Summer 2006
THE ECOTHERAPY NEWSLETTER
Healing our relationship with nature
Ecopsychology in Action!
Psychotherapy as if the Whole Earth Mattered
© June 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: Sarah Conn, John Seed, Terrence O’Connor, Wendell Berry
2. HOW I BECAME AN ECOTHERAPIST by Linda Buzzell-Saltzman
3. NEW ENGLAND PSYCHOLOGIST interviews DR. SARAH CONN on Ecopsychology in April 2006 issue
4. PETROLEUM EXPERT JAN LUNDBERG on the psychology of oil addiction
5. PSYCHOLOGISTS FOR SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY has section on environmental protection/justice
6. DR CRAIG CHALQUIST creating online collection of *BEST ECOTHERAPY PRACTICES*
7. BRITISH MEDICAL JOURNAL SAYS ECOTHERAPY COULD HELP CHILDREN
8. DAVID KORTEN’S NEW BOOK *THE GREAT TURNING: FROM EMPIRE TO EARTH COMMUNITY*
9. LETTER FROM CHRIS J. CROTTY REQUESTING INFO ON YOUR ECOTHERAPY PRACTICE
10. ARTICLES WORTH READING: a) The Heart and Despair of Peak Oil b) Family Systems in Post-Petrocollapse Society c) Designing Energy Descent Pathways: Unleashing Abundance as a Community Response to Peak Oil
11. *WILD* NATURE PLAY BEFORE AGE 11 FOSTERS ADULT ENVIRONMENTALISM
12. DIANE NISSEN EARNS PH.D. with dissertation on APPLIED ECOPSYCHOLOGY AND ECOTHERAPY PRACTICES
13. CHECK OUT THE ECOTHERAPY BLOG at http://thoughtoffering.blogs.com/ice_seeds
14. ECOPSYCHOLOGY COURSES AND DEGREES: Endicott College offering new M.Ed. Online Course dealing with *The Great Work*
15. UPCOMING EVENTS: Saturday, July 8, 2006, 9 am – 5 pm, HONORING THE WHEEL OF LIFE: A DAY OF CEREMONY IN NATURE
16. 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:
Ecopsychology is combining the systems view of ecology and the systems view of psychology and looking at the human psyche in the larger context of the Earth as a living system. Psychology in Western culture has tended to identify pain as a pathology or sickness in that individual or family. What we are saying is that we want to look at symptoms as signals of distress in the larger context. These signals that show up as symptoms in individuals have information about what*s going on in the world as a whole and that particular individual*s unique way of registering it has information in it for the larger context. This is not unusual for a family systems theory but we are expanding it to include the larger system of the Earth.
Dr. Sarah Conn, The Ecopsychology Institute, Cambridge, Massachusetts
I take *ecopsychology* to mean psychology in service to the Earth. ECO, PSYCHE, LOGOS: Knowing that the earth is home to our soul.
John Seed, in paper delivered to the Ecopsychology Symposium in Australia, February 10, 1994
Isn*t it strange that we supposed experts and healers of human relations give only passing notice to our extraordinarily unhealthy relationship to the planet as a whole, a relationship that will ultimately undermine our work completely? What is the responsibility of a therapist on a dying planet? Physician, heal thyself.
Terrence O’Connor
2. HOW I BECAME AN ECOTHERAPIST by Linda Buzzell-Saltzman
The short answer: my garden made me do it.
For many years I worked in the city as a psychotherapist, living the urban lifestyle but finding it increasingly debilitating. By 1992 my husband and I were able to move to a human-sized community where we bought a small house on 1/3 acre of land that looked dry and desperate for some nurturing. We thought it would be fun to create a cottage-style garden.
Little did we know…
A lot of folks – especially city folks -- think of gardening as *landscaping,* a sort of *exterior decorating* where you*re the master or mistress of all you survey. But novice gardeners often forget one really important fact: land, plants and animals are all alive and are an existing ecosystem community, so having a relationship with them is nothing like having a relationship with a chair or a designer sofa, in spite of what the shelter magazines with the glossy, highly-designed *outdoor rooms* try to tell us.
