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        How To Let Earth Teach Its Process, Wisdom and
        Peace:
                   A Message From Dr. Robert Muller.

In recognition of my 39 years as Assistant Secretary General of
the United Nations, my establishment of the University for Peace
and development of global education schools, books and
curriculums, I received the Albert Schweitzer Peace Prize and the
UNESCO Prize for Peace.  My experiences and the disturbing state
of the world show me that we must not shy from new opportunities
to relate more responsibly to each other and the environment.

One such opportunity has just come to light.  Dr. Michael J.
CohenUs remarkable article in the Autumn 1993 issue of THE
HUMANISTIC PSYCHOLOGIST, a division journal of the American
Psychological Association, offers a dramatic tool for building
responsible personel and environmental relationships.  The
article, "Integrated Ecology: The Process of Counseling With
Nature," describes unique sensory techniques used in education,
mental health and recovery programs.  They reduce apathy and
stress, they catalyze balance within and about us.

I am familiar with Dr. Cohen and his ecopsychology work.  It
fulfills our economic needs, deeper ideals and spirit.  His
scientific, self-guiding materials deserve the attention of every
person who seeks to reverse our troubles.

I urge you to consider Dr. Cohen's article and bring about
awareness of its publication and contents.  To this end, I have
have asked Dr. Cohen to post its Abstract and Summary below
followed by the full article when copyright arrangements so
permit.     Until then the article is available in  hard copy from
Article, Box 4112, Roche Harbor WA. 98250 [phone].


Dr. Robert Muller, Chancellor University for Peace United Nations

P.S. Please network and/or post the above message.  Thank you.
MJC


                                        * * * * *

                Abstract and Summary

                INTEGRATED ECOLOGY:

                THE PROCESS OF COUNSELING WITH NATURE,

                by Michael J. Cohen, Ed.D.  World Peace
                University

                The Humanistic Psychologist  Autumn 1993, Vol. 21,
                No.3.
                 An American Psychological Association Journal



                                ABSTRACT

Whenever our nature-estranged thinking aggrevates our inherent
multitude of natural senses and feelings, it creates the stress
that underlies most of our personal, social and environmental
problems.  This stress further estranges us from experiencing
nature's wise, self-balancing unconditional love within and about
us.  A new integrated ecology training program uniquely addresses
this great challenge to the educational and psychological
community.  Ecopsychologically counseling students in natural
areas over a thirty year period has produced 97 unique nature-
connecting activities that renew over 49 inherent sensory
fulfillments.  Dramatically, the activities induce critical
thinking while in natural areas. They let our natural inborn
feelings of love and understanding express and validate
themselves.  This process catalyzes responsible relationships by
rationally filling the sensory voids which fuel our apathy,
dysfunction, and dependencies.  It gives natural areas added value
as rejuvenators of our biological and spiritual integrity.

                                SYNOPSIS

All people are feelingfully connected.  We enjoy the same
migrating birds and whales, the same air and water.  We love our
beautiful landscapes, humanness and spectacular home, our living
planet, Earth.  It is our sensitivities to and from the natural
world that connect, sustain and rejuvenate us. Culturing them has
shown to create wise responsible people(s).

 Although a delicate wildflower delights us and our pets or house
plants give us pleasure, society seldom teaches us that we neither
learn or earn the ability to enjoy our rewarding natural feelings.
We inherit this gift.  At birth we, and most other living things,
biologically inherit at least 53 different natural sensory
attractions.  They are nature's way of building relationships, of
non-verbally sensing, knowing and enjoying life.  They include
pervasive natural  sensativities like taste, sound, community,
nurturing, place, compassion, reason, trust, music, hunger,
empathy, language and belonging.  Each natural sense feelingfully
conveys and integrates our vital natural connections.

Today, thirty years of all-season outdoor education, counseling
and research in over 260 national parks, forests and sub-cultures
offers the public a new science and learning process called
Integrated Ecology.  It uses personal sensory contact with natural
areas, in backyards, parks or back country, to unleash our natural
ability to relate and survive responsibly.  Integrated Ecology
teaches us to critically think about making sense of our natural
lives.  Rationally, it sustains our good feelings by sentiently
connecting our inner nature to its wise, balanced natural origins
and integrity, the nature of a person, natural place or thing. The
World Peace University, a non-governmental organization of the
United Nations, trains counselors, educators and students to use
Integrated Ecology's self-guiding, home study methods and
materials in schools, counseling and environmental education.
Dramatically, the applied ecopsychology program intensifies the
sensory communication and support that pervades self, society and
nature.

                        Building responsible relationships:

Integrated Ecology recognizes that biologically and feelingfully,
we and the natural world are "Us" for we are as connected to each
other as is our leg to our body.  Us is our own and every other
person's true inner nature bound to Us, the natural world,
Creation's unadulterated nature.  Learning to tangibly connect
with Us connects us to our origins.  It enables us to feelingfully
measure information, sensations and behaviors by their natural
attractiveness and long term effects. We  learn to  amalgamate
with our deeper natural attractions, sensations and ideals, to
more responsibly organize our daily lives.

Us within and about us has immense wisdom but no spoken or written
language.  Because Us organizes, preserves and regenerates itself
without producing garbage i.e.  without leaving out anything or
anybody, Us is unconditional love in action.  When undisturbed, Us
globally approaches an ever-changing, self-regulating perfection,
an optimum of life and diversity without waste, war, or pollution;
without excessive crime, insanity, stress, unhappiness and
violence.  When we learn to let Us express itself within or about
us, Us heals scarred landscapes as well as our personal bruises,
emotional wounds and destructive relationships.  Every species and
individual biologically inherits this wise non-verbal blueprint.
Individuals and societies that culture it function harmoniously.

                                Disintegrating Us:

 As a twig is bent, so grows the tree.  We are biologically
conceived of the love, wisdom and integrity of Us, as sentient
nature-connected organisms.  Because we predicate our survival on
the conquest of nature, our society educates and pays us to
assault Us.  Our authorities teach us to spend, on average, over
95% of our lives indoors, excessively separated from nature.
Collectively, we spend less than 1 day per person per lifetime in
tune with natural areas.  We live over 99% of our adult lives
knowing the non-languaged natural world through abstract words,
facts and pictures about it, not through enjoyable sensory
connections with it.  We learn to estrange ourselves from Us
within and about us, from natural love, support and beauty.  Being
born and raised bewildered (wilderness-severed) assaults our
thinking and our inner nature, the totally loving little child
within us.  Losing feelingful support from our multitude of
natural attraction fulfillments stresses us.  Bewildered, we
helplessly seek help from equally nature-estranged helpers.

In America alone, stress resulting from our excessive nature
disconnection causes 44 million of us to suffer from the apathy
that leads to acute mental disorders, drug abuse and low self-
esteem.  Our stressed immune systems invite diseases that further
stress us.  Stress dissolves 50% of our marriages and erodes the
love in many others.  It fuels the irrationality of alcoholism,
greed, cigarette smoking and violence.  The cost: 500,000 deaths
per year and $250 billion spent from the health care system.  Over
70% of our medical problems are stress related.  We are not
islands.  As we remain estranged from Us, our negative social and
environmental indicators rise.  In the last decade we spent over
100 billion dollars in the war on drugs alone, yet  because
nature-estranged education, psychologies and therapies don't
address our estrangement, more people are addicted now than a
decade ago.

