Ocean-psychology

Sustainable Seafood

2011-09-18T15:28:00.000-07:00

http://www.montereybayaquarium.org/cr/SeafoodWatch/web/sfw_factsheet.aspx?fid=92

E.O. Wilson on saving life on Earth

2011-05-05T17:19:00.001-07:00

Therapeutic Communications Class 8/10

2011-04-19T11:55:00.000-07:00

I came to the last Therapeutic Communications class with ecopsychology theories and questions on my mind. I learned about ecopsychology around a year ago. Since then, I have read everything I can get my hand on related to the subject. I read Miriam Greenspan during the prior week and something she wrote connected with some previous ecopsychology teachings for me. Greenspan (2003) writes, “’Emotional Ecology’ enlarges the frame of reference, moving the focus from individual journeys of healing to the larger social and global contexts of the dark emotions in our time” (p.4). I began to wonder if a deep healing could take place individually if a person was to remain in an emotionally dark social and global structure.

The Western system (including Islamic) is based on colonization. The Western system works through human beings living off other beings, which the Hopi Natives Americans call Powaqqatsi. I have been studying a similar theory based on my forest tradition Theravada Buddhist practice. It is called the forest tradition because the monks in the past found enlightenment living deep within the forest. The Buddha also found enlightenment under the bodi trees with his body and hand grounded to the earth. Now everyone practices the forest tradition inside buildings, sitting in vipassana meditation, closed off from the natural environment outside. Is enlightenment attainable without a connection to the mother earth? Is individual deep healing possible in a sick society? Richard Louv (2005) says, “A widening circle of researchers believes that the loss of natural habitat, or the disconnection from nature even when it is available, has enormous implications for human health and child development. They say the quality of exposure to nature affects our health at an almost cellular level” (p.43).

During class, I flashed back to a National Geographic Television series I had to watch for a cultural communications class at Cabrillo College. They would take a very wealthy family from the United States and place them to live for ten days in an indigenous society. For the first three days, the families were full of complaints and tears. But, by the tenth day, there had been some profound healing. They had an overall respect for each other that you did not see in their own unnatural environment. The way the indigenous people supported each other began to affect the way the outsiders treated one another. In the end, their tears were not from discomfort but from the realization that they were going home to become sick again.

I feel good about what I am learning from working with my classmates in practice therapy sessions. I was struck by something that a person in class said to me while in a practice session. He said in his culture it is not considered healthy to look within one’s self. He gave example of looking inward as finding a jar filled with things that you might not be able to deal with, unless you have the proper help and a lot of time. He told me that he felt that I would be good at helping, but asked me if I felt I had the time. I must admit that what he said scared me. If someone did open such a jar in my presence would I have the time to meet his or her needs? I figure in class we have five to fifteen minutes, and in therapy we have an hour to meet those needs. I think it was Stephen Levine that said that it’s best not to ask someone how he or she are doing unless you have at least forty-five minutes of attention to give.

Work Cited

Greenspan, Miriam.2003. Healing Through the Dark Emotions. Boston, Shambhala Books.

Louv, Richard.2005. Last Child in the Woods. New York, Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill.

Trauma

2011-03-03T10:57:00.000-08:00

Trauma and Terror

When Tibetan Buddhist Scholar Steve Goodman PhD told me that life is trauma I was stunned. Over the years I have heard from many Buddhist teachers use the term “life is suffering” but no one had ever said trauma. Trauma had been left out of the equation. When I began to investigate my own trauma, I realized that uninvited trauma was the cause of most of my suffering. Most recently I had been experiencing trauma because my three-year-old daughter has been suffering high fevers off and on for the last two months. Doctors cannot seem to figure out why she continues to get sick. I have been feeling helpless; the more I turn away from that sense of helplessness the more I am traumatized. Lately, I have been trying to just sit with my daughter’s dilemma, pray, ask for prayers from friends, and support her the best I can. I still find my self at times turning away from the trauma, my daughter’s discomfort, and sadness. As a child, I was taught by my parents not to face trauma – to turn away from suffering. I am now at a point in life where I face trauma much more than I did in the past but need to consciously override engrained childhood patterns.

Childhood

I was born into a family where trauma had been pasted on generation after generation. Trauma in my family came in three main forms—psychological, physical, and addiction. Nobody in my family had ever stepped out of the whirlwind of abuse to notice the tremendous trauma being caused. My parents cared about cocktail parties and other social events much more than my sister or me. They separated when I was six-years-old because my mother could not take the physical abuse any longer. Unfortunately, the separation did not lead to more concern about my sister and me. My parents only dwelled deeper in their narcissisms. My dad remarried and added an abusive stepmother into my life. My mom moved to a hippie commune with her boyfriend where I learned about positive things like sustainable living. I also learned to use marijuana at the young age of six, and by nine, had tried LSD. In the book Sleeping Where I Fall, Peter Coyote describes what commune life was like in the 1960s and 1970s. Coyote writes, “There was another ‘free land’ commune in nearby Marshall, called Wheeler Ranch, and when its members came to visit we would feast and party and take LSD and make music for none or ten hours at a time” (p. 209). Looking back, I feel that drugs destroyed the sustainable communal living movement of the hippie generation. Drugs allowed me to be numb, to avoid the feeling of trauma, but only for a while. Eventually, substance abuse began to magnify the suffering for me. I came to a crossroad where I had to kill myself with drugs or invite trauma into my life. Goodman told the class, “When you are invited to the banquet of pain and suffering, you do not run away from it” (personal communication, 2010). Being just a child, I found I did not have the tools to deal with family trauma so I turned away by loosing myself in a haze of drugs and alcohol.

Trauma and Theravada

I once heard a story from my friend, Noah Levine, and it illustrates what I have been experiencing since I became sober in 1999. This story came from Noah’s father, Stephen Levine, a well-known author, grief counselor and meditation teacher. Stephen had a theory that, when we are born, our hearts are fully open. Each time we experience pain or hurt feelings, we protect our hearts with thin layers of rice paper. Over time, the layers covering our hearts become so thick that we cannot experience any emotions or express them either. This cuts us off from love and nurturing and separates us from others. These layers start to shed every time we engage in self-realization and healing and our hearts can become open as they once were. This process can take many years of mindful investigation (personal communication, 1988). I have been on this journey of self-awareness for twelve years. The Levine family shared with me their knowledge and insight into Eastern spirituality and meditation. Even after twelve years of dedicated practice I have only begun to peel off the layers.

When I first met Noah in 1985, he was a heroin addict hanging around downtown Santa Cruz. I was riding motorcycles with a motorcycle club called the United Rockers who were allowed to where patches from a more established motorcycle gang. Noah writes, “One of the leaders of the Rockers was an older guy named Mike. He was one of the old punks who had started the motorcycle club in the early eighties” (p. 74). At the time we both thought that his father’s Eastern spiritual practices were for hippies. When Noah got sober in 1988, I watched his life slowly transform. He began to practice Vipassana meditation that his father taught him. He went on a spiritual journey through Thailand and India.

Around this time, I moved to San Francisco and saw less and less of Noah as he grew into a healthy human being and I continued to be an addict who was loosing his life force. By the beginning of 1999, I had enough and went to my first twelve-step meeting. There, I was reacquainted with Noah, who acted as a mentor to me, teaching me meditation to help me find my way. According to Noah, “When I moved back to San Francisco, I ran into my old friend Mike from Santa Cruz, the guy who, in my youth, had mentored me in the ways of motorcycles and madness. I saw him at a twelve-step meeting and he asked me if I would be his sponsor, if I would help him work the steps. I agreed and it was really incredible to see what a full circle our relationship had come, from bikes and violence to sobriety and spiritual practice” (p. 224).

Within a month of beginning my Buddhist practice, Noah introduced me to a monk named Ajahn Amaro who was the abbot at Abhayagiri Monastery in Ukiah, California. I felt a strong connection with Ajahn Amaro and began to look at him as my main teacher. Like me, Amaro had been a punk rocker in the late 1970s. In 1977, living a life of what Amaro called “sex, drugs and rock and roll”, he left on vacation to Thailand where Amaro stumbled upon Ajahn Chah’s forest monastery (personal communication, June, 1999). He has been a Theravada monk since 1977 and today is the abbot of Amaravati Monastery in England. Ajahn Amaro suggested I try the Theravada Buddhist practice for ten years before practicing any other spiritual practice. I agreed to take the path of the Buddha. “The path is the method in the Buddhist spiritual journey for attaining the goal. The path is understood to require commitment to awakening, and it is regarded as something that takes a long time. Even if one does not subscribe to the idea of rebirth, the notion of gradual development is important” (Douglas-Klotz, Gilligan, & Kramer, 2003). I practiced as a rule Theravada Buddhism with Vipassana meditation until 2009, when I began to look at indigenous family practices.

In 2001, I felt a need to be of service to other people. I found a strong connection with Stephen Levine’s hospice work and was lucky enough to be hired to work with Noah’s godfather, Ram Dass, at Zen Hospice Project. More than any spiritual practice or education, sitting with the dying gave me the greatest insight into my own bias and resistance. I found myself using Vipassana meditation with hospice patients to help reduce their pain, anxiety, and stress. It was my understanding that Vipassana meditation could be helpful without its Buddhist tradition.

Stephen Levine was one of the first people to break Vipassana meditation away from the Theravada tradition. He used Vipassana meditation without the Buddhist teachings to help hospice patients control pain levels. Levine also used Vipassana with a variety of spiritual teachings from various religious traditions. According to Levine (1979), “The motivation for meditating is often quite different for each person. Many people come to meditation because of their love for the qualities of some teacher or their desire to know G-d. Others because of the desire to understand the mind. Some begin not even knowing what meditation is, but with great longing to be free from sadness, some pain, some incompleteness in their lives” (p. 1). Using Vipassana meditation outside of its Buddhist container felt freeing to me. I never felt like a religious person but I had always felt deeply spiritual. Theravada Buddhist teachers were always telling students that the Buddha said to take what teaching felt right and to leave the others behind.

The Difference Between Helping and Being of Service

Both R.D. Laing and Michel Foucault fought against the idea that psychiatrists are superior to their clients. They were part of the anti-psychiatry movement. Laing’s idea was that the doctor/patient relationship should be no different than any other relationship – meaning that a therapist/counselor/psychiatrist should get to know his client in the same way he becomes increasingly more familiar with a friend. When we remove the power dynamics from this relationship, clients are better equipped to heal and feel an overwhelming sense of empowerment when they are treated with respect and caring. These ideas are principles I try to incorporate into counseling with clients every time I am working with them.

This idea of reducing or eliminating the power dynamics in the counselor/client relationship was something that I was already familiar with. When I worked for Zen Hospice, Ram Dass explained that, when we help someone, we set up the dynamic of helper and helpless (personal communication, May 2, 2002). Instead, he believed that it was better to be of service to someone, meaning that you are, in a sense, leveling the playing ground or putting yourself in a position of servitude to relieve another’s suffering. Basically, this is just a different way of viewing the same activity, and Dass believed that your frame of mind and sincerity in your heart came across in all types of service and brought about a greater potential for healing.

