He and I created a game we called “Joe”.   It was quite simple.  It had no moving parts or flashing images.   It went like this:   Each day we would invent something that “Joe” (a name we each took on) wanted to do.   Say for instance, today we want to own a small country store.    We get our red wagon and collect stones, leaves, sticks, chestnuts, acorns, dead bugs and the like to put up for sale in our store.   We transport them to a spot in the front yard where we build a store shelf out of an old plank we find in the garage and place the plank on a couple of larger stones to hold it up from the ground.

Now we pretend we have customers who are interested in purchasing these goods.  These are invisible “spirits” of people who come to shop.   And, of course, the objects we have collected take on a completely different nature.  Perhaps a stone is representative of a box of cereal and an acorn is a can of tomato soup.

Thank you Mrs. Boisvert, we say, as we collect her money (represented by popsicle sticks we have saved) and place it in a cash register we have fashioned from an old cardboard box.

Today’s young people may think this as the ultimately boring afternoon because the outdoors and free play in nature are competing with TV, Nintendo, skateboards and fast, noisy, flashing images bombarding their sight and psyches.   

But let’s go back for a moment to my brother and I.   What did we learn from our time together playing “Joe”.

Well, certainly we learned to be creative and inventive as we were required to come up with something Joe wanted to “be” each day.   Perhaps today Joe is a doctor or a fireman, or so on.   

1. We learned to create associations between the seen and the unseen (rocks representing tomato soup)
2. We learned cooperation as we had to really be a team since we were both JOE.
3. We learned to communicate with the unseen spirits of the customers.
4. We knew the names of the items we collected from nature and had a tactile relationship with them.   
5. We came to understand the seasons and when acorns were in abundance and when there might be more bugs.
6. We learned about life and death by collecting bugs and such that had “passed on”
7. We learned how to protect ourselves from the elements and how to work in harmony with the elements; i.e, when to wear a jacket or a raincoat and when to wear a hat cause the sun was hot.  We knew the elements were not our enemies
8. We learned first hand about how things grow…the grass is taller today than yesterday, for instance.
9. Most importantly we learned to move, think, react and respond with the rhythm of the natural world…the natural order of things.
   

I CAN HEAR THE WOODPILE!

My grandmother, who lived with us, always used to say:   “It’s going to rain because I can hear the woodpile”.   Sounds quite nonsensical doesn’t it?   Well, we knew what she was talking about because when we were outdoors there were times when we could hear the woodpile too!   What she really meant was that she could hear the sound of the logs crashing against each other when the log trucks were being unloaded @ the paper mill.   However, we could only hear them when the wind was coming from that direction, specifically the northwest.   And, taking that one step further, she knew that in the summertime winds coming from the northwest would likely bring rain or potentially thunderstorms on hot humid days.  As youngsters, we knew enough to head for the indoors when we heard the woodpile!

ELECTRONIC GAMES AND PLAYING INDOORS

Now let’s compare what a child learns from TV and electronic games and from being isolated in the indoors.

There are a few positive things that studies have shown.  One is that children do learn to respond quickly to outside stimuli, and that children who play a lot of video games have excellent hand/eye coordination.  They gain tremendous keyboarding skills which are helpful in our technologically driven world.   And, to be honest, some of the games do expose children to other cultures, beliefs, and do contribute to some increase in language skills.

On the other hand, however, they also learn to adapt to loud noises which probably prepares them for driving on the highway or running around with their shopping carts @ the supermarket!    More importantly, they learn to tune out and normalize aggressive behavior and violence which prepares them for fitting into our warring culture.   

I don’t mean to be flippant, but the comparison is obvious.   TV, video games, and other electronic toys do not, for the most part, require an interaction with any other living being!   Sometimes kids play a game together, but what they learn about each other is quite limited to how they relate to the game as opposed to how they relate to each other.

THE CHICKEN AND EGG: WHY HAVE OUR CHILDREN BEEN DRAWN INDOORS

So, let’s go back to the Last Child in the Woods.    How has it happened that our children have been drawn indoors?   And does it matter that our children are not regularly interacting with other living species?  Are the electronic toys responsible, or were the electronic toys created to repair a larger more pervasive problem within our culture?   

I think we have a chicken and egg thing here, but I believe that the electronic toys followed a growing trend of fear and distraction on the part of the adult population.

Think about it!   What do we hear on the news on a regular basis.   Child abductions, rapes, murders, deadly viruses carried by mosquitoes and other wild things!  Tornadoes, hurricanes and other natural disasters take the lives of thousands of adults and innocent children.  As a consequence we have developed a tremendous fear of our natural environment and have come to restrict the radius in which we allow our children to roam freely.    We don’t want to let our children out of our sight for fear one of these damaging possibilities might befall them.   

