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***My book**** 

Towards an Ecopsychotherapy

Pub. Confer Books, 2020

Write to me on mj@mjrust.net for a signed hard copy.

READ MORE ABOUT IT HERE

 

“The universe is a communion of subjects, not a collection of objects.”  Thomas Berry

This website is dedicated to NATURE.

The diverse web of life on whom we depend, of whom we are part, is in crisis. We need a sea-change in lifestyles, values, identity. Joanna Macy calls this The Great Turning – the shift from the Industrial Growth Society to a life-sustaining civilization. This is about a change in relationship towards self, other and earth.

As a psychotherapist with some 45 years experience, I am interested in a psychology in the service of the earth. This is Ecopsychology.  How might we support the genius of human nature to re-imagine our relationship with the web of life? How might we understand and confront the shadow sides of human nature that have led us to this point of global crisis?

I offer lectures, workshops and seminars to a wide variety of groups and organisations (see ‘Events’), as well as individual therapy with the earth in mind. Some themes of this work are:

                   Living sustainably involves making a sea-change in lifestyles and attitudes. What role might psychotherapists have to play in this paradigm shift?

                   What can the study of natural systems (ecology) teach us about human systems?       

                   We are in the midst of a “giant eating problem”, as we struggle with rampant consumerism. Can we use experience from individual recovery to understand our collective predicaments?      

                    How do the wider issues of global crisis and our relationship to ‘nature’ come into the therapy relationship?      

                    Ecotherapy is the practice of ecopsychology. What does this look like, in all its many forms?         

Ecopsychology is an attempt to weave together psychological, political, ecological and spiritual understandings.  To this end, I am interested in conversations between diverse peoples and beings, in diverse places. Listening to all parts of the ecosystem – and that includes our diverse internal ecosystems – rebalances the whole.   Only when we invite back in that which has been marginalised can we find new ways forward.

See our UK Ecopsychology website for:  UK practitioners; resources; information on training; reading; and more.

 “A human being is a part of a whole, called by us ‘universe’, a part limited in time and space. S/he experiences himself, her/his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest… a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.“ Einstein

Header Image: Susan Hills sculpture Mud Maid Earth Woman at Lost Gardens of Helligan, Cornwall. Photo: M. J. Rust.