ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the relationship between personal integration and well-being and the way that we conceive of and experience the natural world. The author explores how cultural constructs, for example gender bias and stereotyping, or excessive goal setting in place of lived experience, have separated us from nature; both our own inherent nature and the natural world to which we belong. It introduces the concept of solar and lunar time and suggests that practicing receptivity as a form of environmental art therapy can support the transformative process of healing and becoming whole.
The emphasis on receptivity as a way of experiencing ecotherapy stems from Buddhist practice and Gestalt psychotherapy. It proposes a re-awakening to our inherent potential through a receptive form of contact with nature that attends to and heals the splits engendered by dualistic thinking. The benefits of myth, archetype and storytelling are explored as methods for introducing people to new narrative possibilities or personal nature stories, and sensory experience. The ‘tapping on the window’ is the wild shadow, our own wild nature that begs to be unforgotten.