And then let’s add to that the growing population and the fact that the average child’s yard has shrunk by many acres.   Most children today are living in a neighborhood development with little land other than their own small back yard to play in.   Even here in

Maine, there is less and less land that is free to roam on.

Undeveloped land is often either owned privately by peoples who don’t want children roaming around on it, or it’s too far for the children to access on their own (even by bike), or it’s “protected” because it’s a wildlife habitat.

The stresses of families where both parents need to work, have compounded our attachment to the indoors because many children come home from school to an empty house and are given strict instructions not to (a) open the door to strangers (b) leave the house under any circumstances and, (c) to communicate with their parents by phone, email or text messaging.    

Because families are, out of necessity, occupied with work, their children often are occupied with activities their parents consider “safe” such as team sports, going to the YMCA, or sitting at home watching TV within the confines of the safe walls of their home.    

Add to that, the fact that schools are demanding more and more homework for children as young as 1st grade, and voila….we have children who either (a) don’t have the time or (b) are not able because of family restrictions and/or fears, or (c) don’t have access to the natural world out of doors because it’s too far away.

Without forethought or intention we have now created a generation of children who are disinterested and disconnected from the natural world and as we have shown are suffering developmentally, mentally, physically, and emotionally as a result.   

We have the most obese generation of children and the consequences of that are becoming alarming.   We have children who are depressed, suffering from ADD or ADHD or other mental health diagnoses and are lacking in social skills which they could be learning from interaction with living things, including people.

ADRENALINE RUSH

I believe there is a causative relationship between the adrenaline rush of TV and electronic games which contributes to the obesity of our children.   Even kids who play sports are obese, not because they don’t get any exercise, but because they eat excessively (and usually quite unhealthily) and retain weight as a result of an adrenaline overload.    Think about how adrenalized you would be if you were facing a battle with the electronic famorians day after day or racing an electronic car or jet faster than lightening and keeping it from crashing….your little life depends on your fast, focused response to danger…and you are good at it!   Perhaps you are even addicted to the adrenaline rush and what can compare to that….certainly not a boring time in your backyard without any props to keep your adrenaline pumping!

THE BIRDS

Contrast that to another activity my brother and I did regularly.    We were fascinated with birds.   And I had the idea that perhaps we could catch one so we could observe it more closely.   I was quite nearsighted and it was difficult for me to see the distinctive features of the birds I so longed to know more intimately.   

So, here we go, we created another activity.    We found a cardboard box which we propped up on one end with about a 12” stick.   We attached a long string to the stick and held it in our little hands while we hid under the porch waiting for a bird to come to peck at the breadcrumbs we left under the opened end of the box.   

We sat for HOURS waiting for a bird and did this regularly over the better part of a whole spring and summer, setting up our box daily and waiting patiently under the porch for that one bird that we might trap.   

Birds did find the breadcrumbs, but of course they were much faster @ flying away than we were at responding by pulling on the string and collapsing the box onto them.   

However, after many weeks of this activity we did one day trap a small sparrow.   Oh my God we were so excited!    Now we had to figure out how to get it out from under the box without it escaping.   Very gingerly one of us raised up one end of the box while the other put a hand in and captured the little bird.   

Hmmm…now what to do with the bird?   We had to find a way to keep it so we could observe its activities over time.    Out comes another cardboard box!   We found some screening materials left over in the garage and using some duct tape, screened the little sparrow into the box with some more breadcrumbs and a little dish of water, which she promptly stepped into and spilled all over the place.   

So how does a bird drink water, we wondered?   Hmm…let’s try an eye dropper, which we managed to sneak out of the medicine cabinet from a bottle of Vicks Nose Drops!   We found feeding water this way quite challenging and time consuming, but we were dedicated to getting to know this little creature and we certainly loved it to pieces already.

Fortunately, some adult was paying attention and later that night removed the screening materials and liberated the little bird.   Our understanding was that it’s mother came to get her which made us happy!

Do you get a feel for the pace of this activity?   Does it sound frenetic or an activity that would get our adrenaline rushing?   Well, perhaps for a moment when we actually caught the bird we were quite hyped up, but overall, this activity demanded tremendous patience over many days and weeks.   

What we learned:   Patience.  (1) We learned to stick with a task for more than 30 seconds, a skill which is fast alluding our youth.   (2)We learned to relate with each other in those many hours under the porch.   (3)We learned to create a safe space for ourselves as there was not always great emotional safety in our home.   (4)We learned to live in an environment under the porch which we soon recognized as being the land of bees, mosquitoes, beetles, spiders and worms.  (5) We listened for the sound of the woodpile and came to know the difference in the breezes and winds and what they brought.  (6) We did get some hand/eye coordination in there, though we didn’t get the bird but once; which, of course, is another lesson…(7) we don’t always succeed or “win” the game.

