in a broad sense to refer to all the aspects of the group concerned with mutual support, deepening connections and developing emotional or spiritual resources. Some of these issues are hard to look at and we need to develop nourishing spaces to sustain us. This part of the group looks at ways of helping us engage with issues that can sometimes be experienced as overwhelming. Here is an example of a process my group did at our last meeting.
This exercise is called Wheel of the Great Turning. Instructions can be found at Joanna Macy’s website at http://www.joannamacy.net/html/great.html
We gathered in a circle, with three objects in the centre to represent the three dimensions of the Great Turning. The first dimension is the holding actions. I think of this as the *NO*. It involves all acts of protest and campaigning to stop or slow the destruction of our world. We represented this by a cushion. It was something to hold on to. The second dimension is the development of constructive alternatives and new ways of doing things. I think of this as the *YES*. We represented this by a plant. It had plenty of new shoots. The third dimension is the deeper shift in values and perceptions, the recognition that we are part of our world, and deeply connected with life. I think of this as the *WOW*. It involves the shift in consciousness needed to motivate the other changes. We had a beautiful crystal to represent this.
One by one, we came into the circle, and described things we were doing in our lives that contributed to the Great Turning, holding one of the object to represent the dimension we expressed with each action. I held the plant as I described a new course I*ve set up for medical students looking at health and the environment. I held the crystal as I talked of the book I*ve just written about finding our power to take part in positive change. What I remember from that evening was a deep encouragement. I was witnessing the Great Turning. I was hearing about it in its many forms. It gave me a boost. And that boost strengthened my resolve. It did for others too. In supporting each other, we were setting off a self amplifying loop of positive change. The more we’re encouraged, the more steps we take. And the more we move The Great Turning forward, the more encouraged we become. That way the Great Turning occurs through us, through our actions and choices.
The challenge we face is that self-amplifying loops can work both ways. There are plenty of vicious cycles of cascading awfulness. But cycles of amplification can work the other way too and we can become part of these. We have the opportunity to participate in a change that helps itself happen more. The shocks and bad news are important as wake up calls that alert us to the dangers we face. The Great Turning is about rising to the challenge of a constructive response.
The newsletter (that this article comes from) comes out every three months with the aim of keeping you in touch with both the crisis unfolding in our times and the rising wave of a culture committed to the flourishing of life. For a Great Turning to occur, we need to train ourselves. We need to cultivate the compassion that moves us to respond, the courage so that we are not put off by difficult circumstances and the insight that helps us see how our actions can be effective. That is why this newsletter addresses the psychological and spiritual dimensions of change as well as the political and ecological.
With you in this Great Turning adventure
Chris Johnstone
Editor, The Great Turning Times.
email: chris@chrisjohnstone.info
web: http://www.chrisjohnstone.info
P.s.
If you like this email newsletter, please do pass it on (that’s another way to become part of a self-amplifying loop). If it has been forwarded to you and you’d like it regularly, email me with SUBSCRIBE in the subject header.
6. CHECK OUT THE ECOTHERAPY BLOG
The ecopsychology blog has been created by the International Community for Ecopsychology and features 5-7 new posts A WEEK! Including most Mondays on Ecotherapy by Linda Buzzell-Saltzman. Please check us out and post your comments on any of the blog topics. Just go to http://thoughtoffering.blogs.org/ice_seeds
7. ECOPSYCHOLOGY COURSES AND DEGREES
ENDICOTT COLLEGE, Beverly, Massachusetts and The Institute for Educational Studies (TIES) now offer a new variation of their online Master of Education in Integrative Learning program that may be of special interest to students of ecopsychology. This initiative is being led by Core Faculty, Lauren de Boer, former editor of EarthLight Magazine, and additional faculty with backgrounds in adult and childhood education, science, philosophy, and social change.
Established in 1996, this innovative *all on-line* program has attracted learners from all over the world. Students have always chosen an Emphasis Area that focuses on their individual interests and accounts for one third of the credits toward graduation. In this new program, this Emphasis Area is developed from the learner's Great Work, or *allurement,* a passionate life interest to which they feel committed. The larger framework for integrative learning is provided by the remainder of the course, which is identified as *eco-cosmological.* An eco-cosmological context is one which stretches our thinking beyond *sustainability* by presenting cosmology as the fundamental and unifying context for the learner as an integral part of Earth's larger ecological community.
Background
There is a growing awareness that our current institutions, including educational institutions, are not addressing the world's most pressing issues: ecological well-being, social justice, violence, alienation, and a lack of meaning and inspiration.
There is an extraordinary need for institutions to catch up with social reality. Educational programs, which have so much impact on the ability to effectively deal with these issues, have a particularly strong obligation in this regard. This M.Ed. program draws on the ideas and practices of those who have deeply studied and wisely responded to today's opportunities and problems.
