Outdoor Therapy: Connection with Nature

We are born to be close to the earth and close to nature and it can be healing medicine for our souls. 

Outdoor therapy sessions can open up possibilities for accessing hidden buried parts of ourselves and it can be surprising and illuminating what comes from being in nature with mindful awareness and consciousness. Sights, sounds, smells, tastes and sensations are all more immediate to us when we are outside. This helps us feel more connected and grounded in our bodies, which in turn helps us out of our preoccupied, often over-thinking minds, the locus of much of our stress and anxiety. It can be a helpful means of finding spaciousness, perspective and clarity – we say we can ‘clear our heads’ as our bodies move and breathe more freely. It can help us feel alive.

Spending time close to nature can help to reconnect with playful or adventurous aspects of ourselves. There can be simple delight in watching animals playing or birds in flight. You may find you reconnect with childhood memories of being by the sea or in the forests or parks.  

Looking up to the vast infinite space of the sky you may be taken up into a sense of wonder and awe and become more connected to the spiritual  experience of being alive, whatever that may mean for you .

Structure and boundary issues are discussed before we work in this way and it is not suitable for all.

‘I haven’t just gently walked like this in nature for many years…  I'm usually just rushing everywhere but there’s so much to see and take in I feel like I’m seeing it all for the first time.’

‘My childhood was full of difficult memories  – but I always would go to this little bridge down the lane and hear the water flowing underneath and think one day it would carry me away on a raft to somewhere safe and happy, and that always made me feel better.’

‘The tree at the bottom of our garden was everything to us as we played underneath in its shelter for hours, and then climbed up into it whenever we could.’