Workshop Explores Relationship Between Natutral World and Psychological Well-being
Ottawa, Quebec (PRWEB) October 02, 2013 -- A workshop for mental health and other healing professionals will offer training on ways to integrate nature-based contemplative practices into a psychotherapeutic context. Titled “Psyche and Nature: Bringing nature into the clinical practice,” the daylong program, held on October 25, 2013, is hosted by Eco-psychotherapist Jan Edl Stein of the San Francisco Bay Area-based Holos Institute, a clinic offering affordable, holistically oriented psychotherapy and educational programs.
Stein will offer numerous clinical vignettes from her 25+ years as a psychotherapist and retreat leader in the San Francisco Bay Area.
The daylong workshop participants will help professionals:
• Learn fundamentals of a nature-based approach to healing
• Understand what it means to embrace an eco-psychological perspective
• Understand a map of the psyche that is described by cycles in nature
• Know about techniques of guiding a psycho/somatic exploration of the inner map
• Learn ways of elegant invitation to these techniques
• Discover applications of these practices that can greatly enhance work with clients, as well as personal growth
Participants will have an opportunity to discuss clinical case material in relation to an Ecopsychological framework. Participants may also choose to experience some of these principles in the experiential daylong retreat offered the next day.
Jan Christensen, director of Sage Tree Circles, said that Eastern Canada needs more nature-based training for counselors and therapists.
“I believe that when we connect to the natural world, our perspectives and experience of life shifts, we benefit from the natural healing qualities of calming our mind, calming our spirits and feeling the expansiveness of being in the larger web of life,” Christensen said. “In our modern world, we do not have the deeper understanding of this connection that other ancient, and all aboriginal cultures, do have. As a modern society, we are beginning to see the biological evidence of our connection through the research findings of neuroscience - I believe this will continue to demonstrate what we intuitively experience.”
Christensen added: “As therapists, we can learn to connect ourselves and our clients to the natural world, and focus our attention on what exists, that is always there, everywhere around us, to support our well-being.”
WHEN and WHERE: The workshop will be held on October 25, 2013 from 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. at the La Grange Country Inn, Wakefield, Quebec.
CONTACT: For more information and to register for the workshop, contact Sage Tree Circles at http://www.sagetreecircles.com .
Visit the Holos Institute online at http://www.holosinstitute.net or call 415-750-0478.
What is Ecopsychology?
There are numerous psychological subfields that look at the interplay between human beings and their natural environment. The field of Ecopsychology expands upon traditional psychoanalytic thought by recognizing the profound relationship between human and nonhuman worlds, and that modern society is in an extreme, pathological state of rupture from the reality of the natural world. Just as Freud believed that neuroses were the consequences of dismissing our deep-rooted sexual and aggressive instincts, Ecopsychologists believe that grief, despair and anxiety are the consequences of dismissing equally deep-rooted ecological instincts. What follows is an approach that strives to reveal the spiritual and emotional toll exacted by the modern world, and to foster reconnection with the nonhuman world. Ecopsychology is broad terrain with many applications, such as: psychotherapy which understands nature connection as a defining aspect of health, “Ecotherapy” conducted outdoors, wilderness practice, contemplative practice, vision quests, shamanic counseling, and environmental education.
Jan Stein, Holos Institute, http://holosinstitute.net/, 415.751.1307, [email protected]
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