Ecopsychology Revisited


Book Description

Ecopsychology Revisited is a critique of and deconstructive approach to several trends termed "ecopsychology." This work attempts to bring light to some of the misconceptions that have hardened as "ecopsychology," as these ideas have been reinterpreted and sometimes oversimplified by the general public and some professionals outside mainstream psychology. Part of the confusion arose when "ecopsychology" became inadequately amalgamated with other ideas. Nevertheless, within the social and behavioral sciences, at least, there is great value in devising and applying evidence-based strategies that track the normative ramifications dealing with cognition, emotion and behavior, exploring how or why humans relate to natural processes in a wide range of ways.




Ecopsychology


Book Description

An ecopsychology that integrates our totemic selves—our kinship with a more than human world—with our technological selves. We need nature for our physical and psychological well-being. Our actions reflect this when we turn to beloved pets for companionship, vacation in spots of natural splendor, or spend hours working in the garden. Yet we are also a technological species and have been since we fashioned tools out of stone. Thus one of this century's central challenges is to embrace our kinship with a more-than-human world—"our totemic self"—and integrate that kinship with our scientific culture and technological selves. This book takes on that challenge and proposes a reenvisioned ecopsychology. Contributors consider such topics as the innate tendency for people to bond with local place; a meaningful nature language; the epidemiological evidence for the health benefits of nature interaction; the theory and practice of ecotherapy; Gaia theory; ecovillages; the neuroscience of perceiving natural beauty; and sacred geography. Taken together, the essays offer a vision for human flourishing and for a more grounded and realistic environmental psychology.




Ecotherapy


Book Description

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.




Radical Ecopsychology, Second Edition


Book Description

Expanded new edition of a classic examination of the psychological roots of our ecological crisis.




The Web of Life Imperative


Book Description

A book and course that teaches you the Natural Systems Thinking Process A nature connected learning tool enables our psyche to genuinely tap the healing powers of nature and regenerate 48 peaceful natural intelligences in our awareness and thinking. Backyard or backcountry, this practical, multiple-sense, book empowers you to improve your health, relationships and happiness by replacing destructive omissions in how we learn to think with rejuvenated natural sensitivities. Learn how to reconnect your psyche to its nurturing origins in the restorative vigor, sustainability and peace of nature. Help yourself and your community benefit from the profound renewal that lies in the magnificence of a beautiful day, the wisdom of an ancient tree and the fortitude of a weed. Let nature's invincible healing energies help your thinking transform your stress, disorders and harmful bonds into constructive personal, social and environmental rewards. Grow from hands-on, accredited, Applied Biophilia classes, essays, activities, research, internships, ethics, counseling and healing. Strengthen your inborn natural genius. Enjoy an Earth-friendly job, career, internship or teaching certification. Take advantage of subsidized, online courses and degree programs. To understand how and why this book will work for you as it has for so many others, consider the following key intelligence test question, one that ordinarily might help assess a person's mathematical aptitude: "If you count a dog's tail as one of its legs, how many legs does a dog have?" "Five," of course, is the correct answer for a math test. Intelligent people say "five" because it is valid in mathematical systems and contemporary thinking and is highly regarded and rewarded by our society. However, we don't solely live our lives or think in mathematical systems. Our natural sense of reason can consider what we know from our actual contact with a real, normal dog, too. That's when our multitude of other natural senses come into play: senses of touch, motion, color, texture, language, sound, smell, consciousness, community, trust, contrast, and love. They each provide further information and help our sense of reason make more sense and a more informed decision. They enable our thinking to register that a tail is different than a leg, that a dog has four legs, not five, no matter what might be correct in mathematical logic. It is a grave mistake for anyone not to take seriously the difference between 4-leg and 5-leg ways of knowing and our learned prejudice for the latter. As this book shows, when they are not in balance the schism between their two different ways of registering the world is significant.. Four-leg knowing is a magnificent psychological and physiological phenomenon with deep natural system roots into the eons, the heart of Earth and our psyche. It brings our widely diverse multiplicity of natural sensory experiences into our awareness. Five-leg knowing produces important awareness through abstract imagination, labels and stories. However, when it does not also seek and contain 4-leg knowledge it results not only in our desensitization but in the separation of our thinking from the regenerative powers of Earth's natural systems within and around us. This profound loss produces the many destructive side effects of our artificial world that we can not readily solve. Four-leg versus 5-leg discord creates an entrenched conflict in our psyche between how we think and how nature works. This is a point source of the stress and contamination our society produces in the integrity of people and the environment. It generates our many disorders and troubles that are seldom found in nature. It is important to recognize is that by financially and socially rewarding us for getting "good grades" or for "making the grade" by using nature-isolated 5-leg thinking, our socialization habitually bonds, conditions, programs or ad




