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? 

Deepening Connections with Ancestral Wisdom

In one way, we’re moving fast, I know. But in another, this topic asks you to slow down, open awareness, and give yourself time to explore your world with a beginner’s mind, or the no-mind of Zen. For a gentle opener to this week’s topic, go to the video and explore the beautiful, peaceful, silent deep listening practice of Dadirri, as explained by renowned Aboriginal Artist and Educator, Miriam Rose Ungunmerr Baumann, 2021 Senior Australian of the Year.  

Once you have given yourself the opportunity to explore this gentle way of being in the world – a way we all have at our fingertips, whenever we can get off the treadmill of modernity and its insane hastiness – see how you go with the rest of the topic and tasks. Practice self-care and compassion as you go; we are not well trained to open the self beyond its sometimes quite rigid boundaries and we need to remain mindful of our need for stability as we experiment with the fluidity of the psyche in nature. If you have a strong meditation practice, you may find some new outcomes when you take it outdoors. If you have a deep nature connection, you may find it speaks to you easily and comfortably. If you are just starting out on this path, allow yourself time to explore. The exercises should be beautiful and confirming of some inner wisdom that is always alive in the relationship between the psyche you identify with as a self and the universe as it unfolds around and within you. Naturally, they may also shift some things we thought we were certain about or took for granted as part of ourselves. This is natural and the reason we need to proceed with care for self.   

Note also the differentiation made by Brazier between mindfulness, as a practice that has become widely recognized in the West as a modern form of traditional meditation practices, and a more immersive consciousness. This will be no surprise for those of you who have studied or practiced forms of the shamanic arts. It is also something that may seem recognizable to yogis as the hara, or martial artists as the dan tien. And just as meditation has been popularized as mindfulness for the modern audience, this gut-level consciousness at the core of our physical beings has become more recognized as a kind of ‘second brain’ of the body. Once full immersion in the mysterious flow of psyche and nature is experienced, it becomes clear that there is no separation between the two; something wisdom traditions have long held. This is why in Zen we sometimes speak of the body-mind, a psyche the size of the earth (and cosmos).  

We can’t discuss ancestral traditions in Australia without including Indigenous wisdom; while Miriam Rise directs us towards a nurturing practice, Duane Hamacher (himself an American astronomer) has worked with Australian and Torres Strait Islander elders to share the way they have traditionally tracked stars – incredibly, including the shimmer at different times of year and under specific climatic conditions. This extends our understanding of Aboriginal wisdom from the immediate sensate experience on being alive with living Country, to being informed by the cosmos in relationship with the elements. Both relate to the here and now, but in entirely different ways. Speaking of the word Country, as it is used by the First Australians, this will be a topic for discussion in this module. 

Graham Harvey has been enormously influential in the discussion around animism – the belief, or rather experience, that the world is alive. This is probably the most consistent position of all ancestral peoples, ours included. It is at least a start to return to this possibility and experiment with it, as a way of refreshing consciousness that can be enormously therapeutic. Finally, the article on ‘Traditional Healing & Psychotherapy’ draws ancestral and modern healing practices together in ways worthy of discussion, since traditional healing was almost always related to nature connection and immersion. 

Accessing Peripheral Perceptions

• Settle into a comfortable spot in nature, or facing nature (through a window is fine for the purposes of this exercise), with the journal, art materials or recording device at the ready.  
• Meditate upon the question for this week: How much can I trust the more-than-human intelligence of nature? 
• Investigate to what extent you are comfortable ‘opening to the other’ as the Conns put it in a set text reading for this week. What stops you, when you want to pull back into the human ego you have co-created for the purposes of navigating this world and your social relationships? What comes alive when you have the courage to step out of this ego mind and allow nature’s intelligence to have a voice?  
• Be sure to offer gratitude to the spot you chose and to nature’s intelligence – some might call this the genius loci or spirit of place – before you close the activity and leave. And make sure you compose yourself as you return to consensus consciousness. Your ego is a magnificent creation, a navigational tool, an interpreter between self and world, and you need it to be safe and stable as you move through your day. Don’t lose it or wander about in a haze after exploring the great beyond, which is everywhere and everywhen. Be sure to come back to yourself with thanks also for the ego, persona, and individual that you are.  
• Check out the attached pdf Peripheral Vision for a little more shape to this exercise.