Indigenous Trauma

Koyaanisqatsi is the Hopi Native American word for life out of balance; a state of life that calls for another way of living. It was only after my life was completely out of balance that I sought to change it. I began to explore what many Native American cultures call “all my relations.” Through classes such as Transpersonal Psychology, Cross-Cultural Counseling, and Shamanism – the Origins of the Sacred, I began to experience a shift in the way I looked at my own weaknesses and strengths. I was no longer trying to heal just my psychological issues – I was entering into a healing journey that included spirituality, ancestors, ecology, cultural history, and stories. I believe that by recognizing what makes up all of my relations I can reconcile with my family dynamics, restore my own health, and help bring about a greater ecological healing to the environment. My healing is a work in progress, organically transforming as I cultivate spirit.

Recently, I have begun to look deeper into my Native American roots and culture. On my mom’s side of the family my grandfather was raised on a reservation in Oklahoma. I also sought to understand my grandmother’s Irish and Norwegian history, preferring to connect with the Saami and their rituals. I began to see great similarities between the Saami and the Native Americans. Unlike Western society, the Saami and Choctaw both look at nature and humans as not separate. Nature provides for us and we, in turn, must give back to nature. It is a healing cycle that has been broken in Western society. I began to see that many of the DSM’s diagnosed disorders do not exist in cultures outside of the Western world. The Daily Show with John Stewart recently interviewed Ethan Watters, author of Crazy Like Us. In his book, Watters has shown that, even with the use of psychiatric pharmaceuticals, Western countries have a lower success rate in treating schizophrenia and other disorders compared to the rest of the world. This further supports the notion that our mental well being may be as simple as reconnecting with nature, the elements and a humble life – all of these counterintuitive to what we are taught to value in the U.S. and most of Eastern and Western Europe.

While working with people diagnosed with schizophrenia, I began to take them on nature walks. Most of these walks were in Santa Cruz forests or beaches. I began to see less anxiety and stress levels in my clients. As I started to research nature’s affect on mental illness, I discovered Attention Restoration Theory. Attention Restoration Theory was brought to light in Rachel and Stephen Kaplan’s book The Experience of Nature: A Psychological Perspective. The Kaplans suggest that there are four types of attention; direct attention, direct attention fatigue, effortless attention, and restored attention. Their theories suggest that, without experiencing nature’s soft fascinations, restored attention cannot occur. Lack of restored attention causes anxiety, stress, and numbness. I realized upon discovering the Kaplans’ Attention Restoration Theory that I had been feeling better in my own life because surfing and hiking in nature was greatly reducing my stress and anxiety levels. Another conclusion I came to was that ecopsychology was a container that held all my relations. Everything is connected. I am connected to everything and everything is connected to me. When something in the ecosystem goes out of balance I feel the affect and, if I am living my life out of balance, then the environment is affected.

Ecological Psychology

Ecopsychology takes into account the whole earth; it looks at humans and nature as single organism. I think that John Muir explained it best. Muir writes, “I only went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found was really going in.” Overall, my spiritual and psychological process is an ever-evolving one. Ecopsychology allows me to put a name on the way I feel connected to spirit, awareness and nature. I try to be mindful of power dynamics in any kind of human interaction, and most importantly in counseling those in need. Richard Louv (2005) says, “A widening circle of researchers believes that the loss of natural habitat, or the disconnection from nature even when it is available, has enormous implications for human health and child development. They say the quality of exposure to nature affects our health at an almost cellular level” (p. 43). When I think of nature on a cellular level I recall the story of the Buddha’s early life as Siddhartha Gautama. Gautama traveled India searching for a spiritual path, trying various forms of Hinduism taught by a range of gurus. None of these complex traditions offered him lasting freedom from suffering. Only when Gautama went into the forest and simply sat under the embrace of the Bodhi tree with his hand connecting to the earth, did he find enlightenment. Gautama became the Buddha by simply realizing that all things on earth are connected. This is very similar to the Native American belief of respecting all your relations. If I push away or mistreat any of my relations, I always suffer more than when I embrace the earth as a whole – fully connected.

Conclusion

I doubt that looking at trauma and suffering will ever come naturally for me. I am positive that I will always need to bring awareness to the fact that I am turning away from trauma. Unconsciously, I was trained from birth to avoid suffering and to seek pleasure. Practicing Buddhism has helped me become more insightful about how I respond to trauma. I have to keep in mind not to be to hard on myself when I turn away from suffering. Goodman told the class to remember five things when dealing with trauma. He suggested, “Really, I am doing the very best I can, pause, and so is everyone else, all the time” (personal communication, 2010). I am doing the very best I can and so is everyone else.

Worked Cited

Coyote, Peter. (1998). Sleeping where I fall. Washington D.C., Counterpoint.

Kaplan, R. & S. (1989). The experience of nature: A psychological perspective. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

Levine, N. (2003). Dharma punx: A memoir. San Francisco, CA: HarperSanFrancisco.

Levine, S. (1979). A gradual awakening. Garden City, NY: Anchor Press.

Louv, R. (2005). Last child in the woods: Saving our children from nature-deficit disorder. New York, NY: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill.

Theravada Buddhism & Vipassana Meditation

2011-01-02T21:46:00.000-08:00

My first exploration into other spiritual practices outside of my family traditions was Theravada Buddhism. This form of Buddhism is from South East Asia; it is the oldest surviving Buddhist school dating back to around 544 B.C.E. In 1974, Theravada came to America through Buddhist teachers like Jack Kornfield, Sharon Salzberg, and Joseph Goldstein. Ordained as a monk in the late 1960s, Kornfield trained under a venerated monk named Ajahn Chah. Kornfield (1977) writes, “Ajahn Chah does not emphasize on special meditation techniques nor does he encourage crash courses to attain quick insight and enlightenment. In formal sittings, one may watch the breath until the mind is still, and then continue practice by observing the flow of the mind-body process” (p. 35). Kornfield is now a Theravada teacher. Having teachers instead of monks is a relatively new and controversial concept that has changed the structure of traditional Theravada tradition.

When I first met Noah in 1985, he was a heroin addict hanging around downtown Santa Cruz. We both thought that his father’s Eastern spiritual practices were for hippies. When Noah got sober in 1988, I watched his life slowly transform. He began to practice Vipassana meditation that his father taught him. He went on a spiritual journey through Thailand and India.

Around this time, I moved to San Francisco and saw less and less of Noah as he grew into a healthy human being and I continued to be an addict who was loosing his life force. By the beginning of 1999, I had enough and went to my first twelve-step meeting. There, I was reacquainted with Noah, who acted as a mentor to me, teaching me meditation to help me find my way. According to Noah (2003), “When I moved back to San Francisco, I ran into my old friend Mike from Santa Cruz, the guy who, in my youth, had mentored me in the ways of motorcycles and madness. I saw him at a twelve-step meeting and he asked me if I would be his sponsor, if I would help him work the steps. I agreed and it was really incredible to see what a full circle our relationship had come, from bikes and violence to sobriety and spiritual practice” (p. 224).

Within a month of beginning my Buddhist practice, Noah introduced me to a monk named Ajahn Amaro who was the abbot at Abhayagiri Monastery in Ukiah, California. I felt a strong connection with Ajahn Amaro and began to look to him as my main teacher. Like me, Amaro had been a punk rocker in the late 1970s. In 1977, living a life of what Amaro called “sex, drugs and rock and roll”, he left on vacation to Thailand where Amaro stumbled upon Ajahn Chah’s forest monastery (personal communication, June, 1999). He has been a Theravada monk since 1977 and today is the abbot of Amaravati Monastery in England. Ajahn Amaro suggested I try the Theravada Buddhist practice for ten years before practicing any other spiritual practice. I agreed to take the path of the Buddha. “The path is the method in the Buddhist spiritual journey for attaining the goal. The path is understood to require commitment to awakening, and it is regarded as something that takes a long time. Even if one does not subscribe to the idea of rebirth, the notion of gradual development is important” (Douglas-Klotz, Gilligan, & Kramer, 2003). I practiced as a rule Theravada Buddhism with Vipassana meditation until 2009, when I began to look at indigenous family practices.

Stephen Levine was one of the first people to break Vipassana meditation away from the Theravada tradition. He used Vipassana meditation without the Buddhist teachings to help hospice patients control pain levels. Levine also used Vipassana with a variety of spiritual teachings from various religious traditions. According to Levine (1979), “The motivation for meditating is often quite different for each person. Many people come to meditation because of their love for the qualities of some teacher or their desire to know G-d; others because of the desire to understand the mind. Some begin not even knowing what meditation is, but with great longing to be free from sadness, some pain, some incompleteness in their lives” (p. 1). Using Vipassana meditation outside of its Buddhist container felt freeing to me. I never felt like a religious person but I had always felt deeply spiritual. Theravada Buddhist teachers were always telling students that the Buddha said to take what teaching felt right and to leave the others behind.

The Rosenhan Experiment

2010-12-31T21:39:00.000-08:00

What is a larger perspective you hold in practicing psychotherapy?

2010-12-06T14:11:00.000-08:00

I would love to find a way to combine therapy and organic farming, and bring it into state and federal campgrounds. I would eventually like to buy a farm where I could produce organic vegetables and encourage individuals and groups who are interested in exploring new ways to interact with the earth. Working on the farm would be a part of the therapy. Ecotherapy is not only about healing human beings, it is also important for people to give back to the planet. When you take from the earth, you must give to the planet to keep it in balance. Western society teaches us primarily to consume and the result has been a life out of balance—a physically and mentally unhealthy culture. Where did this idea come from? According to Philip Cushman (1995), psychology and psychotherapy were important in creating the idea of self-liberation through consumerism. Cushman writes:

However, there is an even worse fate awaiting us if we start situating psychotherapy historically. We would come to see that even the most sophisticated and humane psychotherapy theorist, those who seem concerned with social interaction, the examined inner life, and loving, intimate relationship—like Winniott and Kohut—even these, perhaps especially these, significantly although unknowingly, have contributed to the consumerism of postwar ear. This is a disturbing prospect because it reveals our personal confusion and inadequacy and those of our leaders as well. (p. 250)

Today, Americans find themselves at the crossroads. Consumerism has not fulfilled their search for happiness. In the United States, many people feel empty, buried in debt, unhappy, and yet we consume more products than any society in the history of the world. According to Richard Louv (2005), “Our indoor life feels downsized, as if it’s lost a dimension or two. Yes, we’re enamored with our gadgets—our cell phones connected to our digital cameras connected to our laptops connected to an e-mail-spewing satellite transponder hovering somewhere over Macon, Georgia. Of course, some of us (I include myself here) love the gizmology. But quality of life isn’t measured only by what we gain, but also by what we trade for it” (p. 59). I believe that it is perfectly acceptable to have the “gizmos” if one can find a way to balance one’s life by involving oneself in the natural world. The stress on the body and mind of working all week in front of a computer screen can be balanced out by unplugging from the machine during the evenings and weekends. My idea of an organic farm not far from city life would allow people to venture out of the city, unplug, work in the soil, and, in trade, receive wholesome food to take home weekly for their involvement. I would like to set up lavvus, so that I could provide retreats where people could stay for a period of time. I lived on a hippy commune as a kid, from 1969 to 1973. This idea of working the land together and benefiting from the combined fruits of many laborers is something I learned while I was there. During the week, we stayed with my mom and her boyfriend at the commune, planting organic vegetables, feeding livestock and playing. Then, we would spend our weekends in town at my mother’s house, often shopping for clothes, groceries to supplement the food supply on the commune or watching television. During a very unstable childhood, the experiences I had at the commune are my fondest and healthiest memories.

