Tracker of Plants

When I first became the way I am, that is essentially a primitivist, one of the main influences on my developing philosophy was a college course in the field of ecopsychology. Ecopsychology begs the question: How can anyone be truly sane if the way we treat our planet is fundamentally insane? How does our environment affect our psychological well-being and how does our psychological well-being affect our environment?

Up until that point I had recognized that technology and civilization had terrible consequences for human physical health in the form of toxins, diet, and a sedentary lifestyle,  but I had not taken into account the fact that our minds too were evolved for a certain way of living involving exposure to greenery, deep attachment to specific places,  and a close-knit community lifestyle.

Ecotherapy is applied ecopsychology. Ecotherapy does not just see nature as a tool for human healing, but attempts to address and restore relationships between humans and the non-human world, bringing healing to both simultaneously. Whereas mainstream therapy treats the patient as if in a vacuum, or at most explores family dynamics, ecotherapy takes into account the state of the entire world.

This is becoming increasingly pertinent as more and more people wake up to the environmental devastation that is being wrought and are subsequently overcome by overwhelming anxiety, grief, anger, or depression. One basic tenent of ecotherapy is that in the absence of an animistic or ensouled view of the world, we experience a loneliness that leads to consumerism, addiction, and a wide range of psychological disorders

The book Ecotherapy: Healing With Nature in Mind is an anthology that brings together diverse aspects of ecotherapy, many more than can be covered here. A few examples:

• Craig Chalquist reviews ecotherapy research which indicates, for example, that walking in nature has proven as effective as taken antidepressants and describes his pioneering work in terrapsychology, that suggests, “living in accord with the movements, features, and “style” of a place replaces alienation with a mode of relating in which we learn what a place needs from us–as when a nightmare of mood shift suggests a source of toxicity in the local environment.”
• Lauren Z. Schneider, Meredith Sabini and Stephen Aizenstat all explore dream imagery in the context of societal rather than personal messages and warnings.
• G.A. Bradshaw  recounts startlingly human-like responses to trauma by animals in his essay on trans-species psychology and suggests that human healing takes place as a side-effect when people engage in service at sanctuaries for abused animals. Neda Demayo describes the healing effects of encounters with (re)wild(ed) horses at her California ranch.
• Landscape architect Elizabeth R. Messer Diehl and Vietman vetran Shepard Bliss expound on the profound healing effects of gardens and gardening.

While this book will be of most interest to those in healing professions, it is an easy read and very relevant to rewilding in general, especially in terms of introducing the necessity of rewilding to the mainstream public. In fact, as an outgrowth of Richard Louv’s work, Last Child in the Woods, the word “rewild” is even being used in psychology circles, albeit in a more simplistic, less radical way,  to describe the push towards increasing the frequency of childhood experiences in nature.