Connecting with Nature

Written by Tammie Byram Fowles, PhD, LISW-CP

Interview with Mike Cohen on the power of connecting with nature.

"Nature is the unseen intelligence that loved us into being."

Elbert Hubbard

Tammie: How would you describe our relationship to the earth?

Mike: People's relationship to Planet Earth is like our leg's relationship to our body. We are ecologically a product and likeness of nature, sharing "one breath" with all species.

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In each immediate moment of our lives exists the unadulterated creation process of the natural world. It is part of our personal biology, our natural origins and sensitivities including our faculty to register sensations, feelings and spirit. We are human and "Human" has its roots in "humus," a fertile forest soil. This is not a coincidence, biologically, we are like humus. One teaspoon of humus consists of water, minerals and hundreds of other microorganism species: five million bacteria, twenty million fungi, one million protozoa and two hundred thousand algae, all living cooperatively in balance. This coincides with our bodies containing water, minerals and ten times as many cells of non-human microorganism species as human cells, all living cooperatively in balance. Over half our body weight consists of the weight of "foreign" microorganism species in balance with us and each other. They are vital, inextricable parts of every cell in our body. Over 115 different species live on our skin alone.

Tammie: You've observed that our loss of sensory contact with nature creates and sustains our run away disorders. How is that manifested?

Mike: Our lives don't make sense and our problems flourish because industrial society does not teach us to seek, honor and culture nature's sensory contributions to our lives. We learn instead to conquer nature, to separate from and deny the time tested love, intelligence and balance enjoyed by the natural world.

On average, in industrial society we spend over 95% of our lifetime indoors. Early on, at home and school, we learn to stay indoors, to become attached and dependent on indoor fulfillments. We spend 18,000 developmental indoor childhood hours alone doing schoolwork to become literate. During this same period, on average, through our literacy and the media, we witness 18,000 murders. Most of us grow up not recognizing that in every outdoor natural area, like the wild area in a park or backyard, natural life is not murdering life. It is nurturing it. Throughout the eons, natural life has been wise enough not to commit murder as we know it. The natural world has also learned how to nurture and sustain life and diversity without producing garbage, pollution or insensitive abusiveness. Nature is an unimaginable intelligence, a form of love that we inherit but suppress.

As it does with humus, through natural attractions the natural world constantly flows around and through us. Researchers find that every 5-7 years every molecule in our body is replaced, particle by particle, by new molecules attracted in from the environment and vice-versa. The natural environment continually becomes us and we become it; we are to nature and creation as an embryo is to its womb; we are one because we are each other.

Tammie: You've written that the natural environment governs itself with a wisdom that prevents it from producing our unsolvable problems and with an intelligence that sustains it in balance. How possible is it for human beings to acquire this wisdom and balance?

Mike: As natural beings, we genetically inherit the ability to think and feel with this global intelligence. However, from birth and before, we envelope our mentality in a process and society bent on conquering nature. We learn to separate ourselves from our biological, earth bequeathed wisdom. Our underlying problem is the attitude of industrial society. It teaches us to think in stories that emotionally know nature's intelligence as an enemy that exists in people and natural areas. Deep down we know and fear nature as evil. For example, we often portray Satan with a tail, claws, scales, fur, horns, hooves and fangs, seldom in a business suit. To our loss, as our thinking assaults and conquers nature within and around us, we deteriorate our lives and all of life, even as we say we should stop doing that.

Throughout the seasons, I have enjoyably lived the past 37 years in natural areas, researching and teaching how to responsibly relate to them. During this period, I have observed that when people feelingly make thoughtful contact with nature, they become more sensitive to life. They think, feel and build personal, social and environmental relationships in more enjoyable, caring and responsible ways. Their runaway problems subside. This is not a surprise. It results from the intelligent way nature has "wired" us and all of life to relate in supportive balance. For those who are wise enough to desire and teach life in balance, I have developed a natural systems thinking process. It consists of unique, nature connected, sensory techniques. They are activities, materials, courses and distance learning degree programs that enable anybody to beneficially reconnect with nature and teach this skill. They enable people to release themselves from their attachments to the destructive stories of industrial society. Uniquely, the Process allows youngsters or adults to feelingly tap into nature's intelligence and think with it. The beauty and integrity of nature inspires them. Their spiritual relationship with nature empowers and guides them. They let natural areas nurture them. The Process has proven to reverse many runaway troubles.