Roots of the spirit: Interrelationships among ecological actions and attitudes, nature-related exceptional human experiences, spirituality, and well-being

his was a study of people who reported one or more nature-related exceptional human experiences and how the experience(s) may have influenced their psychological health and well-being, personal and spiritual perspectives, and ecological viewpoints and actions. A 25-item, 5-point Likert scale instrument was developed to determine types of ecological actions participants were most likely to take in protecting the environment. An additional set of 6 instruments measured the other areas of interest. Demographic data and an account of the participant's experience were gathered by questionnaire. Six of the 126 participants (91 females, 35 males, 94% Caucasian) were interviewed. Pearson r correlation matrices revealed significant intercorrelations among ecologically supportive actions, positive environmental attitudes, exceptional and mystical/unitive experiences occurring in nature contexts, spirituality, and psychological well-being (ranging from...