Ecotherapy for the Eco Soul

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As human beings we have a need for place—where we can be connected to a community of people, plants, animals, and the land. Without this, we feel lost, alone, and alienated. The world also needs us to belong to it, since it is only when we inhabit a place that we care for it and assume responsibility for it. If we regard the world only as a place we are visiting, we have little interest in protecting it.

We have allowed ourselves to be defined as consumers rather than citizens too long. (In ancient Greece, the opposite of the citizen was the “idiot,” literally the private person who was not engaged in the life of the community.) The managed care industry refers to patients as “health care consumers,” a designation that encourages passivity and helplessness. But what we need is the opposite of passivity: The work that embeds us in community and empowers us as citizens also has the power to heal.

We humans have a fundamental need for nature. Instead of trying to tame or eliminate or ignore it, it is time we learned to grow with nature. We need to take an active role, celebrating it and caring for it, nurturing our own needs in the process. Only by taking responsibility for the earth can we truly reconnect with it—and with ourselves.

Larry Robinson is a psychotherapist, ecopsychologist, and former mayor of Sebastopol, California. This article is excerpted from the anthology Ecotherapy: Healing with Nature in Mind, edited by Linda Buzzell and Craig Chalquist, published by Sierra Club Books; www.sierraclub.org/books.

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