what is ecopsychology?

According to Howard Clinebell, who write down a book in 1996 on the theme, “ecotherapy” refers to curing and growth rise by healthy contact with the earth. He as well called it “green therapy” plus “earth-centered therapy.” even though Clinebell preferred the expression “ecotherapy,” which contains work with the body, to “ecopsychology,” the study of our psychological relationships with the rest of nature, it is obvious that ecopsychology supply a solid theoretical, cultural, and critical basis for ecotherapeutic practice. For this reason we regard ecotherapy as applied ecopsychology.

As an umbrella word for nature-based technique of physical and psychological curing, ecotherapy points to the need to the new addition in psychotherapy and psychiatry as if natural world and the human-nature connection matters. This point of view reveals the vital fact that people are very well connected with, rooted in, and undividable from the rest of nature. By grasping this fact acutely shifts our understanding of how to heal the human psyche and the currently dysfunctional and even deadly human-nature relationship.

Ecotherapeutic works as Clinebell picture it, takes guidance from an Ecological Circle of three mutually interrelating dynamics:

·         Inreach: receiving and being nurtured through the healing existence of nature, place, Earth.

·         Upreach: the real experience of this more-than-human energy as we relocate our place within the natural world.

·         Outreach: activities with people that care for the planet.

Ecotherapy as applied ecopsychology occupy many methods to reconnect the psyche and the body with the worldly sources of healing.