Fool that I was, I thought I was going to work *my* land, but what actually happened of course was that the land already belonged to other sentient beings and they all began to work me, to *garden* me. And to heal and transform me as I tended the land*s many wounds caused by years of previous *mow, blow and go* practices.
I had read in a library book that one shouldn*t make changes in a garden without living in it for a whole year, so we started out simply and slowly, resisting the impulse to bring in the landscapers, bulldozers and *instant garden* plants. We just watered and spread kitchen compost and waited to see what would happen. An amazing array of plants and animals began to show up. Bulbs popped out and then disappeared. Baby oak trees arrived to remind us that this was, of course, an oak forest in Chumash times.
As I hung out with the existing ecosystem in this unique place, the land began to slow me down to her biorhythms and to remind me that I too was merely one of her short-lived creatures in this place, like the bees who now visit the lavender and then pollinate our fruit trees… or the brilliant blue scrub jays who squawk at me when I accidently dig up their acorns… or the butterflies, raccoons, lizards, hummingbirds, worms, fungi and other inhabitants whose community we were now joining. It became obvious that we didn’t *own* anything here, and that we*d have to let go of both our anthropocentrism and our arrogant concept of *stewardship* as we added our efforts to those of our new neighbors.
This deep shift opened my eyes and my heart. I saw so clearly how dysfunctional and painful the connection between my psyche and nature had been. And I realized I was far from alone in suffering from the effects of living unnaturally. As the land began to heal and transform me, it also by necessity profoundly changed my practice of psychotherapy. If being nature-disconnected had made me so unhappy, how much of my clients* unhappiness might also be directly attributable to the unnatural way we live in our nature-disconnected, consumerist industrial society?
In the late 1990s, I stumbled across an ecopsychology list-serv on the internet and was thrilled to discover a community of people interested in exploring and healing the human-nature relationship. I realized that nature-connection was at least as vital to mental health as every other relationship in people*s lives, and as worthy of inclusion in any therapy session. This led to my interest in ecotherapy, the practice of healing psyche while healing the earth.
And what of our garden? The land guided us as we gently began to shape and plant. We began to dream about being able to feed ourselves more and more from our garden so we could become less reliant on distant food sources which depend on fossil-fuels and the destruction of other people*s and animals* land and habitat. We started a local organic garden club, and began to create community with fellow land-lovers. And we discovered Permaculture to guide us as our garden became a Permaculture-style food forest, overflowing with life. Every day we spend some time grazing, just as our Pleistocene ancestors might have done, hunting and gathering goodies from our multi-layered *forest* of almost 70 fruit trees, interplanted with delectable veggies, herbs, berries, edible flowers and native plants.
And as with gardening, one thing always leads to another, so we*ve had to learn old-timey skills our grandparents knew – healthy cooking and preserving. My latest passion is growing old heirloom roses and tough antique *found* roses that have been saved from old homesteads and cemetaries, enjoying the healing of psyche that this ancient symbol of Beauty and the Goddess has bestowed on humans from time immemorial – and also appreciating her petals in our salads and her rose hips in our tea and jam. How can a 19th Century rose named Mme. Lambard or Perle d*Or or Gloire des Rosomanes not add Soul to our garden?
But who*s gardening who here? Nature might tell the story differently. Permaculture co-founder Bill Mollison likes to say that *everything gardens.* We*re just two tiny players in a symphony of life that*s thriving on one small piece of well-loved land, trying to rediscover the animals we really are and hoping to live in harmony with our relatives with whom we share this tiny place.
