Lisa Dahlgren
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This is a very indecisive topic for me and I have asked myself this question at many times in my career, and most specifically in the last few years. I tend to enjoy everyone who currently comes to my office. And when I was working with children and their families, I enjoyed all of them. I am most comfortable right now saying that I want to offer things that are “psychology-based and nature-supported”. Possibly my ideal client is one who already has a commitment to community service, particularly in the social justice field, or are in the direct care of others such as teachers or hospice workers (I was a volunteer at hospice for a couple of years offering reiki and energy work to those who were dying and became what was called an, “eleventh hour angel” to come in and be with the dying in their very last hours and see them through their transition. Through that experience I learned first hand to appreciate the intense soul work of hospice staff and would like to in some way contribute to their healing, inner peace, and the special place they have in our community.)
I think I have been learning that an aspect of this work for me is somewhat pointed and in a way, feels serious. As my confidence in myself has grown in the EBI program, I have begun to take my particular set of skills and talents, which includes training in hypnosis, inner work, my own healing from severe trauma, and my naturally intuitive nature, more seriously recently, and so want to apply them with ncc. I think my skill set almost automatically sets someone with whom I work into taking themselves more seriously.
How do I imagine working with clients? Well, the answer to this is still a work in progress, as well. I think I will be working with adults, although I spent half of my career working only with children and their families, so I am reluctant to leave that population behind. I think I want to work primarily on a short-term basis with people, possibly as an adjunct to their on-going therapy, or as a stand-alone experience for them with some aspect of incorporation. Right now I am starting to work with another therapist on behalf of her clients, by offering a half-day workshop utilizing the principles of nature connection with the focus on fire-building, but I don’t know if that will really pan out. For this, we are discussing it in the context of helping to grow her client’s intention and ability to access their emotions, core beliefs, and hidden narratives. I also want to do small group work in addition to individual work. For this I have been working on an adult development program that is called, Stewards of Peace, since before starting with EBI. And I want to get that going. Stewards of Peace is meant to be a half-year or so program of healing and inner awareness, and community service.
How would I like to collaborate with nature to support their awareness and success? First, to bring people outside, which is so different for most people it is something like a pilgramage. I believe that when they commit to coming outside they are acknowledging they are engaging in something different and special. Of course encouraging them to use their backyard is also something I want to do, but I see myself as wanting to take them to places that are relatively unfamiliar and perhaps somewhere they would not feel comfortable going without a guide. I also want to use nature as metaphor for their inner psychological life, and help them engage directly in a bodily manner with nature in both deconstructing and reconstructing their psychology. I am very interested in how to help people engage WITH nature, when possible. To help them speak directly with nature. Mostly, I want to collaborate with nature in a directed manner, that is, we enter into the wilderness (or backyard) for a specific purpose that has something to do with their soul journey.
On the web I have been looking at individuals who offer shamanic experiences, places that offer vision quests, therapy camps that utilize nature immersion – seems there are several for troubled teens. I’ve done job searches for wilderness guides, wilderness coaches, wilderness therapists, outdoor educators, survival schools, etc. It is easy to compare them all to EBI, but since I have been looking for the past year (which brought me to EBI to begin with), there are too many to actually reference. Last summer I also spent five days solo wilderness camping, and then went on a group guided wilderness trip in the RMNP. Key components for me is the psychological component-that is, moving beyond the transitive goal to the transformative goal, an emphasis therefore, on inner work, and the commitment to right-relationship and a return to the community.
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Hi Daniel L. Wow. I need to read your post at least three times. Very interesting.
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Hi Sheri!
I LOVE your challenge and I hope that it works well for you. I am thinking that just the thought that you give yourself this challenge means how much you are deeply into what NCC means to you. I just finished the first intensive and now have signed up for the full year. It feels like a relief to have made the commitment-that uncertainty can feel agonizing! But which ever way you ultimately choose, I wish you all the best. It seems you have the certainty for success no matter which way you turn. Good luck. I would love to hear what you decide.
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Hi. This is still my initial post. somehow I didn’t copy the whole thing when I posted last night.
My second experience in threshold was also just as wonderful, even though I would term the experience as being more in relation TO nature than WITH nature during the experience. With my second experience I was unclear about what would transpire in threshold, and so just went for a wander. Again, my coach kept me focused on what was coming up for me, but I was talking a lot more to my coach the second time, verbalizing back-story and feeling into stuck places. And that worked perfectly as well-sort of like two minds being better than one at that point-with extra input to really help me sense into my experience and then also to help put nature “to work” for me in a way.
