Echotherapy: Healing with Nature in Mind

Edited by Linda Buzzell and Craig Chalquist

Published June 1, 2009 as a follow-up to the influential Ecopsychology: Restoring the Earth, Healing the Mind, this anthology revisits the work of writers like Theodore Roszak, Mary Gomes, Sarah Conn, Steven Aizenstat, and Ralph Metzner while offering a new harvest of contributions from David Orr, Richard Heinberg, Richard Louv, Bill McKibben, Joanna Macy, Larry Robinson, Malidoma Somé, and Shepherd Bliss.

This groundbreaking volume is must reading for therapists seeking guidance in navigating the new frontiers of ecopsychology, or for anyone who has ever wondered why we continue to abuse the planet even though we know better. Reaching a sustainable future means reinventing psychological healing as if the human–nature relationship matters — as it profoundly does.

Lester Brown,
award-winning coiner of "sustainability"
and founder of the Earth Policy Institute

Excerpts from Ecotherapy: Healing with Nature in Mind

Asking Different Questions: Therapy for the Human Animal

by Linda Buzell

Have you ever wondered why psychotherapists ask about a client's relationships with mother, father, family, friend, job, drugs, and even community but seldom say a word about the client’s connection - or lack of it - with "Mother" Earth?

So begins the chapter by psychotherapist Linda Buzzell, in which she challenges mental health professionals to expand their clinical worldview and approach to include the whole of nature.  She offers working tools for the practice of echotherapy, from the intake session forward.  Among the tools she discusses is the use of an outdoor setting in therapy sessions, drawing on her own experience of incorporating her permaculture garden into her work with clients.

Resisting the Juggernaut: The Wild Frontier of Ecopsychology

by Richard Bruce Anderson

We live in a mythical era, a time that surpasses legend.  We’re witnessing a dazzling triumph of technology, an archetypal summoning of powers that are indistinguishable from true magic.  But that triumph is hollow and destructive to much of what we value.

Dr. Anderson dares to look deep into the dark forces of financial aggression that are consuming our planet.  A leader in the voluntary simplicity movement, he has been exploring the sources of and remedies for our culture’s epidemic addiction to consumerism.  As this epidemic continues to convert huge portion of the Earth’s surface into eventual waste products, it also replaces organic modes of thought with mechanized ones, allowing the passive consumer to dissociate from active participation in the tangible, living world.

Additional Information

Visit www.ecotherapyheals.com for more information about ecotherapy and this book, which can be purchased from Amazon.com.

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