Living Institute Wilderness Program
The Living Institute Wilderness Program (LIWP) is designing various lectures, workshops, programs and destination workshops with a focus to educate and integrate wilderness experience, knowledge and practices into daily life. The various models and methods to be considered in the LIWP are drawn from: aboriginal spiritual practices, with respect for the originators of these traditions; wilderness tripping (traditional methods of traveling through the land); the edible forest (practices and workshops explaining what local wild food is available and how to find and prepare it); utilizing small urban “wild” areas to regenerate oneself; how to create small urban gardens to supply oneself with fresh food (indoor and outdoor); permaculture concepts and practice; living off the land, ethical practices of hunting and harvesting animals for food and materials; green living practices, composting, alternative energy and water supply; medicinal plants and usages that could be grown at home; eco spirituality and practice (with Dr Dennis O’Hara); ecopsychology, drawing on archetypal psychology; eco and spiritual architecture and design; art and nature workshops.
Segments will include lectures and workshops, with local weekend or evening short programs that will be a stand alone teaching, as well as being designed to establish a focus of future programming and interest in destination workshops. These programs would be coupled with several destination based outposts. Some locations will be within a 2-3 hour drive from Toronto, with others being more remote and taking extended time for the experience. We will invite a group of specialists and experts in the wilderness community who could offer perspectives and instruction in their field of expertise. Possible locations include: The Dharma Center of Canada (www.dharmacentre.org), near Kinmount, about 2 ½ hours north of Toronto, 400 acres of forest and wetlands with several residential and workshop buildings; Algonquin park lodges; Temagami Obabika lake (wilderness outpost), an extended trip destination.
The LIWP will draw on elements of the adventure therapy tradition, of which wilderness therapy is a part. The Wikipedia description of adventure therapy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adventure_therapy ) is as follows (excerpt):
Adventure therapy is the creation of opportunities to explore the unknown in a safe environment through adventure activities. Adventure therapy approaches psychological (process) through experience and action within cooperative games, trust activities, problem solving initiatives, high adventure, outdoor pursuits, and wilderness expeditions. Some believe that in adventure therapy there must be a real or perceived psychological and or physical risk generating a level of challenge or perceived risk. Challenge can be viewed as significant in ... transferring learning from one specific experience to other life experiences ... through the structure of framing an activity (by the) creation of a metaphoric theme for a given activity ... Wilderness therapy, adventure based therapy, and long term residential camping are the most common forms of adventure therapy.
Ecopsychology will be part of the LIWP. Naropa University (www.naropa.edu) includes ecospychology in their Transpersonal Psychology degree programs. The origin of the term ecopsychology is in Theodore Roszak’s book, The Voice of the Earth (1992) which connected ecology and psychology, and was expanded in his Ecopsychology, an anthology co-edited by Mary Gomes and Allen Kanner (1995). Ralph Metzer’s Green Psychology (?) also carries this theme. The theme of ecopsychology is the reintegration of the natural world into Western culture’s post-industrial, techno-capitalist, consumerist social consciousness, promoting a more sane relationship with the environment and a psychology grounded in nature, based in a sense of the interconnectedness of all life. According to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ecopsychology), “there are a variety of other names used to describe this field: psychoecology, ecotherapy, environmental psychology, green psychology, global therapy, green therapy, Earth-centered therapy, reearthing, nature-based psychotherapy, shamanic counselling, sylvan therapy”. The archetypal psychology tradition has also contributed to ecopsychology. Bill Plotkin’s Animas Valley Institute (www.animas.org) which teaches ‘soulcrafting’ through wilderness experience is one example. Joanna Macy (www.joannamacy.net, and California Institute of Integral Studies, www.ciis.edu) and Robert Romanyshyn (Pacifica Graduate Institute, www.pacifica.edu) are also exponents. Romanyshyn’s “The Melting of the Polar Ice: Revisiting Technology as Symptom and Dream” was published in Spring, a Journal of Archetype and Culture (Vol 80) (www.springjournalandbooks.com).
The LIWP will also include ecospirituality, a spirituality and theology based in participation in the natural world as sacred. Ecospirituality draws on the work of Thomas Berry, Sallie McFague and others. Ecospirituality envisions the earth as sacred, telling and enacting the ‘universe story’ (the story of the origin of the physical universe) as a creation myth akin to the Biblical Genesis myth (and origin myths of other cultures), though Berry has suggested putting the Bible ‘on the shelf for about 12 years’. McFague speaks of a “common anthropology”, how human beings fit into the larger scheme of things, suggesting a switch from individualistic to a communitarian world view. Berry, a theologian in the Catholic faith, who passed away in 2009, called himself a ‘geologian’ or ‘ecotheologian’. LIWP faculty Dr Dennis O’Hara, director of the Elliott Allen Institute for Theology and Ecology in the University of St Michaels College, University of Toronto, wrote his PhD thesis on the intersection of theology, ecology and health based on Berry’s work.
The LIWP will integrate with the Living Institute Leadership Program, which will be a one or two year certificate program that educates people to be leaders in the tradition of cultural activism. This training could be applied in many fields, including facilitating general cultural change, environmental activism, sustainability, social justice, political activism, organization development, social entrepreneurship, education, health care, the arts. Each of the potential faculty will identify with different areas of specific focus in these fields. Each of these areas is also a place for broad cultural leadership in our current evolutionary activation state in Western culture. As we go forward with dialogue, the particular foci of the program will clarify, based on mutual interests and what is being called for in the culture. Lectures, workshops and conferences will be part of this program.
A Green Leaders conference focusing on environmental issues through ecospirituality (drawing on the work of Thomas Berry and others) and ecopsychology (drawing on archetypal psychology) is in the works for spring/summer of 2010 as part of the LIWP and LILP. As well as addressing issues in the planetary ecological crisis, these themes will be presented as key ingredients in the possible resolution of Western culture’s existential, evolutionary crisis, which the ecological crisis is inextricably intertwined with. We are negotiating with the Dharma Centre of Canada to be co-sponsors of this endeavour, and will also be approaching other institutions. As well as the general cultural activation re green themes, the Hon. George Smitherman’s proposed Green Energy Act, with its ‘green economy, renewable energy, conservation culture’ highlights (www.ontla.on.ca/web/bills/bills_detail.do?locale=en&BillID), makes this very timely in Ontario.
Dennis O’Hara (Director, Elliot Allen Institute for Theology and Ecology, St. Michaels College, University of Toronto, naturopath, health care ethicist), Kelli Nigh (educator, holistic curriculum development, journal editor, theatre, arts).
