PROGRAM SCHEDULE: (subject to change)
8:30 am Registration open. Coffee, tea and breakfast snacks available.
9:00 am Announcements, advisements for the day, and Opening Ceremony, with Holos staff/board
9:15 am General address by Jan Edl Stein, MFT, director of Holos Institute.
Response-Ability in a Changing Environment. Jan will open our day’s discussion with a number of questions to be explored: What places do you hold in your bones that speak to your soul? How can you listen to this? How have decades of nature-based therapies informed our core beliefs? How do we evolve a psychological response to meet a rapidly changing world? What are the ethical considerations to be embraced by the “healing” professions?
9:40 am General address by Linda Buzzell, MFT, author and professor of ecopsychology at Pacifica Graduate Institute
Ecopsychology, Ecotherapy and Ecoresilience. It’s pretty clear what isn’t working, but not so easy to envision the practicalities of a sustainable world that could really work. Craig Chalquist and I have been wrestling with this, and have developed 20 ecoresilience principles for personal and cultural adaptation to a changed planet. We’ve gathered wisdom from many sources, including the nature-based permaculture principles, ecopsychology, ecotherapy, ecospirituality, community building endeavors, indigenous wisdom, the arts and depth psychology. We hope to provide at least the beginnings of an integral and hopefully inspirational view of how we and “all our relatives” might survive and even thrive on our Earth homeplace as environmental, political, economic and cultural conditions become ever more challenging.
10:00 am Keynote presentation by Joanna Macy, PhD, author, activist, philosopher and inspirer of hope.
So Very Scared, While Invited Home to our True Nature
10:45 am BREAK
11:00 am Joanna Macy, experiential exercise with community discussion
Feeling our Despair, Feeling Our Hope
11:50 LUNCH BREAK
1:00- 1:50 BREAKOUT WORKSHOP SESSIONS
These 50 minute workshops will be offered concurrently post lunch. Please choose your first choice and indicate upon registration.
Also make note of your second choice. You will be able to change later. These have varying degrees of physicality. We will advise you.
(Please note: Outdoor workshops are subject to change depending on weather)
- A Taste of the Work That Reconnects with Molly Young Brown, MA MDiv (Outdoor/experiential session)
We will experience one of the practices of the Work That Reconnects to help us identify more closely with the natural world, in which we are inextricably interwoven. The Work That Reconnects, pioneered by Joanna Macy, helps us to experience our innate connections with each other and the healing powers of the web of life. This experiential, interactive work draws from systems thinking, deep ecology, and many spiritual traditions.
- Using Mindfulness and Compassion Practices in Nature with Rob Fisher, MFT and Hu Ting Ting, MA (Outdoor/experiential Session)
Mindfulness, compassion practices and a natural setting, when combined together, bring a power and impact that goes to the heart of any exploration. In this 45 minute session we will present some approaches that can be used in solo journeys, group events and with individual clients that will allow you to go deeply and gently into our personal journeys into our hearts and our psyches. We will explain, demonstrate and you can experience three specific practices that you can easily use on your own: group compassion mandala and mindfulness induction in nature.
- Resonant Affinities: Ancient Harmonics of Body and Earth with Sophia Reindeers, PhD, MFT, REAT (Outdoor/experiential Session)
Participants will be guided in creative experiential practices to deepen their healing awareness of the intimate reciprocity of the human with the living earth. This dynamic reciprocity is woven into the very fabric of our sensing and moving, perceiving, thinking, feeling and imaging body, itself arising out of the living matrix of the sentient earth. The practices in this workshop will foster a sensory-imaginative engagement with nature. They will invite the experience of wonder and gratitude, and a joyous sense of kinship with the earth. They will encourage attitudes and practices of attuned earth-stewardship, born of love.
- Move with the Earth, for the Earth: Somatic Ecotherapy in Action with Ariana Candell, MFT (Outdoor/experiential Session)
Discover new ways to connect to Nature through movement-oriented, Earth-based explorations. Receive support from the land through a somatic dialogue with a nature ally. Explore what is blocking your energy to respond to the natural world’s crises, and learn to open these channels through visualization and movement. Find courage and direction through connecting with nature’s wisdom inside yourself, and sharing this in a responsive community. Feel the powerful integration of experiencing your mind, body and spirit in connection with the land and community.