So both experiences were fantastic, and even though different the main thing that seemed to be so helpful was the coaching presence and deep listening. In the first the deep listening was a lot more silence and holding space, in the second the deep listening was also meeting me where I was and with more verbal exchanges between us.
I am uncertain where in the competencies the act of holding space for someone is, where “less can be more” resides, where “meeting someone where they are” is actually articulated, but it seems to be incorporated in being flexible, open-minded, attuned, reflective, aware, confident, honest, and genuine. And so it seems to be mostly articulated within the section of deep listening.
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I am happy to start off with this kick-off question because my coach for my threshold experience was Ben F., and so I get to post right after him! What fun. During my threshold experience I felt a lot of sensations that made me feel like I was connecting to my nature and to the nature of the wilderness around my coach and me. I felt pulled to go in certain directions and then when I thought “aha, I know where I am going!” and went where I thought I was to be, it turned out to feel “not right”. My coach just kept asking, “what is coming up for you?”, which really helped me follow my inner sensations. With that support, and when I just followed my heart I arrived at a place that seemed “right”, and a deer ran through, practically on the spot. So it seemed as if I was receiving a lot of support from nature, the nature of coaching, and from my coach. After I found the “right” place, I was able to do part of an honoring ceremony I felt coming on me, inviting my vision council to become a more felt experience for myself. My coach used very few verbal coaching competencies throughout the entire experience, which was actually great because I would have otherwise gone into my head too much, and besides my experience wasn’t really about him at that point anyway. So one coaching competency that isn’t mentioned, but maybe (?) is one, is: Get out of the way! Or, sort of: Coaching presence only, needed.
In my mind, I have a figure of a triangle: me-coach-wilderness, and I am drawing lines between us with each one having a direct relationship to each of the others, and then a circle around us all. And that does a pretty good job of depicting my threshold experience in a manner that I think I want to hold as a coach.
What I notice, however, is that my experience happened mostly close to a WITH nature and WITH coach experience, and that may not be available to the people I coach. In my office, I feel I have a large enough emotional container to hold people who are even in an AT experience with me. I am not as patient with people in the out-of-doors, who are having an IN experience with nature. And when combining personal work with nature, I struggle to have enough patience for people who are in a TO experience with nature.
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Summary Post: I have gone back through the readings, and through all the posts (several times on the posts), and again am amazed by all of what is written. Initially I was keying in on what felt like burn-out to me, from me and those that I was reading. Putting that aside, I began to look at how taking myself or other therapists or coaches out of the equation, and just having person-to-nature as a healing modality might be. After a long walk in the woods today, practicing surround awareness as much as possible, I found a meta-oneness (ok, it’s a made-up word, I get that, it’s just the best I can do to describe the sensation). Maybe that is some of what is being explained in the readings and by others in their posts, maybe by Cory in his last post. Not sure. I intend to continue to explore this and many other things. Looking forward to our next module
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Hello everyone, I have just finished going through our posts again, and want to say how much I appreciate hearing all the different angles we have on ecopsychology and how it applies to coaching. I think that I want to spend more time reviewing the articles and what you all have posted, because I may have missed more about the nature connection as I spun off into issues of therapy and therapists. When I read your posts I feel like the awareness of how nature connection is used in coaching is deep and real for you all, and I feel like I am just exploring it. I know how it is for me personally in nature, but not how that might translate to others. So although I don’t have specific questions for each of you, I am listening and thinking about all the things you have put forward, and so appreciate each of the posts. Thank you!
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Doing the readings for this section, I felt there were broad themes of people who are dedicated to understanding and promoting the deep connections that are the foundation of survival and of thriving And themes of understanding that people fill their psychological needs with what is available, and that is not very often aspects of life in which there is deep connection. In “office psychology”-to distinguish from ecopsychology- I feel familiar with that theme. Perhaps it is because I have felt burned out as an office psychologist that I seemed to read a sense of burn out in the authors of our last series of readings.
As an office psychologist, I’ve been interested in understanding “right relationship” and helping people toward that balance. Right relationship here, means a responsible balance of reciprocity within a person, between people, and among groups of people. The drive of individual’s toward filling their psychological need with what is available, however, often appears to undermine actually living out that balance in part because there seems to be so little right relationship available in the world. Add to that the seemingly culturally distorted goals of office therapy, driven by broader cultural norms and powerful complexes such as insurance companies, the bloat of community leadership insistence of shoving blame to others as a distraction from taking on actual social responsibility, and decades of a system trying desperately to both cling to a flawed medical model while it attempts to distinguish itself from that same model, and it can feel like, well, a hot office mess. Or perhaps, “radical madness”.
