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About the Mindfulness-Based Ecotherapy Program

Mindfulness-Based Ecotherapy combines the skills of mindfulness with the healing power of nature. MBE is used as a framework for helping individuals and families to find deeper connections in their own lives, and to give more meaning and enjoyment to the activities of daily living. By re-integrating ourselves with nature, we are able to tap into nature’s healing power and to heal the earth as we heal ourselves. The Mindfulness-Based Ecotherapy Workbook and the Mindfulness-Based Ecotherapy Workshop series were developed by Charlton Hall as a 12-week program to help individuals re-connect with the healing power of nature. The series meets once per week for 90 minutes, usually in an outdoor setting. The first six sessions cover the skills of mindfulness, and the next six sessions cover integrating mindful skills into ecotherapy. The six mindful skills are about “what” to do, and the six ecotherapy skills are about “how” to do it. The Mindfulness-Based Ecotherapy Facilitator Manual was updated to the Second Edition in January of 2022. A free pdf copy of the manual is included in the materials for this course. If you would prefer a hard copy you can purchase one by clicking on the link. Each of the twelve sessions of the Mindfulness-Based Ecotherapy program covers a distinct skill that builds on previous skills, and provides activities and interventions that can be used in both group and individual therapy sessions. Since we first began offering the program in 2015, response has been overwhelming, so we began to offer the facilitator training to mental health professionals all over the world. If you are interested in running your own Mindfulness-Based Ecotherapy program, this is the course for you!

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The Mindful Ecotherapy Center, LLC has been approved by NBCC as an Approved Continuing Education Provider, ACEP No. 7022. Programs that do not qualify for NBCC credit are clearly identified. The Mindful Ecotherapy Center, LLC is solely responsible for all aspects of the programs.

Student Forum

We now have a Student Forum. On this forum you can post questions for feedback from the instructor(s) and/or other students, and request clarification and support on course materials. The instructor generally checks the forum at least once per week. The forums are available to all registered users. Click here to visit the forum.

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DISCLAIMER

The Mindful Ecotherapy Center, LLC has been approved by NBCC as an Approved Continuing Education Provider, ACEP No. 7022. Programs that do not qualify for NBCC credit are clearly identified. The Mindful Ecotherapy Center, LLC is solely responsible for all aspects of the programs.

We all make assumptions every day about the way the world works and our places in it. These assumptions color our perceptions about the way things work, and these perceptions influence our reality. By changing our assumptions and our perceptions we can create a different reality for ourselves. Let’s talk about how this works.

Assumptions

We all make assumptions every day about the way the world works. I assume when I get out of bed in the morning that the sun has indeed come up again. When I make my way to the bathroom I assume power is on, so I’ll be able to turn on the lights and to hop in the shower. When I get in my truck and drive downtown, I assume that my office hasn’t burned down during the night and that I still have a place to practice. As I make my way through the day’s schedule, I assume my patients will show up for their appointments.

While some of these assumptions are more accurate and valid than others, they are all assumptions. We all have to make a certain number of assumptions every day. For most of us, the vast majority of these assumptions are effective, and they lead to positive results and positive consequences; however, on occasion we might make assumptions that lead us to negative consequences.

So assumptions can be both positive and negative. I assume my wife loves me and that our lives together will be positive and productive. Because of this, we usually have a good relationship. What if I assumed that she was cheating on me? Would that be likely to result in a positive experience for me or for my wife? What if I made such an assumption with zero evidence to back it up other than my own opinion? Would that be more likely to result in a positive, or a negative, outcome?

Our assumptions lead to our beliefs about life and our place in it. Our assumptions also lead to how we interact with others in our lives. Taken together, all of our assumptions about the way the world works create a lens through which we view the world. This lens is our perceptions.

Perceptions

Confirmation Bias is the tendency we all have to look for evidence that supports our beliefs and assumptions while rejecting any evidence to the contrary. This rejection of contradictory evidence doesn’t even have to operate on a conscious level. It can be an automatic process.

World-famous magicians Penn and Teller once did an experiment on perceptions for their television show. The experiment involved how people perceived organically-grown food versus food grown by traditional farming methods. In this experiment they divided a banana in half. Participants in this experiment were told that the two halves of the banana were from different bananas: One grown organically and one grown traditionally. Both halves of the banana were actually from the same fruit, but participants were not aware of this fact. People consistently identified the banana that was supposedly grown organically as having better flavor and texture than the other half of the same banana!

What had happened here was that the people in the experiment had a perception about organic fruit. That perception actually worked to create a different taste experience for different halves of the same banana, based on their assumptions about the superiority of organically-grown fruit.