How did you become an ecotherapist? Ecotherapy news welcomes your story too…
3. NEW ENGLAND PSYCHOLOGIST INTERVIEWS DR. SARAH CONN ON ECOPSYCHOLOGY IN APRIL 2006 ISSUE
In case you missed this interesting article from the April 2006 issue of the New England Psychologist, here are the first few paragraphs and the link below:
Ecopsychologist hopes that individuals and world re-connect
The idea that man has cut himself off from his natural-world roots is not a new notion. Experts have pointed out that we are not designed to sit at a computer under fluorescent lights all day. We are not designed to eat constantly or stay indoors nearly all of our lives. These are changes that have occurred only during the smallest fraction of man*s existence and changes that we have not evolved to cope with.
It should not be surprising, therefore, that humans feel a sort of disconnectedness from the world around them and that that disconnection would manifest itself psychologically.
The field of ecopsychology is all about helping the individual and the world as a whole to re-connect. It*s an area that seems well suited to clinical psychology yet there are not many who are doing this type of work. That situation may change as these ideas gain more widespread acceptance. Future psychology students may be shocked to learn how we once treated individuals as just that, alone in their pain or pathology. (emphasis added!)
While most in the field live in the Western states, one prominent ecopsychologist is Sarah Conn, Ph.D., a clinical psychologist with a private practice in Arlington, Mass. Along with her husband, Lane Conn, Ph.D., she co-founded The Ecopsychology Institute in Cambridge, a group of psychologists and other professionals who design ways to collaborate with other professions and environmental groups.
To read the rest, go to http://www.masspsy.com/leading/0604_ne_qa.html
4. PETROLEUM EXPERT JAN LUNDBERG ON THE PSYCHOLOGY OF OIL ADDICTION
…petroleum dependence reaches beyond transportation, agriculture and U.S. militarism. Petroleum dependence also translates into cultural traits and people*s psychological states. I took note of this in my years of activism and learning about sustainable living. I*ve explored my potential for experiencing nature more directly in part by incorporating what might be needed and useful (or unnecessary and useless) for individual, community and global survival. In my talks and writings I pass along these tidbits and ideas.
The most frequent questions at the end of my presentations usually include: *How sustainable do you think our area is - can we surmount general collapse taking place beyond our region?*; *How can we do more to educate people and bring people together to take action?*… Rather than focusing on the frightening prospect of loss of energy resources and goods and services, I maintain that closer social relations for cooperation and mutual aid will assure survival and ultimately a more rewarding way of life.
…In the world*s *richest, most powerful nation*, we are hooked on energy-intensive living and total reliance on long-distance corporate products…as pressure builds for total transformation and chaos, I remain sure that the learning and sharing of tools for sustainability is the most essential pursuit for one and all.
http://culturechange.org/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=44&Itemid=2#cont
5. PSYCHOLOGISTS FOR SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY HAS SECTION ON ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION/JUSTICE
Thanks to Dr. John Scull, we have learned that Psychologists for Social Responsibility has an active section devoted to Environmental Protection and Environmental Justice (see http://www.psysr.org/EPJ/environmental%20protection%20AC.htm )
Here is a quote on global warming recommended by Dr. Harriet Wood:
There are many ways that psychologists can help move the debate on global warming. In addition to cutting down on personal consumption of
fossil fuels and being involved citizens by contacting elected officials, we can call attention to the way psychological processes are affecting the debate. For example, we can identify denial that occurs when people don*t want to acknowledge or think about global warming, despite the evidence that they directly experience (drought, heat waves, flooding). We can speak about despair and hopelessness that occur when a problem seems too big and one*s actions too small. We can identify cognitive errors that occur in information processing, from selective attention to illusory correlation, from cognitive dissonance to us vs.
them thinking. And we can help people discover barriers to action, so that they can live out Helen Keller*s philosophy: *I am only one; but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something. I will not refuse to do the something I can do.*
http://www.psysr.org/EPJ/talking_points_on_global_warming.htm
6. CLINICIAN’S CORNER: DR. CRAIG CHALQUIST CREATING ONLINE COLLECTION OF *BEST ECOTHERAPY PRACTICES*
With all the urgent talk about peak oil and a post-carbon future, we hear very little addressing the social or psychological implications of living in such a world. And yet what point survival if we don't survive whole?