- An Expressive Arts Approach to Cultivating Resilience with Mira Michelle Kennedy, MA (Outdoor/experiential/low impact)
The workshop will define the term resilience in three key areas: personal, community and ecological. The workshop will then offer a hands-on experiential activity about how to cultivate resilience. Participants will explore expressive arts, using materials from nature in order to identify personal strengths and challenges. The workshop will incorporate resource mapping, finding metaphors from the natural world, and permaculture principles. We will explore applied ecopsychology, earth based expressive arts and how we can build resilience.
- Speaking to the Wild Self: Bringing Nature into the Therapy Room with Emily Swanson, MFT (Outdoor-seated/presentation/discussion)
Many clients do not explicitly seek out an eco-therapist or nature-based therapy yet it is precisely these individuals that can benefit deeply from reconnecting to their inner, wilder nature and to the outer world around them. This presentation will explore how to help clients begin to uncover their natural selves without leaving the therapy room and without clients knowing that you are using “ecotherapy.”
- Holy Ground: A Standing Rock Experience: with Mary Good, MFT and Marni Ashira Rothman, MFT intern
(Indoor/presentation/discussion)
We will explore experiential connection with earth through exercises and stories inspired by the Water Protectors at Standing Rock. We will examine and discuss how this contemporary event illustrates the strength and history of humanity’s involvement with land and place as a sacred relationship, and how this type of relationship can promote the well-being of people and the environment with which we live. Holos intern, Marni Rothman, and also a Jewish ritualist, recently participated in a call for clergy people to come pray with the Water Protectors at Standing Rock. Mary Good, MFT, deep story teller, naturalist and speaker of truth, joins Marni to describe the experience of Standing Rock and to also explore symbolic meaning of the NODAPL movement in our psychological lives.
2:00 pm regather
Topic Talks in Applied Ecopsychology
2:10 pm ECO-Equine—Equine Assisted Growth and Learning: Horses in Nature, Alane Freund, MFT, EAGALA Certified
Understanding equine assisted work by Heart and Mind Equine, the leading provider of ecotherapy with horses in beautiful, bucolic Marin County. Learn the ins and outs of how horses galvanize the therapeutic process through their perfect integration of sensitivity and mindfulness. Sensitive prey animals, horses are masters of nonverbal communication and help us become our most authentic and successful selves.
2:30 pm The Psychology of Village Building: Nature-based Models for CulturalHealing, Anna Swisher,MA.
Nature-based systems such as Permaculture, Eco psychology, and the 8 Shields model taught by Jon Young, offer inspiring models for understanding the harmonious ways of nature, and applying that understanding to our own community psyche to restore patterns of health, cooperation, and interdependence. This presentation will explore ways that we might apply these insights to our own lives, personally and professionally, to effectively design human systems that support the healing of the individual,the community, and the Earth
2:50 pm Teen’s Search for Meaning: How Eco-psychology can foster Compassion and Resiliency in America’s Youth, Caroline Lewis, MA.
In a culture shaped by technology and materialism, connection to Earth is necessary for mental health in teenagers. Currently in the U.S, suicide is the third leading cause of death for 15-24 year olds, and depression and anxiety rates are increasing. I have witnessed how experiences in nature can connect a teen to his or her true sense of self that is often not only masked but perhaps not even known. Eco-psychology is not only a therapeutic modality but also a teaching of ancient Earth wisdom that is crucial to for us as therapists to gift to our young people in order to foster compassion and resiliency.
3:10 pm The Role of Shame in Healing our World, Renee Soule, PhD
Shame literacy is essential for ecopsychologists. On most days, we gaze upon our world and fall in love. Other days, acknowledging our complicity in ecological destruction, we suffer self-deprecating guilt, anger, numbness, or a whirlwind of stress. Ecopsychologists contend with this rough and varied emotional terrain. How might the dark specter of shame contribute to this emotional rollercoaster and a lackluster response to eco-crises? Or, might shame support the initiatory development of the Ecological Self?
3:30 pm BREAK
3:45 pm Community Discussion with panel of ecotherapists: Linda Buzzell, MFT, Mary Good, MFT, Laura Parker, MFT, and Jan Edl Stein, MFT
Please bring your questions/concerns and commentary as our panel of presenters meet your inquiry in a lively discussion that invites YOUR participation.
4:35 pm Closing comments
4:55 pm Closing meditation.
5:00 pm CLOSE (Be sure to complete your paperwork for CEUs)