Introducing The Four Pathways

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). 

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