I have created a Web page to begin collecting *best practices* that foster mental well-being and community harmony. My thought is that rather than waiting around for the empire to fall, or spending a fortune stockpiling bullets and dried apricots, why not see all this as an opportunity to experiment with practices that have been used the world over by people in peaceful communities: conflict resolution, the practice of council, clear communications skills, indigenous ways of knowing, town hall democracy, practical psychology, restorative justice, etc. The site is here: http://www.terrapsych.com/opuspax.html -- *Opus Pax* because living together as fully realized human beings must be a responsible work of peace. The goal is a downloadable free catalog of best practices and wisdoms culled from many places and cultures.
I have just started on this and am looking for resources, topics, contributions, and other kinds of relevant information to post at the site. With teaching to do and a book coming out, I hope to eventually turn this project over to interested students. Some funding would also be nice. For now, however, I will continue to watch over this and hope it will draw the sort of knowledge that could help people face a highly uncertain future and maybe encourage a bit of practical utopic dreaming.
7. BRITISH MEDICAL JOURNAL SAYS ECOTHERAPY COULD HELP CHILDREN
What’s especially exciting about this article is the recommendation from Dr. Ambra Burls that healthcare providers and nature organizations could share and exchange expertise in helping kids. Dr. Patch Adams meets the Sierra Club? Sounds interesting! Thanks to Dr. John Scull for passing this along to us.
ESSEX - Who needs cartoons? A real life Rocket J Squirrel could be just what the doctor ordered for helping emotionally troubled children. An editorial published in a special issue of the British Medical Journal (November 26, 2005) claims that ecotherapy - restoring health through contact with nature - could be beneficial for children with emotional and behavioural problems. The BMJ points to a number of studies that show ecotherapy can help these kids overcome social isolation. *Partnerships between healthcare providers and nature organizations to share and exchange expertise could create new policies that recognize the interdependence between healthy people and healthy ecosystems*, writes author Dr Ambra Burls.
National Review of Medicine Dec 15, 2005
8. DAVID KORTEN’S NEW BOOK *THE GREAT TURNING: FROM EMPIRE TO EARTH COMMUNITY*
...we humans are a choicemaking species that at this defining moment faces both the opportunity and the imperative to choose our future as a conscious collective act. We can no longer deny the need nor delay our response. A mounting perfect economic storm is fast approaching. A convergence of climate change, peak oil, and the financial instability inherent in an unbalanced global trading system will bring an unraveling of the corporate-led global economy and a dramatic restructuring of every aspect of modern life.
We cannot avoid the unraveling. We can, however, turn a potentially terminal crisis into an epic opportunity to bring forth a new era of Earth Community grounded in the life-affirming cultural values shared by most all the world’s people and eloquently articulated in the Earth Charter.
For more info, check out http://davidkorten.com/Books/greatturning.htm
9. LETTER REQUESTING INFO ABOUT YOUR ECOTHERAPY PRACTICE
Dear Ecopsychology and Ecotherapy Community,
I am currently in the process of completing my Masters degree in Applied Ecopsychology and Contemplative Education at Prescott College in Arizona. As part of my thesis work I am creating a manual that highlights people, organizations, and specific experiential practices that embrace ecopsychological values and principles.
This manual is intended to become a public resource that helps people like ourselves find one another, and help members of the larger community find us. I hope to expand this manual overtime and I also plan to make it available through my website and at conferences and workshops around the country.
If you have a private practice, work for an organization, or have certain experiential practices that express the importance and value of healing and strengthening the human-nature relationship, I would love to hear from you. If you send me a short explanation of the work you do (or of work you are trying to *get off the ground*) with contact information, I will add it to the manual. If you would like to send an explanation of a specific experiential practice, please send it as an attachment. If you know of someone who is a fitting recipient of this email, please forward this along.