Download pdf: Peripheral Vision

• How aware am I of the natural world all around me?
• How much can I trust the more-than-human intelligence of nature? Relate to any experience or idea you have about animism – the ancestral understanding that all of nature is alive. 

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 2 Journaling Prompt: 

• Start to note down what becomes apparent to you from the edges of awareness, from the liminal space just outside of consciousness (including dreams or daydreams), or from the peripheries of your senses.

Neuroplasticity is so hot right now, partly due to the modern drive to achieve scientifically verifiable results. There is no doubt that being able to watch colourful displays of neuronal networks lighting up in ways that suggest new pathways have been created in response to therapeutic intervention is satisfying. The idea that the brain can repatch itself, allowing for a result that was previously blocked, so that (for instance) a fight/flight reaction can be avoided and a trusting response trained into its place, is exciting. Especially for those who work with trauma. From experience, it takes a long time, but it is possible, and this gives cause for celebration. Where does this fit with the potential of eco-psychotherapy to help us relate better to nature and open our minds to new relationships, connections, and ways of being? How might this knowledge help clients alleviate anxiety or lift them out of depression?

It would be great to see the before and after results of some neuroplasticity research into eco-psychotherapy, but I haven’t seen this yet (if you find some, please share!). It would be fascinating and enlightening to see neuronal networks firing in novel ways, which helped someone to a greater sense of wellness, or rebalanced a mental health issue, or otherwise evolved their way of being. But it is probably more valuable to spend our time thinking through how concretely we can rewire our habits, as products of how we are in the world, how we respond to challenges, what we can do or how we sit with troubles. After all, if we don’t see results, what is the point of a course of action?

Amongst the readings for this week are two from almost opposite ends of the spectrum of evidence; one is a personal-level case study, and the other is a group set of exercises with military veterans. This gives us two different insights into the changes that people find occurring for them in response to spending more time practising awareness in nature. For the Heroes on the Water, kayaking in groups, with experienced guides facilitating the process, resulting in a substantial reduction in self-reported symptoms: Stress (56%); Re-experiencing (60%); Avoidance (63%); and Hyper-vigilance (62%). Those numbers are undoubtedly impressive. For the individual recipient of the other program, called Nature-Based Regenerative Healing, results were equally outstanding; “significant improvements in the major symptoms were achieved in the first three months and the subject returned to work within six months. By ten months, the subject described herself as being ‘a different person’, enjoying her life and her job more so than before she was first ill.” It’s so inspiring to hear such reports. 

The common factor in both cases is the therapeutic setting being outdoors and the sense of regeneration, which is a word that brings to mind the rewiring capacities of the brain we have seen in neuroscience evidence. If we can see someone return to life with renewed vigour and engagement, or appreciate self-reported reduction of symptoms, we see results, even if we can’t yet watch colourful displays of neuronal networks lighting up in new ways. What we know is that they felt safe enough to explore new ways of being in nature and that this brought something in them back to life. This is something we can all support and hopefully co-create with anyone we work, live or share community with. 

Also, if you want to find a tool that can help you to tap into the kinds of things that bring you pleasure in nature, look to the final resource in this Module, the Sensual Awareness Inventory from Nature-Guided Therapies by Australian ecotherapy elder George Burns.  When we allow ourselves, or help others, to remember our positive associations in the natural, more-than-human world, we can find a lot of solace, reliable resources for mental health and emotional regulation, and space to outgrow, let go of or move on from personal experiences of trauma, grief or loss. 

Practical Exercise 3a:

Pick one thing about your way of being in the world that you would like to improve.*

• • Find words to make this explicit and focus your intent on this result the next few times you spend time in nature, with awareness and focus.  
  • Appreciating that this is a very brief and experimental intervention, can you record any result that suggests a regenerative response system?  

*Remaining mindful that we are not talking about a simplistic version of positive psychology here; this is not about becoming happier, necessarily, but about feeling more connected with lifeforce, less isolated or alienated, more in flow. The healing of wounds and alleviation of symptoms are valued but not necessarily vaunted above existential outcomes, such as a renewed sense of meaning.

Practical Exercise 3b:

When do we feel safe or unsafe?