Theodore Roszak : Towards an Eco-Psychology

2010-11-25T17:28:00.000-08:00

A Healing Environment -- What is Madness? (Part 3)

2010-11-04T09:30:00.000-07:00

What is a healing environment for someone suffering from schizophrenia? Unlike Laing, I believe that it must be a contained capsule similar to what Cortright mentioned in his class lecture. Most care homes for schizophrenics allow the clients to come and go at their free will. A Mental Health Center where I did my practicum says that the center is the schizophrenic client’s home and that we must try to be there for them without being intruders. The problem I see with that kind of facility and Laing’s home care centers are that the clients go out and self medicate on various drugs and are exposed to a harsh world; when they are out in society, they experience hardships that people suffering from schizophrenia or a spiritual emergency are mentally unprepared to handle. I witnessed a great example of this today at a Santa Cruz mental health facility. A client took a walk downtown from the center with a social worker. They were stopped by two undercover police officers and questioned callously. The social worker was not searched but the schizophrenic client was. Then, the police left as suddenly as they had appeared. The client, already suffering from acute paranoia, was traumatized by the episode and needed to be taken to a mental health institution for stronger medication. I think that schizophrenic care homes would have much better results with clients if they safely contained clients from the outer world in a healthy environment. The problem is when people hear containment they think of being locked up in mental facility similar to the one in the film, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Cortright writes the following about a safe container:

If it is at all possible, it is a great help to have a sanctuary, a retreat from the ordinary world in which to experience the profound conscious changes that are occurring. It is preferable that this not be a hospital or some other clinical, sterile environment. Ideally this safe haven should be comfortable and quiet, warm and home-like with soft lighting, and connected to nature. Such ideal settings are not often available, in which case the person’s home may need to be good enough. (174)

It is hard to believe that a schizophrenic suffering their first or second break would not benefit and pass through their psychotic break in such a loving supportive environment as the one Cortright just described. Unfortunately, none of Laing’s homes ever offered a safe container separate from the outside world. During the early 1970s, psychology wanted to get as far away from institutional model of mental health as it could and Laing was no exception. The home that I am doing practicum in offers each client their own room, cafeteria-style cooked meals, and a shared living room with a giant television. The house smells, is dirty by my standards, has only cold linoleum floors and fluorescent lighting. The main problem is that these care homes lack financial backing and run off limited governmental handouts. The lack of funds also puts most of these care homes in low income downtown areas, far from any kind of nature.

Nature Heals

Cortright says that nature is an important component to the healing of a spiritual emergency. It is my opinion that these same principles can be applied to the healing of schizophrenia. In my first experiences with schizophrenic patients in practicum, I witnessed the power of nature and the environment in healing. When I arrived for training at Front Street, I saw a group patients watching television in the living room, all with void expressions and very little awareness of anything other than the T.V. screen flickering. By contrast, int eh director’s office, I saw several photographs of people smiling on the beach, carrying surfboards or out in the ocean, surfing. I thought it might be staff at the center and asked if they took surf lessons or something. I was shocked when the director told me that it was a group of patients, many of them still at the center and undoubtedly part of the group of expressionless television viewers I just witnessed. I was shocked. They were active, reacting with nature and responding to the experience. They looked healthy. It reminded me of the organization, Surfers Healing; they use surfing to reach many children with autism and report the same kinds of evidence of healing. I am not even sure if the director was aware of the change in the patients that was apparent in the photographs but I hope to explore this once I become more familiar with the center and the structure of the care provided there.

Another experience I had was while watching the film, Grey Gardens, the 1975 documentary about Edith Ewing Bouvier and Edith Bouvier Beale, aunt and first cousin of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. taking place in the photos of their clients. The second nature and schizophrenic episode I saw in a 1975 documentary film called Grey Garden. It was about a mother and daughter living in a run down 25-room mansion that was eccentric cousins of Jacquelyn Kennedy. The mother and daughter dressed as though they were in the 1920s, as the film progresses you begin to see that in the 1920s they were both very wealthy high society beauties. Now all the wealth was gone, the house was in shambles and surrounded by a thick grove of trees. The daughter a former beauty queen, poet, scholar, and dancer had obviously suffered a schizophrenic break in her late twenties. She still suffered from a little paranoia and some delusions but overall was still very mentally sharp and held conversation with no problem. Her mother who seemed to have a good spirit about her had supported her daughter. The daughter was contained by an over grown encapsulating garden that resembled a small forest even though it was smack dab in the middle of Nantucket Sound. It seemed to me that the garden had acted as a barrier from the outside world and created a nurturing environment for her to pass through a schizophrenic break to some extent. It is important to note that a container for anyone experiencing a mental emergency is important because the out society we live in is ill. This brings us back to Laing’s theory that we live in a world of murder, hate, rape, and genocide, yet we consider a person talking to him or herself insane. Theodore Roszak see the decline of the worlds health a direct result of mental illness. Roszak writes:

When the Earth hurts, who responds? The answer is, I believe, that each of us now experiences in some way—physically, psychotically, economically, or politically—the pain of the Earth. The news about environmental degradation is hard to avoid, anyone who walks, breathes, looks, or listens knows that the air, the water, and the soil are being contaminated and that nonhuman species are disappearing at alarming rates. Yet the great majority of us, in this country and in much of the Western world, seem to be living our lives as if this were not so. Because we experience the self as separate from the Earth, we feel either overwhelmed by or removed from what we learn about environmental deterioration; we become helpless or indifferent in the face of it, and unable to respond except with numbness and denial. (161)

What chances does a person suffering a schizophrenic break have of recovering in a world that is unraveling? Can a schizophrenic find a safe container in this society?

Conclusion

I believe that Laing and Foucault theories on schizophrenia need to be looked at with a fresh set of eyes. Freud theories suffered a similar discrediting during the 1970s and 1980s but are having a renaissance today. Perhaps a similar resurgence will happen for Laing and Foucault theories. Cortright’s transpersonal approach to spiritual emergency seems to compliment Laing’s theory on schizophrenic care. Roszak seems to back both Laing and Cortright’s theory of the healing effects of nature on society and spiritual emergency with psychotic features. I feel that by using an integral approach that includes similar theories we can heal schizophrenia in its early stages. Laing and Foucault laid the groundwork fifty-years-ago. Since then transpersonal and ecopsychological approaches have appeared on the psychology seen. When these theories are blended together we end up with a powerful psychotherapeutic tool.

Work Cited

Andrel, M. (2008). Big Paramedical Spends More on Advertising than Research. ZME Science. Retrieved April 12, 2009, from http://www.zmescience.com/big-pharma-spends-more-on-advertising-than-research.

Cortright, B. (1997). Psychotherapy and Spirit. New York, State University of New York Press.

Foucault, M. (1965). Madness and Civilization. New York, Vintage Books.

Laing, R.D. (1969). The Divided Self. London, Penguin Books.

Roszak, T, Gomes, M. & Kanner, A.D. (1995). Ecopsychology: restoring the earth healing the mind. San Francisco, Sierra Club Books.

R.D. Laing -- What is Madness? (Part 2)

2010-11-01T12:04:00.001-07:00

Both Laing and Foucault felt that the psychological institutions of the 1950s and 1960s were unhelpful and even harmful in the treatment of schizophrenia. I can find no evidence to dispute their theory. The Rosenhan Experiment confirms that the institutions were misdiagnosing patients and putting them into an unhealthy environment, with little chance for recovery. Foucault’s theory included communist political views, something Laing’s theory left out. So why is Laing and his ideas so overlooked in today’s psychology? There seems to be two reasons for Laing’s demise. The first reason is that Laing could never overcome his own personal battle with substance abuse. Severe alcoholism finally unraveled his life, leading to his disbarment, and his untimely death. The second reason is a large campaign pushed by the American psychiatric community to discredit all of Laing’s theories.

It has been well documented that the U.S. pharmaceutical companies fund the American psychiatric community directly and indirectly. According to Mihal Andrel, in 2008, U.S. pharmaceutical companies made 235.4 billion dollars and spent 24.4% on advertising and 13.4% on research. Much of this advertising money goes to discredit non-pharmaceutical psychological treatments. The discrediting of Laing is less apparent in Western socialist countries because socialized medicine eliminates the possibility for medical companies to make overly high profits. England did take away Laing’s psychiatric license for practicing while intoxicated and sexual misconduct. He has only himself to blame for allowing this to overshadow his theories on schizophrenia. The important thing to remember is that after forty years Laing’s care homes for schizophrenics still run today throughout Europe. If these homes were not efficient, would they still be in use?

Brant Cortright gives different criteria for spiritual emergency than he does for schizophrenia. He also gives a separate criterion that includes both elements of spiritual emergency and psychosis. According to Cortright, “In provocative contributions to this field, Lukoff (1985) and Nelson (1990) propose criteria in which spiritual and psychosis experience co-exist” (P.171). Laing also believed it was at this early spiritual stage of schizophrenia when a person is having their first or second breaks that a true healing could take place. He contemplated that the healing could only take place if the client was given a contained nurturing environment to pass through their schizophrenic dilemma. Cortright says that a person having a spiritual emergency needs grounding, special diet, exercise (movement), bodywork, sleep, and sometimes medication to pass through the experience to a healthier mental state. Laing had a very similar list for schizophrenics to pass through a schizophrenic break. His Philadelphia Association Community Houses in London today offer the schizophrenic residents their own rooms in a large home where they can come and go. The homes offer around-the-clock support and all of the treatments that Cortright mentions for spiritual emergency, even medication. I believe that we, as therapists, wish to discredit Laing because of unseen psychology establishment pressure and we feel let down that, as a therapist, he was unable to overcome his own psychological demons. I have heard this same discrediting of Foucault’s brilliant theories because he was unable to stop his sadomasochistic lifestyle that eventually led to his death. The problem is, when we discredit a therapist for not living up to our standards, their theories also suffer, becoming fixed in time—lifeless. Many therapist I have talked to believe that Laing had schizophrenia care homes where he and other therapist experimented with LSD. That’s all they know about his theories and are reluctant to hear anything else—he is discredited. Nobody knows or cares that his theories and schizophrenic care homes evolved until his death and still continue to develop today. Only when we can admit to ourselves that we, too, are fragile beings with our own set of psychological hardships, is it possible to see Laing and Foucault as brilliant minds with human faults.

