The Great Lakes Zephyr - Wind Energy & Hydrogen Journal

Rejuvenating Our Innate Love of Nature Motivates Social and Environmental Activism


From Project NatureConnect
Thursday, November 20, 2003

"We cannot win this battle to save species and environments without forging an emotional bond between ourselves and nature as well - for we will not fight to save what we do not love." said
Stephen Jay Gould , the acclaimed nature writer, paleontologist and evolutionist at Harvard University. At Project NatureConnect, Dr. Michael J. Cohen, Director, offers that the Orientation Course described in the book he and 36 co-authors have just published entitled "The Web of Life Imperative" contains instructions and activities that help people discover, strengthen and wisely act from their inborn love of nature.

Cohen says "Contemporary society's conquest and suppression of our innate love of nature conditions us to disregard that love and feel frustrated about our powerlessness to improve our environmental relationships. That love is a vital force for strengthening our environmental relationships and our relationships with society and ourselves as well, for, as people, we are biologically and psychologically part of nature."

"Rejuvenating people's love of nature is a mainstay of our book and course, a subject that is seldom found, and too often demeaned as 'fuzzy thinking,' in educational curriculums and environmental efforts," Cohen notes. His course in Applied Ecopsychology is taught via the internet and that enables people in many walks of life to thoughtfully make sensory connections with authentic nature. They use that connection to help them rejuvenate their inborn love of nature into their consciousness and thinking. "The restoration of that power dissolves the apathy that saps the support we need to rectify our our most challenging environmental and social troubles, noted Cohen, who also wrote "Reconnecting With Nature" and founded the program of the National Audubon Society Expedition Institute in 1960.

To help people familiarize themselves with the course and its potential, Cohen has placed on the Internet the archives of student involvement in the course as it was, and still is, taught at the University of California at Santa Barbara. http://www.webstrings.org/webst111.html

A quote from the journaled message of a student to fellow students in the Project NatureConnect online degree program serves as an example of the course and book bringing hidden love for nature into action:

"What I got from this exercise on an experiential level is the interdependence of species of all kinds for good quality air, since it is a give & take beneficial relationship. While I was doing this exercise, I was sitting outside on a deck and connecting with the trees as I breathed in and out, and it felt very wonderful to be experiencing our mutual attraction to each other. I felt as though the tree was grateful for the air I was breathing out, just as I was for the clean air it was providing for me to breath in return. I became much more aware of the (love and) interrelatedness that we have for each other because we need each other.... Recently, I have been struggling with the air quality in our new apartment home, with all the pressed wood, new paint, linoleum, etc .and trying to "air" the place out during the day. To have stale, stuffy, smelly air indoor air to breath is almost as bad as not breathing at all because it is removed from nature's perfectly balanced life giving air! Every cell in my body protests, and when I am outside I breath very deep & cleansing breaths to try & make up for lost time outdoors. Another step I have taken is to fill my apartment with live plants which give so much and greatly improve the air quality."


Through books, CEUs, courses, and degree programs online, Project NatureConnect, at the Institute of Global Education and in cooperation with several universities, offers the public an easily accessible, nature-reconnecting preventative and recovery instrument. Anyone may easily learn and teach online or on-site its hands-on, sensory, unifiying process in local natural areas. The Project NatureConnect grant program subsidizes training in Applied Ecopsychology.

For further information visit the Project NatureConnect web site at www.ecopsych.com or contact Dr. Cohen: email Telephone: 360-378-6313.





For more information, contact:

Mardi Jones, Ph.D.
Public Information
Project NatureConnect
Post Office Box 1605
Friday Harbor, WA 98250
nature@interisland.net


Web site:

http://www.ecopsych.com