We all have a natural tendency to allow our assumptions color our perceptions of the world. If I assume my wife loves me, I’m going to automatically look for evidence to support that theory while rejecting any evidence to the contrary. If I assume that my wife hates me, I will likewise look for evidence to support that claim while rejecting evidence to the contrary.

My assumptions about my wife’s feelings for me have created a perception filter that causes me to seek out evidence to confirm my assumptions. In this way, our assumptions and perceptions work together in ways that tend to create the day-to-day reality we experience. Together these assumptions and perceptions form our confirmation bias of our day-to-day reality. That is, we are automatically biased to create a reality based on our assumptions and perceptions.

Reality

We create our reality based on our assumptions and our perceptions about the world and our place in it. By making assumptions about the world, and using our perceptions, based on those assumptions, to look for evidence to support our beliefs, we eventually create a reality that reflects those assumptions and perceptions. We’ll look more closely at how this happens in the next section, but for now consider that each of us has a story.

This story is about us. It is our autobiography, and we are the authors. I can use my assumptions and perceptions to write this story, and I can use this story to create the reality of my life. If I assume I am a happy, well-adjusted person, and I look for evidence to support this assumption, I have set my perception filter to find such evidence.

As I write this story of a happy, well-adjusted person, I create that reality in my life. Such a story is independent of the circumstances in which I find myself. I can be happy and well-adjusted living in a cardboard box under a bridge if I have learned to seek evidence that creates that reality for myself. I can also create a story that would lead me to be an unhappy and miserable person even if I lived in a palace and had all the money in the world.

It is therefore not the external circumstances of my life that create my emotional reality. It is my assumptions and perceptions about who I am and what I choose to be that create my reality.

Mindfulness-Based Ecotherapy Journal

In 2024 the Mindfulness-Based Ecotherapy Organization will begin the publication of the Mindfulness-Based Ecotherapy Journal, a quarterly publication dedicated to the study of mindfulness and ecotherapy, and the intersection of the two.

We are currently accepting submissions for the journal.

The Mindfulness-Based Ecotherapy Journal will follow a double-blind reviewing procedure. This means that the author will remain anonymous to the reviewers throughout peer review. It is the responsibility of the author to anonymize the manuscript and any associated materials prior to submission for review.

Author names, affiliations and any other potentially identifying information should be removed from the manuscript text and any accompanying files (such as figures of supplementary material).

A separate Title Page should be submitted, containing title, author names, affiliations, and the contact information of the corresponding author. Any acknowledgements, disclosures, or funding information should also be included on this page.

Authors should avoid citing their own work in a way that could reveal their identity.

This journal also publishes special/guest-edited issues. The peer review process for these articles is the same as the peer review process of the journal in general.

If a guest editor authors an article in their issue/collection, they will not handle the peer review process.

Submission of a manuscript implies:

1. that the work described has not been published before

2. that it is not under consideration for publication anywhere else

3. that its publication has been approved by all co-authors, if any, as well as by the responsible authorities – tacitly or explicitly – at the institute where the work has been carried out

The publishers of the Mindfulness-Based Ecotherapy Journal will not be held legally responsible should there be any claims for compensation.

Authors wishing to include figures, tables, or text passages that have already been published elsewhere are required to obtain permission from the copyright owner(s) for both the print and online format and to include evidence that such permission has been granted when submitting their papers. Any material received without such evidence will be assumed to originate from the authors.

Please ensure you provide all relevant editable source files at every submission and revision. Failing to submit a complete set of editable source files will result in your article not being considered for review. For your manuscript text please always submit in common word processing formats such as .docx or LaTeX.

Authors of research and review papers, excluding editorial and book review submissions, are allowed to provide the names and contact information for, at a maximum, 4 to 6 possible reviewers of their paper. When submitting a paper to the Mindfulness-Based Ecotherapy Journal, authors must provide complete contact information for each recommended reviewer, along with a specific reason for your suggestion in the comments box for each person.

The Mindfulness-Based Ecotherapy Journal will consider reviewers recommended by the authors only if the reviewers’ institutional email is provided. A minimum of two suggested reviewers should be from a university or research institute in the United States. You may not suggest the Editor or Associate Editors of the journal as potential reviewers. Although there is no guarantee that the editorial office will use your suggested reviewers, your help is appreciated and may speed up the selection of appropriate reviewers.

Authors should note that it is inappropriate to list as preferred reviewers researchers from the same institution as any of the authors, collaborators and co-authors from the past five years as well as anyone whose relationship with one of the authors may present a conflict of interest. The journal will not tolerate this practice and reserves the right to reject submissions on this basis.

To submit a paper, please contact chuck@mindfulecotherapy.com for further submission guidelines.