Please download pdf. 

• Module 3 Study Group conversation prompts:
  • When have you experienced a reduction in anxiety, feelings of uplift, or other associated positive impacts from spending time in nature?

Module 3 Journaling Prompt:

• Settle into a comfortable spot in nature, or facing nature (through a window is fine for the purposes of this exercise), with a journal, art materials or recording device at the ready.
• Meditate upon the practical exercise for this week: How can i find a sense of safety in the natural world?  (Consider this an extension of last Module’s question, how can I trust the more-than-human intelligence of nature?)
• Investigate to what extent you are comfortable ‘opening to the other’ as the Conns put it. What stops you, when you want to pull back into the human ego you have co-created for the purposes of navigating this world and your social relationships in safety? What comes up for you when you have the courage to allow nature’s intelligence to help you to grow beyond former limits? (This can be related to the possibilities of post-traumatic growth if appropriate.)

Depth psychology begins with the premise that beneath the consciousness we identify with is not only a personal but a collective unconscious. When we become more alert to the signals from this lesser-known realm, such as in dreams, visions, fairytales and myths, and experiences of the Otherworld, we have the capacity to learn more about who we are and how we can respond to our challenges. While much communication from the depths is symbolic to the point of being ambiguous, with attention we can learn to interpret these messages for the wisdom they contain.  

This kind of depth ecopsychology would have to assume, from the outset, that life wants to live. There is no real reason for it, that we could surmise from our limited form of consciousness, but life must have burst into existence to experience itself. This is the realm we know as mythic, beyond the capacity for reason to know with confidence, where symbolic powers come into being, rise and grow, conflict and synthesise, make alliances or remain in opposition, live and die. The gods and goddesses represent earthly powers, seas of passion, angry storms, dark underworlds, rulers and servants, fertile crops and desert lands.  

Amongst all of this, we humans also arise out of the earth, clay that has life breathed into it, just as the universe arises like a light out of the eternal, still, silent darkness that is pure potential (the unlit fire, as the Buddha called it). We are born, we grow, if we’re lucky we have loving parents and kin and we become adults. As we’ve already discussed, we modern individuals might have missed an initiatory system and wisdom tradition along our socialisation process, and perhaps this is part of why so many of us need therapy. But depth psychology always attempted to get beyond the merely personal, to find the patterns according to which we grow, the commonalities beneath and beyond the individualities, the uniqueness we also always represent. We need to look deep into the myths and cultural orders that inform the way we develop and evolve, but for the purposes of ecotherapy we need to extend that into the natural realm too. What parallels might we find, when we look to the patterns in nature, for our healing journeys? 

All lifeforms require fuel of some kind, consuming each other in a dance of energy. Plant life draws upon the carbon in our atmosphere to build their bodies, while feeding upon the power of light to lift out of a home in the soil. Animal life eats the plants, while both wither and die without fresh water. The cycle of oxygen shows how life can work together, as animals breathe it in and release carbon dioxide, which the plants breathe in, before releasing oxygen in turn for the animals. Water is likewise effectively endless, evaporating from the salt water that is the birthplace of life, to condense and fall as rejuvenating fresh water, which eventually runs back to its home in the sea. Light is given freely throughout the universe. While we all must die, we can still participate in equal exchanges while we live, when we give thanks for our food and water, the fresh air we breathe, the soils and seas out of which life arises, until eventually we give our bodies back to the earth and consciousness back to … well, that’s another story.

Grass grows back after being stood on, rivers bend around rocks, and trees keep growing even when a prevailing wind bends them all day. Life wants to be, while it has the chance, to grow physically and in terms of consciousness and relationship. Bodies seek spontaneously to heal – white blood cells rushing to a wound, for example, or scars knitting together split skin. Given that our minds are not separate from the rest of nature, but another emanation of life, doesn’t it make sense that they also seek healing and growth, innately and against any odds? Here is one of the keys to ecopsychology and ecotherapy.

1. Follow the guided meditation/visualisation that is this Module’s video and note anything you gain from reconnecting with light as a nourishing form of life.
2. Check in with your dreams and ask what they might say about your relationship with nature or the spirit of life in the cosmos. Reflect on a past dream, and/or keep a dream journal for this month to see what arises. Consider meditating on this before sleep, a gentle form of dream incubation, which has been practised since time immemorial.