Ecopsychology


Book Description

This anthology is a two-volume work that focuses on our relationship with the Earth and our future, examining the crossover between psychology and environmental studies in the emerging fields of ecopsychology and environmental psychology. This set offers the first comprehensive and holistic understanding of how our human activities are very rapidly changing the earth's environment and harming its inhabitants. Since our present path of population growth and use of finite global resources is unsustainable, we must find new ways to protect our environment and our future. Offering unique perspectives and guidance toward holistic new solutions, this reader-friendly anthology serves a vast audience in the fields of psychology and environmental studies as well as scientists, humanitarians, educations, and policymakers. This work presents readers with the latest research on psychology and the environment, gives examples from around the world, applies to programs for youth and adults, and appeals to all stakeholders, including those in public health, policy, environmental studies, and more. The reader will gain the perspective and understanding of policies needed to effect environmental change and holistically manage the direction of that change.




Ecopsychology


Book Description

This pathfinding collection--by premier psychotherapists, thinkers, and eco-activists in the field--shows how the health of the planet is inextricably linked to the psychological health of humanity, individually and collectively. It is sure to become a definitive work for the ecopsychology movement. Forewords by Lester O. Brown and James Hillman.




Ecopsychology, Phenomenology, and the Environment


Book Description

This book seeks to confront an apparent contradiction: that while we are constantly attending to environmental issues, we seem to be woefully out of touch with nature. The goal of Ecopsychology, Phenomenology and the Environment is to foster an enhanced awareness of nature that can lead us to new ways of relating to the environment, ultimately yielding more sustainable patterns of living. This volume is different from other books in the rapidly growing field of ecopsychology in its emphasis on phenomenological approaches, building on the work of phenomenological psychologists such as Maurice Merleau-Ponty. This focus on phenomenological methodologies for articulating our direct experience of nature serves as a critical complement to the usual methodologies of environmental and conservation psychologists, who have emphasized quantitative research. Moreover, Ecopsychology, Phenomenology and the Environment is distinctive insofar as chapters by phenomenologically-sophisticated ecopsychologists are complemented by chapters written by phenomenological researchers of environmental issues with backgrounds in philosophy and geology, providing a breadth and depth of perspective not found in other works written exclusively by psychologists.




Ecopsychology


Book Description

In recent years the environmental challenges facing humankind have gained increased recognition, as have the psychological impacts of these global threats. In this special issue of ReVision, leading ecopsychologists take the next step, demonstrating how to foster ecological sensitivity, and not merely react to environmental crises. In theoretically rich, yet practical essays, readers learn how to become more intimate with nature in a range of settings—from semester-long “Natural Presence” geology classes in an urban university, to week-long “Diamond in the Rough” wilderness retreats, to fleeting experiences encountering nature in one’s own backyard using a phenomenological approach.Contributors to this special double issue on ecopsychology seek to cultivate greater environmental awareness in a variety of ways, including- Drawing on personal experiences of relating more deeply with nature.- Enhancing mindfulness of the natural world through Buddhist practice, either as traditionally practiced or as merged with wilderness therapy.- Highlighting cultural influences on environmental identity. - Engaging with diverse approaches to research, including – among others – quantitative and qualitative studies across cultures, laboratory experiments in cognitive psychology, and literary analysis.




Ecotherapy


Book Description

In this thought-provoking book, Jordan and Hinds provide a comprehensive exploration of this emerging area of practice. Divided into three parts, the book offers a unique examination of a range of theoretical perspectives, unpacks the latest research and provides a wealth of illuminating practice examples, with a number of chapters dedicated to authors' own first-hand experiences of the positive psychological effects of having contact with nature. Whilst the idea of using nature to improve mental and emotional wellbeing has existed for many years, growing levels of interest in holistic, reciprocal relationships with nature have led to the development of ecotherapy as an explicit field of research. This is the much needed academically rigorous, yet engaging, introduction for counselling and psychotherapy students new to the subject as well as experienced professionals wanting to expand their understanding of this fast paced area of study and practice.