Here is a trailblazing book on issues of vital interest to the future of humankind. Ecotherapy: Healing Ourselves, Healing the Earth sheds light on humankind’s most serious health challenge ever--how to save our precious planet as a clean, viable habitat. As a guide for therapists, health professionals, pastoral counselors, teachers, medical healers, and especially parents, Ecotherapy: Healing Ourselves, Healing the Earth highlights readers’strategic opportunities to help our endangered human species cope constructively with the unprecedented challenge of saving a healthful planet for future generations. Ecotherapy: Healing Ourselves, Healing the Earth introduces readers to an innovative approach to ecologically-grounded personality theory, spirituality, ecotherapy, and education. The book shares the author’s well-developed theories and methods of ecological diagnosis, treatment, and education so professionals and parents, our most influential teachers, can rise to the challenge of saving our planet. Readers will find that the book helps them accomplish this goal as it: explores an expanded, ecologically grounded theory of personality development, the missing dimension in understanding human identity formation outlines a model for doing ecologically oriented psychotherapy, counseling, medical healing, teaching, and parenting describes life-saving perspectives for making one’s lifestyle more earth-caring demonstrates the importance of hope, humor, and love suggests how these earthy approaches may be utilized in a variety of social contexts and cultures A systematic theory and practice guidebook, Ecotherapy: Healing Ourselves, Healing the Earth fills a wide gap in both the counseling and therapy literature and the ecology literature. It offers an innovative model for fulfilling the “ecological circle” between humans and nature with three action dimensions. These are self-care by being intentionally nurtured by nature; spiritual enrichment by enjoying the transcendent Spirit in nature; and responding by nurturing nature more responsibly and lovingly. The theories and practical applications presented in the book come together to explore long-overlooked issues at the boundary between human health and the health of the natural environment. Psychotherapists, health professionals, and teachers; pastoral counselors and other clergy who counsel and teach; laypersons who are parents and grandparents; and individuals and groups interested in environmental issues will find Ecotherapy: Healing Ourselves, Healing the Earth essential for approaching the long-neglected earthy roots of the total human mind-body-spirit organism.

In the 14 years since Sierra Club Books published Theodore Roszak, Mary E. Gomes, and Allen D. Kanner's groundbreaking anthology, Ecopsychology: Restoring the Earth, Healing the Mind, the editors of this new volume have often been asked: Where can I find out more about the psyche–world connection? How can I do hands–on work in this area? Ecotherapy was compiled to answer these and other urgent questions. Ecotherapy, or applied ecopsychology, encompasses a broad range of nature–based methods of psychological healing, grounded in the crucial fact that people are inseparable from the rest of nature and nurtured by healthy interaction with the Earth. Leaders in the field, including Robert Greenway, and Mary Watkins, contribute essays that take into account the latest scientific understandings and the deepest indigenous wisdom. Other key thinkers, from Bill McKibben to Richard Louv to Joanna Macy, explore the links among ecotherapy, spiritual development, and restoring community. As mental–health professionals find themselves challenged to provide hard evidence that their practices actually work, and as costs for traditional modes of psychotherapy rise rapidly out of sight, this book offers practitioners and interested lay readers alike a spectrum of safe, effective alternative approaches backed by a growing body of research.

In this thought-provoking book, Jordan and Hinds provide a comprehensive exploration of this emerging area of practice. Divided into three parts, the book offers a unique examination of a range of theoretical perspectives, unpacks the latest research and provides a wealth of illuminating practice examples, with a number of chapters dedicated to authors' own first-hand experiences of the positive psychological effects of having contact with nature. Whilst the idea of using nature to improve mental and emotional wellbeing has existed for many years, growing levels of interest in holistic, reciprocal relationships with nature have led to the development of ecotherapy as an explicit field of research. This is the much needed academically rigorous, yet engaging, introduction for counselling and psychotherapy students new to the subject as well as experienced professionals wanting to expand their understanding of this fast paced area of study and practice.

Ecotherapy in Practice reflects the growing interest and research in this field. Drawing on a diversity of experience from the counselling and psychotherapy professions, but also from practitioners in community work, mental health and education, this book explores the exciting and innovative possibilities involved in practising outdoors. Caroline Brazier brings to bear her experience and knowledge as a psychotherapist, group worker and trainer over several decades to think about therapeutic work outdoors in all its forms. The book presents a model of ecotherapy based on principles drawn from Buddhist psychology and Western psychotherapy which focuses particularly on the relationship between person and environment at three levels, moving from the personal level of individual history to cultural influences, then finally to global circumstances, all of which condition mind-states and psychological wellbeing. Ecotherapy in Practice will provide refreshing and valuable reading for psychotherapists and counsellors in the field, those interested in Buddhism, and other mental health and health professionals working outdoors

This book integrates the fields of expressive arts and ecotherapy to present a nature based approach to expressive arts work. It highlights attitudes and practices in expressive arts that are particularly relevant to working with nature, including cultivating an aesthetic response to the earth and the relationship between beauty and sustainability.

An ecopsychology that integrates our totemic selves—our kinship with a more than human world—with our technological selves. We need nature for our physical and psychological well-being. Our actions reflect this when we turn to beloved pets for companionship, vacation in spots of natural splendor, or spend hours working in the garden. Yet we are also a technological species and have been since we fashioned tools out of stone. Thus one of this century's central challenges is to embrace our kinship with a more-than-human world—"our totemic self"—and integrate that kinship with our scientific culture and technological selves. This book takes on that challenge and proposes a reenvisioned ecopsychology. Contributors consider such topics as the innate tendency for people to bond with local place; a meaningful nature language; the epidemiological evidence for the health benefits of nature interaction; the theory and practice of ecotherapy; Gaia theory; ecovillages; the neuroscience of perceiving natural beauty; and sacred geography. Taken together, the essays offer a vision for human flourishing and for a more grounded and realistic environmental psychology.

What is ecotherapy, how does it relate to mental health, and how can it reduce emotional distress and promote general wellbeing? This book explains how a deeper connection to nature can improve quality of life, by combining the therapeutic power of mindfulness and being out in the natural world. Examining the latest psychological research evidence into how and why the natural world has such a positive effect on us, this book shows how best to utilise these therapeutic connections in practice. 100 nature-based activities are included, from experiencing the full force of the wind, to creating a sound map of natural noises. The aims of each activity are clearly outlined, with detailed guidelines for facilitating outdoor sessions with adults effectively and safely, and advice to help make the most of the outdoors in all weathers and seasons.