What is Madness? (Part 1)

2010-10-01T16:18:00.000-07:00

In a transpersonal psychology class, I learned the difference between spiritual emergency and schizophrenic break. But is the difference only noticeable because we are viewing the situation from a Western perspective? Did indigenous shamans view spiritual crisis and schizophrenic fracture in the same manner? R.D. Laing and Michel Foucault both agreed that schizophrenics could be healed if a client was given a nurturing healthy environment to experience their psychotic break, allowing them to pass through it. The healing methods described by Foucault and Laing are very similar to the one’s mentioned in class concerning the methods to heal someone through a spiritual emergency. If we look at madness through the lens of Western Christian religion, maybe it is not as different as it is made out to be. According to Foucault, “Christ did not merely choose to be surrounded by lunatics; he himself chose to pass in their eyes for a madman, thus experiencing, in his incarnation, all the suffering of human misfortune” (p.80). This puts forth the questions who is mad and who is sane? What actions make you crazy and what one’s make you normal?

Today, we have a distorted view of what is rational in the Western world. How is it that we have come to accept modern ideas like war in the name of democracy as rational but we view a person talking to himself on the sidewalk as psychotic? We assume that that our society is normal, even though we live where murder, rape, war, and other such horrors are considered routine because they are on the news everyday. Yet, we believe that, if someone behaves in a harmless nonconforming manner, they are crazy and should be put away from the rest of society. We believe that these people are mad because, for the last 100 years, psychiatrists have told us that they are. Since psychiatrist are the Western high priests of judging who is sane and who is not, we take their word as gold. Foucault writes the following about madness:

Madness is precisely at the point of contact between the oneiric and the erroneous; it traverses, in its variations, the surface on which they meet, the surface which both joins and separates them. With error, madness shares non-truth, and arbitrariness in affirmation or negation; from the dream, madness borrows the flow of images and the colorful presence of hallucinations. But while error is merely non-truth, while the dream neither affirms nor judges, madness fills the void of error images, and links hallucinations by affirmation of the false. In a sense, it is thus plenitude, joining to the figures of night the powers of day, to the form of fantasy the activity of walking mind; it links the dark content with the forms of light. (106)

Can psychiatrist and psychology truly tell who is insane? Laing and Foucault believe that those in the medical profession are ill equipped to make that judgment without more investigation. Can this theory be proven?

The Rosenhan Experiment

Rosenhan wanted to test R.D. Laing’s theory of what constituted normality or mental illness. The research test that took place in 1972 is known today as the Rosenhan Experiment. Rosenhan sent himself and eight healthy colleagues into well-known psychiatric institutions across the United States. They told the psychiatric officials in the institutions that they heard an unclear voice saying he words “empty”, “hollow” and “thud”. Beyond hearing these words, they acted completely normal. Against their will, all of them were committed to the psychiatric institutions. Rosenhan instructed the pseudo-patients to behave completely normal once admitted. Even though the mentally healthy pseudo-patients behaved normal and even kept detailed notes of the tests they were asked to perform, they were held for months. No psychiatrists or nurses ever looked at the notes the pseudo-patients were writing. Only when the pseudo-patients admitted to being crazy and pretended to take their medication were they eventually released. In an interview, Rosenhan says, “I told friends, I told my family, I can get out when I can get out. That's all. I'll be there for a couple of days and I'll get out. Nobody knew I'd be there for two months. The only way out was to point out that they're [the psychiatrists were] correct. They had said I was insane, I am insane; but I am getting better. That was an affirmation of their view of me” (Wikipedia).

Once the results of this test were published, the psychiatric facilities became angry with Rosenhan. He agreed to work with one particular institution over a three-month period of time. The staff was asked to evaluate all incoming patients to determine whether or not the patient was one of Rosenhan’s pseudo-patients (he falsely informed them that he would be sending in his test subjects to recreate the results of the first experiment). Of the 193 genuine patients seeking psychiatric care at this particular institution, the staff identified 41 as impostors and 42 as suspicious.

These two experiments proved that it was often difficult to correctly diagnose anyone coming into a psychiatric facility and that staff often had a tendency to misdiagnose a healthy person because they were looking for signs that the person was unhealthy rather than assuming the person was healthy. One unforeseen response was that the misdiagnosed and admitted pseudo-patients were able to carefully critique and evaluate the care they were receiving without the staff being aware of the observations, allowing Rosenhan and others to openly and intelligently criticize the psychiatric community.

It is no doubt that these experiments supported the idea that the Western world needed to deinstitutionalize mental health care. There had been many class action suits against institutions in the U.S. and the anti-psychiatry movement in the 1960s and some were beginning to see the cost savings of community mental health programs established to help people with disabilities to live on their own with some supervision. Although this did not achieve Laing’s vision of psychological care in “community households” where people can work through their emotional difficulties together and with psychotherapists (not through medical treatment and behavior modification techniques that often caused more harm than good), some progress was made in the psychiatric field, with many doctors and researchers now looking for scientific and biological clues for mental illness.

One unfortunate result of deinstitutionalization is that many of the mentally ill patients ended up homeless or in the prison system. Many of these people would have been better served if they had been in some form of institution because they were incapable of taking care of themselves and, since there was an across-the-board decision to revamp the mental health care system, these people were often overlooked.

Taiaiake Alfred -- From Noble Savage to Righteous Warrior

2010-09-20T19:33:00.000-07:00

Capitalist Suicide: The End of Western Civilization (2007)

2010-09-01T11:59:00.000-07:00

The Industrial Age gave birth to what we know today as modern capitalism. Capitalism includes outright theft on a class of people who no longer own any means of production. “Capitalism initiates a rapid transformation in the labor process and promotes the development of science and technology. Meanwhile, religion and kinship ties are continuously undermined. Some theorize that capital is built up in a few countries at the expense of other countries, which are used as sources of cheap labor and raw materials” (Open Wiki, 2007). The cultures that have been destroyed in the name of industrial profit led me to base my thesis on the death of Western Civilization by capitalism. Capitalism feeds human greed and greed is what has driven humans to create what Albert Einstein called the Three Revolutions. In Crepuscular Dawn, Paul Virilio warns that he believes that the Three Revolutions are almost completed and that the end of humankind and Western society as we know it are at an end. The revolutions are beings fueled by capitalist industrial technology and the quest for speed. The first is the revolution in transportation. “The second is the revolution of transmission, whose hero could be Steve Mann or Jaron Lanier. And the revolution of transplants, of course, is the third: that’s Professor Warwick. Warwick, an Englishman, had a microchip sewn into himself to avoid wearing a badge while walking around his laboratory and his university” (Virilio, Paul, 2002, p.96). All three revolutions are accelerated by industrial capitalistic greed for more.

In Sleeping Where I Fall, Peter Coyote (1998) described his father as being part of the Wall Street capitalist society. While his father was visiting him on the Olema Ranch commune, he caught Coyote off guard by admitting that if he were Coyote’s age again, he would be doing the communal living thing (p. 208). Coyote never expected to hear such words from his well-to-do father. Why would somebody wealthy and connected to Wall Street (the heart beat of America’s capitalism), want to live in a free family commune? Coyote’s father had connections into the inner workings of capitalism. He knew that powerful people were doing as they pleased with little or no thought of the long-term results of their actions. Coyote was pleased to hear his father’s words and twenty years later he still remembered them vividly:

Capitalism is dying, boy. It’s dying of its own internal contradictions. [He was, after all, a Wall Street financier, so I listened carefully.] You think that the revolution’s gonna take five years. It’s gonna take fifty! So keep your head down and hang in for the long haul, because I’ll tell you something. The sons of bitches running things don’t give a shit about their children or their grandchildren, and they certainly don’t give a shit about you! They’ve paid their dues, and they want to get out with theirs! They’re gonna sell off everything that’s not nailed down to the highest bidder. Don’t get crushed when it topples down. Take care of yourself and your family. If you can make a difference, do it, but there are huge forces at work here, and they have to play themselves out according to their own design, not yours. Watch yourself. As far as I can determine, everything he prophesied has come true. (p.209)

Coyote’s father was predicting that capitalistic greed would eventually destroy everything including capitalism itself—a suicide. His father’s prophecies have come true in many ways. “Capitalism is also destroying the natural environment. With oil, coal, gas, and forest clearing, we burn each year what nature took a million years to create.” This could all be changed very quickly if only what the world spends on military weapons was spent on cleaning up the earth. Taking such action would reforest the earth, stabilize the topsoil, provide cleaner drinking water and help us come up with a renewable energy source (Resistance, 2006).

It would seem that most of the industrial world has joined in on this capitalistic suicide pack. Paul Virilio calls it the “suicidal state syndrome”. He says, “What happened to the Cambodians would have happened to the Germans. …It was not simply the Reign of Terror—they decapitated everyone and in the end the executioners also went to the guillotine (that happened to Louis XVI at the Place de la Concorde, a primordial image for the French). They started up an extermination machine, and this machine is still running” (Virilio, Paul & Lotringer, Sylvere, 2002, p.127 & p.128). Man created the machine and capitalism is makes it an instrument of death. Capitalism demands that the machine go faster until it eats up everything in its path.

The reason that capitalism has spread throughout most of the modern world is through greed for greater resources. More resources lead to advancements in technology, which, in turn, create authoritative corporations that control world governments. Since the start of the European industrial age, the West has been imperializing the world through technology. In Decolonizing Methodologies, Linda Tuhiwai Smith (1999) writes:

It links imperialism to the spirit, which characterized Europe’s global activities. MacKenzie defines imperialism as being ‘more than a set of economic, political and military phenomena. It is also a complex ideology, which had widespread cultural, intellectual and technical expressions’. This view of imperialism locates it within the Enlightenment spirit, which signaled the transformation of economic, political and cultural life in Europe. In this wider Enlightenment context, imperialism becomes an integral part of the development of the modern state, of science, of ideas and of the ‘modern’ human person. (p.22)

The capitalist economic part of imperialism is what funds the political and military engines that in turn, protect the destructiveness of capitalism from prosecution. Capitalist countries need to be held accountable for their actions that harm human and animal life. Yet, who at this point in history is powerful enough to call renegade capitalism to stand trail?

The Luddites give us a good example of the damage that industrial capitalism can cause, even though the damage to Luddites was on a much smaller scale than the spoil that capitalism is causing to the world today. The Luddites took a stand against the misuse of technology that caused them to loss of jobs and destroyed eventually their community. Poet and activist E.P. Thompson said that the actions taken by the Luddites was ‘a violent eruption of feeling against unrestrained industrial capitalism’” (Sale, Kirkpatrick, 1995, p.75). The Luddites did not win their battle against technology. In fact they barely slow down by vandalizing the machines. “Western Civilization has indeed penetrated everywhere, with a resulting loss of cultural, linguistic, communitarian, societies, but with minor exceptions the poor nations have not become rich—and in fact, though it is kept quiet by the benefactors, there has been a continuing net flow of money from the poorest nations to the richest, amounting to $19 billion in 1993” (p.233). The gap between rich and poor will never be reduced because the capitalist nations use most of the earth’s resources already. Clear-cutting forest, polluting the oceans, fishing and hunting without limitations, excessive mining of minerals, poisoning and over use of farm topsoil are all result of corporate greed. The capitalist greed for more profit causes individuals and corporations to turn a blind eye. As a result, they fail to see the bigger picture. When the earth’s resources are gone, it will no longer sustain human life on such a large scale, if the earth supports human life at all. Since almost every human on earth now realizes the planet is dying from human misuses, would not this make it a capitalist industrial suicide? (Sale, Kirkpatrick, 1995, p.234).

