Embodying Nature

How do we quiet the monkey mind and receive our environment? And once we are in relationship with place, how do we engage and interact?

Embodying Nature Download PDF (93K), by Jamie McHugh
In this somatic and expressive approach to becoming more fully human as elemental creatures, Jamie McHugh combines the technologies of breath, vocalization, contact, movement and stillness to occupy the soma/psyche, open the portals of perception and invite in the spirit of place. He discovers how tree, rock, sky, and water reflect aspects of our being through this sensory-motor encounter.

Author Bio: Jamie McHugh is a somatic coach, dancer, and artist living on the California coast. The creator of Somatic Expression® – Body Wisdom for Modern Minds, Jamie has guided somatic-expressive encounters with the natural world for the past 25 years in Europe and the United States.

Photos of Jamie McHugh by Gregory Bartning

Losing Contact With Nature

One woman’s opinion, by Amy Lenzo
First published on the ICE blog

MonbiotArticleOn reading an article by George Monbiot in the UK Guardian called If Children Lose Contact With Nature They Won’t Fight For It … I agree wholeheartedly with Monbiot’s title, but my hackles rise at the (to me) lazy & inaccurate argument that follows, “blaming” the entire problem at the door of on-screen-engagement.

The truth is that while large-scale social conditions have indeed changed our children’s freedoms and access to the natural world (there’s a lot more happening here than the rise of the internet, folks), I believe that those little screens also hold some part of the way back for many of us (and our children).

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New publication: The Tao of Sustainability

George Ripley presents us with a timely and urgent message for this new year with his book, Tao of Sustainability.  Perhaps no more salient than now, this book will propose the Daoist way of being one with nature as a substitute to the nature-separation story, and its maladaptive effects, to which we have subscribed.

Published by Three Pines Press, a leading publisher of Taoist works.

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The Earth Manifesto

Earth Manifesto

The Earth Manifesto:  Saving Nature with Engaged Ecology
by David Tracey
Rocky Mountain Books
ISBN 9781927330890

Reviewed by John Scull

Here is a small review of this deceptively small book (132 pages), which is much bigger on the inside.  David Tracey (author of Guerilla Gardening) introduces the idea of “Engaged Ecology”, or E2, which has six laws:

  1. Nature is Here
  2. Wilderness is Within
  3. Cities are Alive
  4. The Earth is Our Witness
  5. We Have the Right to Clean Air, Pure Water, Healthy Soil
  6. Engaged Ecology Creates a Community

The first three chapters cover the first three “laws”, which come down to connecting to your place and with yourself.  Then the next three chapters cover what to do with this connection – join a small group where you are and do what you can to cool the earth and support biodiversity.  Engaged Ecology is what Ecopsychology should be about  — local, personal, and reflective, but also global, communitarian, and active.

An Ode to Nature

by Madison Woods
This poem was previously published in Madison’s blog.

Madison Woods writes, creates, and communes with nature from the Ozark Mountains of northwest Arkansas. She and her husband founded Wild Ozark, LLC with a desire to align their passions with their livelihoods. Madison offers readers an opportunity to reconnect to nature through her blog, photography, stories and books.
Contact her by email.

Here are the words of the poem, in text:

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Untitled Poem

By Larry Robinson
Sent in by Robert Greenway

Here’s a poem that a former student and now colleague sent in the other day. F’or me, it reveals the way a poem — in part by its very ambiguity, in part by it’s “rhythm” — reveals nature, ecology, big mind, little mind, egoic mind, etc.

easiest-to-relate-to-the-airOnce there was a time when it was necessary
to remove ourselves from nature. Once.
To distinguish, to see within
these selves is the objective. It’s second nature

now. This chain-of-being buried
& nearly forgotten. Paved over in sediment
like walled in cities, lessons in childhood,
other experiences qualified or in need of

the missing link. “Man is held highest on Earth
& below the Angels.” The intention:
toward God. Then later, toward a controlled state –
technology. The competition is fierce

& it is not. An Angel (many?) who inhabits
the rock suggests you skip its flat surface
on the river. Interfacing the world of eyes,
you pick it up: sentient self awareness

beyond the organs of particularity. Yes, you are
the rock & each plant & animal whose dust
compresses here. A moment of your time.
It is easiest to relate to the air.

Moved by a Mountain, Reviewed

front cover mbamMoved by a Mountain: Inspiration from an Alpine View in Alaska
Photographs and Text by Tom Reed, 2013
Soft cover, $21.95
Published by Wild Coast Media

Reviewed by Amy Lenzo

Having visited Alaska for the first time earlier this year, where I was enchanted by the ever-changing vista, I was intrigued by this new book by photographer Tom Reed and its focus on a particular mountain in Alaska’s majestic Kenai Ridge.

I usually “read” photography books like this visually first, and Moved by a Mountain richly rewards such an approach. The images are stunning – beautifully composed monochromatic photo-paintings with a distinctive red-ink chop strategically placed to complement and complete each one.

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The Granite Avatars of Patagonia, Reviewed

granite-book-coverThe Granite Avatars of Patagonia
Photographs and Text by Tom Reed, 2009
Hardback, $49.95
Published by Wild Coast Media

Reviewed by Amy Lenzo

This first book by Tom Reed sets the pattern I saw in his most recent book, Moved by a Mountain: Inspiration from an Alpine View in Alaska (reviewed elsewhere in Gatherings) – exquisite black and white photography set in full-page display with smaller color inserts woven in with the accompanying insightful stream-of-consciousness text. The aesthetic for both books is clean, clear, and extremely beautiful – almost Japanese in its simplicity.

Thom Reed Photography
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Reconnecting with Nature

“Mt Hood from Mt Tabor” by David Johnson

Abstract: In this article author Tatiana Casey explores her own symbiotic relationship with the earth, life, and Self through an ecopsychological lens. The definition of Ecopsychology is also explored and defined through varying perspectives which include information from research, personal interviews, and eco-therapeutic topics.
Download the full article (pdf)

Body of God

“I believe in God, only I spell it Nature… God is the great mysterious motivator of what we call nature, and it has often been said by philosophers that nature is the will of God. I prefer to say that nature is the only body of God that we shall ever see.”
– Frank Lloyd Wright