Living in the Earth: Ecopsychology, health and psychotherapy.

An ecopsychological perspective on health invites us to move beyond the cultural tendency to associate personal pain with individual or family pathology without attention to the larger context. When we consider the human psyche within the web of life, we can begin to view personal pain as both unique to the person and as a signal from the larger context, as “the earth speaking through us.” Exploring the inner and the outer landscapes within which we live, and the connections between them, we look for diversity, interconnected‐ness and flows of nourishment in the system of which the pain is a part. Ecopsychology invites psychotherapy practice to expand its focus beyond the inner landscape, to explore and foster the development of community, contact with land and place, and ecological identity.