At the time we didn’t know we were learning all this, but @ age 59 I can now see so clearly the gifts we were given by having the freedom to be outdoors.   

HOW DOES SHAMANISM HELP?

Which brings me back to the title of this presentation:   Nature Deficit Disorder: Children and Shamanism.     How do we as responsible, caring adults get our children back outdoors relating to the natural world?

My life today is about being a shamanic healing practitioner, a loving partner, a generous aunt, and a co-parent to two wonderful Portuguese Water Dogs.   In my shamanic work I do have the pleasure of seeing many children.   And through this work I have come to see some of the ways we might re-introduce our children to the world outdoors.  I have seen first hand how children can learn and at the same time have a relationship with and affect the lives of other creatures.

Going back to my own childhood again, I recognize I had plenty of reasons to be a very depressed child.   My life was fraught with much physical, emotional and sexual violence.  So how did I come to be so resilient?    

Clearly those of you who are parents sitting here today aren’t raising children who are suffering from severe abuse in your home, or you likely would not be sitting @ this presentation.   However, regardless of the degree of dissociation from the natural world and the reasons for the disconnection, there are many ways we can assist our children to become more resilient and avoid the pitfalls of our modern, fast paced lives.

There are several things that saved my life, as I see it.   (1) Another caring adult in the form of a teacher, (2) nieces and nephews who counted on me to care for them, and (3) perhaps most importantly, a strong, spiritual connection to the Earth and all its creatures.

Where do we start to help our children make these connections with the spiritual aspect of the natural world.   Well, in my opinion, it starts with us!

First, we have to transform our own fear.  Yes, there is such a thing as West Nile Virus, and there are child abductors, sexual predators and other violent people out there. And we can choose to focus our energies on worrying and fretting about all these things.   Or, we can choose to use our own positive powers to create a safe place for ourselves and our children.   Fear breeds fear,  and hope feeds hope.

AS ABOVE; SO BELOW – AS WITHIN; SO WITHOUT

DR EMOTO: THE POWER OF POSITIVE THOUGHT

Many of you are perhaps seeing the film “What the Bleep Do We Know?” today.   Within the film there is mention of the work of Dr. Masaru Emoto.     Dr. Emoto is a Japanese scientist who has discovered that molecules of water are affected by our thoughts, words and feelings.   Since humans and the Earth are composed mostly of water, his message is one of personal health, global environmental renewal, and a practical plan for peace and harmony that starts with EACH ONE OF US!

On this easel behind me is a photograph of a water crystal that was shown the words THANK YOU.    See it’s beauty.    This is real.  This is not some hocus pocus.   Dr. Emoto has devoted the last 12 or so years to researching how water responds to our thoughts and feelings.   Quantum physicists the world over recognize his work as revolutionary.   Furthermore, the work demonstrates what they know:  that thoughts are energy and energy creates our reality and has the power to heal or harm.

FEAR

Taking this one step further you can see how fear feeds the universal fear, and distorts the water crystals.  There isn’t a photo of a water crystal exposed to fear in this particular book I brought to share with you, but if you look at other photographs of water crystals responding to hateful words, you can extrapolate what the water exposed to fear might look like.   

It is our duty to reign in our fear that our children might be harmed by being outdoors,  We can do this by training our minds to think and visualize our children having fun, being entertained, and learning in the great outdoors and protected by the spirits of the sun, the plants and trees and the Earth herself.   

ACKNOWLEDGE THE SPIRITS

Being a shamanic practitioner I am, of course, in touch with the spirit in all things.  I can assure you that the benevolent spirits of the land are watching over our children and will do their utmost to protect them at all times.   It is, at the same time, imperative that we ask for their help.   They don’t want to be ignored!   They are living beings.    You wouldn’t walk into your neighbors’ house and not acknowledge their presence would you?  Why, then do we think it’s OK to walk on the land surrounded by trees, grass, bushes, flowers, and living creatures of all kinds without acknowledging the living spirit within them?   

Engage the spirits of the land to work with you in protecting your children and visualize them doing so.   They will respond, I guarantee you!   

Children learn from observation, particularly by observing their parents and other adults.   So, if we are not outdoors communing with the natural world, why would our children think to do that?   

In our harried daily routines we barely have time to put dinner on the table, so how do we fit time outdoors into our lives?   Well, we MUST do it, and in the doing we will receive back more than the time we give.   Once we open up to communicating with the spirit in all things, we become aware of the metaphors that surround us every moment.   