The Mindful Ecotherapy Center, LLC has been providing continuing education in mindfulness and ecotherapy since 2007. During all of that time, students of Mindfulness-Based Ecotherapy have continually expressed a desire for an organization that specifically caters to the educational needs of counselors and therapists who practice Mindful Ecotherapy.

With these needs in mind, the Mindful Ecotherapy Center, LLC will be creating a new two-year certification in Mindfulness-Based Ecotherapy. This new certification will train and certify counselors and therapists specifically in Mindfulness-Based Ecotherapy.

This will be an intensive two-year certification process, including up-to-date training in the latest techniques, research, and education in Mindfulness-Based Ecotherapy.

Certification will require renewal every three years, and will have a continuing education requirement during each renewal period, so that MBE practitioners are up-to-date on the latest techniques and interventions. It will also require case presentations and supervision for certification.

This will be a different and much more intensive certification than our current Mindfulness-Based Ecotherapy Facilitator training. Trainees who complete the two-year training would be certified Mindfulness-Based Ecotherapists (MBE) and would be entitled to use the designation MBE in their credentials.

The new program will include the following:

• 20 hours of continuing education in Mindfulness
• 20 hours of continuing education in Ecotherapy/Ecopsychology
• 30 hours of continuing education in Mindfulness-Based Ecotherapy in Clinical Practice
• 5 hours of continuing education in suicide prevention
• 3 hours of continuing education in ethics
• 10 hours of continuing education in electives
• 20 hours of supervision
• Case presentation

NEW Ecospirituality Program

The current Mindfulness-Based Ecotherapy Facilitator Certification course will be replaced in 2024 with the Ecospirituality Program, which will expand to include a more spiritual element to the training and to the program.

Somewhere between 90% and 95% of people on Earth practice some sort of spirituality. Obviously, spirituality must be pretty important. Studies tend to back this up. What the studies show is that the type of spirituality doesn’t really matter. Whether you’re Christian, Muslim, Jew, Buddhist, Hindu or Pagan, or even agnostic or atheist, practicing some sort of spiritual path yields benefits.

Since the particular type of spirituality is secondary to the benefits gained (in other words, since all spiritual paths lead to a better quality of life for those who practice them properly), what is it about spirituality that allows it to work its magic?

Suppose you could take all the spiritual paths practiced worldwide, put them into a cauldron, and boil them down to their essence. What would remain? I believe that the common thread to all spiritual practices is a feeling of connection. Connection to others, or connection to the divine, or simply connection to nature and to ourselves. In short: Spirituality = Connectedness!

If you think back on the spiritual experiences you’ve had in your lifetime, do recall feeling connected on some level? Many describe spiritual experiences as a sense of ‘oneness.’ Oneness implies connection to something outside ourselves. In this sense, even an agnostic or an atheist could achieve spirituality through connection.

The new Ecospirituality Program scheduled for release in 2024 will incorporate elements of this connectedness!

Changes to the Mindfulness-Based Ecotherapy Certification Program

Although the Mindfulness-Based Ecotherapy Program was created to be facilitated by licensed mental health professionals, in the past we’ve had quite a few coaches who have also taken the course. While mental health professionals are highly regulated in most states and in many countries, coaches are usually not.

Due to this lack of regulation and credentialing for most coaches, some states and some organizations have restricted the use of the term ‘ecotherapy.’ Because of this, we are re-naming the current Mindfulness-Based Ecotherapy 12-week program. In 2024 the program will become the Ecospirituality Program. Current certified facilitators of Mindfulness-Based Ecotherapy will be allowed to take the new Ecospirituality Facilitator Training program for free when it is available.
The new Mindfulness-Based Ecotherapy Certification will then replace the current designation. This will be a much more in-depth two-year certification process only available to licensed mental health professionals.

The new Mindfulness-Based Ecotherapy program will require intensive study, supervision, and a case presentation prior to becoming certified. Once certified, licensed mental health professionals will be able to use the designation “MBE” in their credentials, for “Mindfulness-Based Ecotherapist.”

When the first cohort of Mindfulness-Based Ecotherapists graduates we will begin a Supervisor Training Program that will educate MBEs in supervision so that future training programs will have a variety of supervisors to choose from.

As we move forward with these changes we would love your input! Click here to visit the forum and join the discussion!

The idea behind using Meme Triads is to move from a problem-focused paradigm to a solution-focused paradigm. One of the goals of using Meme Triads is to begin to think in terms of solutions instead of in terms of problems. When we start thinking in terms of solutions, we begin to live with intention. The power of intention is one of the skills of mindfulness, so by living deliberately and with intention, we move to a solution-focused paradigm.