                                The process:

Our biggest problem is the nature-estrangement of our thinking.
It seldom recognizes that most stress results from the painful
tearing of our inherent sensory bonds with Us, it seldom values
re-connecting with nature.  Not surprisingly, Integrated Ecology
nature-connecting activities dispel stress and apathy because they
feelingfully rejoin people to their natural origins.  Each
activity lets our critical thinking create a nature-sensitive
moment.  During that special moment, our assaulted natural senses
rejuvenate, strengthen and gain fulfillment from Us.  We
automatically think more sensibly.  Additional sensory activities
reinforce this process,  Ensuing ideas, feelings and
understandings motivate natural sharing, community and
interpersonal support.  We feel better and gain new confidence.
We revive, we begin to relate more responsibly.  For this reason
Integrated Ecology finds a home in the fields of counseling,
education, science teaching, spirituality, recovery, peace and
natural history.  Native elders call it "Indigenous Peoples'
science" and "Awakening the Great Spirit within."  The hands-on
activities work because fully connecting with a wild rose offers
12 times more multi-sensory aliveness, wisdom and rewards than
does just seeing its photograph or reading about it.

                             Environmental integrity:

 Integrated Ecology lets counseling and education make a
desperately needed contribution to environmental awareness and
responsibility.  It releases our excessive dependence on
destructive artifacts and re-bonds us to the joys of natural
wisdoms and areas.  Too often, our limited indoor thinking teaches
us to only trust environmentally limited ideas.  For example, when
we learn to mostly know a natural area as economically valuable
raw materials or square feet of real estate, we tend to sense it
as an expendable, exploitable, economic object, a commodity or
resource to develop or improve for progress.  This differs from
equally sensing a natural area as a personal fulfillment; friend;
profound mother; natural wisdom and community; unconditional love;
our other body; spirit and healing in action or un-edited higher
power.  The values we assign to natural areas have vastly
different long term effects on them.  Tangible sensory contact
with Us motivates and gives credence to protecting the natural
world.

To believe that we can find lasting peace and sanity while
continuously injured by our estrangement from the natural
environment defines madness.  Through sensory nature connecting
seminars, workshops, courses and home study training materials,
Integrated Ecology enables the perfection and powers of Us to help
reflect and correct our estrangement and its discontents.  It
encourages our reasoning and language abilities to seek and
validate attractive connections with the natural world.  We
discover responsible stories and sensations that move us.  We
begin to walk our talk, to live in our ideals and the peace of
Us.

For further information contact "worldpeaceu"
([e-mail])  [phone].




INTEGRATED ECOLOGY: THE PROCESS OF COUNSELING WITH  NATURE

Michael J. Cohen.  World Peace University January 5,1994

From: The Humanistic Psychologist, Journal of the Division of
Humanistic Psychology American Psychological Association Autumn,
1993

Every moment of our lives, often without being aware of it, we
relate to the world through multisensory perceptions shaped by our
previous experiences.   Dramatically, in August 1966, while deep
in the bowels of the Grand Canyon National Park, a thunderstorm's
fury vitalized my scientific perceptions.  For me, the world
changed forever.  The storm fused my Newtonian and biological
explanations of Earth's grandeur, landscapes and processes.  When
the sky cleared, in the sun's new light I deeply sensed Planet
Earth as more than mechanical cause and effect relationships.
Rather, it appeared to organize, regulate, preserve and regenerate
itself, to act like a living being .  That unique perception
carved my destiny.  In 1985, I conceived  the National Audubon
Society international symposium "Is the Earth a Living Organism?"
It not only  scientifically substantiated my Grand Canyon
impressions, it laid the foundations for the study of Integrated
Ecology.  That science offers profound additives to counseling
psychology (Cohen, 1988).

Guided by my living earth perceptions, in September, 1984, a
yellow school bus and its occupants embarked on a 9-month living
and learning expedition.  Outfitted with camping gear and a small
library, it departed from Albany, New York carrying 20 students,
my staff and me to a  personal and academic growth utopia (Cohen,
1974).  It began my 16th year sleeping out under storms and bright
stars year round; camping exploring and teaching in America's
natural areas. This all-season, consensus-governed, outdoor-living
program I founded in 1959,  immersed its intimate school community
in critical thinking, rich interpersonal experiences and natural
wonders.  Participants thrived in 83 different natural habitats
and from keeping their commitments to open, honest relationships
with the natural environment, each other and with indigenous
people(s), researchers, ecologists, the Amish, organic farmers,
anthropologists, folk musicians,   naturalists,   shamans,
administrators, historians and many others.   The experience
deeply connected our inner nature to the whole of nature

As a result of our  romance with educating ourselves this way, in
the school community:

Chemical dependencies, including alcohol and tobacco, disappeared
as did destructive social relationships.

Personality and eating disorders subsided.

Violence, crime and prejudice were unknown in the group.

Academics improved because they were applicable, hands-on and fun.


Loneliness, hostility and depression  subsided.  Group
interactions allowed for stress release and management; each day
was fulfilling and relatively peaceful.

Students using meditation found they no longer needed to use it to
feel good.

Participants knew each other better than they knew their families
or best friends.

Participants risked expressing and acting from their deeper
thoughts and feelings; a profound sense of social and
environmental responsibility guided their decisions.

When vacation periods arrived, nobody wanted to go home. Each
person  enjoyably worked to build this supportive, balanced living
and learning utopia. They were home.

All this occurred simply because every community member met their
commitment to make sense of their lives by establishing
relationships that supported the natural world within and around
them.  We hunted, gathered and practiced such relationships; we
organized and preserved group living processes that awakened our
natural wisdoms.  We learned to regenerate responsible
relationships when they decayed.  The secret to our success was to
learn how to learn directly from the natural world, the living
earth within and about us.  Through natural sensations and
feelings it taught us how to trust it, how to validate and
incorporate its wisdom.  From 30 years of all-season travel and
study in over 260 national parks, forests and sub-cultures, I
developed a  learning process and psychology that unleashed our
natural ability to grow and survive responsibly.  By documenting
that it worked repeatedly and could be taught,  I earned my
doctoral degree; the school became a small graduate and
undergraduate degree program.

To share my discovery with the public, in 1988 I encapsulated my
nature-connected psychology in a series of 97 award winning
sensory backyard and back country activities (Cohen, 1988, 1990,
1993).   At the World Peace University, a non-governmental
organization of the United Nations,  I established, and presently
chair, the Department of Integrated Ecology.  The department
trains counselors, educators and students to incorporate these
revolutionary nature-connecting activities in their work and
lives.  The simple, fun activities benefit peopleof all ages and
backgrounds.  Uniquely, they revitalize innate sensory
communication and support between a person and the natural world.
Nature connecting activities balance our lives by letting natural
connectiveness identify and be our common cause.   By reducing
stress while inducing  participation, the activities promote
recovery from destructive habits, dependencies and dysfunction.
Today professionals use them to augment counseling, 12-step,
hospice, stress management,  conflict resolution, self- esteem,
and environmental education programs  (Cohen, 1993).   They enable
us to follow JobUs suggestion: "Speak to the Earth and it will
teach thee."