An ant inches her way across the driveway, carrying a burden twice her weight.   Does she waver?   NO!   She trudges on and delivers her goods to the colony and continues her work.  How does this metaphor speak to you?

What message comes to you on the spirit of the wind?   Surely it is not:  Buy Kelloggs’ Corn Flakes because it will help you lose weight!    What blessing do you receive when turning your face up to the raindrops falling from above?   Is it love?  Is it cleansing?   It’s certainly NOT money…the focus of our work-a-day lives!

Do you see where I’m going here?   The natural world, in fact all living things, have Spirit.  We know that and yet we are hesitant and often times too busy to acknowledge it.  While we speed down the highway, our children are sitting in the back seat of the car watching a video or playing with their Game Boys.   We often don’t acknowledge the patterns and the Spirits in the clouds overhead or notice the sun on the hay field we are passing.   And by not acknowledging and pointing these things out to our children, they don’t have a chance to notice and pay homage.

So, on weekends or other moments at the end of the work day, make the time.   Go outside with your children.   Don’t worry about the weather.   Don’t saddle yourself with STUFF. You don’t need to plan a two-day expedition in the Allagash.  It’s all happening in your own backyard!  Or in the park nearby.    Just go sit someplace or take a walk in the woods and NOTICE the life, the spirit, all around.  Talk with the birds, the trees, the chipmunks and the stones.   Sit and hold a ladybug!   Introduce the children to the beauty and indeed the safety of the natural world. You don’t need to make great speeches about how you revere the life around you.   They’ll get it!  They’ll repeat it.   They’ll come to honor it and commune with it themselves.   But you need to get them there; because our fear has stopped them in their tracks.   

Somehow I think we become complacent because we live in Maine and, after all, we are outdoors people, right?   Well, not necessarily, and obviously not enough.

THE TOMATO

I’m reminded of my 14 year old twin nephews who were with us for about a month last summer (as they are every summer).   My partner and I participate in Community Supported Agriculture and we have these wonderful, luscious, organic vegetables in abundance all summer.   The nephews live in suburbia, outside Minneapolis, MN, and have never been on a farm (a situation we are going to remedy this coming summer).

They actually hate vegetables (not uncommon in teenagers) but sadly they have not been exposed to many fresh vegetables, except when they are with us.   

So as I sat with them at the picnic table having lunch one day they noticed a nice, fresh tomato I was slicing.   One of them said “WOW, what happened to that tomato?”.   To which I responded, of course, “what do you mean, what happened”.   Well, he says, it’s all distorted…it’s not perfectly round!    I actually could not believe it for a minute; I thought they were joking!    Oh no, they were perfectly serious!   They had, somehow, never seen or noticed a fresh, farm tomato.   One that was not the kind that you buy in the supermarket, all perfectly round, same size, wrapped in cellophane.

These boys are 14!   They spend a month every summer with us and have since they were 5 years old.   We introduce them to the outdoors; hiking, biking, kayaking, rock hounding, etc. and yet there are still huge gaps in their understanding of growing and living things.   We have a long way to go with them still.

WINTER IN MAINE: HOW TO BE OUTDOORS

Winter in Maine does pose its problems in terms of being outdoors, for some of us.  Perhaps it also feels like it would be hard to find living things here in the wintertime.   Not so!   The outdoors is teeming with critters, and the spirits don’t go away in winter.   If you are personally reticent to go outdoors in the freezing cold, bring some of the outdoors into your home.   Adorn your windowsills with stones!   Shovel some snow into a bucket and bring it into the house.   Observe what happens as it melts. Be in communion with the spirit and the magic of snow!   Keep it simple.  Your children will catch on.   

Read books about the natural world to your children @ bedtime.   Don’t be afraid to talk with them about the spirit in all things.   It actually comforts them.  Remind them that they are not alone.  Assure them that their own spirit guides and power animals are with them 24/7, watching over them and caring for them.

CHILDREN AND ANXIETY

I have wonderful stories to tell about some of the children I have worked with and the ways their anxieties were relieved by the simple act of acknowledging Spirit.   

One little girl who was 4 or 5 at the time I first met her was having severe sleeping disorders and fear so extreme she would not even go up to the second floor of her home to brush her teeth.  Her mother, fearing something terrible might have happened to her, brought her to me so I could assess the situation.   