The recent articles references to therapy catch my eye, given my background, and certainly sound familiar and depressingly accurate. So I was digging a bit into other research, and I came across the following statement in a Psychology Today article (April, 2016), related to how inadequately the system of therapy works for individuals, the community, and even therapists themselves. It reads: “The core issue is that we are currently stuck with an antiquated, ineffective, and inflexible therapeutic milieu that serves the mental health industry at the expense of practitioners and the public.” In further studies I found that between 46% and 61% of psychologists rate themselves as being depressed, 49.5% rated themselves as failures, and 29% stated they had suicidal thoughts. Female, white, psychologists suicide rate was reported as nearly 3X that of the general public. The biggest barrier to helping distressed psychologists is that they fear the shame of professional censure, and yet the specialized services for these individuals are advertised as being for, “impaired psychologists”. If that isn’t radical madness I don’t know what is.
So I enjoy reading about the goals of ecopsychology as they pertain to awakening a sense of environmental reciprocity that lies within the ecological unconscious, and how the focus is on healing the fundamental alienation between the person and the natural environment. As an applied and culturally accepted manner of healing, however, I speculate it will run into some of the same difficulties as office therapy.
At the same time, through observation in my own career, I am aware that change and healing is possible and I have spent many of my 600 question segments trying to find common healing techniques between therapies. Two aspects which seem to me to be necessary for change is energy, and being lifted from feeling a “oneness” or singularity. In that respect when I contemplate the techniques of different therapies, I am drawn to examine those two aspects. Something that seems clear to me: from Freud to CBT to DBT to EMDR, to IFS and Mindfulness, and beyond, all therapies help individual’s to achieve a “meta” state. That is, a state in which there is a perspective outside of being absorbed, or blended, with our inner states of being (parts). Or in other words, a state of being in relationship to or with oneself, not “in” oneself. Psychoanalysis uses curiosity, CBT asks, “what is the evidence? (for emotional conclusions)”, DBT facilitates “wise-mind” (the perspective of both intellect and inherent sensations), IFS and other part-work therapies forge relationships between Soul-and-part and parts-and-parts, both of which are meta positions. So I begin to look at an “inherent sense of reciprocity” in ecopsychology in helping people to be more “meta”, and yet also contained in the relationship between themselves and nature and what that might look like in coaching and in NCC.
As I look down the list of competencies for coaching, I begin to see aspects of bringing people into a meta position: “reflection”, “reframe”, “articulate to help the client understand from another perspective”, “use of metaphor and analogy”, quickly jump out at me as techniques to do this. More specific to nature connection are the competencies of, “intentional interactions with nature”, “reflecting observations of nature to discover metaphorical meaning”, “actively observes nature”. Bringing me back to the levels of interacting with nature (IN, TO, and WITH), that I was thinking about before, and reinforcing for me the idea that more profound and deeper healing will most likely be contained only in the TO and WITH levels of nature connection. And here I think also of people being in an authentic relationship with nature. Being with people when they are on their edge of physical comfort brings a person (certainly does me, anyway) to a more authentic, vulnerable, side. And the practice of surround awareness, sit spot, and other yin meditation practices with a nature focus also seem to me to promote the awareness of authenticity in relationship.
And as much as I get interested in all of this and like to see how things are connected, NCC still seems to come down to the most important thing; availability of right relationship. And so, as I sift through all the readings and my experience, I still feel like the greatest gift to be giving to our earth community is by our own relationship to nature and when we greet someone with genuine openness, acceptance, and gratitude, and say, “Hi! So good to see you. What was it you wanted to work on today?”
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This has been a great course. I have really enjoyed the material and enjoyed our conversations on the posts. When I think of where I am going from here, I feel like I just want more of what this course offered for awhile. It is great for me to explore and see new ways of thinking about my personal path and how that might combine with my career path. But I also have a sense that I could just stay in this space and not get to the next step because the exploring and discovery is just so much fun-kind of like a vacation for a psychologist. During the course I just got to go play in my inner world and nature-two of my favorite things, without having to take on the responsibility of using the material outside myself. I guess it is sort of like a professional symphonic musician who gets to finally join a rock band and just really jam. It helps that I now know that I am in the west so I can sense into how to navigate this part of the four shields and to sense what other part or parts of the shield call to me. When I get reflections from my friends and family about where I might go from here I hear some doubt and nay-saying. “Why change?”, “But everything is good where you are at.”, “It’s time to look at retirement, not re-tool for more work.”, “Look how much money this is costing you”. And the one that seems quite magnified, “You cant do this.” Etc. But I also get encouragement. “You have always been an explorer.”, “If anyone can do this, you can.”, “It’s ok to enjoy what you do.” So as those voices inside of me ping-pong back and forth I take little steps toward the “different” in my life that I wanted when I started this course, while I keep ahold of the bigger vision. Because it is the bigger vision that I know I never want to let go of now, no matter what form or expression it takes. Yeah for rock bands. (You all get the nature-connected metaphor, right?):)
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Hello Sheri, David, Tamara, and Liz, — I am reading through our posts this morning and feel so inspired and so grateful to see your words and feel the connection of kindred souls. I am appreciating how hard it is sometimes to be on the edges of the ways we have been initially trained to think of ourselves and the world and of possibilities. Many thanks to each of you this morning for making my day.