To illustrate the difference between a problem-focused paradigm and a solution-focused paradigm, and how to move from one to another, we’ll use the example of a couple in which one or both partners are engaging in emotional aggression by expecting the other partner to be responsible for making them happy.

We’ll graph it out as follows:

1. What is the problem? The problem meme is, “My spouse must be responsible for my happiness.”
2. Why is this a problem? This is a problem because “My spouse is getting tired of being responsible for my happiness.”
3. How is the problem maintained? In this example, the problem is maintained because I believe my spouse must be responsible for my happiness, but my spouse has grown tired of being responsible for my happiness. If I try to solve the problem by insisting even more that my spouse be responsible for my happiness, she reacts by getting even more tired of being responsible for it.

The first step in moving towards a solution is to eliminate the problem-based meme. Since the meme has three components, and all three components are interrelated and dependent on each other, we can choose any of the three components to change. By changing any one of the components, we transform the meme.

In the example above, we’ll look at what happens when we change any of the three components. Let’s start with the ‘What’ component. This component is, “My spouse must be responsible for my happiness.” What would happen if this component was changed to, “I will be responsible for my own happiness?”

If we make this change, what does it do to the other two components?

If the ‘What’ component is now changed to “I will be responsible for my own happiness,” let’s first look at what this does to the ‘Why’ component. The ‘Why’ component above is “My spouse is getting tired of being responsible for my happiness.” If the ‘What’ component is changed to “I will be responsible for my own happiness,” then the ‘Why’ component is altered, because if I am now responsible for my own happiness, my spouse is no longer responsible for my happiness, and has no reason to get tired.

Now let’s look at the ‘How’ component when the ‘What’ component has been changed to “I will be responsible for my own happiness.” The answer to the question, “How is the problem maintained?” is that the more tired my spouse gets of being responsible for my happiness, the more I pressure her to take on that responsibility. If the ‘What’ component has changed, and I have now learned to be responsible for my own happiness, there is no need to pressure my spouse to shoulder that responsibility.

So by changing the ‘What’ component of the triad, we have changed all three components, and transformed the meme into something more productive.

Let’s now examine what happens if we focus on changing the ‘What’ component. The ‘What’ component in the problem-focused example above is, “My spouse is getting tired of being responsible for my happiness.” In this case, I cannot change the ‘Why’ component, because it deals with my spouse’s thoughts and feelings, and not my own, and I cannot force my spouse to change her feelings if she doesn’t want to. But let’s just assume that hypothetically she decides to continue to bear the burden of my happiness, even though she is tired of it. If that is the case, what happens with the ‘How’ component?

The ‘How’ component is no longer an issue, because if my spouse has agreed to continue to bear the burden of responsibility for my happiness, even if she is tired of it, then I have no reason to continue to pressure her to do so. Therefore the ‘How’ component is no longer relevant.

So if the ‘Why’ component is altered in this way, what does it do to the ‘What’ component? If the ‘What’ component is “My spouse must be responsible for my happiness,” and my spouse has agreed to be responsible for my happiness, there is no problem (not for me, at least…my spouse may feel differently!).
Finally, let’s look at what happens when we change the ‘How’ component.

If the ‘How’ component is that I pressure my spouse to be responsible for my happiness whenever she complains that she is tired of being responsible for my happiness, I could change it by not pressuring her to take on that responsibility. If I do that, the ‘What’ component of, “My spouse must be responsible for my happiness” is irrelevant, since I am no longer pressuring her. And since I am no longer pressuring her, she no longer feels tired of the responsibility for my happiness, thereby changing the ‘Why’ component as well.
In the illustration above you can already see elements of moving from a problem-focused paradigm to a solution-focused paradigm.

Let’s take it a step further by exploring the Solution-Focused Generic Meme Triad.

Looking at the problem-focused triad above, the central issue is ‘my happiness.’ The problem manifests because I am trying to derive my happiness from the actions and feelings of someone else: My spouse.
What happens when I move to a solution-focused paradigm? If the solution (or the intention) is ‘Happiness,’ the solution-focused triad becomes:

1. What is the solution? I am responsible for my own happiness.
2. Why is this a solution? Because if I am responsible for my own happiness, nobody else has to be responsible for my happiness. Also, if I am responsible for my own happiness, nobody else can ever take it away from me.
3. How is the solution maintained? The more I am responsible for my own happiness, the less I am dependent on others for my happiness, and the less dependent on others I am for my own happiness, the happier I become.
   

With all of the meme triads that follow in future posts, the objective is to move from a problem-focused paradigm to a solution-focused paradigm by altering the memes that are leading to negative consequences.

By altering our memes to a solution-focused paradigm, we become proactive in creating positive consequences in our lives.