Interesting article from 2010 New York Times exploring our connection to landscape and the shadow side of altering ground.
The work of Ecotherapy and the need to rethink how much our environment could be influencing mental health seems to be gaining more interest and credibility. Ecotherapy at its simplest is encouraging the view that we are ‘nature’; and ‘nature’ is not something separate that is observed. Environmentalist would argue that when we see nature as separate from us, we are able to distance ourselves from change or destruction.
Ecotherapy values the immersion in nature to facilitate awareness and connection to a more simpler ‘wild mind’, and in doing so allows a quietening of the mind – a similar state which people strive for in meditation. By the individual taking up that space and benefiting from the landscape, this in turn creates an appreciation and respect for that healing environment, and an interest in keeping that space ‘wild’.
Since the early 80’s The School of lost borders in California has been doing interesting work using the natural world as co facilitator to explore rites of passage, questions around identity and connection.
Betsy Perluss from the School of lost borders, who spends a great deal of time in the Californian deserts, reflects here from a life dedicated to exploring the connection between psyche and nature.
