Pioneering Ecopsychology Journal Interview Released: Contact with Nature Reverses Disorders

SAN JUAN ISLAND, Wash., Aug. 9 /PRNewswire/ -- A featured interview with Applied Ecopsychologist, Michael J. Cohen, Ph.D. appears in the Summer 2010 Ecopsychology Journal Vol 2 No 2. The interview by Editor-in-Chief, Dr. Thomas Joseph Doherty, offers pioneering sensory relationship information. It explains how and why a quiet walk in a natural area has the extraordinary power to reduce stress, anxiety and depression that underlie personal, social and environmental disorders.

The interview conveys empirical information from Cohen's decades of sensory contact with nature. It also reports its effect on the natural biological inheritance of his students and himself.

Cohen's biological integrity was injured during early childhood when his psyche was manipulated by Industrial Society's nature-disconnected thinking. Today, that thinking still reigns and produces problems that seem unsolvable.

During Cohen's sixty years as an experientially based environmental outdoor educator, and as the director of Project NatureConnect, he observed that planet Earth acted like, and no doubt was, a living organism. Over time, it became obvious that people were identical to Organism Earth. Every part of us came from, and was renewed by, our Planet's life, including our psyche. This triggered new sustainability ideas and discoveries.

Cohen successfully addressed that our troubles result from us being bonded to our "literate-story way of thinking." In the interview, he notes that our literate thought is not only foreign to Earth's natural-sensitivity way of relating. It is also often financially and emotionally addicted to destructively exploiting natural systems, in and around us. Cohen says, "We learn to think that we own Mother Earth when are only some of her children."

In the Ecopsychology interview, Cohen, author of ten books about educating, counseling and healing with nature, shares remarkable methods for facilitating sensory connections to natural areas, backyard or backcountry. These restorative connections help us remedy our disorders. They enable us to create moments that nature teaches us what we need to know as well as help us achieve it.

In cooperation with the Ecopsychology Journal, Cohen has produced a webpage that provides full access to the interview. In addition, the page identifies nature-connected rationale and activities that help us solve problems.

Recipient of the 1994 Distinguished World Citizen Award, Cohen, is a Program Director of the Institute of Global Education, where he coordinates its Integrated Ecology Department and Project NatureConnect. He also serves as Ecopsychology faculty at Portland State University and Akamai University. He founded sensory environmental education programs independently and for the National Audubon Society and Lesley University (AEI) and conceived the 1985 National Audubon Conference "Is the Earth a Living Organism?"

Ecopsychology is a peer reviewed journal published by Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. It's Editor, Dr. Thomas Joseph Doherty, trained in clinical and environmental psychology and has been featured in the New York Times, and the Monitor on Psychology.

Contact: Michael J. Cohen: 360-378-6313, http://www.ecopsych.com, [email protected]

Ecopsychology Journal: http://www.liebertpub.com/eco

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SOURCE Institute of Global Education