In an outdoor therapy session, client and therapist walk together through a natural setting together, at the client’s pace. Sessions last an hour beginning and ending at the gateway in the National Trust carpark in Etherley Copse. During this time, the natural surroundings may invite the client to reflect on particular life events or challenges and together we can explore and seek to better understand the impact of these experiences. Changes in the landscape may create different perspectives, whilst seasonal cycles evoke losses and endless regenerations.
Other natural spaces can offer us an opportunity for rest and replenishment, to regulate heightened emotions, or simply to “be with” nature. My role as therapist is to hold the boundaries of the session (confidentiality, ethical practice, time and place) to facilitate the client’s connection with the natural environment, not direct it and to accompany the client on a journey which moves inwards and outwards, traversing the past, present and possible futures, “walking through the story”.
Psychodynamic in Nature Therapy May Include;
Talking therapy or “walk and talk” therapy; putting feelings and experiences into words
Embodied communication; noticing how we move and what the sensory, bodily experience may tell us
Reverie; a way of mentally relaxing in nature, which allows the freeing-up of emotions and associative experiencing, recovering intuitive, unconscious or other "lost" parts of ourselves
Focussing on the client-therapist relationship, and relationship with nature
Working with “living metaphor” or the symbolic significance of what we encounter; something meaningful happening outside that has an internal relevance
Receptivity to the seasonal cycles of change, loss and regeneration
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