The Soul of Sensing Beings (AnimAnimali)

by Guido Dalla Casa

This article about the soul of sensing beings is an English translation of an Italian article published on Marcella Danon’s Italian e-zone, Ecopsicologia.net.

What soul is
The idea of soul is connected with a stable, permanent, autonomous and unitary entity in all Western culture tradition and in Judeo-Christian and Islamic religion teachings. It “exists” or “doesn’t exist”: it’s attributed exclusively to a human being and only to an individual.
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Developing a Greater Sense of Belonging

An Art and Method for Ecological Sustainability
by Danny C. Shelton

“You didn’t come into this world. You came out of it, like a wave from the ocean. You are not a stranger here.” ~ Alan W. Watts

Among our most basic needs as human beings is that of being accepted by others of the society in which we live. As we develop, our need for acceptance expands into greater circles of interrelationship with other people. Through maturity, we further develop understandings of cultural variations and recognize what is shared in-common between greater variations of cultural practices. It is this search and discovery of what is shared in-common, among cultural variation and diversity, that we may sense, recognize, and rediscover our greater shared sense of belonging in Nature. The word common has its roots in the concept of equally belonging and shared alike. It is the root of the word community, and most importantly of communion, or that which is shared in-common through participation in direct natural sensory relationship.
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In Service to the Deities

Chellis Glendinning and Jesús Sepúlveda Talk across Continents
submitted by Chellis Glendinning
originally published in Sacred Fire,  No. 9,  2009

Poet Jesús Sepúlveda and psychotherapist Chellis Glendinning sat down to talk.  Well, sat down at keyboards on their respective continents: Sepúlveda in his native Chile, Glendinning from New Mexico USA. 

Sepúlveda is known for his essay, The Garden of Peculiarities, published in Spanish and translated into English, French, Portuguese, and Italian.  He is also the author of Hotel Marconi, Place of Origin, Pax Americana, Escrivania, and Correo negro.  Glendinning is the author of six books, including My Name Is Chellis and I’m in Recovery from Western Civilization and Off the Map: An Expedition Deep into Empire and the Global Economy, and the bilingual folk opera De Un Lado Al Otro.

The following conversation took place in the summer of 2008.

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New Ecopsychology Journal

posted by Thomas Joseph Doherty, Psy.D.

To recognize Earth Day, I am proud to announce the launch of Ecopsychology, a new, quarterly online peer-reviewed journal from Liebert Publishing. You can download free articles from the first issue Continue Reading →

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Defining EP, Part 2

by Robert Greenway

(continued from Part 1)
Thanks for all the interest in “defining” —  I think it very important, for a variety of reasons.   Not to “lock in ‘the field'”; not assuming that “nature” needs us to be conceptual or heady; not to provide public credentials (that after all serve a culture with symptoms of serious disjunction); not to push a certain philosophy over another; but simply as an “interim” tool — with which those who in fact have worked out a healthy “human-nature-relationship” can do more than blather incoherently (or eschew all guides and forward references) in service to a kind of naturalistic Boddhisatva vow — that we will not take our exploitative comforts and pleasures [for granted] until all humans and creatures and life can live in alignment with “nature”.

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Defining Ecopsychology, Part 1

by Robert Greenway

There is no common definition of “ecopsychology” —  to many,  in and out of academia,  it has come to mean any or all of the following:   a kind of “pop psychology” or quasi therapy that helps ease fears about the decline of “the natural world”;   just about any kind of environmental-social or environmental-political topic;   gardening, hikes in the wilderness,  fishing —  anything having to do with “humans” and “nature”  (with “nature” usually meaning something separate from humans).  Etc.
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The Environment: Comment from a Reader

Greetings,

I think we, all of us, ought to consider a little deeper our prolific use of the term the environment. This term suggests and fosters an attitude characterized by the belief / perception that nature is simply an object that exists somewhat separately from human beings. I would like to challenge everyone to consider using or coming up with other terms, terms instead that reflect the critically integrated relationship between human and nature, terms that will bring our thinking and being in line with that which we truly are part of like our own hearts being critically dependent on our own minds. When we say the environment we say that we are not part of it and thus that we are not a part of nature. The fact is that we are nature and our survival and thrival is dependent upon an understanding of this for  existence past, present and future.

To survive and thrive we need to accept, not fear,  the reality that it is not the environment we are trying to “save” but our selves. “Save the Humans” is a hauntingly apt t-shirt slogan I once saw.

Thank you for reading. I wonder if you are aware of others who have directly addressed the the use of the term the environment and how it inherently fosters further rift between us and nature. If so, I would greatly appreciate you letting me know about it.

Thank you.

Grady Sindlinger
Vancouver, Canada

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Imaginal.com.au

Have a look at imaginal.com.au, a great website by Peter Brandis with short articles on ecopsychology exploring the interactions and interconnectedness of nature/ soul/ self.

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The Living Body

by Sophia Reinders

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Poem in Ochre

by Sophia Reinders
Read articles by Sophia

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Wind of February

by Chitola Utsanami

The wind entered through the sills and our nostrils
Plundering our hearth.

You could see it earlier that morning
Raising an army of snow into drifts and then walls.

The fox and the deer felt this army before.
One went into a deep musky den, the other made a shallow bed under a
shield of fir, fur and fear.

No creature was safe.  No one was immune to its progress.
Even a low bearing vole would not dare bore holes in such a snow. Continue Reading →

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Palimpsest

photo by Heather Zeng, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Psychology
Park University
www.park.edu

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Deep Ecology: Steps to a new worldwiew

L’Ecologia Profonda – eBook

Lineamenti per una nuova visione del mondo
Author: Guido Dalla Casa

Price: € 5,90

Summary in English:  Deep Ecology. Steps to a new worldwiew. Pangea, 1996 – Arianna, 2008 (Ebook)

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Educating, Counseling and Healing With Nature

Natural Attraction Ecology and The Web of Life Model:  Planet Earth Speaks Through 53 Natural Senses For Personal, Social and Environmental Well-Being, by Michael J Cohen

In his new sensory environmental science book, Educating, Counseling and Healing With Nature, Michael J. Cohen, Ph.D, demonstrates through a web-of-life ecology model that we inherit at least 53 natural senses and that they guide us to live in peaceful balance with Planet Earth’s global ecosystem and each other. The book documents from our human experience that, to our loss, Industrial Society’s seldom-acknowledged prejudice against nature-and-the-natural  socializes us to injure and suppress most of these natural senses. This disturbance underlies many disorders we suffer.

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Trekking in the Wood


by M. Ivana Trevisani Bachand

Far tramples
of hidden animals
on withered foliage.

The shadow of a shadow,
imperceptible,
brushes against me,
while I’m walking in the wood.

The sigh
of Life,
for a moment,
blows,
lightly,
on my life.

Visit M Ivana’s website for more “ecopoetry”, written in both English and Italian. The “Manifesto” page is particularly interesting.


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