Us: Identifying our essence

Because Integrated Ecology honors the responsible, ever-changing
perfection of the global life community, it studies the fabric of
that community's ability to relate and grow harmoniously through
natural attractions.  That fabric, which we each biologically
inherit, unifies life relationships rather than further
subdividing Earth into isolated academic and institutional
cubbyholes.  In reality and imagination integrated ecology returns
us to our origins.  There we critically measure information,
procedures and behaviors by their natural attractiveness and long
term effects.  We then, moment by moment, responsibly organize and
balance our relationships by amalgamating our natural attractions.


An essence of integrated ecology is the use of Us, a singular,
powerful, culturally familiar symbol.  In scientific, educational
and spiritual ways, Us lastingly awakens and supports the dormant
harmonic unity of global wholeness that lies within us.  Critical
thinking, research and history about Us enjoins most personal,
intercultural and interspecies relationships.  Eclectically, Us
bridges the destructive gaps between religion and science by
reinforcing what these two ways of thinking hold in common.

The spiritual view of Us respects that most western people believe
the following account:  During the sixth day of creation, (Genesis
1:26) before people are created, The Creator speaks with somebody
or some things present.   The Creator refers to us  and our  on
that sixth day saying "Let us  make man in our image, after our
likeness:S  Who is this us and our?  Since people have not yet
been created, The Creator canUt be speaking to humanity.  All that
exists at that moment is The Creator and His or Her creation.  For
this reason, God may be speaking to "His spirit moving upon the
face of the waters, to Earth and everything that creepth upon the
earth." (Genesis 1-25).   This suggests that Us is the natural
world that exists in ourselves and the environment.  Us is God's
nature, spirit and love.

New research affirms that natural people and natural areas are Us.
For example, researchers now report that the word "Indians" comes
from Columbus calling the benign, nature-connected new world
people he met "en Dios" -with God.  The sciences of Biology,
Paleontology, Geology, Physics, Anthropology and Philosophy as
well as most cultures and religions agree that the human species
did not create, but rather arose from and after the natural world
was already established.  This aligns with spiritual outlooks.  It
suggests that we are a seamless continuum and likeness of Us,
having Rone Breath.S (Ecclesiastes 3-19).  Scientifically, God
making man out of dust from the soil (Genesis 2:7) to create human
being also confirms Us.  The word human has its roots in humus, a
fertile forest soil.  Just one teaspoon of humus consists of
water, minerals and many other species: five million bacteria,
twenty million fungi, one million protozoa and two hundred
thousand algae.  This coincides with our bodies containing water,
minerals and ten times as many cells of non- human species as
human cells.  Over half our body weight consists of the weight of
RforeignS microorganism species; over 115 different species alone
live on our skin.  In addition, natural attractions make the
natural world physically flow through us.  Every 5-7 years every
molecule in our body attracts and is replaced, atom by atom, by
new molecules from the environment.  Constantly, the natural world
becomes us, we become it.  Furthermore, scientists observe that a
shared global balancing mechanism guides and integrates us and
every other natural being.

>From these interdisciplinary findings, Integrated Ecology views
our lives and nature as Us.  Us and we are each other.  Us is our
own and every other personUs true inner nature bound to Us, the
natural world, God's unadulterated nature.   This helps explain
why most of the world's great leaders "received the word" by
spending long periods of time in wilderness, "en dios".

Each of us is naturally born as Us, free of cultural stories and
dogma.  I and others gain harmonious wisdom as we rationally
choose to connect with Us in ourselves, others and the
environment.  By culturing our connectedness with Us, we enjoy
peace with the whole (Holy) of nature found in ourselves, others
and the land.  We feel upset when we hurt any part of Us, for we
feel that hurt.  Because we recognize the validity of Us, we
validate our hurt feelings and their messages as well as our good
feelings.  Through this process our inner pain enjoins with our
natural attractions.  Together, they guide us to live responsibly
for our pain not only subsides as our natural trespasses subside,
it is replaced by joy.


The wisdom of Us

I have been trained as a scientist.  When hearing about, but not
experiencing Us, some say IUve been in the woods too long and it
shows.  However, I suggest we measure my experiences with Us by
their long term effects.  When I compare these effects to the
personal and global effects of our excessively nature-separated
society,  I conclude that most of us have not yet been in the
woods long enough.  Decades of outdoor sensory learning and
research show me that Us has no spoken or written language.
Although functionally illiterate, Us is a beautiful, intelligent
global life community that exists within and around us.  Us
survives by continually organizing, preserving and regenerating
all of itself, including people(s) that heed and respect its
callings.  When undisturbed, Us globally approaches an
ever-changing, self-regulating, balanced perfection, an optimum of
life and diversity without garbage, war, or pollution; without
excessive crime, insanity, stress, unhappiness and violence.  When
allowed to express itself, Us heals scarred landscapes as well as
our personal bruises, emotional wounds and destructive
relationships.  With the exception of our cultural training to
separate from, rather than embrace Us, we are to the natural world
as our leg is to our body.   For this reason, what happens to the
natural world happens to us and vice versa.  You see, it is no
coincidence that our personal, social and environmental problems
escalate in unison.


The underlying problem.

Most problems result from the difference between how Us works and
the way our cultural conditioning teaches us to think.  Our
thinking is based on language stories, it seldom incorporates the
non-languaged globally supportive ways of Us.  We survive by
believing a misguided spoken and written cultural story.  It says
"To survive, conquer Us.  Constantly grind Us into grist for
building an overprotective indoor world."  However, since we are
Us, as we separate from, conquer and hurt Us in the environment,
we do the same to Us in ourselves.  Us within us senses painful
natural relationship ruptures, abandonment from the whole of Us.
We suffer stressful feelings that limit our participation in
relationships.  That stress and  apathy often produce dysfunction
and continual cravings for support and pacification.  Society
teaches us to fulfill these cravings through further involvement
and excellence in our misguided cultural stories and ways.  This
vicious circle is the core of our problems.

Degradation on many fronts conclusively demonstrates that our
cultural story misleads us.  To reverse it, integrated ecology
teaches a more reasonable story.  It says We may best sustain
ourselves by  being reasonable, by sensing, articulating,
validating and participating in Us, the whole of life.   To
accomplish this we must learn to hear, speak and respect Us's
non-verbal language with which we are born.  Us in us knows it.
Indeed, every species and individual biologically inherits this
blueprint.  By using critical thinking, integrated ecology makes
us aware in reason and language of what we already know inherently
in our other natural sensitivities.

