The Web of Life Imperative

About the Book

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 addicts us to 5-leg thinking. In the process, 5-leg thinking often learns to demean 4-leg reasoning as childish, unscientific, or environmentalist (tree hugging, airy fairy, earth muffin). The result is that we become dependent on 5-leg knowing and relating. For example:

"Aristotle thought there were eight legs on a fly and wrote it down. For centuries scholars were content to quote his authority. Apparently, not one of them was curious enough to impale a fly and count its six legs." -Stuart Chase

The Natural Systems Thinking Process reverses this psychological schism and its destructive personal and environmental effects by enabling us to reasonably gather information from both 4-leg and 5-leg sources. This lets us enjoy a whole, healing, 9-leg thinking process. The vital secret of NSTP is that by carefully following its instructions, we can enlist Nature's restorative powers to overcome our bonded conditioning to destructive 5-leg thinking. In time, 9-leg thinking becomes as ordinary and healthful as brushing your teeth.

The history of NSTP.

In 1959, Dr. Cohen founded a camp and schooled on reconnecting with nature. The National Audubon Society and many others called it the most revolutionary school in America. They said it was on the side of the angels. Participants traveled and thrived by camping out in 83 different natural habitats throughout the seasons. They learned to be aware of their thoughts and feelings. They learned to live out their commitment to have open, honest relationships with the natural environment, each other and with indigenous people(s), researchers, ecologists, the Amish, organic farmers, anthropologists, folk musicians, naturalists, shamans, administrators, historians and many others close to the land. The experience deeply reconnected their 53 senses to their natural origins. They reconnected their thinking and selves to the whole of nature.

The students loved to educate themselves this way and its effectiveness shows in its results:

• Chemical dependencies, including alcohol and tobacco, disappeared.
• Destructive social relationships were challenged and healed.
• Personality and eating disorders subsided.
• Violence, crime and prejudice were unknown in the group.
• Academics improved because they were applicable, hands-on and fun.
• Loneliness, hostility and depression subsided.
• Group interactions allowed for stress release and management; each day was fulfilling and relatively peaceful.

Some students using meditation found they no longer needed to use it. They learned how to sustain a nature-connected community that more effectively helped them increase their resiliency to stress and disease. Others found the school experience increased the benefits of meditation by attaching it to the peace in global natural systems.

Participants said they felt they knew each other better than they knew their families or best friends; they knew themselves better than they ever had before.

Participants felt safe. They risked expressing and acting from their deeper thoughts and feelings. A profound, inborn sense of social and environmental responsibility guided their decisions.

When vacation periods arrived, neither staff nor student wanted to go home. Each person enjoyed working to build this supportive, balanced living and learning utopia. They were home.

Students entered right livelihood professions.

All this occurred simply because community members made sense of their life by developing supportive, multiple-sensory relationships that restored their contact with the attractive callings of the natural world within and around them.

About the Author

Recipient of the 1994 Distinguished World Citizen Award, Ecopsychologist Michael J. Cohen, Ed.D. is a Director of the Institute of Global Education, where he coordinates its Integrated Ecology Department and Project NatureConnect. He also serves on the faculty of Portland State University, Akamai University and the International University of Professional Studies. Dr. Cohen has founded sensory environmental education programs independently and for the National Audubon Society and Lesley University, conceived the National Audubon Conference "Is the Earth a Living Organism," and is the award winning author of Reconnecting With Nature, Einstein's World, and How Nature Works. He is an accomplished folk song artist and contra dancer who presents traditional music programs for the U.S.National Park Service and Elderhostel on San Juan Island, Washington.