- The place of nature and environment is increasingly recognized in therapeutic theory and practice. - Co-edited by the originator of the theory of Terrapsychology. - Builds on his successful 2020 title, Terrapsychological Inquiry, which we also published.

- The place of nature and environment is increasingly recognized in therapeutic theory and practice. - Co-edited by the originator of the theory of Terrapsychology. - Builds on his successful 2020 title, Terrapsychological Inquiry, which we also published.

In the fourteen years since Sierra Club Books published Theodore Roszak, Mary E. Gomes, and Allen D. Kanner's groundbreaking anthology, Ecopsychology: Restoring the Earth, Healing the Mind, the editors of this new volume--a practicing therapist and a teacher--have often been asked: Where can I find out more about the psyche-world connection? How can I do hands-on work in this area, amidst a culture largely blind to such connections? Ecotherapy was compiled to answer these and other urgent questions. Ecotherapy, or applied ecopsychology, encompasses a broad range of nature-based methods of psychological healing, grounded in the crucial facts that people are inseparable from the rest of nature and nurtured by healthy interaction with the Earth. Leaders in the field, including Robert Greenway, Mary Watkins, and Ralph Metzner, contribute essays that take into account the latest scientific understandings and the deepest indigenous wisdom. Other key thinkers, from Bill McKibben to Richard Louv to Joanna Macy, explore the links among ecotherapy, spiritual development, and restoring community. As mental-health professionals find themselves challenged to provide hard evidence that their practices actually work, and as costs for traditional modes of psychotherapy rise rapidly out of sight, this book offers practitioners and interested lay readers alike a spectrum of safe, effective alternative approaches backed by a growing body of research.

Most books on discovering one's "personal myth" focus on uncovering the general patterns or scripts of a life. STORIED LIVES by depth psychologist Craig Chalquist, PhD goes much farther by showing how specific myths play out from cradle to grave. Personal accounts of discovering and working with these myths enliven the book's emphasis on refashioning these plot lines from the inside out.

THE SPECTACLE OF OURSELVES: A CHRONOLOGY OF KEY EVENTS IN WORLD HISTORY FROM BIG BANG TO 2012 tells the human story over the entire span of time up to today. Events from every continent receive brief but interesting explanation throughout.

The end of a Californian journey.... The story begun in The Tears of Llorona: A Californian Odyssey of Myth, Place, and Homecoming (World Soul Books, 2009) and extended into Ventral Depths: Alchemical Themes and Mythic Motifs of the Great Central Valley of California (World Soul Books, 2011) reaches a conclusion in this, the final volume of the Animate California Trilogy. Inland of its spectacularly busy and famously scenic coast, and around the edges of its huge Central Valley, California extends itself into a mysteriously introverted land of dry deserts, tall mountains, ancient lakes, and solitary valleys. To listen deeply to the myths, legends, and images emanating from this arc of isolation demands an open-hearted inquiry from border to border and Sierra to open sea. The Tears of Llorona took the historical, ecological, and imaginal pulse of the original Mission counties of California along El Camino Real from San Diego to Sonoma. Ventral Depths sampled alchemical and mythic motifs in the Central Valley. Edges, Peaks, and Vales moves the terrapsychological focus to the interior edges of California, and therefore to those of a quintessentially place-based consciousness attuned to its startlingly sentient surroundings.

In recent years the environmental challenges facing humankind have gained increased recognition, as have the psychological impacts of these global threats. In this special issue of ReVision, leading ecopsychologists take the next step, demonstrating how to foster ecological sensitivity, and not merely react to environmental crises. In theoretically rich, yet practical essays, readers learn how to become more intimate with nature in a range of settings-from semester-long "Natural Presence" geology classes in an urban university, to week-long "Diamond in the Rough" wilderness retreats, to fleeting experiences encountering nature in one's own backyard using a phenomenological approach. Contributors to this special double issue on ecopsychology seek to cultivate greater environmental awareness in a variety of ways, including - Drawing on personal experiences of relating more deeply with nature. - Enhancing mindfulness of the natural world through Buddhist practice, either as traditionally practiced or as merged with wilderness therapy. - Highlighting cultural influences on environmental identity. - Engaging with diverse approaches to research, including - among others - quantitative and qualitative studies across cultures, laboratory experiments in cognitive psychology, and literary analysis.

