Renewal: How Nature Awakens Our Creativity, Compassion, and Joy

by Andrés R. Edwards, New Society Publishers, 2019

Based on years of research about people who were extremely healthy -- self-actualizers -- pioneering psychologist Abraham Maslow found that all self-actualizers develop a love for nature, as nature without and nature within are ultimately the same, and when those two realities harmonize, many good things happen. In these times when less than half of Americans say they participate in outdoor recreation, and mental health problems have become epidemic in part due to people spending too much time watching electronic screens, Andrés' book will help people return to their roots and discover the healing and inspiring powers of nature.    
---James A. Swan, PhD, author, Nature as Teacher and Healer

Andrés Edwards demonstrates a deft, easy touch in this wonderfully free-roaming book. He writes of developing a sense of awe for the natural world, becoming eco-literate, healing and de-stressing with the help of the outdoors, and pursuing bio-mimicry as a way to develop wiser and more efficient technologies. This inspiring mix of inner work and outer action reminds us we still have a chance to save the planet (and ourselves), if we turn to nature as our guide.
---Mary Reynolds Thompson, author, Embrace Your Inner Wild and Reclaiming the Wild Soul

Andrés Edwards’ important new book walks us through the steps of forging a powerful emotional bond with the rest of nature, teaching us how to compassionately and ethically align our individual and collective lives with our age-old, super-intelligent teacher, mentor, healer, guide and most intimate and cosmic kin. Without opening ourselves to Nature's awesome beauty and presence, we cannot survive for long.
---Linda Buzzell, co-editor Ecotherapy: Healing with Nature in Mind

A key subject, explored with clarity.
---Jeremy Narby, author, Intelligence in Nature

Finding our connection to the real, living world is one of the most important things we can and indeed must do. Renewal contains many guiding ideas and suggestions for making the connection a real part of our lives. After you read it, get out there and build your own lifetime of experiences.
---Carl Safina, author, Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel

Saving nature is not just an altruistic act. In saving nature we also save ourselves since our innate affiliation with it supports our wellbeing. Nature provides services that we can hardly replicate and can be the inspiration for the things we design. Andrés Edwards has articulated the message that our lives are tied economically, intellectually and spiritually to nature. 
---Bill Browning, Partner, Terrapin Bright Green

This book is a pioneering exploration of an epochal (and bitterly necessary) shift in our attitude toward nature. Edwards sees nature not as an external resource to make human life safe but as part of the paradigm of reciprocity that makes our existence possible and allows reality to flourish. Ecosystems are love processes and love is a primary ecological force. These core insights can help us align our civilization with life.
---Andreas Weber, author, Biology of Wonder, Matter & Desire, and Enlivenment

In Renewal, Andrés Edwards beautifully describes the power of developing a reciprocal relationship with nature that helps us live in harmony with the natural world. This book includes remarkable stories and neuroscience discoveries that inspire us and call on us to connect to nature and live more fulfilling lives.
---Thupten Jinpa, author, A Fearless Heart

From his stone home overlooking the Pacific, poet Robinson Jeffers wrote: "We must uncenter our minds from ourselves; we must unhumanize our views a little, and become confident as the rock and ocean that we were made from.” Andrés Edwards confidently and elegantly guides us through how to unhumanize, and then rehumanize, ourselves.
--- Wallace J. Nichols, PhD, author, Blue Mind

Renewal is a journey that takes us home.  It vanquishes the illusion of separation responsible for so much of the suffering we are witnessing in the world today to reunite us with what we really are… an integral part of the universe around us.  Edwards’ personal love affair with this world and his eclectic relationship with sages from every time and culture make this journey delightful, nourishing, and worth every page.
---Sandy Wiggins, co-founder and principal, Consilience, LLC; Director, Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE)

Rediscovering joy through nature is of critical importance within the climate movement; the bonds that hold movements together aren't just strategic, they build our compassion. This book can be a guide on that journey.
---May Boeve, executive director, 350.org

We can feel a wide range of emotions in nature, and everyone has their own personal relationship with the outdoors.  Using personal anecdotes and scientific evidence, Renewal illuminates the different ways we can emotionally and intellectually connect with nature as well as practical ways we can deepen this relationship to promote both our own flourishing, and that of the natural world around us. 
---Craig L. Anderson, PhD, University of California, San Francisco

Why 30 Minutes of Nature a Day Is So Good For Your Health. Science is showing how immersion in nature speeds healing and acts as an antidote for many ailments. Exerpt from Renewal. Yes Magazine. April 10, 2019.