Research with people in contact with natural areas helped Cohen, in 1965, recognize Earth to be a living organism and that from it we are born with, not just five, but more than 53 natural senses that help us sustain personal and global well-being (including a sense of left-handedness for 10-15 percent of the population).
Cohen's investigation of our natural-senses brought to light that most of the personal, social and environmental disorders that we suffer - including greed, stress, violence, abuse, depression and addiction - result from an unreasonable, but profit making, prejudice against nature in Industrial Society that we seldom acknowledge. This prejudice holds an irrational disregard for nature's integrity and the callings of the 53 natural senses that we inherit as part of nature. We become less sensible and we weaken our well-being due to the absence of the self-correcting and restorative ways of our natural senses.
To our loss, we produce our greatest problems because we seldom learn to think sensibly by respecting our natural senses and their sensibilities. Instead, our unreasonable prejudice against nature socializes us to injuriously drive these senses out of our awareness and into our subconscious where they lie hurt and frustrated.
To deal with this phenomenon, Cohen produced a hands-on, nature-connecting, sensitivity tool that helps us eliminate our natural-sense deprivation. He demonstrated that his renewing educating, counseling and healing with nature process is a sensory and spiritual ecology that enables us think like nature's restorative processes work. Readily available on-line, and in his newly released book, Educating, Counseling and Healing With Nature, the process generates genuine, nature-connected learning and relating that heals and renews our injured natural senses. By learning to use the process, we become more resilient and sensitive; we build more sensible relationships and many disorders subside.
"Educating, Counseling and Healing With Nature," is a professionally-refereed, practical, environmentally-based psychology that helps our thinking co-create with nature's self-correcting and regenerative ways. Because it is an effective antidote and preventative for many dysfunctions, including Nature Deficit Disorder, it enables us to increase well-being and decrease our alarming prejudice against nature.
Whenever natural attractions connect our psyche with the web of life, our restored natural senses transform our disorders into constructive relationships. The latter consist of the balance, cooperation and unconditional love that nature shares with us to sustain life in peace.
- "We cannot win the battle to increase the well-being of the web of life, that includes our life, without strengthening our natural senses, our emotional bonds with nature - for we will not fight to save what we do not love."
- M. J. Cohen's blend of Stephen Jay Gould and Jalaluddin Rumi
