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Mental Vitality: Assessing the Impact of a Walk in the Woods

In this article, Mark Bowen presents an abridged version of his 2016 doctoral thesis entitled, “Mental Vitality: Assessing the Impact of a Walk in the Woods”.

The thesis attends to a gap in literature pertaining to studying nature and late adolescence.  In particular, Dr. Bowen mentioned that “this study measured one aspect of mental vitality, that of mental acuity in 16-18 year old students at an international school. Using the d2 Test of Attention to measure the impact of regular nature walks, this study found a significant improvement in participants’ mental acuity after a regular, twice weekly, 40 to 60 minute duration nature walk intervention.”

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Ayahuasca as Treatment Modality

The Ayahuasca Ceremony as a Viable Treatment Modality
by Mel Falck, Appalachian State University

The ayahuasca ceremony is an ancient shamanic custom that is gaining popularity and acceptance amongst many in the western world. Some are turning towards this sacramental ritual in order to acquire healing, wisdom, and insight, in the hopes of obtaining some glimmer of hope and respite from a culture that seems to alienate us from ourselves, our communities, and our planet. This paper explores the potentiality for healing that this sacred and ancient ceremony offers to modern day humans.

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Creating a Safe Environment for our Birds

Boris Smokrovic

This piece was submitted by “Sally Writes” after reading a study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggesting that humans are pushing the 6th great extinction. She wrote, “Part of this is overpopulation and overconsumption, but part is accidental. One area where we’re harming the environment is with our windows, which kill millions of birds each year. As the Content Manager for a small window cleaning service, I felt it important we cover this topic.”

Birds, like all other creatures on this planet, are essential to the natural balance of the ecosystem. They pollinate our plants to enable fertilization and reproduction. They give trees the chance to colonize new areas by assuming an active role in successful seed dispersal and regeneration. They transport the nutrients found in soil from one place to another and play a hugely important role in agricultural systems by regulating the number of pests.

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A Field Guide to Container Gardening

Photo from huffingtonpost.com

It might seem strange to talk about container gardening in February (at least, for people who live in the middle of winter at the moment), but for those who are interested in creating a container garden it is worthwhile to prepare for plant health and growth in a context bounded by containers.

This Field Guide to Container Gardening covers topics such as appropriate soil, types of containers, plants that thrive in vessels, as well as demystifying this kind of gardening by comparing the benefits and differences between in-ground beds and container gardens.

Using very accessible language and beautiful pictures, read more about container gardening by clicking on this link.  Continue Reading →

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The Sensuous Kinship of Body and Earth

 

In this article which appeared in the March 2017 issue of the Ecopsychology Journal, Sophia Reinders asks us a compelling question:

“How can we bring into being in ourselves and in our communities a consciousness that is earth-cherishing and aware of the planet as the living matrix in which all earth communities, including the human, are embedded and have their ground?”

The manner in which the author suggests that we go forward is poetically derived from her own experiences of oneness with nature as she beautifully recounts her embodiment of a coyote’s song and melding with the fragrance of the morning.  Using these examples, the author asks us to go beyond contemplation and gently invites us to act by “sensory reception” and “intuitive perception”.  She suggests that, as we re-awaken “our ancient capacity to be enchanted with the mystery that has given birth to us and surrounds us… we may begin to listen to the ancient dialogue of body and earth”.

Sophia’s full article may be found at http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/pdf/10.1089/eco.2016.0035

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This article first appeared in the March 2017 issue of the Ecopsychology Journal, which regularly features articles free of charge to the public for a limited period of time.

Acknowledgement for featured image: “Coyote Leaping” by John Nieto, 24″ x 30″ acrylic.  Available at Ventana Fine Art, 400 Canyon Road, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501

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Re-Humanizing Nature

Re-Humanizing Nature (PDF, 123K) by Ian Johnstone

“The meaning of things lies not in things themselves, but in our attitudes to them.”
~ Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Australian Ian Johnstone’s long (24 pages), thoughtful article utilizes the language of poetry (and excerpts from the best of nature writing) in an impassioned plea for :re-humanizing” nature. Written in 2014, Johnstone’s argument is about the dehumanization that an exclusively scientific perception and language has wrought, and the many ways he sees for re-humanizing our relationship with the natural world – a topic as relevant now as it was then.

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Embodying Nature

How do we quiet the monkey mind and receive our environment? And once we are in relationship with place, how do we engage and interact?

Embodying Nature Download PDF (93K), by Jamie McHugh
In this somatic and expressive approach to becoming more fully human as elemental creatures, Jamie McHugh combines the technologies of breath, vocalization, contact, movement and stillness to occupy the soma/psyche, open the portals of perception and invite in the spirit of place. He discovers how tree, rock, sky, and water reflect aspects of our being through this sensory-motor encounter.

Author Bio: Jamie McHugh is a somatic coach, dancer, and artist living on the California coast. The creator of Somatic Expression® – Body Wisdom for Modern Minds, Jamie has guided somatic-expressive encounters with the natural world for the past 25 years in Europe and the United States.

