Ecotherapy: Healing with Nature in Mind [Paperback]

Linda Buzzell (Editor), Craig Chalquist (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 12, 2009

In the 14 years since Sierra Club Books published Theodore Roszak, Mary E. Gomes, and Allen D. Kanner’s groundbreaking anthology, Ecopsychology: Restoring the Earth, Healing the Mind, the editors of this new volume have often been asked: Where can I find out more about the psyche-world connection? How can I do hands-on work in this area? Ecotherapy was compiled to answer these and other urgent questions.

Ecotherapy, or applied ecopsychology, encompasses a broad range of nature-based methods of psychological healing, grounded in the crucial fact that people are inseparable from the rest of nature and nurtured by healthy interaction with the Earth. Leaders in the field, including Robert Greenway, and Mary Watkins, contribute essays that take into account the latest scientific understandings and the deepest indigenous wisdom. Other key thinkers, from Bill McKibben to Richard Louv to Joanna Macy, explore the links among ecotherapy, spiritual development, and restoring community.

As mental-health professionals find themselves challenged to provide hard evidence that their practices actually work, and as costs for traditional modes of psychotherapy rise rapidly out of sight, this book offers practitioners and interested lay readers alike a spectrum of safe, effective alternative approaches backed by a growing body of research.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Psychotherapist Buzzell and psychology professor Chalquist (Terrapsychologist) gather 29 contributors to explore traditional psychotherapy at the intersection of the human and the environment. This next-generation update of the Sierra Club's 1995 Ecopsychology finds one of the editors of that volume, Theodore Rosak, comparing society's "relentless pursuit of money" with Aztec "blood sacrifice," and urging all psychologists to challenge the prevailing ethos. Mary E. Gomes, another editor of Ecopsychology, considers an extention of the community circle to "all that lives and all that has left this world," treating lost species "as we would a friend, a family member, a beloved." Buzzell explores the precepts of ecotherapy (probing "human-nature" as well as "human-human" relationships) and its questions ("Are there animals in your life? Special environments where your heart opens and life feels right?"). Chalquist provides an overview of ecotherapy research while exploring the idea that a missing "psychology of homecoming" is the result of an artificial divide between "scientific knowledge" and "indigenous wisdom." Other sections explore ecotherapy in practice, helping couples bond to nature, treating animal trauma, and the healing methods of wilderness therapy.
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Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Sierra Club/Counterpoint (May 12, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1578051614
• ISBN-13: 978-1578051618
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #182,444 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #74 in Books > Science & Math > Environment > Environmentalism

More About the Author

Craig Chalquist, PhD

is a core faculty member in East-West Psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies as well as an adjunct instructor at John F. Kennedy University. He is also an academic adviser to graduate students at Antioch University, Prescott College, and Pacifica Graduate Institute.

Psychology:

Has worked as a family therapist, conflict resolution facilitator, lecturer, and group facilitator. He earned his PhD at Pacifica Graduate Institute, where he studied depth psychology with an ecological approach. A thesis adviser, dissertation coordinator, and research director, he has taught depth psychology, ecopsychology, family therapy, couples therapy, brief therapy, theories of therapy, theories of personality, social science research, history of psychology, Jung, William James, dream analysis, transpersonal psych, Systems Theory, and mythology at six Bay Area schools. While working as a therapist he spent six years providing group counseling for men and women referred for mandatory therapy. In October of 2010 he launched a one-year Certificate in Ecotherapy at JFK University, the first of its kind in the world.

Horticulture/Agriculture:

Certified Master Gardener through the University of California Cooperative Extension, where he also earned a certificate in Sustainable Landscaping. Also holds a certificate in Permaculture Design. Is on the team that maintains Our Garden, a demonstration vegetable garden in Walnut Creek, California. Gives presentations on "Gardening and Mental Health."

Publications:

Terrapsychology: Reengaging the Soul of Place came out in 2007, Deep California in 2008, and he is co-editor with Linda Buzzell-Saltzman, MFT of Ecotherapy: Healing with Nature in Mind, Sierra Club's 2009 sequel to Ecopsychology: Restoring the Earth, Healing the Mind. 2009 also saw publication of Storied Lives: Discovering and Deepening Your Personal Myth and The Tears of Llorona: A Californian Odyssey of Place, Myth, and Homecoming. In 2010 he published The Folly of Repetition and the Wisdom of Remembrance: 30 Crucial Neglected Lessons of History and edited the anthology Rebearths: Conversations with a World Ensouled. [All books available here at Amazon.com.]