My vision is that this project can facilitate the growth of ecopsychology and ecotherapy through raising awareness and helping people in our extended communities locate and contact the resources that are available. Thank you for your help.
Chris J. Crotty
cjcrotty@yahoo.com
Heart-Sun Institute
Integrating Mindfulness & Nature in Health, Healing and Education
www.heartsuninstitute.org
50 Andrews St.
Essex, MA 01929
(978) 500-3155
10. 'WILD' NATURE PLAY BEFORE AGE 11 FOSTERS ADULT ENVIRONMENTALISM
If you want your children to grow up to actively care about the environment, give them plenty of time to play in the *wild* before they're 11 years old, suggests a new Cornell University study.
*Although domesticated nature activities -- caring for plants and gardens -- also have a positive relationship to adult environment attitudes, their effects aren't as strong as participating in such wild nature activities as camping, playing in the woods, hiking, walking, fishing and hunting,* said environmental psychologist Nancy Wells, assistant professor of design and environmental analysis in the College of Human Ecology at Cornell.
Wells and Kristi Lekies, a research associate in human development at Cornell, analyzed data from a U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service survey conducted in 1998 that explored childhood nature experiences and adult environmentalism. The Cornell researchers used a sample of more than 2,000 adults, ages 18 to 90, who were living in urban areas throughout the country and answered telephone questions about their early childhood nature experiences and their current adult attitudes and behaviors relating to the environment.
The findings will be published in the next issue of Children, Youth and Environment (Vol. 16:1).
*Our study indicates that participating in wild nature activities before age 11 is a particularly potent pathway toward shaping both environmental attitudes and behaviors in adulthood,* said Wells, whose previous studies have found that nature around a home can help protect children against life stress and boost children's cognitive functioning.
*When children become truly engaged with the natural world at a young age, the experience is likely to stay with them in a powerful way -- shaping their subsequent environmental path,* she added.
Interestingly, participating in scouts or other forms of environmental education programs had no effect on adult attitudes toward the environment.
*Participating in nature-related activities that are mandatory evidently do not have the same effects as free play in nature, which don't have demands or distractions posed by others and may be particularly critical in influencing long-term environmentalism,* Wells said.
Unlike previous studies that have looked at the effect of childhood experiences of adult environmentalists, this study looked at a broad representative sample of urban adults. By examining individuals* pathways to environmentalism, the study also took a *life course* perspective, that is, a view that looks at individual lives as sets of interwoven pathways or trajectories that together tell a story.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/03/060313183552.htm
11. ARTICLES WORTH READING:
a) THE HEART AND DESPAIR OF PEAK OIL by Adam Fenderson and Andrew Walker-Morison, March 17, 2006 in the Energy Bulletin
This article describes *The Heart of Peak Oil* workshops that use Joanna Macy techniques.
One of the things that make peak oil/peak energy so difficult to comprehend is the inability of most people to visualize a radically different existence. This is perfectly understandable. Most people visualize their future quite similar to their current existence. The average vision of the future is perhaps a little more expensive and hectic than today with ever larger construction projects. Inevitably most people will expect ever more sophisticated technology. The key point however, is that whatever interpretation of the future one may have is based on past trends and personal experiences. .
Peak energy turns this understanding on its head. For if any given individual takes the time to understand the ideas of depletion and limits to growth and grasp their implications, they will arrive at an unsettling realization: everything they believed would occur was just an illusion or a false promise. This is a very powerful feeling. For many people it is simply too much to handle and thus you see the various coping mechanisms. Only after someone has taken this sucker punch to the psyche and accepted it, can true preparations begin.
http://www.energybulletin.net/13964.html
b) FAMILY SYSTEMS IN POST-PETROCOLLAPSE SOCIETY -- JAN LUNDBERG*S PREDICTIONS
Jan Lundberg says we need to consider social, family, dependent care, mental health as issues in sustainability planning.
http://culturechange.org/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=43&Itemid=2#cont
c) DESIGNING ENERGY DESCENT PATHWAYS: Unleashing Abundance as a Community Response to Peak Oil by Rob Hopkins.