Photos of Jamie McHugh by Gregory Bartning

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Home Life Could Be Simpler

Home Life Could Be Simpler:  
Perceptions of Home Among Married Couples While Staying at an Eco-lodge

Dr. Tal Litvak Hirsch, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Israel
Dr. Alon Lazar, Independent scholar

Eco Lodge NegevAbstract
Individuals relate to their homes in a myriad of ways. The current study suggests that in order to expand our understanding of people’s perceptions of “home” it would be beneficial to also consider these perceptions when individuals are on vacation, and especially in locations in which living arrangements are very different from their homes. Inspection of the perceptions of married Jewish-Israeli couples who holidayed at an eco-lodge in the Israeli desert revealed that the disparity between the two abodes was generally positive and similar. The wives were more prone to point out that the stay at the eco-lodge, led them to consider the possibility of conducting their homes in a simpler manner. The results are discussed in light of social behavior , connectivity to nature and consumerism.

FOR MORE
Download a PDF of the full article – Home life could be simpler
Download a PDF of Tables – Home life could be simpler – Tables

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Being moved from Entitlement to Enlightenment

2014 enlightened-consumerAn article by Jonathan Stein

“Sadly, most people in the western world remain in denial of their inherent interconnection with all of life, merely through their avoidance of anything that remotely reminds them of their mortality (pain, discomfort, suffering, etc.), and they endure, much to the detriment of The Whole, self-selectively abdicating the responsibilities of their true nature as rescuers with a deep and powerful purpose. Instead, most wait, hoping that somebody or something “out there” will come and make everything all better again.  Awakening in this time of crisis requires a more courageous response. It involves choosing to become conscious of the deleterious effects of one’s own sense of entitlement and how it is contributing to destroying life on planet Earth.” – Jonathan Stein

Read the article here – being moved from entitlement to enlightenment

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The Biophilia Hypothesis & Mental Health

This provocative piece questioning the association between ecopsychology and biophilia was submitted by Douglas Radmore, undergraduate student of Criminology and Psychology at the University of Brighton, Sussex (England):

The concept of biophilia is a prevalent one within ecopsychology and is implicated in many theories within the school (White & Keerwagen, 2013). This article will take a brief look into the implications of biophilia and biophobia on our everyday mental wellbeing, with particular focus on disgust based biophobic reactions and their cultural implications.

Download the entire article in pdf format, here: Examination of the Biophilia Hypothesis and its implications for Mental Health.

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How Ecology Informs Transpersonal Psychology

flowering_shooting_starsSan Francisco bay area psychotherapist Mark Johnson wrote a great post in his blog, Empathy and Essence: When Therapy Awakens Your Divine Nature, on “How Ecology Informs Transpersonal Psychology”.

Here’s an excerpt from Johnson’s psychologically and spiritually astute post, which quotes from a wide variety of spiritual, psychological and nature-based thinkers from Joanna Macy to Oscar Ichazo:

How we perceive the outer world and the way it works largely determines how we view our inner world and its movement and change. If we have been raised in the Western world, educated and enculturated in its scientific mindset, we will tend to see the Universe as mechanistic, random or accidental, infinitely complex but ultimately reducible to finite, material components and energies, and forever stressed between opposing and competing forces.

This prevailing view directly colors how the human psyche is perceived…

Read the rest of his post, here.

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Introduction to Ecotherapy

from Beth Lapin

Because of its relative newness, many people are not aware of ecotherapy nor do they have an understanding of it. I have recently completed two outreach efforts to broaden the public’s understanding and appreciation of this emerging field. I’d welcome any feedback about either of them, available through the hotlinks below.

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Solomon Benatar’s Forward to “Billy Beaver: An Environmental Allegory”

photography by Amy Lenzo

photo by Amy Lenzo

Some years ago Michael Aleksiuk submitted a pdf of his book ‘Billy Beaver: An Environmental Allegory‘ to Gatherings.  Its premise is that the human striving for status is at the psychological roots of environmental degradation. This ‘children’s story’ has been heartily endorsed by academics and scholars worldwide as a breakthrough in understanding. It is still available in the Gatherings Archives of Jan 05 – December 05.

All those years ago Solomon Benatar was invited to write a foreword to ‘Billy Beaver’ and he tracked us down so that we can include his foreword here with the original story; download and read his work here: Billy Beaver Foreword.

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Recovering the Eco-Unconscious

Desert Flower

Photo by: Amy Lenzo

by Robin E. Gates

Abstract: Western culture has a history of union and subsequent separation from nature. This split between spirit and nature, psyche and soma, intellect and emotion, science, philosophy, and religion, manifests in our individual and collective consciousness creating crises that span the spectrum of human experience, from the psychological to the environmental. Since we have within our unconscious, memories of our being in union with nature, it is a matter of recovering them through what Carl Jung called the individuation process; whereby, a person develops one’s unique individuality from that which has been imposed on him or her from the environment. An expansion of consciousness and recovery of the eco-unconscious is achieved by the confrontation with and integration of unconscious material culminating in coniunctio, or union of the opposites….Read Article

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A Winter Meditation on Pruning…

By Linda Buzzell-Saltzman, previously published in The Huffington Post as “The Zen of Pruning” , 1/16/12.

Winter and early spring are the seasons when many gardeners, orchardists and farmers — fancying themselves surgeons — approach their trees, shrubs and roses with knives, pruning shears and saws in hand, seemingly unaware that these plants are, as the Buddhists would say, sentient beings.

Most pruning is less a conversation between two of nature’s creatures and more an act of ruthless domination under the guise of necessity. Continue Reading →

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