>From early in our lives, our authorities seldom teach us to
nurture Us.  Out of respect, fear or dependency, we habitually
internalize our authorities and their conquering ways in our
thinking.  Throughout our lives, within and about us, they and
their stories thwart, rather than encourage, connections with Us.
Studies show that out of habit, internal and external authority
forces compel the average American to spend over 95% of his or her
life indoors.  Laws require that we spend almost 18,000
developmental childhood hours in classrooms alone.  Collectively,
we spend less than one day per person per lifetime in tune with
the natural world.  We live over 98% of our adult lives abstractly
knowing Us through detached stories about Us rather than through
intimate contact with and enjoyment of the fullness of Us.

Studies show that people born and raised in a closet have and
cause problems resulting from traumatic sensory deprivation.  Hurt
and unspirited, even when liberated from their confines, closeted
people fearfully cling to their closeted ways.  How different are
we from them?  Born and raised bewildered (wilderness-severed) in
a nature-isolated closet, our growth and development bonds us to
indoor authorities, artifacts, stories and isolation, not to Us in
ourselves, others and the natural world.   Our sensory
deprivation, fear and ignorance of Us stressfully engineers our
nature.  It aggravates and deteriorates our inborn awareness of
Us.  Even when outdoors, we habitually think and act in ways
foreign to the natural world.   Bewildered, we helplessly seek
help from equally closeted, helpless helpers.  How can we more
effectively deal with our nature-estranged imprisonment and its
adverse effects?

The substance of integrated ecology.

Let reason prevail.  To be part of a system, any being must
somehow be in communication with that system.  Otherwise, that
being has no clue what the system is doing and vice versa, so it
canUt be part of it.  Indisputably, Us on Planet Earth is a global
life system of which people are part.  Therefore, it must
communicate with us and vice versa.  How?  It communicates with us
in the same way that it communicates with every other species and
mineral, through natural attractions and affinities.  We register
them through our natural senses and feelings including our senses
of reasoning  and language.  However, since our cultural survival
programming says "conquer nature," we educate ourselves to remove
most of nature's feelingful callings from our thinking.  We
disconnect from them by demeaningly labeling them "the little
child within us,"  "immaturity,'  "subjective," "unreasonable,"
"emotionality," "impulsiveness," "unscientific," "dirty,"
"satanic," "neurotic," etc.  These labels hide nature's biological
rights and cries for compassion, mercy and equality within and
about us.  The labels not only encourage our habitual disconnected
thinking, our closeted reasoning and language senses, to assault
Us within and without, but by injuring our natural sensitivities
the labels immunize our thinking from the hurtful outrageous
effects of its assault on Us.

The discipline of Integrated Ecology reverses our painfulful
disconnectedness from Us.  It recognizes that we will not teach
the natural world to speak English, so it makes sense for us to
learn nature's unspoken language.   In each of us that language
consists of good natural feelings.  Creating many kinds of
enjoyable feelings for natural attractions is how Us in us makes
sense at every moment and level.  Reasonably relating to Us
unleashes these good feelings. They entice our sense of reason to
demand that we continue our enjoyable, reasonable sensory
relationships with Us.  Motivated by the joys of being reasonable,
we commit ourselves to further enjoying (enjoining) Us.  Through
this process, Us becomes a tangible, trustable authority in our
lives.  It lets us discover the feelingful wisdom of Us within and
about us.  To this end, the World Peace University Department of
Integrated Ecology develops self-guiding nature-connecting
training materials, workshops, internships and dialogs.  They work
because connecting with a wild rose offers 12 times more multi-
sensory aliveness and integrity than does just seeing its
photograph.  They let Us itself validate and intensify our
rewarding sensory connections with Us.


About the University

Established in 1985, the World Peace University, a
non-governmental organization of the United Nations, educates for
peace, social justice, food sufficiency and environmental and
personal balance.  To stop our vicious circles of conquest, the
University inserts a peace component in all courses and
disciplines.  This differs from the tradition of offering learning
for learning's sake without effectively addressing the known or
possible adverse effects of what and how we learn.   Uniquely, the
University offers a unifying integrated ecology.  It enables
psychology and psychotherapy to heal the pain of our torn,
sentient natural bonds to Us by sensibly re-connecting these bonds
to their nurturing origins in Us.  The program offers
interpersonal activities in natural areas, activities based on
modern knowledge, omissions and problems,  not on those of other
times, places and  cultures.  It seems insane that some
authorities view the value of our nature-connecting methods and
materials as suspect, however, R. D. Laing noted: "Insanity is a
perfectly rational adjustment to an insane world."


The process: learning about us from Us.

Integrated Ecology not only enjoins people with Us, it also helps
us cope with internal and external forces that block enjoinment.
It works in the natural areas of parks, backyards or back country.
There, its activities reverse apathy, abandonment and disbelief by
creating thoughtful, nature-sensitive moments.  In these safe,
non-languaged periods participants attune with and are nurtured by
nature's non-verbal attractions and wisdom.  Embraced by Us, our
wanting, withdrawn natural senses awaken, play and intensify,
allowing us to think more sensibly.  Additional reinforcement
activities empower our reasoning and language skills to
articulate, strengthen and sustain these attractive sensations.
Repressed inborn feelings of love, balance  and understanding
blossom into awareness.   Natural self-respect, responsibility and
sanity crystallize new personal integrities.   The activities work
best when done with a facilitator and shared with others since it
is people's reasoning and approval that often allows us to learn,
as well as un-learn, our habit of devaluing our natural senses.


Some activities and their implications

 Our extreme indoor time and conditioning limits our thinking.  It
urges our 3 R's senses of sight, language and reason to create
stories that applaud our nature-closeted environment and
creativity.  We culture these 3 senses to dominate our perceptions
and thereby reinforce our separation from Us.   To offset their
dominance, an integrated ecology activity connects us directly
with Us by having participants limit their habitual dependency on
language, sight and memory while in a natural area.

Upon conclusion of the activity, participants share what they
sensed and felt.  Their non- verbal, non-sighted, non-reasoning,
non-judgmental experiences in the non-verbal natural world give
other parts of Us the opportunity to come into awareness.  Through
this activity alone, within ten minutes, a group of participants
usually validate that they experience over 35 different sensations
and feelings such as: fun, warmth, direction, heartbeat, silence,
trust, freedom, belonging, thankfulness, contentment, resonance,
peace, forms, hunger, balance, color, timelessness, beauty, love,
motion, purpose, direction, compassion, place, responsibility,
nurturing, community, belonging to a greater whole and many more.
Each of these senses is an aspect of Us in action.  A compiled
reaction is:  REach sense felt good, each was an attraction to Us
in the environment,  my partner and myself.  I was able to turn
off my internal dialog and sense that another world is here within
and around me, one that teaches beyond what I can imagine or
express.  That world felt interesting, inviting and serene; I
wanted to share it with my partner; I sensed an increasing
responsibility, trust and oneness with myself, my partner and
nature; I heard and felt more intensely.S

