"Friday Harbor, WA -- October 2, 2009 -- Our country sorely needs grants and scholarships to help caring individuals apply radical solutions that address today's radical problems. Such grants today have been made available through Project NatureConnect at the Institute of Global Education. They support participation in its holistic educating, counseling and healing with nature programs offered in cooperation with UNESCO approved online courses and degrees. The grants and scholarships produce minimal tuition degrees as they reduce average university costs by 80 percent or more.
Studies by the director of the Project NatureConnect, Dr. Michael J. Cohen, author of "Educating, Counseling and Healing With Nature"[/url suggest that many of the disorders we suffer today result from the excessive disconnection of our psyche and thinking from the flow of nature's ways, in and around us. The grant and scholarship program enables interested individuals to learn holistic therapy, nature connecting techniques that help us reduce our destructive separation from nature and increase personal, social and environmental well being.
"We are crippled by a radical omission of nature's restorative ways in how we think and feel," says Dr. Cohen. "This prevents us from building conscious, mutually supportive relationships with the self-correcting grace of nature that streams through ourselves, each other and the web of life." Cohen notes that as we lose contact with nature's self-correcting powers, we lose satisfactions that ordinarily fulfill over fifty of our natural senses in a good way. These senses, deprived of their supportive contact with nature, lie frustrated or hurt within us and our dreams. A major challenge is that they urge us to attach to questionable attractions in the industrial world, attractions whose side effects produce disorders and troubles."
One of Dr. Cohen's students notes in her field journal, "The more receptive I become to the essence of the forest, the more willingly it reveals its secrets. The more accurately I interpret its voice, the more comfortable I am in supporting and loving rather than opposing or fearing nature. I now realize that my unique sensory qualities evolved over millions of years to support my wellness, including the senses of direction, color, visibility, place, time, territory, kinship, reciprocity, etc. I now understand that excessive indoor living, while making me physically more comfortable, numbed these innate senses into oblivion. And, in the process, it robbed me of qualities that I most admire. I am glad that the funding for these courses helps me to go to the forest to reclaim my kinship with all other living things."
About Project NatureConnect
Operating online in cooperation with The Institute of Global Education, Portland State University, Akamai University and several additional programs, Project NatureConnect provides grants and scholarships for low-cost educating, counseling and healing with nature training courses and degrees that are UNESCO approved. Its radical mission is to increase personal, social and environmental well-being by helping people genuinely connect their thinking with the sensitivity and intelligence of nature's self-correcting flow, in and around them. This revolutionary process enables our psyche to walk nature's path to socially and environmentally responsible relationships, stress reduction and sustainable livelihoods. The program gives credit for appropriate prior learning and life experience. It offers scholarships, jobs and internships that strengthen nature-supportive thoughts and feelings.
For Additional Information:
www.ecopsych.com/
360-378-6313 nature@interisland.net
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Program Founder and Director:
Recipient of the 1994 Distinguished World Citizen Award, Ecopsychologist Michael J. Cohen, Ph.D., is a Program Director of the Institute of Global Education, where he coordinates its Integrated Ecology Department and Project NatureConnect. He also serves on the faculty of Portland State University and Akamai University. Dr. Cohen has founded sensory environmental education outdoor programs independently and for the National Audubon Society and Lesley University (AEI). He conceived the 1985 National Audubon Conference "Is the Earth a Living Organism," and is an award winning author of "The Web of Life Imperative," "Reconnecting With Nature," and "Educating Counseling and Healing With Nature." A video about his radical lifework may be viewed at http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1357054/
CONTACT:
http://www.ecopsych.com/mjcohen.html
Email: nature@interisland.net
360-378-6313, Pacific Time Zone
