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If you’re interested in mindfulness, ecotherapy, or the healing power of nature, you may be excited to learn what we’ve been up to at the Mindful Ecotherapy Center!
As of January of this year, we’ve upgraded the Mindful Ecotherapy Center’s Learning Management System. Our courses now include videos, downloadable course documents, audio files, and automatic quizzes. We also now have an automatic Certificate of Completion process so that when you complete a course your certificate is automatically generated and is available on the main course page of the website. Students now also have the ability to create a profile on the site and to participate on our discussion forums. This means that you will now be able to interact with other students and the instructor online.
All of our current courses have been updated to include these changes. But don’t worry…if you’re currently taking a class with the Mindful Ecotherapy Center, your course materials will still be available until June of 2019. Just be sure to retain the download links you received when you signed up for your course(s). If you experience any difficulties with your downloads, please contact us on the website.
We’ve also streamlined the process of enrolling for courses. Now, from the main course page, you just select the course(s) you’re interested in, and click on the PURCHASE button. After you complete your transaction, you are automatically enrolled in the course and the materials are immediately available to you.
To assist students with learning the new system, there’s a free orientation program that you may take by visiting https://mindfulecotherapy.org/courses/orientation-to-the-mindful-ecotherapy-center/
And of course, if you ever have any questions or technical difficulties, support is always available through our contact form on the website.

Become an Instructor

With our expanded offerings at the Mindful Ecotherapy Center, we are also looking for instructors. To be an instructor, you must be a licensed mental health professional in good standing with your local licensure board. If you have a topic you would like to create a course for, submit a proposal at the Mindful Ecotherapy Center’s website at www.mindfulecotherapy.org. If your proposal is accepted, you will be paid a commission on your course every time your course is sold! To be emailed a list of course guidelines to assist you in developing your proposal, contact Charlton Hall at the Mindful Ecotherapy Center.

What’s Coming in 2019

If you are a mental health professional, in February we will be adding a FREE 2-hour online course in suicide prevention. This evidence-based course contains information on assessing suicide risk, creating a suicide prevention action plan, and a review of some of the latest research on suicide and suicide prevention. It also addresses some common myths about suicide and the actual facts about suicide. Nationwide suicide has increased by about 37% since 2000, so this information is critical for anyone who deals with the public on a regular basis in any health care capacity.
In 2019 we’ll also be adding Ecoplay, a course and program developed by Charlton Hall, MMFT, LMFT/S, RPT-S, CHt for parents and children. This course will be available online for both mental health professionals and for parents. Richard Louv’s groundbreaking book Last Child in the Woods coined the term Nature Deficit Disorder. According to Louv, our children are spending less time outside in the natural world and more time inside watching television and playing video games. Louv says that this lack of contact with nature has created a wide range of behavioral problems.
“It’s a problem because kids who don’t get nature-time seem more prone to anxiety, depression and attention-deficit problems,” says Louv, who suggests that going outside and being in the quiet and calm can help greatly.
Ecoplay is one way to help children to reconnect with nature and to discover that quiet and calm within themselves. Ecoplay is an 8-week filial play program that trains parents to be ecoplay ‘therapists’ for their own children. It is also a theoretical framework and approach to therapy that allows children to express themselves in play, their natural language. Ecoplay allows this expressive play to happen in healthy natural environments. Ecoplay is founded on four core principles: Mindfulness, ecotherapy, family resilience and play therapy. You may learn more about the Ecoplay program by visiting https://mindfulecotherapy.org/ecoplay/
Also, now that we have our new Learning Management System in place, we will be adding a series of online and experiential continuing education courses in the future. These courses will be from 1 to 3 hours in length and will cover a wide range of topics. Our goal is to add at least one course per month, so be sure to keep checking back! If you have any interest in a particular topic, please feel free to suggest it by contacting us.

What’s Coming in 2020

Those of you who have taken the Mindfulness-Based Ecotherapy course or who have become certified Mindfulness-Based Ecotherapy Facilitators are aware of the fact that the facilitator training is geared towards mental health professionals and offers 60 hours of online and experiential continuing education. In the past I’ve been contacted by many life coaches and graduate students who have expressed an interest in a coaching program that does not require a professional license. This training is now being developed and will be available in 2020. The training package will be called “Ecospirituality” and will require 50 hours of online and experiential training. It will include a workbook and many video and audio files in the course materials.
Some of the topics covered in Ecospirituality:
  • The difference between coaching and therapy: Avoiding legal liability
  • Introduction to Mindfulness
  • Introduction to Ecotherapy
  • Running a Successful Group
  • Mindful Awareness
  • Radical Acceptance
  • Wise Mind and Wise Body
  • Letting Go
  • Living in the Now
  • Centering
  • Connecting
  • Nature as Metaphor
  • Nature as Teacher
  • Nature as Nurture
  • Nature as Healer
  • Living in True Self
Also coming in 2020 – Many graduates of the Mindfulness-Based Facilitator program have expressed an interest in becoming a certified supervisor in Mindfulness-Based Ecotherapy. In other words, becoming certified to train certified facilitators. While this has not been available in the past, we are currently developing a program that will train you to train facilitators. This program will include 100 hours of continuing education in Mindfulness-Based Ecotherapy plus 25 hours of live supervision through online video or audio chat. If you have already taken the Mindfulness-Based Ecotherapy Facilitator Certification, then the 60 hours of continuing education you earned through that course will be applied to the 100 hour continuing education requirement. If you’re interested in this program, please contact us at the Mindful Ecotherapy Center to be added to the mailing list.

Get Involved

We’re always looking for suggestions for improvement for the Mindful Ecotherapy Center. Please send us your suggestions, comments and feedback on the website at https://mindfulecotherapy.org/contact/
By Charlton Hall
Newsletter of the Mindful Ecotherapy Center