Island nature sensitivity program receives UNESCO approval….

Mike Cohen

You’ve seen Mike Cohen playing at Farmers’ Market and around the island, marching in uniform in the Fourth of July parade, and singing just about everywhere. He’s been running Project Nature Connect since 1959, and now has spread the reach of the program from here to Costa Rica to Hawaii… and it’s still growing.

Here’s more about what he does:

Hidden behind his banjo and accordion lies a little known fact about San Juan Island folk musician, Mike Cohen: he holds a Ph.D. in “Educating, Counseling and Healing with Nature,” he is the author of 10 books on the subject, and he directs online degree programs and courses in it for several different universities.

Recently, his work has gained the international recognition of UNESCO approved schools.

On his website, Cohen notes that, “A lilac can appear to be blue against a red background, and appear to be red against a blue one. However, he says, the color of a Lilac also has its own integrity.

Cohen says “We are excessively troubled because, with the ‘conquer-nature’ bias of Industrial Society as our ‘background,’ our thinking sees nature as a resource that we must increasingly exploit and consume for profit if we are to survive.”

The science of Natural Attraction Ecology (NAE) that Cohen has developed helps us reasonably sense nature based on a different background. That background certifies that for our survival and balance, the integrity of nature is a powerful and supportive friend to us. We each benefit from natural attraction relationships in natural systems as their flow creates its own self-correcting perfection, around and within us.

To survive in a balanced and ethical way with the whole of life, Cohen says, it is rational for us to learn how to let nature-connecting activities help us think and feel while in conscious sensory contact with the integrity of our natural attractions in natural areas.

NAE identifies 53 natural attraction senses in our genetic makeup, senses that we learn to subdue.  Our dismissal of them makes us think non-sense about our relationship with the flow of nature, in and about us.  In addition, Cohen has constructed 16 Axioms about our relationship with nature, Axioms that he demonstrates to be indisputable facts of life in balance.  He contends that we suffer because Industrial Society socializes us to ignore or demean these Axioms.

“If you have had a good experience in nature,” says Cohen, “You are eligible to particpate in Project NatureConnect and help discover missing answers that we desparately need, answers that, no joke, are actually ‘blowing in the wind.’ He invites anyone to learn Educating, Counseling and Healing With Nature, green their profession and relationships and help others do the same.

Learn about Cohen’s funded courses, degrees and careers, online at Project NatureConnect, http://www.ecopsych.com Contact him at: 360-378-6313

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