“What we are doing to the forests of the world is but a mirror reflection of what we are doing to ourselves and to one another.”

-Mahatma Gandhi

Do you ever recognize how people have a tendency to vacation or retire in natural areas?  People enjoy camping, the beach, mountains and more because there is a deeper yearning within them.  As children we know that feeling.  Children are naturally attracted to nature and being in the outdoors.  Perhaps it is society that assists them in their disconnection from natural desires by setting them in front of a television, computer or simply keeping them indoors.

Have you ever noticed that people who spend a lot of time in the outdoors have a certain glow about them?  I seem to have a natural attraction towards these folks.

A few years ago I came across a website.  After reading about Project Nature Connect I became more interested and enrolled in the course.

Albert Einstein recognized that we suffer our greatest personal and global troubles because we don’t learn to think like nature’s self-correcting ways work. The critical process to make right what is now very wrong is Educating, Counseling and Healing With Nature, a sensory-ecology book and learning program by Michael J. Cohen, Ph.D.

It demonstrates that we inherit at least 53 natural senses that spiritually enable us to live in balanced, mutually-supportive ways with our planet’s web of life and each other. It lays bare that Industrial Society’s unreasonable prejudice against nature and the natural is the critical factor that socializes us to injure and suppress our natural senses.  Many disorders result.  Educating, Counseling and Healing With Nature empowers us to correct them.

Cohen, a pioneer environmental educator and psychologist, indicates that our undue assault on our natural senses reduces the sensitivity and sensibility of our thinking. This deteriorates personal, social and environmental well-being.

Educating, Counseling and Healing With Nature gives us a remedy for the irrational ways of thinking that pay us to exploit and injure natural systems in and around us, including our 53 natural senses and the renewing powers of their spirit. It helps us refrain from spending, on average, over 98 percent of our time and thinking disconnected from the grace of nature’s peace and healing process. It shows that this monumental green-spirit separation produces a nature deficit in our psyche that leaves us wanting. We sense that we never have enough and that spawns our excessiveness and feelings of inferiority.

In natural areas, Cohen’s nature-connecting activities help us remedy this crippling disorder.  They enable us to enjoy spiritually fulfilling callings from the web of life that help us build cooperative relationships with people and places by co-creating them with nature.

Most leading bookstores carry Educating, Counseling and Healing With Nature ($48.00),  It is also available as a free e-book that you can download here.

Review copies of it are available from Dr. Cohen at 360-378-6313  nature@interisland.net

I believe in reconnecting with Nature and the concept of ecopsychology.  If we would  learn to reconnect with Nature, many of life’s issues would be healed.

If you want to learn more please check out the website or contact Dr Cohen.

Recently I read a blog by a young lady that is a daughter of a green living expert.  She talked about how being raised in a green, eco conscious home made such an impact on her life.  Her childhood memories were more than non toxic cleaners, cloth shopping bags, organic and natural foods.  Her mother made a conscious choice to be green.  Their home and lifestyle was a mirror of this.

After reading this article it helped me realize how much my choices truly do matter to the well being of not only myself, but my children, community and the world.  Is your life a mirror of peace, love and positivity?  This is all a part of being green too.  Living green is a lifestyle that will eventually touch every aspect of your life.

Living green means making conscious choices in your life.  When you raise your awareness you learn to live in harmony with body, mind and spirit.  It will more than likely be a process as you follow the path of being green.

You may first find that you are replacing the plastic shopping bags with cloth, choosing organic local foods, using non toxic cleaning supplies, wearing natural fiber clothing, clearing the clutter from your home, using herbs or natural healing, choosing cloth/eco diapers for the children, discovering sustainable toys and more.

Eventually you may find yourself changing jobs, growing spiritually, enjoying peaceful solitude and spending time in nature.  Relationships may change form as you make more positive uplifting choices. You will become conscious of the choices you make and how they impact life on this planet.

So, I hope that when my children grow they will remember my attempts at filling our life with all things green, but most importantly love and compassion.  At times I get discouraged and feel more enlightened choices could be made.  Then I connect with that small, still voice within and remember to have compassion for myself as well.

Being green is a lifestyle of becoming conscious and raising our awareness.  May I encourage you to start where you are and consider the path to living green.