MARGARET A. HOWARD, MFA, LCSW
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The Four Pathways: How Do the Unconscious and the Land Work Together?

5/5/2023

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You may wonder: Regarding the Four Pathways work, how do the Unconscious Mind and the Land intersect? Here is part of it:

The Land is sometimes trying to be in relationship with us. We are often, though we may not know it consciously, longing to be in relationship with the Land. How could we not be? We’ve evolved together from the very start. And we’ve had, culturally, almost all of use who’d be reading this, a traumatic separation from the Land in our ancestral lineage, or even in our own lives. It’s the artificial separation imposed by colonization, the switch to seeing the Land as “available for resource extraction” rather than living entity/part of us/our relative. This separation came with the loss of our indigenous lifeways and spirituality and orientation (even if we’re “white people” we have ancestors who had such ways — European, Scandinavian, and the Isles pre-Christian ways, ways that we’re indigenous in that they grew up out of the Land our people were living on) that has caused us to forget this foundational relationship. 

Part of decolonizing the psyche is learning to listen to the Land. To really be curious about how seeing ourselves as separate from them is an artificial construct that has removed us from a deep belonging together with our kin, the Land. The trees, the birds, the mammals, the reptiles, the water, the air, the fire, the micro-organisms, the sky, the clouds, the sun, the rain, all of them and more are the Land and all of them are our relations. As Robin Wall Kimmerer calls them, our kin. 

So how do we get back in relationship with the Land? First, we listen. Like all relationships, we listen. One way we listen is to pay attention to, and take seriously, our dreams. We can dream with the Land. Both are aspects of the Unconscious. Our Personal Unconscious can interact with the Collective Unconscious through dreams and dreaming. One way we respect our dreams is by listening to them through their own logic, rather than our waking, ego-driven, purely executive-function-prioritizing bias. We let the dream speak in its own language. We feel it. We learn to re-enter it without pre-conceptions. This is part of how we learn to do dreamwork in therapy. This is one way we begin to listen to the Land. #thefourpathways #landconnection #depthpsychology #dreams 
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Introducing The Four Pathways

5/5/2023

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Introducing the Four Pathways: a framework and journal I’ve designed for experiencing, understanding, and working with the intersections of the Land, the Unconscious, the Body, and the Conscious. 

While many are familiar with how psychotherapy involves the conscious mind, with modalities like CBT, and how more recent neurobiological research is pointing to how important it is to work with the Autonomic Nervous System and “trauma in the body,” it’s less widely known how important the Unconscious (dreams, archetypes) work is, and work with the Land. 

Why is land connection such an important aspect of trauma and anxiety work? Of dream work? And coming into ourselves?

We could also ask, why do so many of us feel disconnected, without belongingness? Could it, as Daniel Foor expresses, have something to do with our disconnection from Place? Or as Sharon Blackie says, our need to dream with the Land?

Since the 1990s when I was using ideas of the importance of Place and connection to place in the university writing courses I was teaching, this idea had my imagination. In the years since, it has become a conscious part of my soul. The Land is animate, conscious, and as needing of relational tending as we are. In this time of climate crisis and grief, we may be curious about our connection to Them, even as we become more curious about our connection to our bodies (somatic psychotherapy), our dreams (depth psychotherapy/the unconscious), and how we see the world and ourselves and speak to ourselves internally (conscious). 

#thefourpathways #traumahealing #ancestors #polyvagal #dreams #jung #illinois #missouri #stl #chi #landconnection

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    Margaret Howard, MFA, LCSW

    Psychotherapist, gardener, writer, mother, grandmother, explorer.

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  • Home
    • Good Faith Estimate Notice
    • Covid-19 Response
    • Location
    • LCSW Clinical Supervision
    • Privacy Policy
    • Supervision/Consultation
    • Statement of Inclusion
    • Stages of Therapy
    • Canine Assisted Therapy
    • Donate
    • Wild?
  • Blog
  • More About How We Work
    • EMDR & Flash Technique
    • Dream Work
    • Somatic Psychotherapy
  • Rates, & Insurance
  • Books & Resources
  • About Margaret
  • Courses
  • Contact
  • Who We Serve