Greening the Psyche /ecotherapy

[Michaelangelica]

Greening the Psyche

 

A toss up to post this in psychology or here.

Here won

 

Well worth listening too, a transcript is also available

Teachers, school administrators, urban planners, psychologists, nurses, police should all listen to it.

 

Intuitively we sense that nature relaxes us -- even small pockets of green in the concrete urban jungle seem to make a difference. But finding good scientific evidence for how and why has been more difficult -- until now. Crime rates, academic performance, aggression and even ADHD. Could a bit of greening make all the difference? And, ecology on the couch -- a self described 'ecotherapist' with novel techniques.

Natasha Mitchell: Natasha Mitchell joining you on ABC Radio National Summer. And hopefully you've managed to escape the bitumen this Summer and head to a pocket of nature, for fun not work.

 

It's a pull that could well be in our genes. The acclaimed Harvard biologist EO Wilson has suggested we're entering an Eremozoic age, the age of loneliness, isolated from all other living organisms. He popularised what's called the biophilia hypothesis, the idea that we're biologically drawn to natural landscapes.

 

It's a scientifically woolly but compelling possibility. Intuitively we sense that grass, trees and water relax us but finding solid empirical evidence for a relationship between ecology and our state of mind has been more difficult.

 

Environmental psychologists are now on to it: crime rates, academic performance, aggression, your mental health, even attention deficit disorder -- could a bit of urban greening make all the difference?

All In The Mind - 17 January 2009 - Greening the Psyche

Ambra Burls: We discovered a piece of tree trunk. It was obvious that it had been cut a long time ago on both sides but in the middle of this piece of trunk was a little tiny branch with bright green shoots, leaves. It was so telling, that even something that could appear to be dead still has within it enough energy to spring alive again

. That is a metaphor for people that we can still grow in spite of whatever life throws at us. There's no therapist that could put words to that, it's just so visible, so clearly visible to anybody. And that source of meaning is your own personal source of meaning, the value of something that you've grown inside yourself, that you have developed yourself and that you can relate to it without having to go to someone else to find it, it makes for what I call sustainable therapy which I think ecotherapy is.