 Since Aristotle, our stories have taught us that we know and
learn from five senses: touch, taste, smell, sight  and sound.
>From my 30 years living in natural areas, my experiences with Us
and the research of others, tell me we biologically inherit, and
can know and learn from, not five, but over 53 distinct natural
senses and feelings.  But neither believe me nor documentation by
physiologists, behaviorists and other investigators.  For you,
what we report is just more mediation (Cohen, 1993;  Murchie,
1978; Pearce, 1980; Rivlin and Gravelle, 1984; Rovee-Collier,
1992; Samples, 1976; Sheppard, 1984; Spelke 1992; Wynne-Edwards,
1991).  I invite you to disregard us and simply trust your own
unedited sensations in natural areas.  DoesnUt Us endow you to
sense Hunger?  Thirst?  Compassion?  Place?  Nurturing?  Color?
Community?  Space?  Sex?  Language?  Gravity?  Form?  Motion?
Including our RnormalS five senses, this makes 18 different
senses.  And if this observation interests you, it indicates that
your sense of Reason  is alive and challenged.  ThereUs a minimum
of 34 more natural sense groups including:  Electromagnetism.
Direction.  Season.  Hormonal.  Distance.  Self.  Fatigue.  Trust.
Camouflaging.  Consciousness.  Music.  Esthetics.  Belonging to a
larger whole -a greater being.   Each natural sense is an
evolutionary memory, a distinct raw sensation, a feelingful
natural attraction, a unique inherent way of knowing and
registering relationships.   Each is a singular expression of
aliveness, being and surviving that pervades and connects nature
within and without.  These natural senses are of, by and from Us,
not humanity alone.  We inherit and share them with and through
the global life community; they interconnect the life-giving flow
of Us.

 Too often we teach our consciousness to mainly recognize labels
and stories.  We lose conscious contact with our natural
sensitivities and feelings when we learn to label them adversely.
However, no matter how we manipulate, label or redefine them, we
feel  natural senses.  To remind readers of this,  I italicize
each sense.   To gain conscious contact and enjoin with Us, we
must learn to validate, strengthen and heed each natural sensation
and feeling.

Sensory, non-languaged communication normally pervades
interconnects and balances the global life community; even
minerals display responsible attractions and sensitivities.  For
this reason it makes sense to spend connective time in natural
areas rather than with sensory-limited nature videos, imageries
and recordings.  Validating and strengthening the many natural
senses that a natural area awakens in us, connects us with the
reality of Us.  It offsets our limited indoor stories.  It allows
us to know Us as Us knows itself.


Sensing the unity of Us.

Each natural sense is a survival attraction that originates as Us
branches and diversifies.  For example, an organism living in the
sea has little need for sensing the equivalent of thirst.  But, if
an organism evolves as a land animal, a natural sensory attraction
similar to thirst simultaneously evolves in the genetic code to
connect the organism and water.  Without the essential
(e-sense-ial) sense (sic) to know or remember that it needs water,
the organism dies.  We register this network of raw sensory
attraction connections through our many anatomical,
neurophysiological and perceptual attributes.  Each natural sense
identifies some vital connection with Us.  That signal, like Us,
is always available in the Rnow,S the present moment, never the
imagined past or future.

Although we donUt know how plants, animals or minerals register
natural senses, we do know that we feel them.  We assign different
labels to our natural feelings.  We call them:  Attractions.
Loves.  Sensations.  Affinities.  Spirits.  Resonance.
Invitations.  Callings.  Intuitions.  God. Communications.
Affections.  Blessings.  Bonds.  Higher Power.  Christ
nature.Natural  wisdom. Us.   But no matter what we call them, our
natural senses and feelings are facts.  Senses and their good
feelings such as quenching our thirst, place and nurturing are as
scientific, real, true and provable as are rocks, water, and
pinching ourselves.  We are normally born with our natural senses
intact and healthy (Pierce, 1980); they constantly connect us to
unconditional pleasure and fulfillment in Us.   The fulfillment of
natural senses in  congress  produces responsibly balanced good
feelings and acts.   In contrast, single sense fulfillment alone,
or general non-fulfillment, frustrates responsible sensory
satisfaction.

Integrated Ecology recognizes that our natural senses and feelings
are our multiple personality, our array of selves, the true nature
of our Rinner child.S  Each natural sense has value for each makes
its special contribution to stability, survival and sanity.  Since
we didnUt invent natural senses and we canUt know them solely
through language, each sense mystifies our closeted awareness.
Each enriches our lives for as Albert Einstein said RThe most
beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious.  It is the
source of all true art and science." and "The foundation for inner
security is...to free ourselves from this prison by widening our
circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole
of nature and its beauty."

Although researchers continuously validate our natural
multi-sensory nature, its full significance remains unrecognized
because our cultureUs indoor story encourages us to conquer, not
validate, Us.  However, our demeaned natural senses are the vital
but missing facts in a responsible story about Us, about how and
when to best act where.  They are present in every infant, but we
neither respect, exercise or support them sufficiently.  As Carl
Jung noted, ROur feelings are not only reasonable, they are as
discriminating, logical and consistent as abstract thinking.S

The senses of reason, language and consciousness are approximately
12% of our inherent means to know and relate to Us.  Too often we
train these senses and their stories to dominate, rather than
nurture, the 49 other natural sense groups that make up the
remainder of our mind.  Too often society pays us well to do this,
even when we recognize that the stories misguide us.  Cigarette
advertising or stressful self expectations serve as examples.

Self regulation

One integrated ecology activity has participants drink water from
raindrops, snow or a spring.  Observation and discussion lead them
to see that, as it does in all organisms, water from the
environment flows into us, through us and out of us.  But during
this process, neither  an excess nor shortage of water enters  or
leaves us.  We neither explode, bloat nor dehydrate.  What vital
regulator(s) attracts, guides and balances water through us?  Each
of us is familiar with it but itUs often suppressed from sight and
mind.  It surprises most of us to discover that the water
attractor and regulator we know best is thirst, a natural sense,
one of the many sensible expressions of Us.  Like every other
natural sense, and like a control valve, by activating or
deactivating thirst  regulates.  For example, thirst not only
motivates us to drink  the PlanetUs water, but quenched thirst
feelings innately know and tell us when to stop drinking.   Each
natural sense remembers and is part of natureUs eons of life
experience.  When we feel natural sensations, we sense the global
life community, including the mineral kingdom, nurturing and
balancing its flow in and through us.  That flow is an emotion
called survival.  When the flow through us stops, we die and begin
to flow into other lives.  In congress, natural senses further
govern the flow by modifying each other For example, our thirst is
affected by heat, (temperature), salt content (chemical), fatigue,
and sight, sound,taste  or even thought (language, reason,
consciousness) of water.  Our congress of natural senses welcomes
every diverse contribution to making sense.  In concert, the 53
natural senses form a trustable consensus, a common sense  and
consent that supports life's and our life's survival.  When in
congress, every different sense offers knowledge that sensibly
informs and stabilizes Us within and about us.  Language  and
reason  make their contribution too.  For example, label a glass
of water "sewage" and only illiterate, blind or stupid people will
comfortably drink it, for reason dictates it's unreasonable to do
so.