Being a shamanic practitioner I work with my own Spirit Guides to “diagnose” what is going on.   It was clear to me that this young girl needed some comfort in the form of a protector.   I did what we call a Power Animal Retrieval for her.   I brought back a purple dragon for her and was very excited to share this with her.   She was quick to say she hated dragons!   Hmmm…in the few seconds I turned to her mother to answer a question, the girl had already given the dragon a name.   We talked about her Power Animal/spirit guide and how he would protect her against any harm when she goes upstairs to put her pj’s on or to brush her teeth.  In fact, the purple dragon would sleep in her room with her and keep an eye on things.   

To this day, she is now 8, she sleeps through the night.   For about a year she talked out loud to her purple dragon and invited him to accompany her upstairs and to bed.   She still draws images of him and has a powerful relationship with this spirit helper.   

Here is a perfect example of the Spirit in all things being palpable to our young people.   She didn’t question for one minute that there was a Spirit helper with her!  Because, being so young, she knows it is true.   She hasn’t had the magic of life torn out of her by the logical, left brained way our culture relates.   

She has crystals, and fairies and lots of stuffed dragons in her bedroom.   She feels safe.  She knows she is cared for by the larger world of Spirit.   

BOYS IN NATURE

Here’s another great example of what happens when a child lives close to the natural world in this time.   Not in the olden days, but in modern day.   

I have another client who is a young boy.   He and his younger brother have visited with me a few times and we have worked with their Power Animals and stones and other living things to help them get emotionally balanced around some significant changes in their lives.

One day a few years ago their mother called me and said the boys wanted me to come to their house to go in the woods with them because there was a place where there was something not right!    The energy of this particular area didn’t feel right and they thought the land might need some help.   

They live on many acres of woodlands in a rural area of Maine.   I, of course, said I would be honored to come see what they were observing.   Long story short, we walked for some time in the woods and eventually I felt the area they were concerned with myself.   They did not have to point it out to me.   The area had disturbed energy.    

The boys helped me in performing ceremony and some earth acupuncture in an attempt to restore harmony to the land.   Not knowing what had gone wrong, I could not address anything particular.   We just loved the land, blessed the land with water that had been previously blessed, left gifts for the land in the form of healing crystals, and went back to their house.   

I had no idea what we might have healed, but I received clear information from my spirit guides that there was a problem with the ground water.   That there was some anger stored in the water and that it was creating a larger disturbance in the area.

A few days later the mother called me quite excited.   She had been introduced to a native man who had lived in the area for many years.   (My clients had just moved onto this land a few months before we did this work together).   Unsolicited, he related to her that about 100 years ago there was a murder on their land caused by a feud over water rights!   The man had been shot in the area where we had worked; near a fence that divided his land from another!   

So, these boys who had spent a few months free to roam the land and who learned naturally how to communicate with the energy, the spirit of the land, knew and were able to identify a disturbance in a particular area.    Their mentors (Mom and Dad) were strongly connected to the outdoors and were supporting their outdoor time by allowing them to be out there for hours and hours without concern.   They knew how to navigate the woods because their parents taught them.   They knew what was safe because they could FEEL it!   

It was indeed an honor to work with these youngsters and I cherish the time I had with them.

As a post script, I need to add that after we did ceremony on their land, water started bubbling up from under ground.  Previously the land was quite scorched and dry.   The water was healed and it showed its face to the world again.  So much so that the parents had to build irrigation ditches on the property to control its flow!   

CHILDREN FEELING THE ENERGY

I feel strongly that children who don’t have exposure to the outdoors don’t have much of a chance to “feel” the energy such as these boys did.   They don’t have enough quiet, enough connection to living things to know the difference between an energetic disturbance and true harmony.   

For that reason, I believe it puts our children at greater risk of not being able to identify a predator when they see one.   They are at risk of not being able to read negative energy in the form of a threat coming from a human being with bad intentions.   

This is yet another reason to promote and support the connection to all living things.   Introduce your children to different energetic experiences so that they can identify and connect with a variety of energy types.   They will be able to do this easily when given the opportunity.   It must be done with living things.   Then they will come to better understand the disturbing energy that sometimes is emitted from their electronic toys.

I GET IT: THERE IS SPIRIT IN ALL LIVING THINGS

In closing, I want to offer to you some words of encouragement.   Words spoken by a 6 year old who I met last summer.   He is a very bright, incredibly verbal youngster who has  developed a strong scientific mind.   His mother was concerned that he was not getting any kind of exposure to spirituality so she brought him to an outdoor gathering I had for young children.    He was quite challenging and contradicted me frequently with lots of scientific facts.    However, after an exercise in which he was able to really connect with his own Power Animal, his own spirit guide, he said:   “I get it…everything that’s alive has Spirit!”

All this in 3 hours of contact with one child: imagine the possibilities!