Customer Reviews

Reconnecting with Nature: Finding Wellness Through Rebuilding Your Bond with the Earth

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Earth and its people are at risk. Most of our personal and global problems don't readily improve because we are emotionally bonded to the destructive way of thinking that produces them. Our dilemmas are psychological addictions. They must be treated as such if they are to change.

The Natural Systems Thinking Process in Reconnecting With Nature provides a psychological key to personal and environmental wellness. It helps us make conscious sensory contacts with nature that replace our destructive subconscious bonds with responsible ways of relating.

Doing the book's activities produced the following repeatable, teachable, discoveries with respect to living in balance and peace with people and the environment. If you use the book correctly, you can produce similar results. Think about what Earth and our personal relationships would be if many people learned to do these activities.

Sustainability: "As I continued the forest activity, I found myself attracted to the various songs of the birds and then gradually to the various stones and nuts and shells in the path. I would stop in the path, pick up the stone, admire its beauty and then feel clearly called to return it to its appropriate place. So often other times I have felt I needed to put it in my pocket and carry it home. Now, through the activity, I had a real sense of appreciating each rock, each shell, each leaf in its place for the time I was there. I felt suddenly freed from the need to possess something. I had a growing sense of letting things be and to just be still and glory in the fullness of the moment. As I allowed myself to connect, appreciate, thank and move on with so much of what surrounded me, I felt a letting go into being present. In this transformation, I began to feel I was part of the scene more, not my other self that needed to possess. I learned that I do not need to possess something to have the joy of it."

Peace: "I was never taught to ask permission to relate to people or the environment, I just did it, we all do. However, this activity required my senses to learn how to ask an attractive tree covered area for its consent for me to walk through it. The area continued to feel attractive, but something changed. It was the first time in my life that I totally felt safe. It felt like Earth's energies were in charge of my life, not me. It gave me a wonderful feeling of having more power to be myself. I felt in balance with nature and the people here because I could feel their energies consenting to support me. I never experienced nature that way before. It was like a strict law protected not only my life, but all of life. I felt very secure and nurtured as I walked under those trees. I learned that when I seek permission from the environment I gain energy and I belong. "

A reaction: "The experiences expressed in the above paragraphs may even be some of the most important since Earth Day 4 1/2 billion years ago. They are at least important for anyone in our possession-addicted, destructive culture to contemplate. It is significant that the nature-connect activities help us make such breakthroughs." Dr. Mark Brody, Psychologist

Participant Reactions: "Through the study I found myself feeling profoundly grateful when I identified my strong attraction to my wife as part of the web of life. It broadened that feeling. I experienced the sun more warmly, the grass under my feet more gently. My respect for nature in general was enhanced. It made my heart open to my surroundings and to care for them. To survive, our environment, and people, too, need and deserve this kind of recognition".

"Reconnecting With Nature" is a work of genius. It is the only ecological psychology treatise that I have found that proposes activities "to do" beyond ideas to think. Every chapter suggests specific exercises that intelligently inform the reader of how to take action so that the theory can be proven, or not, by the individual. Finally, a knowledgeable, knowing voice that goes beyond philosophizing by introducing the reader to a "yoga" that communicates non-verbally with nature. The bottom line is that "Reconnecting With Nature" empowers the individual to become the specialist/expert via experience, thereby, breaking the typical, habitual cycle of seeking ultimate authority in the academic and scientific communities. Great gratitude to Mike Cohen!!!

When I first got this book, Reconnecting With Nature, RWN, I was quite intrigued. As a Sierra Club member I love the outdoors and support conservation efforts. However reading further one finds little ring of truth in RWN. Cohen is writing fantasy and trying to pass it as fact and history.

I totally agree with M. Cohen that exposure to nature is good and healthy and everyone should be out in nature as often as possible.

My problems with Cohen's book are the following:

1. He feels that modern technology is THE cause of human suffering. This is false. The Buddha wrote about the nature of human suffering at 500BC. Certain there was no modern technology back then.

2. He presents a romantic fantasy that people of long ago lived with nature and connected to God and lived happily with no suffering. This is false. He gives American Indians as an example. Reading about the American Indians reveals that their history is filled with wars and killing. Hardly the picture Cohen paints. Ken Wilber refers to people like Cohen as eco fascists. Personally I feel the term fascist is a bit strong but I would call Cohen an eco fundamentalist or fanatic.

3. He equates Earth's nature with God. This is false. Earth's nature is a manifestation of God, but is not God. God is much more that physical nature. Ken Wilber explains this beautifully in his book Sex, Ecology, Spirituality.

It is wrong that Cohen instills a hatred of technology. Certainly technology has created problems for people like pollution and stress. Whenever humans solve problems other problems are always created. Then those problems then need to be addressed, this is the natural flow of human events. Before modern technology people suffered greatly. Just a century ago women often died in child birth. Children often died before adulthood. People usually had ten kids so maybe a two or three would live long enough to have kids of their own. Is this what we want to return to? Not me.

RWN may be a good book for meditation practices but for high level wisdom there are must better books out there, e.g. Sex, Ecology, Spirituality by Ken Wilber. Pathways to Joy by Swami Vivekananda. Any book by the Dalai Lama or any Buddhist monk.

This book gives you little tasks after each chapter to really get you in touch with the nature that surrounds you. It opens up a new universe that we are all too busy to see in our own back yard or even a potted plant. Take time to connect with yourself and let nature take its course.

We are not human beings trying to have a natural experience, we are natural beings trying to have a human experience.

I am begining to see the clinical applications of ecopsychology and I am very exited. I can't waite until Universities and schools start making RWN and ecopsychology a part of their curriculum.

This book has changed my life personally and professionally. It enables the reader to understand why so many things in our culture don't make sense and why many of our perceptions from early childhood were right on. Through a series of lessons and activities in nature, the reader can actually experience how natural systems work and what it feels like to align with the natural order of things. The reader can reconnect with innate sensory awareness that enables us to see life more clearly, make more satisfying decisions and drop addictions and behaviors that are not serving us well. I have incorporated the principles of this book into my career counseling practice with the most dramatic results. Clients gain clarity more quickly about what they want to do in life and are more committed to the career paths they chose. Although it is easily accessible for a popular audience, I also use this book as the basis for a Continuing Education Course for psychotherapists, nurses and other helping professionals. Every professional who has taken the course has found the book to be most useful to them in helping patients find more harmonious ways of relating to others and to the world.

If I have anything to do with it (and I might) I predict that a Nobel Prize will go out to the founders of ECOPSYCHOLOGY.

I don't know of anyone else in the field ecopsychology that has pushed it to the front of scientific debate and made it so accessable to everyone in our culture.

Mike Cohen is on his way to a Nobel prize in the next decade, and I know that is not his motivation, but it should be your motivation to read his books to understand why he deserves it .

Kevin Bethel MD CM BFA

The book may be used in conjunction with an online distant learning course that promotes environmentally sound self- improvement and social justice