“Leo Lowenthal compared biographies of notable Americans found in popular magazines published early in the twentieth century with biographies that appeared in the same magazines during the 1940s ([1944] 1968)” (Griswold, Wendy, p.30.) Lowenthal discovered by looking at over thirty-years of biographies that, in the early part of the twentieth century, people usually wrote about inventors, discoverers, and business capitalist. However, by the 1940s through the 1960s, people were more likely to write about movie stars, and popular athletes. His study showed that American society had shifted from an economy based on production, to a market based on consumption. A shift that took place is what led to the end of mom-and-pop businesses and created an economy reliant on huge corporation. (Griswold, Wendy, p.31). The corporations now controlled everything from power plants to providing food and clothing, leaving the citizens of Western society at their mercy. Since people no longer made as much money, they had to rely on cheap goods made inexpensively created at the expense of many third world countries. Horkheimer and Theodor Adomo observed, ‘No mention is made of the fact that the basis on which technology acquires power over society is the power of those whose economic hold over society is greatest’” (Hall, John R. & Neitz, Mary Jo, 1993, p.143).

In his short essay “Body Ritual Among the Nacirema,” Horace Miner (1956) turns the tables by making us look at our own American culture through the viewing glass we often use to look at indigenous civilizations. He forces us to see that we are a culture consumed by vanity. We spend endless amounts of money on enhancing our bodies through beauty rituals, plastic surgery, and expensive clothing. He tells us “the fundamental belief underlying the whole system appears to be the human body is ugly and that its natural tendency is to debility and disease” (Miner, H., 1995). Miner’s essay, written in 1956 shortly after World War II, ties in with Leo Lowenthal study in that we had become more preoccupied with movie stars and product consumption trying to achieve some unachievable idea of vanity. The unachievable goal of beauty leaves us with a feeling of emptiness that we try to fill by more product consumption. Some seek help for this empty feeling by paying a psychologist. Miner calls psychologist listening witch doctors. “This witch-doctor has the power to exercise the devils that lodge in the heads of people who have been bewitched. The Nacirema believe that parents bewitch their own children. Mothers are particularly suspected of putting a curse on children while teaching them the secret body rituals”. Miner tells us that people in Western society are taught to feel that they were not born with what they needed and need to spend money (consume) to achieve the goal of happiness. It has now been fifty years since Miner wrote his essay and Western culture today has begun to assimilate with technology in an effort to attain the unnatural beauty created by capitalism that people began seeking in the mid twentieth century. “Images of machines have come ever closer to images of people, as images of people have come ever closer to images of machines” (Turkle, S., 1997).

We are now at a point in Western capitalist society, especially in American thought, where we can see the effects of capitalism on indigenous cultures that were unwillingly brought into the system. In Slim’s Table, Mitchell Duneier (1992) shows us how the African-American culture was devastated by capitalist greed. “When types of people most commonly referred to as black role models are basketball players who father babies out of wedlock, the higher classes have less to offer in the way of superior values” (p.127). This once again connects to mid twentieth century change that Lowenthal found in his study. The finding that the ruling white culture began to value stars such as pro athletes rather than scientist. Most people would rather learn about a baseball player’s stats than learn about global warming caused by unregulated industrial consumption. So many minority youth began to want the life of the famous white wealthy stars that the capitalist media bombarded them into thinking this was the normal, healthy way to live. “The role model has long been apart of American sociological thought, but it has been used inappropriately in the debate over the future of the inner city. The concept of role denotes a more limited identification with an individual in only one or a selected few of his or her roles” (Duneier, M.,1992, p.133). Industrial Western culture has created this society ruled by a market based on consumption, which has led to a society based on individualism. We have come to believe that if we get what we need, then things will be all right. That is why the role models we were exposed to by the media were self-centered individuals that seem to lack concern for the community they lived in. Max Weber said, “that man is an animal suspended in the webs of significance he himself has spun” (Geertz, C.,1973, p.5). The fact is “heterosexual white men in this society tend to have a dualistic view of the world: we are either right or wrong, winners or losers. There is only one truth, and we will fight with one another to determine whose truth is right” (Thompson, Cooper, 2000 p.479).

If Western capitalism profits at the expense of outside cultural societies and through inside discrimination, then there would seem to be nothing stopping it from profiting on its own destruction. It follows the old saying - if you cannot care about someone else then how can you care about yourself. M. Scott Peck wrote in The Different Drum: Community Making and Peace:

Indeed, we must recognize that we live in a time in which our need for community has itself become critical. But we have a choice. We can keep on pretending that this is not so. We can continue refusing to face the crisis until the day when we individually and collectively destroy ourselves and our planet. We can avoid community until the end. Or we can wake up to the drama of our lives and begin to take the steps necessary to save them. (p.80 & 81)

There are people who are trying to deconstruct the Western system in the hope of avoiding its inevitable crash. They believe that they can dismantle the system by taking apart the way individual people think. This means dismantling our discriminatory and privileged attitudes that we have been taught by being brought up in a Western capitalist system. “It also involves developing a consistency among what we believe, how we want to live our lives, and the way we actually do it. We move toward gaining authencity and coherence between our worldview and how we live” (Harro, Bob, 2000, p.465). Bob Harro has created a graft that details just how to accomplish such an achievement. The graft is called the Cycle of Liberation. The first step is to wake up, then to get ready. Next step is to reach out, followed by building community, coalescing, and then creating change. The last step is maintaining such an accomplishment. This all circles around what he calls the core: self-love, self-esteem, balance, joy, support, security, and spiritual base. Harro’s idea seems to make sense though it does not take into account that the capitalist system’s power is held by a few wealthy individuals who only want financial gain at any cost These people would doubtfully change and would try to stop anyone interfering with their individual profit. Therefore, the greed driven by capitalism seems to be unstoppable and will eventually end Western society.

Work Cited

Coyote, P. (1998). Sleeping Where I Fall. Washington D.C., Counterpoint.

Duneier, M. (1992). Slim’s Table. Chicago, The University of Chicago Press.

Geertz, C. (1973). The Interpretation of Cultures. New York, Basic Books inc.

Griswold, W. Cultures and Societies in a Changing World. Thousand Oaks, Pine Forge Press.

Hall, J. R. & Neitz, M. J. (1993). Culture: Sociological Perspectives. London, Prentice-Hall International (UK) Limited.

Harro, B. (2000). The cycle of liberation. In M. Adam, W. J. Blumefeld, R.
Castaneda, H. W. Hackman, M. L. Peters, & X. Zuniga, Readings for diversity
and social justice (pp. 463-469). New York: Routledge.

Horace, M. (1956). Body Ritual among the Nacirema. American Anthropologist 58:3. Retrieved June 12, 2007 from http://www.msu.edu/~jdowell/miner.html

Open Wiki. (2007). Capitalism. Retrieved July 14, 2007 from http://www.infoshop.org/wiki/index.php/Capitalism

Peck, M.S. (1987). The Different Drum: Community Making and Peace. New York, Touchtone.

Resistance. Capitalism is Killing the Earth. Retrieved June 20, 2007 from http://www.resistance.org.au/wrsf5

Smith, L. T. (1999). Decolonizing Methodologies: Decolonizing Methodologies. London. Zed Books Ltd.

Sale, K. (1995). Rebels Against The Future. Massachusetts, Addison-Wesley Publishing Company.

Thompson, C. (2000). Can white heterosexual men understand oppression? In M.
Adam, W. J. Blumefeld, R. Castaneda, H. W. Hackman, M. L. Peters, & X.
Zuniga, Readings for diversity and social justice (pp. 477-482). New York:
Routledge.

Turkle, S. (1997). Aspect of the Self. In S. Turkle, Life on the screen:
Identity in the age of the Internet (pp. 177-209). New York: Touchstone.

Virilio, P. & Lotringer, S. (2002). Crepuscular Dawn. Los Angeles, Semioteext(e).

By Mike Haber

Carbonera and other Greenbelts

2010-08-04T11:20:00.001-07:00

I was lucky enough to grow up in the woods of Carbonera, when only a handful of homes sat upon what was then a hill filled with native California grass, surrounded by thick forest, with two creeks running along the bottom. My friends and I built endless tree forts. We swam and fished for rainbow trout in the Carbonera Creek. On the other side of the hill, we trapped crawdads out of the Branciforte Creek with our nets. We loved our time in the forest as kids. It was a tremendous healing experience to be a child in such a diverse ecosystem. Today, the population of Santa Cruz is much larger - much of Carbonera has been developed but the forest watershed is still there. Unfortunately, it has been unprotected, forgotten, and left to drug-infested illegal campsites.

Richard Louv, author of Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder, warns about turning greenbelt parks and watersheds into museums. He suggests that environmentalism has gone too far. We have turned wilderness areas, once used by children to play and build forts, into areas tightly regulated, limited to public viewing. Louv calls it “the criminalization of natural play.” I believe that we are at a crossroads. We have a great chance to reconnect our children to natural play. If we encourage healthy use of nature, then the unhealthy people will flee the woodland watersheds. My daughter is the fifth generation of my family to live in Santa Cruz. I want her to enjoy the same healthy interaction with nature as I did as a kid.

A few years ago, while I was studying psychology in graduate school, I discovered a book called Ecopsychology: Restoring the Earth, Healing the Mind. I soon made ecopsychology the emphasis of my graduate work. Lately, my ecopsychology studies have focused on the Carbonera watershed and my experiences there as a kid. Recently, I met with my childhood friend, Pat, at his parents’ Carbonera house. He no longer lives in Santa Cruz, like most of my childhood friends that went off to college, found jobs in new cities, and started families. In fact, this was the first time Pat and I had seen each other in twenty-six years. I asked him to meet me in Carbonera. I wanted to explore our childhood forest haunts, and to talk about old memories. I was looking to gain knowledge for my PhD dissertation and an ecopsychology book I am putting together.

Looking out from where Pat’s parents’ backyard meets the forest rim, I noticed that most of the amazingly tall old Douglas Firs were in various states of decay. These old firs were much fewer than when I was a child but the remaining one’s still towered over the redwood trees. We entered the forest to see if our largest fort was still surviving after some thirty-five-years. It became apparent that all the trails we made as kids had grown over with ground vegetation made up of poison oak and blackberry vines. This ground vegetation was allowed to grow when many homeowners cut down old trees to get more sun on their properties. This had completely destroyed the ecosystem of this part of the forest – these new elements were choking out many of the trees.