Substantiation

Integrated Ecology substantiates the wisdom of Us by validating
that Us produces no garbage.  This is no accident.  Rather, itUs
because Us only grows from attractions between things.  Everything
natural is attractive including each of us.   Nothing is rejected,
unwanted, negative, unattractive or unnecessary, so in nature
thereUs no such thing as garbage, pollution or waste.  That's
unconditional love in action.  Ecology shows us that when we make
a value judgment about Us and remove what appears to be a
detrimental part of Us Qfor example, a predatorQ  the total
community, in time, deteriorates rather than improves.  Again,
this insinuates that everything is attractive, wanted and needed.
It explains why fully sensing Us in us catalyzes self-respect and
self-esteem.  To this end, an activity asks a participant why they
like a flower that attracted them.  RI like the flower because its
sensitive, itUs beautiful and it gives of itself to many different
livesS says Paul.  I reply:  RSince you know that you and the
flower are Us,  now say those words about yourself and see how it
feels.S   Paul responds, RI like myself because I'm sensitive, I'm
beautiful  and I give of myself to many different lives.  Hey,
that  feels great! Strange, yet  true too.  That flower spoke to
me.S  The activity awakened PaulUs natural senses including:
color, belonging, nurturing, place, language, reason, community,
esthetics consciousness, compassion, power, ethics, appreciation
and trust.   The natural world abounds with support statements.
Each of our other 96 nature connecting activities similarly let
contact with Us catalyze self-esteem.


Nature negatives

We disconnect from Us because our external and internalized
authorities prejudicially signal there is harm in nature.  In one
activity, participants go to a natural area and seek the fears and
discomforts found there such as thorns, rough surfaces,
mosquitoes, cold water, harsh weather, heights, dangers, and
strangers.  Later they identify the discomforts they sense from
people they know, discomforts such as anger and punishment, or
being controlled, rejected, ignored assaulted or exploited.
Integrated Ecology suggests that since Us only consists of natural
attractions, Us can't be negative. (Cohen, 1993).  When we sense
discomfort of any kind, the natural world is actually supporting
us.  For example, because Us treasures our life, the discomfort of
thirst is actually Us trying to keep us alive by signaling us to
connect to water.   Discomfort always signals that some natural
marriage is out of balance, some natural sense senses its
excessive separation from Us.  Each discomfort always says: RFor
survival, seek, enjoin and follow the natural attractions that now
call you.  Gain their fulfillment, attain the stability of Us
again.S Participants discover that the natural world doesnUt
irritate us, our unfulfilled natural senses do.   This discovery
helps participants remove defects and shortcomings wrongly
assigned to nature including their inner nature, the little child
within them.  Participants re-examine the nature negatives they
sense in the activity and their lives.  They learn to perceive
them as attractive callings.  Consider two examples: RThe
discomforts from cold, wet weather signaled me to satisfy my
attractions to a warmer, drier place.  I feel good knowing that I
can enjoyably relate by heeding warning signals from Us and by
seeking comfort elsewhere in Us.S   "My  fears and mistrusts of
people tell me to critically evaluate their stories,  and to seek
and enjoy Us within them, others and the environment rather than
focus on the discomforts their stories present."

Our nature negatives often symptomize that our true inner nature
remembers its estrangement from Us.  When Us in us senses its
abandonment, we interpret nature as negative  rather than as a
provider  of supportive directional signals and peaceful survival.
To reverse this situation participants further engage in
nature-connecting attractions.   In time, they substitute newly
revived natural attraction joys for their abandonment fears, which
then wane.  Participants learn to recognize that their discomfort
from loneliness is really an attraction for responsible sensory
relationships.  Depression is a calling for more intense, safe
sensory satisfaction.  Anger is a strong attraction to being
nurtured, not abandoned, by a stabile life support community.  We
dislike people we sense to be sensorially injured for their lack
of sensitivity prevents us from fulfilling our attractions to Us
in them and vice- versa.  We try  to avoid them because we sense
that their insensitivities are dangers and abandonment-hooking
risks.  Engaging in mutually shared nature-connecting activities
with them and others enables Us to build greater sensitivity,
sensory satisfaction, and responsible interpersonal relationships,
even with negative people.

Normally, many senses come into play and support us when we sense
discomfort.  For example, fulfillment from our senses of
community, place, compassion, nurturing, space, consciousness,
reason, mobility, belonging to a greater whole, self, esthetics
and many others ordinarily offset any one passion or discomfort
from becoming destructively runaway.  But when the intersensory
self-regulation process ceases because other supportive senses
have been hurt into inertness, normal balanced fulfillment is
absent.  We become "disturbed," " insensitive," or "mentally or
emotionally imbalanced." Excessiveness fills the void.   We sense
an even greater need and dependence on our comforts, artifacts and
destructive outlets.   For example, we overeat because we seek
excessive  fulfillment from two senses (taste  and hunger ) to
pacify the unfulfilled cravings of other disconnected senses.
Greed and violence flourish because when we are unbalanced we
want,  and when we want there is never enough.  You show me
apathetic, violent or greedy people and IUll show you people with
injured natural senses.  Re-connecting them to Us rejuvenates
these senses and the good feelings they bring.


Dealing with  abandonment

One activity asks participants in a natural area to inhale and
recognize that as they breathe the atmosphere for their survival,
Us breathes them to help sustain all of life.  This relationship
is healthy co-dependency at its finest.  As participants exhale, I
tell them to disconnect from Us by holding their breath.  Their
inner nature responds to this disconnection/abandonment with
suffocation feelings.  These feelings at first call, then demand
that participants begin breathingagain  no matter their age, sex,
or occupation: race, religion or nationality.  The feelings
express that Us unconditionally loves the participantUs life.  The
facilitator or guidebook says: RMy  instructions, my language  and
reasoning, not Us, directed you into not breathing.  Choosing to
comply with my story, my requirements, disconnected you from Us.
You had and always have the choice to either heed or disregard me.
As long as you continue to choose disconnection, you experience
natural discomforts that tell you to follow your natural
attractions.S  Realizing this, participants choose to re-connect
through their natural respiratory (re-spiriting) sense.  They
breathe again and they sense Us in them respond with good
feelings, expressing its connectedness. They feel inspired (spirit
in) so they don't expire (spirit gone).   Together we and Us
conspire (breathe spirit together) to co-create good feelings, to
peacefully promote life by educating and re-programming the
disconnectors in our mentality and community.  I show participants
that the ancient word for air is psyche  which also means spirit.
I remind them that only our natural connections with Us,  not with
air-conditioners, humidifiers and deodorants, create and sustain
comfortable respiratory feelings as well as fresh air for us and
Us.

When our closeting process disconnects one or more of our natural
senses from Us, they interrupt our us-Us sensory attraction
connections.  We feel pain.  ThatUs when and why children cry.
Our sentient inner nature registers being abandoned, assaulted and
engineered.  It dispels these hurts by hiding them subconsciously.
To our cost, our participation in responsible relationships
collapses whenever an expectation or rejection hooks these
subconscious hurts.  Fear and apathy arise and further disable us.
Although over 40% of the public seeks some sort of counseling to
help them deal with this nature- estrangement phenomenon, most
counseling takes place entirely indoors.   In this way it
sustains, rather than reduces, isolation from Us.  Sadly, too many
of us grow up not knowing if we deserve to have good feelings.
Even thinking about if we deserve them makes us feel
uncomfortable.

