Welcome and Introduction: an Overview

"I go to nature to be soothed and healed, and to have my senses put in order."

- John Burroughs

The posts on this Blog recount good backyard, garden or back-country nature experiences. They come from a wide range of individuals who share them here to help increase personal, social and environmental well being.

Anybody can post their good experiences in nature on this blog.  Some of the postings come from student emails to their classmates in Project NatureConnect's Educating, Counseling and Healing with Nature online training courses and degree program.

VIEWING INSTRUCTIONS: To find, research or quote posts found on this blog, simply enter a topic or keyword of interest in the Google search engine displayed on these pages. (Check to be sure the search engine is selecting "naturconnect blogs.com, not www).

Many hundreds of additional good nature experience quotes for similar use are available through the search engine at Project NatureConnect and especially PNC's
Organic Psychology Reports page. Both serve to validate the beneficial effects of sensory contact with nature.

POSTING INSTRUCTIONS: To help increase well-being, we invite you to post here, in the "COMMENTS" section below, or in any "COMMENTS" elsewhere, in less than 600 words, a good/attractive experience you have had with nature. 

Visitors will be able to find your contribution and benefit from it by locating its words and thoughts through the Google search engine, no matter where you post them as a comment.  Your contribution here will help visitors here value nature as a beneficial resource for well being that deserves our thanks, respect and preservation efforts.

NOTE: "COMMENTS" are only for good nature-experience postings, not for discussion or commentary. Isn't there a good nature-connected experience that you can post as a comment?

Introduction

The journal quote that appears below is unadulterated evidence for your consideration and benefit. It comes directly from a person who experienced, first-hand, the events they describe.             

The quote:

"I was never taught to ask permission to relate to people or the environment. I just take that for granted, as we all do. However, this activity required my senses to learn how to ask an attractive tree covered area for its consent for me to walk through it. The area continued to feel attractive, but something soon changed. It was the first time in my life that I totally felt safe. It felt like Earth's energies were in charge of my life, not me. It gave me a wonderful feeling of having more power to be myself. I felt in balance with nature and the people here because I could distinctly feel their energies consenting to support me. I never experienced nature and people that way before. It was like a powerful law protected not only my life, but all of life. I felt very secure and nurtured as I walked under those trees. My stress and depression had transformed into an all-encompassing love. I learned that when I seek consent from the environment and people I gain energy and unity, I belong."                           

As the deteriorating state of the natural world demonstrates, the above quote goes against our socialized bias to discredit, exploit or conquer nature.  To our loss, we seldom learn to acknowledge and value nature's grace, balance and restorative powers around and in us.

The quote shows how thoughtfully making conscious sensory contact with a natural attraction helped the writer reduce his or her stress and depression. 

The remaining posts on this blog consist of similar entries from young and old in all walks of life. They help us recognize that we benefit from the renewing ways of nature. For example, a short walk in the park often helps us obtain relief from our stress filled lives but most of us usually take for granted this ability of nature to nurture us so we don't learn how to further tap into it or how to support and strengthen it.  

To our loss, most of nature's beneficial gifts are usually missing in our excessively            nature-separated lives. The posts on this blog encourage us to see the value of learning how to think and feel with, rather than against, nature.

For a history and deeper understanding of this blog page visit Webstring Natural Attractions and its links.

This blog is open to the public. We invite you to add your good experiences in nature to it so others may enjoy and learn from them.

Owls and Howls,             

Mike Cohen

Dr. Cohen can be contacted at 360-378-6313, email http://www.ecopsych.com/mjcohen.html 
            

P.S. Please note that you can take accredited nature-connecting online courses that can lead to a nature-connected hobby, career or degree in most fields of interest.             

 

Comments

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[Allison Ewoldt]

I realize that while doing the Project NatureConnect activities, I trust the existence and powers of NIAL (the Nameless,Intelligent, Attraction-based Loving energy that creates and sustains reality) with every fiber of my being. It is amazing, but usually--as soon as I ask permission to connect with nature--I immediately notice glistening spider threads (reminding me of web strings) which instantly shift my consciousness to the utter and total connectedness of it All-- including me. This leads me to an immense appreciation and trust of That of Which I Am A Part, and its life-enabling and supportive LOVE. I feel accepted, loved, valued, appreciated--and I reciprocate those feelings.

However, when I am distracted and absorbed by my disconnected Reality, old conditioning sometimes gives rise to doubts and fears...and I know it is time to reconnect with Nature.

[Allison Ewoldt]

I realize that while doing the Project NatureConnect activities, I trust the existence and powers of NIAL (the Nameless,Intelligent, Attraction-based Loving energy that creates and sustains reality) with every fiber of my being. It is amazing, but usually--as soon as I ask permission to connect with nature--I immediately notice glistening spider threads (reminding me of web strings) which instantly shift my consciousness to the utter and total connectedness of it All-- including me. This leads me to an immense appreciation and trust of That of Which I Am A Part, and its life-enabling and supportive LOVE. I feel accepted, loved, valued, appreciated--and I reciprocate those feelings.

However, when I am distracted and absorbed by my disconnected Reality, old conditioning sometimes gives rise to doubts and fears...and I know it is time to reconnect with Nature.

[Carol Biggs]

August 2, 2007

Just tuning in briefly to everyone.

I'm busy these days with my granddaughter, who just turned 6. We’re watching tadpoles turn into frogs.