Eventually, we hiked back in the forest enough to be covered by the shade of the large trees. Under the big trees the poison oak, and blackberry vines thinned out and we found the remains of our childhood trails. I was caught off guard by how unhealthy the forest appeared—fallen trees, large branches, a thick ground cover of dead redwood leafs, and dried mud slides from lack of healthy tree roots. Pat and I both agreed that our childhood forest was dying. The question I asked myself was why was it dying. Pat explained that a tree arborist told him that the tall Douglas Firs had lived their life span and were now dying. This did not explain the larger scale decay that the forest was experiencing.

We soon came across two small decomposing tree forts that the generation that had followed ours built - those kids now were adults too. Further down in the woods, we found our tree fort disintegrating but still standing. It was evident by the forest decay, and lack of trails that children no longer adventured to played here. According to Louv, most children today play no further the 100 feet from their homes.

Pat and I hiked over to the long forgotten Fravel family dirt service road that once led from the hilltop to the creek. The old dirt road was now heavily in disrepair and overgrown. Near the bottom Pat discovered a broken down lean-two structure still held together by weathered plastic straps. While we were discussing if it was an old homeless encampment, I saw, through the trees, down the hill about 100 yards by the Carbonera Creek, a sizeable blue tent structure. I quietly signaled to Pat to checkout the tent. We both agreed that whoever was in the tent encampment had probably heard our loud voices. We decided that in light of the recent gang shootings, and drug trafficking that it would be best for us to leave the forest. I told Pat that I read about several lower Carbonera Creek camps that local neighbors cleaned up by Isbel Drive, about a mile from where we stood. The clean up must have shoved the encampments to this upper location of the creek.

That night, I found myself dealing with depression - something I am not use to dealing with. What was this deep sadness about? After a few days of investigation, I realized how sad it was that children no longer enjoyed playing in the Carbonera watershed. I was sad that the forest had fallen into decay from lack of use. I was gloomy about the homeless camps destroying the watershed with garbage filled with toxic hypodermic needles and raw sewage. I wouldn’t mind if a homeless person camped respectfully with the environment, leaving minimal footprints. But these camps are just drug and alcohol enclaves filled with garbage. They stop adults and children from using the area in a healthy manner.

Spending time in nature doesn’t only heal us, it is reciprocal. The northern California Karuk tribe knows that the forest cannot stay healthy without people caring for it. They have been the keepers of the forest for thousands of years. Research shows that when we over protect natural habitats, they become overgrown and begin to decay. They become fuel for large fires as we saw in the Oakland hills in the 1990s. People needed to play and seek adventure in the forest and creeks to help the ecosystem. If you look at the 1890s photos of Yosemite, you can see a much healthier ecosystem. Lightening strikes and Native Americans kept the forest from becoming over grown with brush and trees. I believe Carbonera forest is another example of an ecosystem being destroyed from lack of healthy human interaction. We did not know it as children but we were the keepers of the forest, we helped keep it healthy.

Adults and children need to reconnect to these incredible beautiful local ecosystems. Research shows that people who spend time in nature have much lower stress and anxiety. Research on Attention Restoration Theory confirms that humans have a limited amount direct attention before burning out. Then we need soft fascinations such as listening to the rustle of leaves and watching birds fly through the trees to restore our direct attention. Without nature’s soft fascinations we become stressed causing our health to decline. The more people become involved in the natural parks and greenbelt watersheds, the less drug dealers and drug addicts will misuse them.

The more we open the greenbelts up to public use, the less hiding places the drug dealers and homeless camps will have. We need to clean up our watersheds and parks. First, use rangers and police to move drug dealers and homeless encampments out. Then build trails that allow the public to hike in most areas, limiting the places concealed from view. Third, allow a more diverse use to of these natural areas. The more people you encourage into these wilderness areas, the healthier the community and the forest. A good example is the decline of Lighthouse Field over the last few years that correlates with the enforcement of California State Park leash law. The decline in people running their dogs and the rise in illegal camps and drug dealing might be a coincident. It is a coincident that we are seeing again and again all over the county. Unused or barely used wilderness areas are falling victim to drugs, illegal camps, and toxic trash.

It is up to us as a community to clean, restore, and use these natural treasures. Grab your family and friends and head out to a greenbelt area. If you see something suspicious call the authorities. Enjoy the day, relax, hike, and on your walk back, clean up some litter along the way. Take a weekend day with neighborhoods to help rebuild trails, and to clean creek areas. Write your city counsel about opening more trails in greenbelts. A little action goes a long way. Let’s stop treating nature like a museum. It is time for kids and adults to take pleasure in using greenbelt and watershed regions. Remember John Muir’s words,” I only went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in”. Once you adventure in to one of our wilderness areas, you will realize how much healthier you feel. When you volunteer your time nurturing a local greenbelt by simply giving a little of your time, you will get back much more than you give.

Mike Haber

Spiritual Surfing

2010-07-12T11:53:00.001-07:00

What is clear is that people respond to the ocean in ways that they have not responded to other, more conventional modes of therapy. If we look at the indigenous roots of surfing, we have a clearer understanding of the healing properties of the activity. In Hawaii, early surfing was both for pleasure and a way to connect with nature. Surfing was an integral part of many festivals and celebrations to the gods. The Makahiki new year festival was an annual celebration to the god Lono, and surfing was one of the ways of honoring Lono (Handy, 1965, p. 64). Early surfing in Hawaiian was restricted to those with sacred and powerful positions. Since Hawaii is a group of small islands, it is not surprising that Hawaiians have over one hundred words to describe the ocean in all its forms. Riding on the waves was a form of rigorous training for Hawaiian chiefs and noblemen and a way to connect with their gods. For many, the very ritual of carving wood into a surfboard is seen as a spiritual process, where an offering is made to the gods to ensure that the wood’s life energy will continue, just in a new form.

Both Captain Cook and his lieutenant, James King, wrote about surfing in journals dating back to 1778 . This is one of the first recorded observations of the activity. According to Lieutenant James King (Marcus, 2007, n. pag.), “The greatest numbers are generally overtaken by the break of the swell, the force of which they avoid, diving and swimming under the water out of its impulse. By such like exercises, these men maybe said to be almost amphibious. The women could swim off to the ship and continue half a day in the water and afterwards return. The above diversion is only intended as an amusement, not a trial of skill and in a gentle swell that sets on must I conceive be very pleasant, at least they seem to feel a great pleasure in the motion, which this exercise gives.“

We can see that surfing to the Hawaiians was part of the fabric of their society: spirituality, exercise, and legends. After Cook’s presence in the Hawaiian Islands, surfing and other indigenous practices faded from the Hawaiian lifestyle as European missionary practices replaced them. Marcus (2007) writes, “The end of the kapu system (indigenous system) also brought about the demise of the Makahiki festival, the annual celebration to the god Lono in which surfing played an integral role. But now that the Hawaiians had been set adrift from the old ways, Hawaiian culture fell into chaos.” Even though Christian Missionaries continued to discourage Hawaiians from kapu traditions, they were unable to stop surfing altogether.

If it were just the ocean that gave the healing spirituality that surfers experienced, then indigenous Hawaiians would have stuck to swimming in the ocean, which they already did remarkably well as documented by the first Europeans. Young says, “Surfing is the finding of yourself through medium of a surfboard.” The surfboard is the magical vessel that connects you to what the spiritual healing properties that the ocean has to offer. Moore elaborates on this deeper when he says, “…the natural environment is the principal sources of sensory stimulation, freedom to explore and play with the outdoor environment through the senses in their own space and time is essential for healthy development of an interior life.” Their space and time would be the surfboard vehicle, which is the link between the self and the natural environment (ocean).

Greater healing could take place if we began to relearn from the indigenous cultures what we in Western Society have lost. Indigenous cultures have the knowledge to live in harmony with the natural world, instead of trying to conquer it as we do in the West. Though there has been no official research done to prove that surfing affects our health, or that strong community plays a part in the healing, we can find validation by investigating early accounts of how the early Hawaiians used surfing to heal.

Mike Haber

“I wish that when they asked us; ‘What is surfing?’ I would have said it’s a spiritual ritual, and not just a sport, because that’s what put us on the wrong track.” ~ Nat Young 1966

Discover Hetch Hetchy With Harrison Ford

2010-07-07T15:35:00.000-07:00

What is Ecopsychology?

2010-07-03T11:08:00.001-07:00

Carl Jung believed psychology to be a study of human consciousness – mind and soul. He believed in order to deepen the human psyche, there needed to be a relationship with the natural world. He felt that a person needed to be connected to nature to avoid some level of neurosis. According to Jung, the energy of the earth is always there for us. Like any relationship, there has to be balance; it has to be reciprocal.

Theodore Roszak popularized the term “ecopsychology”. He is a modern day leader in creating the field of ecopsychology. Ecology is a study of the interrelationships between the natural environment and all living beings. Ecocounseling draws on ecology and psychology to create a healing relationship between humans and nature. A basic part of ecopsychology practice is taking the therapy sessions out of the traditional office building and into the park, arboretum or similar natural setting.

“In the beginning, the field of psychology focused on internal psychological processes of an individual – the ego, the id and the superego. Over time, it expanded to include relationships and interactions between people, eventually encompassing family dynamics and social issues. By the 1970s, the field developed to include cultural experiences and social identity – gender, race and class.”

Today, ecopsychology takes the field even further, by looking at the entire ecological systems, the planet and humans as a single organism.

“I only went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in.” ~ John Muir

Eco-paralysis

2010-07-02T21:09:00.001-07:00

Eco-paralysis is the feeling that you are unable to respond to ecological challenges. People who appear disengaged from reducing human carbon footprints may in fact be suffering from eco-paralysis instead of apathy. Few people in the industrial world are ready to handle the complications of reducing pollution and environmental destructions. Anyone born before 1975 can clearly see the severity of change in environmental conditions. We can see that this change will have a permanent impact on our future.

Even with the knowledge of negative environmental impact on nature, people may find it impossible to change behavior as usual. They may find themselves going against their values to stay economically comfortable. Being put in the position of being unable to take action can feel paralyzing and induce eco-anxiety.

Attention Restoration Theory

2010-07-02T19:10:00.001-07:00

Medical research shows that nature reduces stress and provides soft fascinations that lead to improved direct attention skills. Nature is filled with the rustle of tree leaves and creeks babbling over rocks that allow people to reflect with effortless attention. Urban environments capture direct attention where it is exhausted overtime, turning into direct attention fatigue. When people suffering from direct attention fatigue are exposed to soft fascinations for a short period of time, they experience restored attention.

This concept was brought to light in Rachel and Stephen Kaplan’s book, The Experience of Nature: A Psychological Perspective. The Kaplans suggest that there are four types of attention: direct attention, direct attention fatigue, effortless attention, and restored attention. Their theories suggest that, without experiencing nature’s soft fascinations, restored attention cannot occur. Lack of restored attention causes anxiety, stress, and numbness. Research shows that post-surgery patients who viewed trees healed faster than those who viewed blank walls. Inner-city children who take time to experience nature in a local park show stronger self-discipline skills than kids who primarily play inside.

