Techniques of Sensory Ecology

When: Year round

Length of tour: One to five days

Fee charged: $60/day for one person, two or more people, $110/day total, minimum $20.00/day/person. The fee only includes instruction. Food and lodging are left to the individual although we do have a package at the Training Center. Visitors should come prepared to be outside and with camping gear if they intend to camp. Campsites and other lodging arrangements may be made via the internet or phone.

• Option A: Receive 1-7 credits of Portland State University transferable academic or professional training graduate or undergraduate credit. $40.00/Credit.
• Option B: Upon completion of your visit, you may continue this training with friends by obtaining a copy of Dr. Cohen's self-guiding book Reconnecting With Nature. $14.95
• Option C: Upon completion of your visit, you may continue this training via online sensory ecology courses and degree programs.

Program description

OUTCOME GOALS:

1. To learn ways of thinking critically that reconnect with and heed natural callings within ourselves, others and natural areas.
2. To understand why we naturally deserve to have good feelings and how to obtain them in globally responsible ways.
3. To learn how to self-regulate by letting nature connections nurture the balanced spirit wisdom and unity of nature within us.
4. To reverse apathy, stress and dysfunction by energizing our natural senses and feelings through nature connecting activities.
5. To enjoy and restore nature's enchantment within and about us.
6. To learn how to speak to Earth and let it teach us, to know nature as nature knows itself.
7. To recognize the culturally induced unbalanced relationship between the old-brain and the new-brain and consciously let contact with nature re-balance them.
8. To learn to personally or professionally organize, facilitate and introduce the integrated ecology/applied ecopsychology process and to network with others with similar goals.

Additional Attractions:
Once you learn how to use the activities, you may gain from their use as you hike, kayak, sail, canoe, bicycle, cruise, motorscooter and take nature walks to the varied inland, wetland and shoreline habitats on San Juan Island, including Orca whale observations. National Park historical sites on the island will acquaint you with peaceful settlement processes of border conflicts between England and the United States. Seminars in traditional rural music of the 1800's are also available as are shoreline accommodations at the Snug Harbor Resort and Marina. Upon leaving the island you may continue this sensory ecology training via internet online instruction and study groups. Through them you may obtain additional expertise, credit and/or ecopsychology distant learning Ph.D, M.S. and B.S. degrees. You may use it to enhance other EarthFoot programs you select. As you gain expertise in the activity program you may intern in it and help facilitate online courses in it for credit and a stipend.

Master thoughtful nature reconnecting psychological activities that dissolve stress and free your spirit by satisfying your deepest natural loves, wants and relationships. Savor the sensory adventure of a lifetime by consciously tapping into nature's balance and beauty. Learn how to own and use 20 sensory nature reconnecting activities that empower you to create moments that let Earth teach. 

Discover excellent reasons to find and follow your 53 inherent sensory attraction intelligences to their origins in a natural area. Learn how to obtain the consent of a natural area to teach you about how it works and how it works in you. Enjoy how natural attraction intelligences safely energize you and your classmates and bring you into balance. Help your environmentally nurtured natural energies break through freedom-limiting walls in your thinking.

Permit yourself to consciously enter hidden natural valleys of your mind that lie behind the walls of your subconscious. Recognize and identify the often suppressed web-of-life intelligences of nature that exist within your psyche. Validate your natural sensory inheritance as part of your true inner nature. Make space for your inner nature to thoughtfully reconnect itself to its origins in this natural area. Experience how this reconnection enables nature to nurture and restore into your thinking the repressed sensory intelligences of your psyche. Celebrate the beneficial rewards from this nature reconnecting process that help you build and, help you help others build, responsible personal and environmental relationships.

LOGISTICS:
The Training Center is located on the west coast of San Juan Island at the entrance to Mitchell Bay across the Straits of Harrow from Victoria, B.C.

Visitors who visit Dr. Cohen will find any number of accommodations on San Juan Island, from campsites in country areas to lodges in town. All are within 20 minutes of the Snug Harbor Nature Sensitivity Center where there are seaside accommodations as well as camping. Located 20 miles from shore in North Puget Sound, 70 miles North of Seattle, transportation to the islands includes a direct flight from Sea Tac Airport or a car and ferry ride.

Sites we visit are accessible by car, motor scooter or public transportation. A large collection of information about San Juan Island may be found on the internet. The program starts with a 10-15 minute overview that acquaints participants with webstrings and how to relate through them. They then self-pace themselves through a series of outdoor ecopsychology activities and share their experiences with me and others, indoors or outdoors depending on the weather. We do the activities in various habitats on the island to increase diversity.

There is no drug use involved in the program, now, or since its inception in 1959. Quite the opposite, this program is often used as an effective means of recovery from drug use.

APPENDIX

Appendix 1: Web Links for the San Juan Islands