Coming to our senses

Frizell, Caroline. 2016. 'Coming to our senses'. In: Eco-Psychotherapy: Healing and the Natural World. London Wetlands Centre, United Kingdom 18 March 2017. [Conference or Workshop Item]

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Abstract or Description

This presentation is a chance to stand still and look out into the psychic landscape of our attachment with Mother Earth. Returning to our senses can mean moving closer to the way we attune to a whole-earth community through our sensibility and our sensuality.

Alerting our sensitivity to the subtle changes of light throughout the seasons; fine tuning our hearing to the distant rumbles of thunder, breathing in the sweet aroma that heralds the arrival of spring, relishing the taste of the driving rain on our lips, yielding to the touch of soft moorland under our bare feet, and heeding the gut-felt presence of a friend the moment before they call us. These are the places of embodied wisdom.

We also need to come to our senses in relation to how we treat this earth that is our home. Like adolescents struggling to free ourselves from the sticky web of our dependency, we have trashed the family home with a hedonistic house party. We then find that, we are inhaling the poison that we’ve pumped into the air. We have a food system that includes the abhorrent treatment of animals. We find that landscapes with which we have fallen in love are decimated. We find the earth becoming unviable for an increasing number of species.

This presentation is offered in the spirit of reciprocity and community as a small drop in a wider ocean of therapists who are turning the psychic tide as we come to our senses.

Item Type:

Conference or Workshop Item (Keynote)

Keywords:

ecopsychology, body, environmental crisis, senses

Departments, Centres and Research Units:

Social, Therapeutic & Community Engagement (STaCS) > Unit for Psychotherapeutic Studies

Dates:

DateEvent
10 December 2016Accepted
18 March 2017Completed

Event Location:

London Wetlands Centre, United Kingdom

Date range:

18 March 2017

Item ID:

27997

Date Deposited:

06 Jan 2020 16:12

Last Modified:

06 Jan 2020 16:12

URI:

https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/27997

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