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What do I know about my vision? I really like this question because at first I want to say, “not much”. But then it starts to feel like I know everything, which is somehow pleasantly surprising. I feel that I found EBI in a very random way and just felt an opening around it when I was looking at the relatively small amount of material about the course. In the past when I have felt that way and followed that instinct I have been amazed at what I get involved in. For example, I once started an international humanitarian organization and brought doctors to Siberia Russia to do surgery on the orphans there-combining two medical teams, one from Russia and one from the US-to complete this mission. Along the way I was inadvertently instrumental in helping this area (twice the size of Texas) change a prison for those UNDER 18 years of age (can you imagine a prison for children?) into a rehabilitation center. THAT was all unplanned, unheard of until I created it, and was done from my kitchen table. I did that because I felt the calling to do it and followed that calling even though there was plenty to tell me that I should not be doing that project. And so it has been with EBI. I really have very little understanding from a rational side of me that I should have signed up for EBI. And yet I felt called. Now, I totally doubt that there will be something like the project I did in Russia that comes from my time at EBI, and yet I feel the same sense of drive to complete it. And because of the experience with the Russian project, and a few other things that are similar, I know to not just put those sensations aside. So for awhile, I think I am going with something that feels like faith. Maybe whatever happens this year with EBI has nothing to do with me DOING anything different, but I will be doing it from a different place inside. Maybe it doesn’t even have anything to do with me, personally, but something I say or do or don’t do has a meaningful impact on someone else and they are the ones that create something different in the world in some small part because of what I did or didn’t do. I have no clue at this point. So my vision is to remain connected to whatever is telling me to do this, to go here or go there or do this or do that, and be as open to the experience as possible.
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Hi Ben,
I am so impressed with your vision of taking threshold to the gym. At first I just did not understand how that would occur but as you described it I began to understand more and think about how wonderful this will be for people. When people are not connected to their bodies there is no way they can be whole or feel complete. And how frightening it is for people to begin to move, and then to even be in a gym. I know so many people who feel so ill at ease with their bodies they would not go to a gym or move any more than is necessary. It is wonderful to think that there are people like you who understand some of those things and are willing to take people to new horizons in a supported and thoughtful manner. I think I mentioned that I belong to two gyms, and so I have met many trainers. I do not believe that they come from the same space that you do about these issues, and so I wonder where you get your inspiration and if you feel like you are creating the wheel. But your vision sounds clear and so well articulated, it is really impressive. Looking forward to seeing you at Starhouse soon! -
Hey Ben. I loved reading your post because I feel like something I need to work on is how to understand how others experience nature and even their own nature. I know from my office experience everyone are at various places with comfort regarding just feelings/emotions/sensations. But I have always been so comfortable in nature that I feel I have to really remember to be in a much bigger container when thinking about taking others out into nature. Here, they will be facing not only emotions and sensations that they may not understand or feel at all comfortable feeling-plus, are dealing with their whole understanding of and relationship to nature. I so appreciate you articulating some of that for me, and helping me to really think about needing to be more mindful and aware of how we are all at different places with so many things and how to be really deep means being uncomfortable no matter what.
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Hi Taylor!
I loved what you said about trusting and playing in the dance of coaching! Gosh, that just seems so right to me. What a great way to put it. And how all the things about deep listening, and 50/50 seem so spot on. I think I understand what you are saying about as a coach somehow being invested in the process and yet not worried about the outcome-that the outcome is for the client and so personal for them. Thank you for your post. It helps me to feel validated and articulated things for me in such a nice way.
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Hi Liz,
What a wonderful thing your wander brought you to. “Write Like A Motherfucker”, eh? Sounds like you know it as, “Live Like a Motherfucker”. 🙂 I love your vision, your dream, your desire, and your willingness to put the time and energy into yourself to let it all happen. Thank you for sharing, it is a real inspiration to me. I am so glad that I could get on this call, even if it was not at the beginning of our time. I worked hard to get there so that I could see as many of you as possible, and put faces to the names on the forum. Thanks again, Liz, for your post.