Has written for ReVision, AlterNet, HopeDance Magazine, The Journal of Critical Psychology, Spring Journal, Dream Network Journal, Jung Journal, Psychological Perspectives, The California Psychologist, and four anthologies, and has been interviewed by Time Magazine, SELF Magazine, Whole Living, Adbusters, the Los Angeles Times, the Conejo Valley Daily News, the Contra Costa Times, and Green Patriot Radio. In 2010 he presented "Ecotherapy: A Cultural Therapeutics for Coming Home" at Bioneers in San Rafael, CA.

Founder and owner of World Soul Books. Trained in Etudes and Spectrum Learning eCollege online learning platforms.


Memberships:

Master Gardener, Contra Costa County through the University of California

International Association for Ecotherapy (board member)

Ecopsychology (editorial board).

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Necessary reading, May 18, 2009

By 

Kae Oliver (Los Angeles, California) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Ecotherapy: Healing with Nature in Mind (Paperback)

There is a reason that parks and gardens exist in urban areas, and that our psyches have become more fragmented the more estranged we become from nature. Studies prove that even a glimpse of wildlife, forest, sea or sky can send our human hearts soaring. Nature provides a profound healing energy that helps reduce our symptoms, cure our wounds and worry, and breathes into us creative life. In Ecotherapy: Healing with Nature in Mind, author/editors and breakthough therapists Linda Buzzell and Craig Chalquist provide a clinical and common sense approach to how nature influences and why we should care about the human-ecology connection. It provides therapists of many disciplines an enhanced methodology to more insightfully treat their patients. Given our current, global state of environmental crisis, this book is a must-read.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars ecotherapy rocks!, May 17, 2009

By 

Bob Bannerhopedance "hopedance" (Central Coast, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Ecotherapy: Healing with Nature in Mind (Paperback)

The new book ECOTHERAPY: Healing with Nature in Mind edited by Linda Buzzell and Craig Chalquist (with a Foreword by David Orr) is quintessential reading for anyone concerned about personal AND social change AND recognizing the emerging patterns that are on the cutting edge of our new conversations. Im so glad that this book is out. But why, with all of our new technology, did it take 3 years to put this together, is my only complaint.

Finally a bridge has emerged to fuse the two seemingly separate worlds of psychology and ecology. Yes indeed a breakthrough. Psychology needs to get out of its head and navel gazing and move into the world AND the world of NATURE where we are intricately interconnected. And ecology (and environmentalism, per se) needs to get out of complaining about our woes and forgo the many guilt trips to discover a way for humans can actually feel and comprehend and act in the world from a centered place of our earth-natured human-ness.

The contributors of this excellent anthology are not merely academic in that stodgy sense but intellectuals who have heart AND are active in their communities. Just to give you some contributor names of outstanding people doing excellent work in real personal and social change (and who are preparing the foundation for whats coming down the pike) include deep ecologist Joanna Macy, peak oil activist Richard Heinberg, Transition Town leader Linda Buzzell, Robert Greenway, Transition Town activist Sarah Edwards, former mayor of Sebastopol Larry Robinson, Bill McKibben, famed Simplicity activist Cecile Andrews, farmer and Vet activist Shepherd Bliss, eco-spiritual publisher Lauren deBoer... and of course the famed one who started it all almost 20 years ago, Theodore Roszak, who initially got my attention decades ago with his excellent Makings of a Counter Culture, as well as the FIRST and seminal work titled Ecopsychology: Restoring the Earth, Healing the Mind.

If you sense that either of these main structures (psychology or ecology) are ill equipped to take us on a journey of a life time, trust that intuition and then take a look at these pioneers who feel nature running in their "soil"ed veins who are courageously offering their new interpretations and stories that use BOTH to give us something different.

It reminds me of when I was at Bioneers a decade ago. I heard a speaker say that we are living here as if we dont need an Earth. That simple statement was an epiphany for me. It radically altered and restructured my direction. The ecopsychologists appeared around the same time and their work has created a movement, a foundation to keep that epiphany alive for myself and many others.

What also blows me away is that many of these contributors of this anthology have been included in the pages of HopeDance (wwww.hopedance.org). I must be an ecopsychologist!

Bob Banner, publisher of HopeDance: Radical Solutions Inspiring Hope and the new edibleSanLuisObispo.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A powerful mental health pick, August 20, 2009

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Ecotherapy: Healing with Nature in Mind (Paperback)

Applied ecopsychology embraces a range of nature-based methods of psychological healing and this book packs in essays by leaders in the field, from Theodore Roszak to Mary Watkins. Links between spirituality, community development and psychological healing make for a powerful mental health pick recommended for both college-level and general public libraries strong in alternative psychology.