Of course, it is a multisensory experience, but we slow it down in order to take advantage of educational moments. (Periodically I focus on the sense of which I'm most aware, through the natural attraction that helps me become aware of it, once again realizing that I am being nourished here, now, through connection with natural creatures or systems, continual gifts that I can choose any time, simply because I have been born into planet Earth -- like Mike says.)

Last year when we found tadpoles at the pond in all stages of transformation, including wee frogs hopping down the trail into the woods, I picked up a few of the frogs for my then 5-year-old granddaughter to see. She was afraid of them...attracted to them but didn't want to touch them. She thought about them over this past year and told me one day a few months ago that she wished she would have held one of the frogs. I told her she would get another chance. We went to the pond after I discovered tadpoles again this year. I picked one up for her to hold but she backed away, still not ready, even though she also wanted to hold it.

The next weekend we went back with a jar to catch several tadpoles to bring home so we could watch them change. However, no tadpoles could we see. But while looking into the pond's depths, we saw minnows close to shore.

Now here's a nature connection for you, exposing a nature-disconnected story if I ever heard one:

My granddaughter wanted to catch a minnow and bring it home. I thought to myself, "Oh sure, a minnow is just going to float into our jar when it has this whole huge pond!" However, rather than pass along my story, I said to Miranda, “Let's invite one to come into our jar.” She did while I hung over a tree root, holding onto the tree with one hand and holding the jar under water with the other. Silently I asked a minnow to come into our jar before my knees gave out, "knowing" absolutely the ridiculousness of the request. (And this is with many years and a master’s in Mike’s applied ecopsych.) I told Miranda I had to get up, when suddenly from behind, a minnow quietly floated to the front of the jar...and swam in. My granddaughter's joyful expression was priceless. The fish, however, swam frantically in its now limited space, banging its nose on the jar, and I said we need to return it to its big pond because it's frightened. Big tears welled up in Miranda's eyes, while she said, "But grammy, you said we could take it home if one came into our jar." So, says I, “Okay, we'll take it home for a day or 2 so you can see it up close, but we'll return it to the pond in order to show our respect and thankfulness to the fish for responding to our request. She said okay, beside herself with excitement. We took the fish home after we got a fish bowl so it could have some space, where we kept it overnight, and overnight again.

When I came home that evening, the fish was laying at the bottom of the bowl. For one frightening moment I thought it was dead. Even though it was 9:30 at night by now I told the fish I would return it to its pond home. (Miranda was at home and couldn't come with me.)

Because of our northern daylight, it was barely twilight when I arrived at the pond. As I dipped the jar under water, I thanked the fish for hearing and responding to our request, and for visiting and teaching my granddaughter. The fish "knew" it was home. It saw tree roots in the watery depths and tried swimming out the bottom of the jar. Silently I encouraged it to turn around and swim the other way. It did… and quietly glided out of the jar into the pond, and disappeared. I felt myself expanding, flowing freely into "something" wondrously timeless and peaceful and vastly unending.

We went back to the pond several weeks later with a small fish net a friend and I used to catch 3 tadpoles now in the fish bowl on the deck. I said to Miranda if we caught more tadpoles we would return the tadpoles on the porch so they could reconnect with their pond community. We did catch more tadpoles and discovered that the fishbowl tadpoles were half the size of their relatives who had remained free in the big pond with their tadpole community.

Next time we went to the pond, Miranda said she wanted to pick up a tadpole. She has seen them up close and learned they need their kind of skin so they can live and glide easily through the water. When she had touched a tadpole skin before she didn't like it because it was "slimy." This was one of those educational moments to discuss the kind of skin a creature might need to live in a watery home. Is it really slimy, or is it just wet, and soft? I picked one up after the other and released them back into the water. She said, "I want to hold one, grammy." She put out her hand, then took it back again, saying, "Can you put it on this leaf." Of course, it slid right off the leaf and into the water. I picked up and released them for a few moments. Finally she said she would catch one. She did, and was so thrilled and excited she wanted to pick up each of the thousands at the pond's edge. She didn't want to leave much later when it was time to go, now with wet pond feet.

It took many times returning to the pond, repeatedly demonstrating the tadpoles or frogs wouldn't hurt me for Miranda to feel safe enough to pick up one herself. I remained patient, demonstrating my own enjoyment and lack of fear, as well as watchfulness for any of our bear relations.

I'm sharing this long story (which isn't yet finished) to remind myself that focusing on a particular sense through one of nature’s attractions slows me down to the here and now where I become integrated with the tadpoles, minnows, dragonflies, granddaughter, great blue herons, water bugs, the pond, and beyond until I am it—just another bit of the pond community.

Ultimately, instead of trying to catch tadpoles, my granddaughter just rested her hand in the water and let the tadpoles flow into her hand.

It is so much easier letting our own natural attractions expand us into all of it—wholeness with consciousness—through individual attractions, leading to multi-sensory nourishment. Science separates in order to learn about the parts, forgetting to remember that the parts all contain the whole. Can’t dissect the whole because it is still part of the whole.

Cheers from the temperate rainforest
Carol Biggs

[dan jacoby]

I like this website - had never heard of ecopsychology before this, but will definititely read more.

there is something similar in a personality assessment + happiness report i just took - maybe interesting to you:

www.personality100.com