This article deals with *The head, hands and heart of creating transitional communities – town Permaculture* and *Community Energy Descent Planning*.
http://transitionculture.org/?p=266
12. DIANE NISSEN EARNS PH.D. WITH DISSERTATION ON APPLIED ECOPSYCHOLOGY
In June 2005 Dianne Nissen was awarded her Ph.D. in Psychology from Argosy University (San Francisco Bay Campus, Point Richmond, CA) for her dissertation on *Applied Ecopsychology: An Exploration of Current Clinical Practice* The question she addressed in her research is *What does an ecopsychologist really do in a therapy session?* Dr. Nissen can be reached at Diane.Nissen@sonoma.edu
13. CHECK OUT THE ECOTHERAPY BLOG
The ecopsychology blog has been created by the International Community for Ecopsychology and features many new posts each week. Including some 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
14. 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. Dr. Aaron Kipnis teaches *Ecopsychology* and authors include Andy Fisher, Duane Elgin, Joanna Macy, Ralph Metzner, John Seed, Mary Watkins, David Korten, Gary Snyder. 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.
15. UPCOMING EVENTS
Saturday, July 8, 2006, 9 am – 5 pm, HONORING THE WHEEL OF LIFE: A DAY OF CEREMONY IN NATURE
Cynthia Morrow, MFT
Saturday, July 8, 2006 9am-5pm
Marin wilderness location to be announced
$125 (sliding scale available) 7 CEUs available
Wheels of Life have been found across earth-based human cultures for thousands of years. Some consider them to be deeply rooted within the collective psyche, originating from the cyclic patterns in Nature herself. The Four Shields of Human Nature will be presented as one wheel that addresses the psychological and developmental progressions of the human soul as reflected by the seasons and cardinal directions.
This highly experiential daylong ceremony, held entirely in a beautiful and inspiring outdoor setting, is a simple and dynamic way of finding balance and attunement between the inner movements of psyche and the natural world. Participants will have the opportunity to weave together a tapestry of their psyche's journey through ceremony, creative expression, intention, and story. You will have reflective time alone on the land as well as time to share and integrate your experience with
the group. No prior experience is necessary. In this carefully guided process, you will have the opportunity to:
• Connect with the Wheel of Life within and without
• Reflect deeply on the non-duality of nature and psyche
• Allow nature to guide you in your soul's expression
• Experience the mythic story unfolding in your life
Details of location and what to bring will be sent one week prior to event
Cynthia Morrow, M.A., MFT, is the coordinator of the Nature Therapy program at Holos Institute. She brings to her work a life-long apprenticeship to the deep mystery and awe of nature and psyche. Her San Francisco-based psychotherapy practice integrates psychodynamic, body-oriented, and transpersonal/spiritual approaches to healing, and includes work with adults, couples, and the clinical supervision of interns. Her work is creatively inspired and enhanced by explorations
in dance, yoga, sculpting, and eastern and earth-based healing traditions. Cynthia has trained with the School of Lost Borders in eco-therapy, vision fasting, and wilderness rites of passage.
To register:
Kindly send the fee (payable to "Holos Institute") and note stating the event, including your name, full mailing address, phone number and email address. Your cancelled check is your confirmation.
Mail to:
Public Programs
Holos Institute
316 Third Avenue
San Francisco, CA 94118
If you have any questions, please call the events line at 510-287-8816, ext. 2,or email us: info@holosinstitute.net
For more information on this and other events visit our website at: http://www.holosinstitute.net
Holos Institute is a non-profit, holistically oriented psychotherapy and educational program. Our counseling offices are based in both Oakland and San Francisco and offer a range of affordable, high quality psychotherapy services.
16. 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 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.
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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.
