Why choose outdoor therapy?
The reasons people choose outdoor therapy are many and varied. You might simply have an awareness that being outdoors makes you feel better, and want to incorporate this benefit to your well-being into your counselling sessions. You may be an outdoorsy person, have an interest in plants, animals, landscapes, the environment, and feel more ‘at home’ being outdoors that stuck in a room inside. Perhaps you feel that counselling sessions whilst engaged in walking or other outdoor activities will feel less intense or overwhelming for you than having sessions sitting in a room. With the growing climate crisis there is an increasing awareness now of ‘eco-anxiety’ or climate anxiety, and your own experiences of this might – in full or in part – be what has brought you to counselling, and an important part of you exploring and addressing these feelings might be immersing yourself in nature during your sessions.
What to expect
Your reasons for feeling drawn to outdoor therapy may well influence how you choose to engage with this form of counselling – whether that be through a straightforward ‘walk and talk’ approach, or perhaps you may be interested in additional ways of engaging, for example, exploring sensory experiencing, metaphor, spirituality, creative expression, connection, belonging or sense of place as means of finding personal meaning in your counselling process.The location for our counselling sessions will be discussed and agreed at our introductory online call – typically I tend to hold sessions in woodlands around the Inverness area. Working outdoors can bring a really interesting shift in dynamic of the counselling relationship and often necessitate collaboration in ways that indoor counselling doesn’t! Together we will consider things like preferred route and pace, whether we walk or find a spot to sit and also responsibility around time-keeping. These and other factors to consider will be discussed together at the outset, and then on an on-going basis as we encounter the different variables that the outdoor environment can offer.
My philosophy
Many of us may feel initially drawn to the idea of outdoor therapy due to the well known benefits to our well being from being ‘in nature’. Indeed, the origins of my own desire to take my practice outdoors stemmed from a fairly simplistic awareness that I enjoy being outside, that I take pleasure and interest in the trees, plants, animals and landscapes that surround me, and therefore the notion that this would be a wonderful way to work as a counsellor. Over time, however, my feelings and perspective have grown and evolved, with more awareness that outdoor therapy can be – perhaps should be – about much more than simply where counselling takes place, or about what “nature” can do for us (humans). My perspective is increasingly influenced by the field of eco-psychology, with a growing awareness that this is not just about where I choose to work but instead reflects a life philosophy, how I view and understand the world and my (our) place in it. Outdoor therapy, for me is not simply about looking to mine the resources that nature has to offer and consuming the benefits is can bring to us (humans). It is about recognising that we are nature, we are not separate or superior. It is about recognising our growing alienation as a species from the rest of the natural world, how we have sought to separate ourselves, to dominate and domesticate, to control, exploit and manage.
Our intrinsic symbiotic relationship with the ‘other-than-human’ with which we share our planet – the other parts of the ecosystem to which we belong – is ruptured and in desperate need of repair and healing. And so, in taking my practice outdoors, of course I acknowledge that wonderful ways that reconnecting with the rest of the natural world can make us feel, the undisputed benefits to our mental and physical well-being this can bring (this is, after all, a surviving aspect of the intrinsic symbiotic relationship!). But I’m equally concerned with ideas around mutuality, respect, reciprocity, belonging – a critical awareness of our relationship to and with the rest of the natural world, and the role that outdoor therapy can play in bringing some healing to this.