As long as we let our cultural story and our internalizations of
it separate us from Us rather than enjoin us with Us, the vicious
circles of our lives continue.  Nature-connecting activities
interrupt this destructive process.  They insist that our
nature-estranged reason and language senses learn to seek,
validate, resonate with, trust and strengthen our 51 other natural
senses.  Then connecting with Us becomes possible anywhere,
anytime  This allows Us in us to feel content to remain in us
rather than leave our being and enjoin with Us in the environment.
We often call the leaving process "death," RcancerS
"self-destructive" or Rstress related" It's actually our inner
nature attempting to escape hurtful cultural blockades, to more
fully embrace the fullness of Us.

When we seek the unadulterated perfection of Us in a natural area,
it often mirrors our internal natural sensory disconnections.  Not
accidently, specific natural attractions appear attractive in a
natural area at any given moment depending upon our conscious or
unconscious moods, needs or problems.  For example: While sensing
a natural area, the grandeur of soft, peaceful, billowing cloud
formations attract Bill.   However,  following  an argument with
his wife, he finds that the clouds  now appear ominous and, in
addition, the discomforts of a thistle's spines attract him.
Alarmed by his discovery that he's that he's attracted to pain,
Bill learns a new story, one saying "Follow other natural
attractions of Us." Soon, good feelings from new attractions
gently support and guide him and his wife to the fullness of the
cloud's, thistle's and his own natural integrity.  He again senses
Us, the adaptability and enduring attractions that he, the clouds,
thistle and his wife hold in common.  By this process,
incorporating contact with Us makes our felt negatives into
positives and possibilities.


Origins and solutions

Archeological evidence suggests that culturally and biologically,
humanity  evolved in the warm, relative stability of Earth's
womblike tropical areas.  There, in "Eden", we successfully taught
ourselves to suckle from Us by culturally intensifying, heeding
and revering nature's everchanging callings.   Through this
process most indigenous cultures survived harmoniously, even when
climatic conditions changed due to glaciation, or when they
migrated into temperate areas.  However, Western Civilization took
a different path.  Through reasoning  and language stories we
designed sense-fulfilling warmth, shelter and food growing
techniques.  We technologically built artificial simulations of
the tropics,  our agricultural, indoor world.  We learned to
applaud stories that said "Conquer Us", short- sighted, sterile
tales that produced tropic-like stability (Sheppard, 1984).
Today, whenever we learn that our nature-estranged stories, not
Us, sustain our survival, we learn to further pave paradise,
produce garbage, and initiate wars within and about us.

Integrated Ecology enables the counseling process to make a
desperately needed contribution to environmental awareness and
responsibility.  Counseling with nature unbonds us from
destructive artifacts and re-bonds us to natural areas.  It gives
these areas added value as places to find Us.  Too often our
indoor limits teach us to only trust environmentally limited
ideas.  For example, when we learn to mostly know a natural area
as economically valuable raw materials or square feet of real
estate, we tend to sense it as an expendable, exploitable,
economic object, a commodity or resource to develop or improve.
This differs from sensing the same natural area as Us, a personal
fulfillment, a friend, a profound wisdom, a community, a home of
all species and unconditional love, our other body, a teacher, a
planetary mother, a biological necessity for oneUs ethical,
physical and emotional well being, spirit in action, a celebration
of 4 billion years of relating,  unedited higher power,
ever-changing perfection or a sacred place.  The values we assign
to natural areas produce vastly different long term effects on
them.  Tangible sensory contact with, and support from Us within
and without lends credence to protecting Us's manifestation in the
natural world.

To believe that we can find lasting peace and sanity while
continuously injured by our estrangement from Us defines madness.
Through sensory nature connecting seminars, workshops, courses and
home study training programs, the Department of Integrated Ecology
enables the perfection of Us itself to help reflect and correct
our estrangement and its discontents.  The process encourages our
reasoning  and language senses to seek and validate attractive
connections with Us.  We discover  responsible stories and
sensations that move us.  We begin to walk our talk, to live in
our ideals and the peace of Us.

                                *End of original article*

UPDATE

During the 14 months in which The Humanistic Psychologist
reviewed, edited and published this article, participants in our
applied ecopsychology courses and workshops obtained the following
results by using nature-connecting  activities:

A participant who preached that people should express their
natural feelings  discovered that his preaching was
philosophically replacing his personal expression of feeling.
Local natural areas became a springboard for him to be more
feelingful and self-expressive.  This led to him establishing
stronger, more supportive relationshipswhich he desired.

A participant with migraine headaches learned to discover, fulfill
and validate her natural attractions in natural areas and people.
Her headaches disappeared.

Participants learned to identify which of their natural senses had
been injured.  By following their attractions in natural areas,
they learned to support and in time heal their emotional
injuries.

Participants found that after learning to validate their contact
with Us in a natural area, they could ask personal and
philosophical questions of Us, and receive responsible answers
that they trusted.

Participants found that through the sensory fulfillment and
support they received from Us, they could choose not to
participate in those parts of society whose long-term effects were
destructive.

Participants discovered that they could use Us as common ground in
discussions thereby avoiding the polarization and aggravation of
paradigm gaps.

Participants learned to enjoyably relate to Us in people with the
same ease and trust  as with Us in natural areas.

Counselors found that couples using nature-connecting activities
were able to find common ground that bridged the gaps and problems
that ordinarily disrupted their relationships.

Counselors found that clients became more trustful and respectful
of their feelings and thereby made greater headway in therapy.

Participants refused to let their occupations continue to
aggravate their inner nature. They actively improved their work
situation or found a more harmonious occupation.

Recovery programs used the nature-connecting activities to have
their participants make tangible contact with "Higher Power"
resulting in new freedoms of thought and social independence.
Some called the process a "thirteenth step".

Participants found a wise, sane and peaceful part of themselves
that they always knew was there but that they never learned to
reach or validate.

Each of the above participants became enamored with and more
respectful of the natural world locally and globally.  They became
painfully aware of how we learn to abuse it, Empowered by Us, the
acted and voted to reverse that trend.

This past year has shown that through its non-verbal sensory
communication, Us can reach, support and sensiby modify our
behavior.  The process is exemplified in the following true
account:  "Some farmers were overturning their hay bales to
exterminate the rats that lived beneath them.  A trio of rats
tried to flee but, unlike the other rats, these three stayed
closely together which limited their ability to escape.  Upon
investigation, the farmers found that the middle rat of the three
was blind; its companions were guiding it to safety.  Deeply
moved, the farmers did not kill these three rats."

REFERENCES

Cohen, M. J. (1974). Our Classroom Is Wild America.  Freeport,
Maine: Cobblesmith.

Cohen, M. J. (1988).  How Nature Works.  Walpole, New Hampshire:
Stillpoint.

Cohen, M. J. (1990).  The World Peace University Field Guide To
Connecting With Nature: Creating Moments That Let Earth Teach.
Eugene Oregon: World Peace University.