• Module 4 Study Group conversation prompts
  • When have you seen or experienced something in nature that was symbolic – when a physical place or other lifeform meant something more to you than its material form?

  (Keeping in mind that we also appreciate all life’s intrinsic value, ie that it is innately valuable in and of itself regardless of any use we humans might give it.)

  • Have your dreams ever connected you to nature or another lifeform, even a mythic one (hybrid animal/humans, nature spirits, other animals or plants that communicated with you, etc)?

Module 4 Journaling Prompt:

• Make yourself comfortable in or facing a natural setting and ask it what it has to teach you about yearning to live, to grow, to heal, and to accept death and demise – perhaps the ultimate awakening for the human psyche. 
  Compose this learning in any way that best suits your creative recording purposes.

People are much less likely to despoil something they sense is sacred. Therefore, the process of colonisation also gained from desacralising nature. Or perhaps the switch from kin to resources happened more naturally, as agricultural peoples slowly got used to thinking of nature as a backdrop to their activities, and this tendency fed into the ambitions of powerful ‘leaders’ and their colonising desires. Regardless, remembering how to source our sense of what is sacred in the natural world helps to nourish the soul and this heals some of the wounds that have been visited upon us by the history of colonisation.

Some people, myself included, have theorised that consumer society is built on this lack; that the ritual of purchase and consumption is an attempt to fill the void left when we are disconnected from the world. Being ‘materialistic’ itself is not the problem; in fact, regarding the material world as worthy is part of the solution. We are caught in a double bind; on the one hand, the material world is reduced to a collection of things that only have value determined by what we can use them for; on the other, we are trained to consume these things (houses and cars, food and holidays, beer and skittles) as if they will offer us a replacement for the transcendental, the immanent, the sacred. These are the elements we lose when the Druid’s groves are cut down, the ‘witches’ (herbalists, nature healers) are burnt, the competition is erased.

Seeking out the answers in native spiritualities became a popular alternative in the late 60s, but while we have an enormous amount to learn from Indigenous cultures, it isn’t fair to ask them to teach us when we haven’t done some figuring out (the heavy lifting) ourselves. What in our own deep stories reminds us of how to connect with the sacred in nature? How can we find a way to do this in a phenomenologically informed, experiential way, from the material realities of our own existence? Exploring both of these options yields rich results; the earliest myths and archeological evidence offers plenty of clues about the ways that the ancestors of all cultures maintained relations with the more-than-human energies and beings that could be called sacred. And since Jung discovered archetypal patterns appearing in his own explorations – spontaneous arising of symbols that spoke of a numinous reality beyond the conventional psyche, which is shared beyond cultural lines – countless researchers and psychonauts have mapped out a territory that would have been known in some detail when we didn’t have as many diversions as we do today.

The great myths are stories that evolved around the campfire, as elders passed on wisdom and initiated new generations into the ancient ways, before becoming ancestors themselves. These stories linked humanity to the powers beyond, the other animals, plants and animals that are our kin, the Otherworld that informs this one. Being reminded of this ever-renewing reality replaces something in our psyche, and learning more about this will make you a better therapist. Honouring your home in nature, while exploring these rich tales of connection, will help you to become more ecologically grounded in relation with all our kin. Finding the sacred in the material world is as easy as connecting with breath in a thankful way; but then, if remembering this in each moment of our everyday life was just as easy, we wouldn’t need to practice or be reminded. To embody the truth of the sacred in our material world, we need to practice.

Explore the ‘gateways to the sacred’ suggested by John Swanson and keep a record of your findings.   These are the:

• Geographical Gateway: Sacred Places;
• Temporal Gateway: Sacred Time;
• Auditory Gateway: Silence; and
• Verbal Gateway: Invocations.

• Module 5 Study Group conversation prompts:
  • How might you conceive of nature as sacred?
  • Put another way, how might you conceive of the sacred as being not separate from nature?

Module 5 Journaling Prompt:

• How might you compose a response to what you think is added to your therapeutic training or way of being in the world by opening to the sacred in nature? Journal or create something that communicates your deepest longing to belong where you are – in your body, your heart, your soul, your place on earth.