Welcome Back to Nature, Welcome Back to Self 

By now, through our welcome and introductory materials, we’re all aware that ecotherapy is an ‘umbrella term’ (Buzzell) for lots of different exercises that tap into nature to provide healing to people with wounds and can return us to a sense of flow. We’re also starting off with a devotion to the natural world – not just taking these empowering qualities from it, but also offering to serve the earth and its many beings, including human and the more-than-human people. 

• We operate from a sense of relationship, which can be repaired and developed, so that our work is an alliance between psyche and ecosystem – the very impetus for ecopsychology, as it was envisioned by Roszak and other leaders in the ‘90s. 

In the Advanced Ecotherapy Training Course, we aim to develop our skills as therapists, coaches, teachers, practitioners and trainers by building our knowledge of how nature works and how we can find and provide ‘good medicine’ for ourselves and others. We will build a solid knowledge base, which will help you to grasp the key tenets of ecopsychology, by referring to key readings from the field over recent years. This will then lay the foundations of a well-informed practice of ecotherapy, as we incorporate practical exercises come in right from the start. 

Each month’s first session introduces the theme in a way that allows us to experience the healing benefits of nature for ourselves, so that we have the experience to call upon – and for our own personal benefit, so that we unlearn some of the bad habits of modern socialization and take our place as part of a healthier ecosystem. 

• Being healed, empowered and in flow ourselves is an initial and compulsory step we take on the ecotherapeutic path. 

The theme for this initial module is recovering or building on a sense of feeling at home in nature, belonging to this earth in our particular body and mind, personality and sense of self. We tap into seminal writing by elders of the movement, Joanna Macy, Theodor Roszak, and the editors of the Ecotherapy anthology, Linda Buzzell and Craig Chalquist, to set the tone for our knowledge base. And we use sit spot as an initial practice, designed to open our senses to place and to settle into this identification with the ‘rightness’ of being here, in this place, in this moment. 

Having experienced being more completely welcome in nature and self, we move on in the second session to how we guide others to the same fount. We explore ways to competently introduce clients to the same opportunity, remaining always careful not to prescribe or expect the way anyone will experience their own nature connection and sense of belonging.  

Awareness in nature is a multifaceted realm. It begins with taking a mindfulness or meditation practice outdoors, but it is more than that. We need to open our senses, as well as our psyche, to the living qualities of the Country we live in and on. Ultimately, we are opening ourselves to the very aliveness of the universe itself, as a living, ‘breathing’, animate field. Connection to life force is an end in itself; it does not need to produce anything. Experiencing belonging, however, can and does create healing, a sense of empowerment and an experience of flow. 

This is not positive psychology, although that has its place. Deep nature connection might not make you happy and these exercises are not designed to lead you towards pleasure and away from pain. Facing grief and discomfort is also part of ecotherapy. A sense of lightness, spaciousness, freedom, homecoming, relief, inner knowing (or gnosis), faith and more may well result from your practice, of course. But the increased awareness you may start to sense as you deepen into these exercises is aimed at reconnection and relationship, growing your field of perception, creating more aliveness and less needless suffering; it is not the kind of happiness that has become a false idol of consumerist capitalism. 

Sit Spot

For your first exercise, please find a Sit Spot you can visit regularly throughout the next month at least. Try to sit daily, or at least a few times a week, even if this means you can’t commit long periods of time in your spot. Read the attached outline for more information on the Sit Spot exercise and enjoy communing with nature!

For the second session this month, to discuss, and for feedback from the team, please feel free to upload any form of recording from your Sit Spot experience – video, photo (with or without captions and text), audio, image of a journal page or drawing, etc.

Try to sit at least a few times before you leap into this, though, and in general devote your sitting time to growing awareness with the nature there – don’t take journal, phone, camera etc until you have experienced your relationship with that place.

Click HERE to Download the Sit Spot .PDF 

Participants are given the opportunity to join a study group, to keep conversations going between module sessions. This can be crafted based on geographical proximity – particularly for those who enjoy the idea of catching up with peers in person – and/or similar or complementary fields of practice (eg counsellors, art therapists, organisational change etc). 

Prompts are offered as ways of shaping conversations, but only act as a starting point and these conversations do not need to be recorded or assessed; they can also remain social acts of mutual sharing and support.

Module 1 Study Group conversation prompts: 

• When has my connection with nature been healing?

Participants will also be offered prompts for their journaling practice throughout the course. Again, these are for your own benefit, although they can be used towards assessment items such as evidence of engagement with practical exercises. 

Module 1 Journaling Prompt: 

• Start to note down what becomes apparent to you about how much you feel you belong – on earth, in your body and mind, in relationship with nature. What are the challenges and obstacles, what have you learnt that has blocked this feeling, how do you get it back and what are the effects of this?