Hyperdermic Needle on Scotts Creek (repost)

2010-07-02T13:01:00.000-07:00

Today, my daughter and I stumbled upon a hypodermic needle sticking straight up out of the sand. She had on only purple Crocs and I had on sandals. We both barely escaped being stuck by a needle. It was just sheer luck that nobody was poked, and exposed to various viruses.

This is the second time I found a needle in the Davenport area. Is hazardous medical waste washing up from the ocean? I doubt that drug users are just dropping their needles in the sand after shooting up. This toxic waste is a serious danger to the health of the Santa Cruz community and needs to be addressed. This medical waste needs to be tracked back to its source, and those responsible need to be held accountable.

Restore Hetch Hetchy

2010-07-01T23:36:00.002-07:00

The Mother Ocean Filling with Plastic

2009-06-05T00:42:00.000-07:00

War on Nature

2009-04-28T08:58:00.000-07:00

Photos by Mike Haber

My family and I visited Bean Hollow State Beach. We walked over to the far cove to look for beautiful shells. On the sand rock walls of the cove, I saw two fresh spray paint gang tags. I could care less if you want to tag a ugly bridge underpass. But this is a serious attack on nature. This is war against the environment. We have created people who are disconnect from life. Most children no longer feel any connection to nature. They see nothing wrong with spray painting such a beautiful place.

Article in The Sentinel

2009-03-11T09:39:00.000-07:00

There was a article today in the local Santa Cruz Sentinel Newspaper on the ocean debris problem:

Trash choking the world's seas, and waters off Santa Cruz no exception

Stormy Sunday

2009-02-22T13:33:00.000-08:00

Its a beautiful stormy day down at the coast. There wasn't really any sea debris or shells washing up. Instead everything seemed to be washing out.

Most of the beach sand had been sucked out, leaving long forgotten structures exposed. I found the old train trestle beams peaking their heads down at Twin Lakes. Before they built the poorly designed Santa Cruz Harbor, the train used to cut across the lagoon and beach front.

I also found this octopus looking pile of seaweed. I'm trying to figure out if someone made it or if it naturally occurred. Anyway, it was nice to enjoy the beach and rain on this stormy Sunday afternoon.

Eye To Eye With Katie Couric: Surfer's Healing (CBS News)

2009-02-17T14:41:00.001-08:00

Davenport Beach Syringe

2009-01-28T18:11:00.000-08:00

Photo by Mike Haber

My daughter and I went up to Davenport beach today to search for sea glass and to have fun on the beach. I love the beach at Davenport on the weekdays because usually there is nobody there. The beach is very quiet, peaceful and has beautiful views. All of the natural beauty of the beach came to a screeching halt when my baby daughter went to reach for something on the shoreline; a plastic syringe with the hypodermic needle broken off. It is truly sad to see medical waste washing up on our small Santa Cruz beaches.

I used to find syringes washing up on Ocean Beach in San Francisco all the time. Sadly, it never shocked me seeing syringes on Ocean Beach because the whole beach is mistreated. That, in itself, is sad. It is shocking to see medical waste in Santa Cruz. I hope that neither of the two local hospitals are to blame.

The bottom line is that the syringe really put a damper on our fun today. Now, I feel like I have to be overly cautious when I take my daughter to the beach.

I would like to hear what others have to say about this.

Sunday Hanging at Gazos Creek

2009-01-12T15:33:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, I took my family up to Pescadero and then relaxed awhile at Gazos Creek beach. While I was chasing around my two-year-old daughter, I would grab a small piece of plastic here and there. Soon, I had a small pile of plastic at the mouth of the path leading up to the parking lot. I planned to carry the plastic debris out when we left.

There were about twenty other people on the beach when we arrived. There was a couple in their early thirties eating sandwiches about ten feet from us. Soon the beach was empty, except for us and the people eating the sandwiches. Then to my disbelief the couple got up and walked away, leaving all there lunch garbage lying on the beach. They didn't even flinch that people witnessed their misuse of a state park. I would have said some thing if my daughter was not with me but now days you never know what could happen.

When we left, I went over to the trailhead. Every single person that left the beach had to walk right by the pile of trash I collected. That was just crazy-- grist for the mill. Beyond that it was relaxing and fun.

Photos by Mike Haber

Ocean Debris Claim Another Sea Mammal

2009-01-10T19:10:00.000-08:00

At the rivermouth in Santa Cruz, I found a dead seal. It was similar to the one found in the video below accept this one had some kind of netting around his neck. Unfortunately, I didn't have my camera with me and, today when I returned, the seal had been washed out to sea.

Video by Mike Haber

Sunday at Año Nuevo

2009-01-04T15:05:00.000-08:00

Photo by Mike Haber

We went for a walk at the far northern, non-populated part of Año Nuevo State Park. I ran into a man and his family, who told me about a large elephant seal at washed up near the end of the path and the beach front. He warned us to be careful csince I was with my two year old daughter. When I reached the huge seal, I realized it was already dead and I checked it over, looking for signs of trauma. There where no outer injuries, leading me to believe that it died from natural causes.

We went for a enjoyable walk where I gathered the usual plastic debris along the way. I can't imagine a beach walk where I did not have to pick up a good amount of plastic trash off the shoreline. Quoting David Abram, "Only in reciprocity with what is Other do we begin to heal ourselves.”

Rainy Day at the Harbor

2009-01-02T21:54:00.000-08:00

Today we parked the VW camper at the Santa Cruz Harbor to eat lunch in the rain. We enjoyed the view of ships swaying in the rain - their rhythmic creaking a beautiful sound. By the time we finished lunch, the rain had subsided and we decided to go for a walk along the harbor down to Seabright State Beach/Castle Beach.

During our walk on the beach, we saw a couple with a dog coming toward us. I watched them as they stopped and picked up objects. When we passed by them, I asked if they were picking up ocean debris. They told me that they always carried a plastic grocery bag with them to pick up beach litter as they went along their walk. I told them I picked up sea trash and that I had never ran into anyone else who did. I explained that I watched many people playing and enjoy the beach amongst the trash but that they were the first I witnessed clean up as they enjoyed the beauty of the shore. They told me the same story. We were the first people they had ever encountered cleaning up the shoreline while enjoying the day.

I told them how I had been keeping track of seashore rubbish on a number of local Santa Cruz County beaches. The man showed me the flotsam and jetsam he had collected. It was a shopping bag filled with odd trash and, of course, the always present plastic water bottles. They let know me know that they found a hypodermic needle on the sand the day before. It looked as though it had washed up and not been left there by someone.

I left those people feeling much better about the shoreline environment’s care and health. They seemed so much happier than the average person I meet enjoying the seashore. I believe that their extra happiness and health comes from their ability to give back to the environment they get pleasure from. If they care then there must be others out there doing the same thing. I hope to run into more like-minded people in the future.

A GREEN SURFING MOVEMENT

2009-01-01T15:23:00.000-08:00

A nicely done blog for anyone who surfs and cares about the environment. The blog is centered on Chile but not limited to Chile. It is in both English and Spanish. Enjoy.

http://greensurfing.blogspot.com/

Mad Mermaids

2008-12-28T16:00:00.000-08:00

I really like some of the design ideas coming from Mad Mermaids. You can checkout their website at madmermaids.com. My favorite design of theirs I put below.

Day after Christmas

2008-12-26T15:50:00.000-08:00

The storms have subsided, the sun is shinning. It is the day after Christmas and the beach is filled with local families. It is high tide so there isn't much usable beach at the harbor. I take my daughter down to play near all the other families and quickly see plastic debris.

I follow my daughter as she runs along the water's edge, I pick up plastic bottles and aluminum cans as I tag along. There are many kids and parents playing around the trash, yet nobody stops to pick it up. I see a half a dozen recycle and trash containers less than a 100 feet from where I'm picking this garbage up. What is going on here? How can people play in a garbage-infested beach without much care? It took me 15 minutes to pick up what you see in the photo so that my child won't have to play in or near it.

Photo by Mike Haber

Walking by Beach Trash

2008-12-12T11:28:00.001-08:00

My daughter and I were playing on the beach Wednesday and Thursday. While playing I notice a small amount of plastics, aluminum, glass, and other trash lying around the water's edge. I saw many people walking by the debris as they enjoyed the sunny winter day. Each person looked at the trash spread throughout the sand but not one person stopped to pick up just one piece of garbage.

I watched for about an hour, and nobody ever picked up a piece of trash. What does this say to about our mental state? Here we are in Santa Cruz, in the recycle-green conscious Bay Area, and yet nobody is cleaning up garbage they see lying on the beach. They just step over the trash as though it was a part of the beach. How can we change this way of interacting with our environment? If we do not stop to pick up environment pollutants in a area known for its green awareness, then what does that say about our local human consciousness? If this is human behavior in a green city, then what is happening in places lacking ecological concern?

Below are photos of what people were stepping over on their nature walk.

Photos by Mike Haber

Keeping Track of Ocean Water Quality

2008-11-26T08:31:00.000-08:00

If you have been sick lately and think that it may be caused by ocean water contact, please tell the Surfrider Foundation.

Synthetic Sea

2008-11-23T11:55:00.001-08:00

Phytoplankton

2008-11-22T09:01:00.000-08:00

Scientists at NASA theorize that some 3 1/2 billion years ago, the world was changed forever. The appearance of tiny organisms with the ability to convert sunlight, warmth, water and minerals into protein, carbohydrates, vitamins and amino acids marked the beginning of life. Phytoplankton, the single-cell plants are the basis of all other life forms on planet earth; they are the 'vegetation' of the ocean. 'Phytoplankton' are responsible for making up to 90% of Earth's oxygen. (by Forevergreen)

Photos of Marine Debris - No Storm

2008-11-21T15:23:00.000-08:00

Photos by Mike Haber

The photos above are of marine debris taken off Twin Lakes (Nov. 21) and Gazos Creek (Nov.16). There were no storms before I picked up this trash. This is just garbage that the ocean washes up on a daily tidal cycle. If you look at earlier blog photos that I took after storms, you can compare. The Monterey Bay has become an unhealthy garbage dump, like much of the rest of the world's waterways. Marine debris floats up on to beaches 24 hours a day every day of the year.

Osborne Reef

2008-11-18T11:41:00.000-08:00

The Osborne reef is a man-made concrete reef in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. In 1972, the reef was expanded with the use of old discarded car tires. It did not take long for the tire reef project to be recognized as an environmental disaster. Once again, humans attempting to improve nature failed having a severe impact on the surrounding ecosystem. Florida wanted to remove the tires for years but was unable to raise the funds to pay a private marine removal crew.

In 2007, the US military decided to take on the project of removing the tires. The clean up was part of a military exercise that trains divers in recovery personnel techniques. It’s a military exercise that benefits the ocean and minimized the clean up cost to the State of Florida.

The US Army Corps of Engineers originally supported Broward Artificial Reef Inc. (BARINC) in 1972, allowing them to build the reef. Goodyear Tire Company was a main supporter of the artificial tire reef project and even dropped a gold-painted tire in to the ocean site to christen the new reef. The reef spanned over 36 acres and was composed of two million tires. The military helping in the reef clean up may be a way for it to regain faith within the community after supporting the catastrophic project.

