Amazing Tree Photo

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On Creating Community

May we all be so fortunate...

To be surrounded by people who will help us get untangled from the things that are binding us.  May we also  answer the calls to help each other, both friends and strangers- not only for their happiness and well-being- but also for our own.  Doing this, we will all know the joy, safety and peace of true community.

Thank you to Larry Gray for passing along this beautiful example of the loving-kindness which creates community.   Our instinctive love for others has the power to change the world.

The Whale

A female humpback whale had become entangled in a spider web of crab traps and lines.   She was weighted down by hundreds of pounds of traps that caused her to struggle to stay afloat.   She also had hundreds of yards of line rope wrapped around her body, her tail, her torso, a line tugging in her mouth.

A fisherman spotted her just east of the Faralon Islands (outside the Golden Gate ) and radioed for help.  Within a few hours, the rescue team arrived and determined that she was so bad off, the only way to save her was to dive in and untangle her -- a very dangerous proposition. One slap of the tail could kill a rescuer.

They worked for hours with curved knives and eventually freed her.

When she was free, the divers say she swam in what seemed like joyous circles.  She then came back to each and every diver, one at a time, nudged them, and pushed gently, thanking them.

Some said it was the most incredibly beautiful experience of their lives.  The guy who cut the rope out of her mouth says her eye was following him the whole time,

and he will never be the same.

Natural Attraction Ecology is the process of remembering, re-awakening, and practicing the instinctive loving wisdom which is inborn in us by nature.  We are genetically designed to be a Global Community; we instinctively know how to restore it in our world.  NAE is the process for making it happen which Nature herself teaches us.

Barbara Huning facilitates Nature's lessons by guiding individuals and groups to experience and learn directly from Nature.

Ready to begin?  Register for one of the upcoming workshops.

Photos: Michael Maloney, San Francisco Chronicle Click Here to Read More..

Reconnecting with Nature Workshop

September 19th Stoddard, WI
September 26th Caledonia, MN

These workshops will give a taste of what nature-connection and natural attraction ecology have to offer. Over the coming months I will offer classes, groups, and individual work which go deeper into the practices and expand on the fundamentals covered in the workshop.

Prepare to feel wonderful!

“It works because once we experience the process of love and wisdom, we own it. We never fully return to our former way of knowing.” - Michael Cohen, PhD



Experience the luxurious, comforting beauty and wisdom of nature through fun, interactive individual and group exercises.

Learn how our disconnection from nature causes us to “lose our senses” and make choices that result in stress, illness and damage to ourselves, our relationships and our environment.

Remember that we can refresh, heal, and educate ourselves by reconnecting with nature’s attractions. We can restore feelings of joy and wonder- and our connection to wisdom everywhere- within and around us.


WHY NATURE-CONNECTION?

Modern life has us “running ragged” with little time for ourselves or each other- ignoring our needs, oblivious to physical and emotional warning signs. In our pursuit of comfort and efficiency we have forgotten nature’s ability to refresh, restore and teach us. We have learned to ignore our own signals and live in a state of stress and uncertainty, relying on unhealthy habits for ‘comfort’ and ‘control’.

Natural Attraction Ecology helps us to recover our sensitivity to the loving bonds that keep us alive– and that enable all living things to thrive. By reviving our inborn natural guidance system, we restore our attraction to lifestyle choices and ways of relating that really work. In the process, we discover a source of love, beauty and wisdom that fulfills us and makes us wise caretakers of our own lives, our families, our communities, and our earth.

La Crosse Wisconsin Area
Sponsored by Driftless Farm's Community Supported Forest
Saturday, September 19, 2009
9:00 am - 4:00 pm
The Community Supported Forest, Stoddard WI

or
Houston County Minnesota
Sponsored by A Heavenly Touch Massage Mary Mell, L.M.T.
Saturday, September 26, 2009
9:00 am – 4:00 pm
Beaver Creek Valley State Park, Caledonia MN
Participants at the Caledonia location will be eligible to win a free 30 minute massage with Mary Mell at A Heavenly Touch.
Registration information:

Cost: $55 Class Size: Up to 12
Two ways to register:

1. Call (507) 725-0200 to register over the phone
2. Email to receive a registration form

Refreshments:
A light breakfast, afternoon snack and water will be provided; you will bring a bag lunch. Detailed instructions will be provided following registration. Click Here to Read More..

What is Natural Attraction Ecology?

The term Natural Attraction Ecology was coined by Michael J. Cohen, PhD, who has lived in nature for 50 years, researching the natural systems that connect us to the web of creation and which enable us to thrive physically, emotionally, and socially- in harmony with all of nature.  Mike Cohen's original nature-connection program, Trailside, was called "the most revolutionary school in America" by Robert Binnewies, Vice President of the National Audubon Society. 