The Great Work
The Great Work has to do with the promise of creating an era when the human community comes to live in mutually enhancing relations with the planet's larger community of life and life systems. Cultural historian and ecologist Thomas Berry refers to this new chapter in Earth's history as the Ecozoic era. The Great Work of our time comes in response to two realizations: 1) the devastation of the planet brought by human activity, and 2) that the task before us is to reinvent the human to become a benign presence on Earth.
We begin this task on the individual level by responding to what mathematical cosmologist Brian Swimme describes as "the allurements that beckon us, by following our passions and interests." The Great Work involves aligning our personal sense of allurement with the larger creative dynamics of the Earth community.
This program provides an opportunity for students to contextualize their own interests within The Great Work.
For more information: www.ties-edu.org
NAROPA UNIVERSITY ONLINE COURSE: January 17 – May 10, 2006. DEEP ECOLOGY IN CONTEXT, NAROPA UNIVERSITY ONLINE COURSE. This course that provides the background for the emerging field of ecopsychology. It is in fact a required course for completion of the Master of Arts in Transpersonal Psychology with an Ecopsychology Concentration at Naropa University. If you have ever wondered where ecopsychology came from, what its philosophical roots are, or what related fields and movements might be, this course reveals all! Although it is officially a graduate course, it is open to everyone who has had at least two years of college, and it can be taken for credit or noncredit from anywhere in the world. Check out the course description at http://www.naropa.edu/distance/courses/ENV520e.htm
PACIFICA GRADUATE INSTITUTE, Santa Barbara, California. Dr. Ed Casey teaches *Psyche and Nature,* which has three parts: exploring ancient notions of the natural and the psychical in myth and philosophy; the ingrediency of place in nature and contemporary life; the wild and wilderness. Water as a basic element is discussed at each phase throughout. Authors range from Plato to Gary Snyder, Ivan Illich to Keith Basso, Susan Griffin to Paul Shepard. www.pacifica.edu
PROJECT NATURE CONNECT*S INSTITUTE OF GLOBAL EDUCATION now has grants that can provide FULL FUNDING of a degree or certification program for those who need it. PNC offers many excellent programs in nature-connected counseling, education and self-help. http://www.ecopsych.com
Note: I'm putting together a list of college and university programs that offer ecopsychology courses and/or degrees: if you’d like to receive the list, please e-mail me.
9. ON THE WEB…
* Our website at http://thoughtoffering.blogs.com/ecotherapy has current and past issues of Ecotherapy News. Many, many heartfelt thanks to ecopsychology maven Heather Witham for creating and hosting our site! Heather is an amazingly creative person who has some wonderful web offerings and gifts for us all. Check out: www.mymoonster.com -- a delightful way to get yourself back in sync with nature’s cycles and explore radical ecopsychology.
* ONLINE DISCUSSION GROUPS: Join one or both of our LIST-SERVS where you can discuss activist ecopsychology with others interested in this topic:
act_ecopsy-subscribe@yahoogroups.com This group is working collectively to develop ecopsychological resources to assist in The Great Turning from life-destroying society to life-sustaining culture.
chat_act_ecopsy-subscribe@yahoogroups.com This group is a chat group where activist ecopsychological folk can discuss their activities and interests.
* If you haven’t yet discovered it, check out http://www.ecopsychology.org: the best ecopsychology site on the web! Read *Gatherings* journal; sign up for the list serv to chat. Sign up on the Practitioners page to tell the world about your ecopsychology or ecotherapy practice...
* Check out the great academic search engine: http://scholar.google.com. Look up *ecopsychology,* *ecotherapy* for lots of interesting stuff…
* http://www.anzjft.com/articles/21=4Burns.pdf will take you to When Watching a Sunset Can Help a Relationship Dawn Anew: Nature-Guided Therapy for Couples and Families by George W. Burns, Australia-New Zealand Journal of Family Therapy, 2000, Vol21, No. 4, pp184-190
* http://trumpeter.athabascau.ca/content/v19.2/04_Hibbard.pdf - *Ecopsychology: A Review* by Whit Hibbard. This article reviews the history and current state of the Ecopsychology field. There's tons of interesting stuff, including the issues of whether destroying our habitat is a form of mental illness, the nature of our denial, consumption/techno addictions etc.
* * * * *
Ecopsychology holds the promise of offering original practices for personal, social and ecological renewal.
Andy Fisher, author of Radical Ecopsychology (2002)
How does health care change when symptoms are seen as signals from the larger world or signs of disconnection from it?
Sarah A. Conn, Ph.D., The Ecopsychology Institute at the Center for Psychological & Social Change; Instructor in Psychology at Harvard Medical School.