Over the years, as the tires broke away from one another, they were hurled by tropical storms. The launched tires, with immense force, destroyed natural reefs and killed off marine life. The leaching of toxins by the tires is another environmental concern, but has been heavily downplayed as a marine life threat.

Osborne Reef Tire Removal Program

2008-11-18T10:26:00.003-08:00

Dolphins Surfing

2008-11-10T11:48:00.000-08:00

Cowells Beach 1939, Santa Cruz California

2008-11-10T09:59:00.000-08:00

My grandparents enjoying the ocean in 1939 at Cowells Beach, Santa Cruz, California. My grandmother is the closest woman in the photo and my grandfather is the farthest back, hunching down.

Our Healing Relationship with Nature

2008-11-10T09:26:00.000-08:00

From Marsha L. Green, PhD, Ocean Mammal Institute

Certainly the rapid degradation of our environment is forcing us to look within ourselves to find the root causes of our environmental problems. As we dare to look within, we realize that our connection to the Earth is deeper than we think. In fact, this connection has nothing to do with thinking, for it's only when we stop thinking that we can begin to experience our relationship to the Earth and the larger family of life.

We are taught to think about and evaluate everything but rarely are we encouraged to feel the feelings arising in our bodies or listen to our inner bodily knowing. This intuition or inner knowing arising from the body is closely connected to the energies of the natural world. But the body also is where we experience emotions - both positive and negative. In order to protect ourselves from feeling the painful emotions we sometimes create a separation between the mind and the body so we don't feel the pain. We literally disassociate our hearts from our minds.

The consequences of this self-protecting strategy are enormous. Once we can't feel the painful emotions we also can't feel the positive ones. We simply can't feel and are no longer in touch with the innate wisdom of the body. Once we've disconnected from our body we are also disconnected from the Earth because our body is our direct connection to the nonverbal energies of nature.

Then we begin to mistakenly believe that we are separate from the natural world and that we can and should control nature. We can then abuse and overuse environmental resources for our own gratification and never feel the pain of our destructive actions. This separation of our intellect from our emotions - our hearts from our minds - has allowed us to make the decisions that have resulted in the acid-induced mortality of the forests, the expansion of deserts, the unprecedented disappearance of species, the plummeting water tables, and targeting whales with LFA sonar. The separation of our hearts from our minds has created the environmental crisis - we have created the crisis from the inside out.

Once we have lost our attunement to our bodies and the cycles of Nature, a sense of exile grows within our souls. We feel alienated and empty and often act out various forms of violence and abuse against ourselves, each other and the Earth. Cutting down acres of irreplaceable virgin forest is a violent act but we can no longer consciously feel the effects of our violence.

We want to remove our suffering and anxiety from our awareness and try to fill up the emptiness with substances and experiences including material goods, relationships and power. These things can temporarily distract us but are not a lasting solution.

The power principle is out of balance on the planet. The need for power leads to the greed and domination that contributes to the environmental crisis. Our drive for power must be brought back into balance with the more right brain qualities of compassion and nurturance. As we rebalance these two forces within ourselves, creative solutions to environmental problems will naturally arise from the depths of our being and these energies will be rebalanced on the planet.

As we consciously make the decision to heal the separation between our hearts and our minds and release the blocked energies in our bodies we are returning our souls to our bodies. We will then be able to feel the harmony and natural laws of the Universe in the very marrow of our bones. We will no longer abuse ourselves, each other or the environment. We will remember our intimate connection to the intricate web of life.

We can’t use technology to clean up the mess technology has created. The solution must come from a deeper source. Years ago Rachel Carson said, "We have to love nature before we can protect it." We can begin to reconnect our minds with our bodies - our intellect with our heart - by consciously coming out of denial, by admitting there’s a problem and by going deeply inside. We can begin to trust our inner world. We can allow ourselves to become fully human working with our bodies to release the blocked energies and feel the full range of human emotions.

We can feel our anxiety, grief and rage about the deteriorating state of the natural world. We can feel our love for Nature. We can remember rituals that help us connect our inner and outer experiences and feel our rootedness in the natural world. Rituals help us quiet our busy minds and gets us into a state where we can sense and feel things usually overridden by the verbal chatter of the dominant left brain. Then we can hear the voices of Nature. We can engage in contemplation and spend time in Nature alone or in groups reconnecting with the natural world.

My research on the impact of human marine activities on endangered whales has taught me many things. By being in the company of whales I have learned how we can live in harmony with other creatures on this planet. Listening to their haunting songs helps us remember our connection to the larger family of life. They remind us of the magic of Nature. Humpback whales in the North Pacific all sing the same song and it is the most complex song on Earth. Their song is constantly changing in the same way in whales separated by thousands of miles of ocean. Scientists cannot explain how this happens - it is one of the great mysteries of Nature. Their effortless combining of immense strength and power with gentleness and grace reminds me that it is possible to balance the active, goal-oriented energies with the compassionate, nurturing energies within each of us.

Certainly it is important to work on a specific environmental problem such as stopping the destruction of the rainforest or protecting endangered species. But in order to successfully address the environmental crisis it is essential to transform ourselves internally.

As we heal the separation between our hearts and our minds we will find new images and balanced energies within that nourish us and value life. We will become protectors of the Earth and all her creatures. Our goal is to reawaken the innate sense of our relatedness and reciprocity with natural law - to heal the alienation between ourselves and the natural environment - to co-create a partnership with the natural world rather than imposing our will. We can look at the natural world as the source of all sustenance and satisfaction instead of thinking of it merely as the background for our human activity. Only if we are willing to transform ourselves will we be able to successfully address the most pressing set of problems ever to confront humanity.

Centipede on wind blown sand

2008-11-09T16:38:00.000-08:00

Walking along Gazos Beach, I thought that this centipede made for a beautiful photo.

Photo by Mike Haber

Gazos State Beach -- Dead Seagulls & Shotgun Shells

2008-11-09T16:29:00.001-08:00

Photos of a few dead seagulls that the wind was covering with the sand. Near by, there were spent shotgun casings but I could not prove that the two were connected.

Photos by Mike Haber

Seal Killed by Discarded Neck Tie at Gazos Beach

2008-11-09T16:22:00.000-08:00

Seal #1

Seal #2 Neck Tie Around Fin

There was very strong wind blowing at the beach while I was recording. This wind destroyed the sound quality of the video. Basically, I was talking about how it is not unusual for animals to wash up dead after a storm, however, this seal has a neck tie that appears to have severed its fin as the seal cub grew. This just is one example of the harmful ramifications of ocean pollution.

Photos and Video by Mike Haber

Gazos State Beach California

2008-11-09T15:56:00.000-08:00

I went up to Gazos State Beach just above Año Nuevo. It is a long stretch of beach that is usually windy with choppy surf. Last night, we had a small storm system pass through. I figured that some marine debris would have washed up. I ended up picking up a large trash bag and a half of garbage. Most of the debris was plastic and styrofoam.

I did find two dead seals and a number of dead seagulls. The week before, I found six dead birds on Twin Lakes beach but didn't document it. Many of these animals did not die from natural causes. In the photos and video, one of the dead seals had a neck tie knotted around its fin, cutting into the flesh and eventually killing the mammal. I also found many spent shotgun shells lying around where the dead seagulls were found. I do not know if the shotgun shell casing were washed up or if someone was shooting seagulls. In the early morning and late night, the area can be a lonely place with very little people.

Photos by Mike Haber

A 1966 Quote from Nat Young

2008-11-07T08:51:00.000-08:00

“I wish that when they asked us; ‘What is surfing?’ I would have said it’s a spiritual activity, and not just a sport, because that’s what put us on the wrong track." ~ Nat Young

Santa Cruz Twin Lakes Beach Trash

2008-11-02T15:43:00.000-08:00

Sunday, November 2: The first storm of fall passed, leaving a good pile of plastics and various other ocean trash on Twin Lakes State Beach. I filled a small trash bag with plastics. For a small beach, there were a lot of plastic water bottles that washed up.

In the photo, there is a piece of seaweed with a plastic bag tied in knots around it. I had to snap the piece of seaweed off the larger main stem because I could not get the plastic unraveled from it. Think of what this bag would have done to any sea creature's neck or fin.

My goal is to continue posting more about the pollution on several of the local state beaches to bring awareness to the issue. First, I want to apologize if I use the term "ocean trash". To me, "ocean trash" sounds more like something that we have to get rid of. On the contrary, "marine debris" sounds like something we might be able to live with. Nobody wants to live in "ocean trash".

Photo by Mike Haber

Santa Cruz Twin Lakes/ Harbor

2008-11-02T14:14:00.000-08:00

Photos By Mike Haber

This photo was taken Wednesday, October 29th. The trash you see, I picked up along the beach as my daughter and I went for a walk. With Halloween a few days away and a major storm coming, I wanted to see how much plastics and trash I would find before the storm. That way, I could compare the difference in plastic garbage after the weekend.

What was astonishing to me was the number of cigarettes on the beach. Looking closely at the photo with the sand and beach grass, there are at least eight cigarette butts in a small patch at Twin Lakes. Why does the state of California still allow smoking on their beaches? Most cities made smoking cigarettes illegal on city beaches years ago. California state beaches are in poor shape. I have not heard much concern. Last winter, I picked up two garbage bags full of plastics from the beach just above Año Nuevo.

Why I started the blog

2008-10-28T20:02:00.000-07:00

My family has lived on the coast of Santa Cruz, California for five generations. For one hundred years, my family has used the Monterey Bay for play, spiritual, and deep healing experiences. I have an MA in counseling psychology with a emphasis in ecopsychology. I clearly remember when my parents enrolled me in the Santa Cruz Junior lifeguard program in 1970. I was already use to hanging around the beach with my family before joining the Junior Lifeguards however the program connected me on a much deeper level to the ocean environment. It was in Junior Lifeguards that I began to surf. Surfing allowed me to feel at one with the ocean. Surfing was a spiritual awakening for me.

In the early 1970s, surfers were reconnecting to the indigenous origins of surfing. When I was in my teens, I began to fall from grace with the ocean and surfing became about flashy eighties colored wetsuits and surf contest. By the 1990s I had fallen into a spiral of drugs and alcohol. I no longer connected to the ocean or nature. In 1999, when I decided to live a life free from alcohol and drugs, I turned back to the ocean for healing. I remember floating in the ocean on a surfboard again, feeling my stress and anxiety melt away as I became a part of the vast ocean. I didn't feel so all important, so self-centered. I was one with mother earth again.

The ocean and nature offer up everything I needed for complete emotional, mental and physical healing. In graduate school, I discovered ecopsychology and it put into theory what I had experienced. I learned that to live healthy you must have reciprocal relationship with the earth. Most people believe that you can only help the environment on a large scale. I found this not be true. If I did little things, like spending an hour cleaning up trash off a beach while I took a walk with my daughter, I felt a even deeper connection and healing. This is the path that led me to create this blog. I look forward to emails from anyone who wishes to add to it.

In kindess

Mike Haber

Craniocean

2008-10-27T11:29:00.001-07:00