From Dr. Cohen's article, "The Science of Natural Attraction Ecology: Educating, Counseling and Healing With Nature Through 53 Natural Senses" at http://www.ecopsych.com/kechnscience.html

"Natural Attraction Ecology is a holistic environmental process that explores and implements nature's blend of the ways of natural systems with the process by which we think.

Researchers in this science observe that by the time we are born, we have at least 53 natural senses that enable our thoughts and feelings to make sense so we may live in balance with Planet Earth and each other. However, to our loss, we have learned to overlook this inheritance. For example, most of us in Industrial Society have enjoyed a walk in the park or other attractive experiences in nature that have relieved our stress and/or cleared our thinking. Although we usually take this restoration for granted, the reason it occurs is because humanity is part of the web of life. In a natural area, gently connecting our natural senses with the grace of nature's balancing and purifying powers revitalizes the energies of our psyche.

We seldom learn that our body and mind consist of ten times more cells of other organisms than human cells; over 110 species live on our skin alone, our genetic makeup includes plant and animal DNA and every 2-7 years every atom in us is replaced by atoms from the environment.

Our thinking learns to omit that each atom almost entirely consists of space filled with natural attraction energies, that we and the world, almost 100 percent, consist solely of space filled with natural attraction energies. These attractions interconnect, bind and unify everything, including us. Our psyche registers them as 53 natural attraction senses. Natural attraction creates, sustains and recycles nature's perfection to health.

Throughout our lives the natural world becomes us and we become it. We are obviously part of Earth's web-of-life community, a seamless continuum of its flow through our body, mind and spirit.

The detrimental effects of our indoor lives excessively disconnecting us from nature's regenerative ways clearly shows that the global ecosystem is an important nurturing heart of our lives. What is also true is that in order to be part of any system, one must be in communication with that system. We seldom recognize that, as part of the global ecosystem, without using words, we biologically inherit the ability to communicate with it.

As noted above, Earth communicates with us, as part of itself, through the intelligent sensibilities of at least 53 natural senses. For example, our sense/sensation of thirst intelligently "turns on" to attract us to drink water, to make the global water cycle flow through and sustain us. In addition, when we have enough water, thirst reasonably "turns-off" and, in balanced ways, attracts us to stop drinking. Each of our additional 52 senses is a similar attraction intelligence. Besides the sense of thirst, our love for water, these senses include our love of community, reason and trust; aroma, place and consciousness; color, taste and motion; belonging, beauty, music and gravity along with 40 additional wordless natural sensory attractions. The web-of-life and we hold them in common while they hold us together in unity.

Let us pause here a moment, look at, or think of, a natural scene, or some alive member of nature, and, with awe, recognize that it has come into its perfection through eons of wordless natural attraction relationships that register in our awareness.

Significantly, on average, we are socialized to disconnect over 98 percent of our time, thinking and feeling from the satisfying guidance and restorative sensory callings of nature.

We suffer because we have learned to ignore or obstruct the peaceful and biologically balanced fulfillment of most of our 53 natural senses. This reduces our natural ability to make sense.

Our extensive loss of rewarding nurturance from nature's perfection leaves us wanting. We feel that we never have enough, or that we are enough. This spawns our excessiveness and other problems. We become destructively greedy, stressed, abusive, depressed and/or chemical and relationship dependent.

Nature knows how to sustain its optimums of life, diversity, balance, purity and cooperation. It does this without producing garbage and with a minimum of greed, abusiveness and isolation. Everything in nature belongs, including us. As part of nature, because we have these natural sensibilities we dream about living in their perfection.

In natural areas, Natural Attraction Ecology helps us apply a psychological science of nature-connected education, counseling and healing. It offers an "ecopsychology" or “ecotherapy” for many troubles that enables us to increase personal, social and environmental well-being. Through it, we reasonably reconnect our thinking to the healing flow of natural systems, in and around us. Backyard or backcountry, we learn to make genuine sensory contact with authentic natural systems. As exemplified by even a walk in the park, this empowers our thinking to help nature recycle any garbage or pollution that Industrial Society has dumped in our mind.

Barb Huning's individual sessions, classes and workshops are designed to help you restore your natural senses and revitalize your natural internal guidance system to help you make wise choices for yourself, and to reconnect you with the feelings of love and joy and freedom that are "business as usual" in the wilderness. 

Because we are a part of nature, our inner drive to feel this joy, to share it, to increase it, helps us to overcome our resistance and wariness about the wilderness within us.  As we begin to "touch in" to the wild places inside us,we discover that these places are the ones that we have always secretly cherished and protected in our deepest hearts.  Wonders never cease. Click Here to Read More..

Ecopsychologist Sarah Jane Edwards, PhD on "The Waking Up Syndrome"

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Awe and Wonder

Interacting with nature, senses-wide-open, is a wonder-inspiring experience. Some encounters are more awesome than others! Thanks to my friend Aria Goebel for passing this one on.

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