Cohen, M. J. (1993). Well Mind, Well Earth: 97 Environmentally
Sensitive Activities for Stress Management, Spirit and Self
Esteem,  Box 4112, Roche Harbor, Washington.  World Peace
University Press.

Murchie, G. (1978).  Seven Mysteries of Life,  Boston,
Massachusetts: Houghton Mifflin.

Pearce, J. (1980).  Magical Child.  New York, New York: Bantam.

Rivlin R., & Gravelle, K. (1984).  Deciphering The Senses. New
York, New York: Simon and Shuster.

Rovee-Collier C. (1992) Infant memory Shows The Power of Place,
Developmental Psychology, March. Quoted in Science News, vol. 141
No. 16 p.244, Washington D.C.:  Science Service

Samples, B. (1976).  The Metaphoric Mind, Reading, Massachusetts:
Addison-Wesley Publishing Co.

Sheppard, Paul (1984) Nature And Madness  San Francisco,
California: Sierra Publications.

Spelke, E. (1992) Infants Signal the Birth of Knowledge,
Psychological Review, October, 1992 as quoted in Science News,
November 14, 1992, Vol 142 p. 325, Washington D.C.  Science
Service.

Wynne-Edwards (1991) Ecology Denies Darwinism, The Ecologist, May
-June, England

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Michael J. Cohen, Ed.D. founded and coordinates Project
NatureConnect, a continuing education applied ecopsychology
workshop and home study program of the World Peace University
where he chairs the Department of Integrated Ecology on San Juan
Island, Washington.  For 33 years, he has established and directed
degree granting environmental outdoor education programs for the
Trailside Country School, Lesley College, and the National Audubon
Society.  His many books and articles include the award winning
Connecting With Nature (which Vice President Albert Gore includes
in his book Earth In Balance).  Connecting With Nature is part of
Dr. Cohen's 1993 self-guiding training manual Well Mind, Well
Earth: 97  Environmentally Sensitive Activities for Stress
Management, Spirit and Self-esteem.


CREDITS:

This article has kindly been donated for educational use in
Internet by The Humanistic Psychologist,  Journal of the Division
of Humanistic Psychology of the American Psychological
Association.

For subscription information and descriptive material about the
Journal contact:

Christopher M. Anstoos, Editor Psychology Department,  West
Georgia College Carrollton, Georgia  30118 USA [phone]

Portions of this article are adopted from the author's published
or forthcoming articles in

Counseling Psychology Quarterly; Journal of the Oregon Counseling
Association; The Science Teacher,  Journal of the National Science
Teachers Association; Legacy,  Journal of The National Association
for Interpretation; The Journal of Environmental Education; The
International Journal of Humanities and Peace; Adventure
Education,  Journal of the National Outdoor Education Association;
ERIC CRESS,  U.S. Dept. of Education; Proceedings of the 1987-91
North American Association for Environmental Education
        Conference and its Monograph of Environmental Problem
Solving; Proceedings of the 1991 and 1992 International Conference
of the Association For
        Experiential Education; School Science Review,  Journal of
the Association For Science Education; Environmental Awareness,
Journal of the International Society of Naturalists; The
Trumpeter, Journal of Ecosophy; Forum,  Journal of Educators for
Social Responsibility; The Communicator,  Journal of the N.Y.
State Outdoor Education Association; Between The Species,  Journal
of the Schweitzer Center of San Francisco, The Interspecies
Newsletter of Interspecies Communication Inc.

F R E E   T R A I N I N G   C O U R S E   N O T I C E :

The World Peace University Department of Integrated Ecology is
organizing an interactive Internet training course for educators,
counselors and students.   We invite participants to take the
course as:

        Active Participants; Persons interested in doing and
        applying the activities.

        Ambassadors;  Persons interested in introducing others to
        the concepts and availability of the process of Counseling
        and Educating With Nature .

The free course will use the home study Training Manual "Well
Mind, Well Earth", described below which participants will need to
obtain.  For those to whom this presents a hurdle, financial aid
is available.

Persons interested in taking the 4-month introductory course
please Email us your Email and your postal address and telephone
number.  Also include a two paragraph summary of how and why you
want to take and use the course.


REACTIONS

The World Peace University Department of Integrated Ecology
welcomes inquiries about our applied ecopsychology home study
guidebooks, workshops, independent facilitator positions, recovery
programs, training courses, academic credit and internships.
Reactions to them include:

"What a wonderful discovery.  Its sensory literacy puts into words
many feelings IUve had since I was a kid.   It gives a voice to
nature's wholeness and spirit within and around me."

"The activities gave me new reasons to trust my gut feelings about
the health of the environment  and myself."

"The activities work, they move people.  I see significant
improvement in their spirit, self- esteem and value.  They find
something outside themselves that is actually a truth within
themselves."

"This program allows the natural world to nurture a responsible
growing edge of culture."

AVAILABLE METHODS AND MATERIALS:

Order from: Integrated Ecology,  Box 4112, Roche Harbor, WA 98250
[phone] Telnet: [e-mail]

The World Peace University is a non-profit educational
organization that largely sustains itself through financial
contributions to our activities and publications.  The prices
quoted below are our actual printing, development, handling and
mailing costs.  For each publication you order, we ask that you
make an appropriate financial contribution.  Thank you.

Enclosed is my total contribution of $________for the materials
checked below and to help support World Peace University's
Applied Ecopsychology activities.  (Please make checks payable to
Project NatureConnect.).

1. (  ) copies of Green in Green,  a participatory overview with
introductory activities.  $3.00pp.

2. (  ) copies of Well Mind, Well Earth: 97 Environmentally
Sensitive Activities for Stress Management, Spirit and Self
Esteem.  by Michael J. Cohen, Ed.D.  A guaranteed home study
training course in two volumes; includes Connecting With Nature
and an introductory San Juan  Island workshop. Our cost: $39.95
pp. each, $48.80 pp. Canadian.

3. (  ) copies of the autobiographical source book How Nature
Works: Regenerating Kinship With Planet Earth  by Michael J.
Cohen, Ed.D.  Our cost: $10.55pp. each, $14.10pp. Canadian.

4. (  ) Project Donation:  Participation in the Project
NatureConnect network; includes contact with and from other
participants, newsletters, listings of dates and places of
forthcoming lectures, workshops, continuing education courses,
conferences and credit; recent articles, etc.  Minimum Donation
$12.00.

(  )Please send this article to the enclosed names and addresses.


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MORE ABOUT  WORLD PEACE UNIVERSITY
and
THE UNIVERSITY OF GLOBAL EDUCATION

The goal of this combined University is to educate those who
desire to co-create a world where peace is a way of life.  The
University trains leaders to cultivate an attitude of world
citizenship where international thinking is the norm.  Students
acquire the knowledge to establish food sufficiency, to initiate
programs that reverse environmental degradation, to mentor social
justice and to attain the highest degree of self realization
through interpersonal and international cooperation.

The University created and supports Radio for Peace International,
a global short wave station that broadcasts courses and peace
programs from the campus of the University For Peace in Costa
Rica.