Masoud Nazari

Track: Inner Ecology, Collective Psyche and Social Transformation

A Shamanic Based Ecotherapy in Iran’s Plato

Practicing an alternative way of sustainability seems necessary for countries such as Iran,tendeds to replicate Western models of development that have accelerated global crises and human disconnectedness with the outer world and nature. As an apprentice shaman and psychologist, I felt called to organize a shamanic-based ecotherapy workshop in Anarak, an energetically powerful region situated at the edge of the historical Silk Road.  Anarak’s natural power makes it the perfect place to support participants in the experience of a deeper connection to mother earth and in receiving healing from the spirit of place. The workshop was designed based on what I have learned as an apprentice shaman, as well as on major concepts in ecotherapy and deep ecology, and was intended to cover a wide array of personal and collective paths to transformation. Eighteen women and fourteen men participated in a three-day experience in the wilds of the Anarak desert. The group was a mix of my graduate students, clients, and other interested people. Personal reflections on ancestral wisdom, interactive dialogues, meditative practices, fire ceremonies, spirit offerings, medicine wheels, and expressive arts were integrated in a deep constellation to prepare the participants for the pinnacle of the workshop: a solo vision quest in the desert followed by a night of silence, which helped participants to connect to the spirit of the place, and to experience the transformative quality of nature. The closing ceremony included personal sharing, energetic exchange of symbolic objects, and sacrificing the clay ego of individualism to the bigger world at sunset, providing new insights for participants to help them to avoid problems that the modern industrial world has created. In this presentation, I will share my vision for this workshop, demonstrate its processes, and share individual accounts of its transformative potential as well as the challenges for promoting this kind of work to Middle East.

Masoud Aref Nazari
Tehran- Iran
-Founder and Leader of Iran's Transpersonal Psychology Portal, Tehran- Iran ( the only           transpersonal psychology center in the Middle East)
-Founder and Leader of Nikaram Psychological Service Center, (Tehran- Iran)
-PhDc. East-West Psychology, California Institute of Integral Studies, San Francisco
-Faculty, Department of Psychology, Azad University, Rudehen- Iran
-Chair, Department of Clinical psychology,Azad University, Tehran- Iran
Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology: Azad University Tehran- Iran
Psychologist, Private practice since 2001
Translated Weily Blackwell Handbook of Transpersonal Psychology in Persian
Translated Handbook of Transpersonal Psychiatry and Psychology in Persian
Published many articles in peer reviewed journals
Public speaker, Reformist, Social Thinker