Friends of Amida - Spiritual Networking -
GREEN THERAPY
We have just completed a weekend of 'Green Therapy' which included working with the outdoors. I wanted to briefly share some of our experience, though there is much more I don;t have time to write. I hope others who were on the weekend may chip in their thoughts.
To start us rolling, one interesting distinction which emerged in many forms was the dialectic between:
- projective work in which the natural world becomes the source of metaphor, projective exploration, association and so on - in Buddhist terms taking on the rupa element in the self-building process.
- encounter with reality through the otherness of the environment. Facing reality in the beauty of nature or in arduous conditions, we are forced out of the cocoon of our individual worlds and meet the 'others' which help us move beyond our limits.
This seemed to me to illustrate particularly well the fundamental principles of othercentredness. The environment provides mechanisms for exploring both aspects of experience - the self-formations and the real others, and these two facets of rupa and dharma (conditioned perception and reality) are the two dimensions of human experience.
To start us rolling, one interesting distinction which emerged in many forms was the dialectic between:
- projective work in which the natural world becomes the source of metaphor, projective exploration, association and so on - in Buddhist terms taking on the rupa element in the self-building process.
- encounter with reality through the otherness of the environment. Facing reality in the beauty of nature or in arduous conditions, we are forced out of the cocoon of our individual worlds and meet the 'others' which help us move beyond our limits.
This seemed to me to illustrate particularly well the fundamental principles of othercentredness. The environment provides mechanisms for exploring both aspects of experience - the self-formations and the real others, and these two facets of rupa and dharma (conditioned perception and reality) are the two dimensions of human experience.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by caroline brazier on -
great. Its an area which fits well with an other-centred approach which is what we teach at Amida. In fact thee ids a section on Green Therapy in my next book which comes out in October.
Look forward to meeting you in France
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