In The Tears of Llorona: A Californian Odyssey of Myth, Place, and Homecoming (World Soul Books, 2009), California native Craig Chalquist collected stories, facts, and reflections gathered during his deep exploration of the spirit, soul, and voice of place from San Diego to Sonoma along the old Mission Trail running up and down coastal California. Ventral Depth, the second volume of the Animate California Series, examines recurring mythic and alchemical images brewing in the Golden State's Great Central Valley. From the standpoint of terrapsychology, the transdisciplinary study of the lively and interactive presence of the outer world in the depths of the human psyche, landscapes harbor rich recurrences of story and folklore, image and dream that connect us to the places we call home.At over four hundred miles in length and seventy five at its maximum width, the Central Valley provides the world with fruit, vegetables, beef, clothing, petroleum, machinery, and hydroelectric energy. Its cultural and religious diversity is unmatched. When witnessed with a terrapsychological eye, it also reveals itself as a vast, sealed-in repository of tales and events, histories and psychologies, geographies and mythologies that weave together inner and outer soulscapes in patterns discernible to a sensitized ecological imagination.

This anthology contains contributions by authors who study nature, place, land, and Earth up close with tools from a variety of disciplines, including qualitative research, naturalist exploration, philosophy, mythology, and even poetry. By closing the gap between self and world, these essays show the reader how to feel the presence of landscapes, creatures, and things inwardly, an experience that transforms how we regard the world around us.

California has been invaded by three imperial powers: Spain, Mexico, and the United States. "Deep California" examines in depth the lingering psychological traumas and motifs emanating from that long history of conquest. These unhealed events have not been left in the past: they recur symbolically again and again, growing in intensity as the overbuilt land and its distracted occupiers unconsciously but definitively demonstrate that environmental justice and social justice can no longer be thought of as separate.

Pacing crusaders and colonizers from county to county along El Camino Real, "Deep California" studies the lingering impact of continuous oppression of people and places as images and themes of displacement and exile filter down into architecture, agriculture, politics, art, culture, psychology, and even folklore and dream. Yet within the shadows cast over California also dwell resistance, humor, irony, tragedy, and hope for more heartfelt and soulful connections to this story-rich "land of the sundown sea."

"History" is an inadequate term for such a sweeping and deep discovery of how the past informs the present. This work deserves to be read widely by all Californians and Americans, and taken to heart, and the hard lessons applied to all places we inhabit on this stolen land.
-Lesley Thomas, author of "Flight of the Goose (Far Eastern Press, 2005)"

"A monumental and much-needed study in depth of the conquest, occupation, traumatization, and animation of the mission cities and counties of coastal California, places which have worked their way into our unsuspecting psyches."
-Linda Buzzell, MA, MFT, co-editor of "Ecotherapy: Healing with Nature in Mind (Sierra Club Books, 2009)"

California has shimmered alluringly as paradise and Promised Land since long before the projections of Hollywood and the slick brochures of real estate developers. Those who answered the call to adventure have been many: conquistadors and missionaries, lovers and dreamers, swindlers and salesmen, builders and destroyers. Yet in all the bruising centuries of exploration and exploitation, few witnesses, if any, have attended to the inside story of this haunted seaside place. When California native Craig Chalquist (author of STORIED LIVES and TERRAPSYCHOLOGY: REENGAGING THE SOUL OF PLACE) awakened from a life-changing dream to hear the troubled spirit of his homeland, he set forth on El Camino Real, the fabled King's Highway linking San Diego with Sonoma, on a journey of research, reflection, and anguishing recollection to listen in on stories and persistent images still abroad at continent's edge. As he followed in the footsteps of Junpero Serra, first missionary of California, he found himself followed in turn by the centuries-old mystery of La Llorona, the Weeping Woman of Mexican folklore, in her search for her lost children along the conquered coast. Who was she? How had she come to be here? And what did she have to do with the land? Come along on an odyssey through the heart of enshadowed California, keeper of nightmares and inspirer of dreams, and into a deep exploration of the resonances and echoes and "ecological complexes" that bind us all to the places we call home.