ECOPSYCHOLOGY
Equip yourself or your organisation to design and deliver transformative outdoor experiences
FOR PEOPLE AND PLANET
Outdoor experiences can transform our psychological health and well-being, and encourage us to live sustainably.

My approach reveals how outdoor experiences impact our psychology, changing the ways we think, feel and behave. It shows how they can be harnessed through design and facilitation to deliver incredible outcomes for people and the planet.
Dave is an inspirational, calm and creative facilitator allowing all participants to feel comfortable and able to connect with the wonders of nature.
In learning that the wilderness can be such a powerful source of intense natural healing, I have a new and profound respect for the earth and our complex relationship with it. I now know that this is a new beginning.
David has a brilliant way of guiding you on exactly the paths you want to traverse. He was able to help me follow my questions to new and interesting resources to learn from.
I work to connect children to nature in India and his course has helped me build language and structure around my work in order to better communicate with others around me.
I have also greatly benefited from his library. The resources available there would be very hard for me to find elsewhere.
Dave has worked with me and my team for the past few years on team dynamics, programme design, and personal coaching. He is an extraordinary trainer, though that word is a dis-service here, his wealth of experience in the broad fields of outdoor education and facilitated wild experiences is un-paralleled. His attention to detail, subject knowledge, and impeccable research means all learning experiences with him are enlightening, thought provoking, and deeply practical.
I’ve worked with Dave over the past few months and am grateful for the conversations on the wider world of nature connection. Dave is generous in sharing his wealth of knowledge and experience and always knows where to point me to explore more. From terminology to concept to fields of study, I feel more confident in crafting a vision for my own offerings. I especially found streamlining and consolidating my interests to reach a broader audience particularly helpful. I feel well on my way to the next steps and am richer for the learning.
I am literally in a different physical and psychological space as a result of my involvement.
Approaching the beach from the cliff top I had a feeling something profound was going to take place. And when I met Dave it started happening. In just 36 hours I had the best reset I could have imagined and 36-months later I am still enjoying its effects. If you’re reading this and wondering if it’s right for you, just get in touch with Dave and see where life takes you. It helped me and I loved it.
I have worked with Dave since 2014, firstly through the online Nature Psychology course and more recently by engaging with him as my coach. He has a richness of knowledge, wisdom and experience that I feel so lucky to be able to access – and my only wish is I had found him sooner.
His grounded, open and, I think, quite modest style heartens me greatly in a world where humility often seems scarce. I leave every session with Dave feeling energised, inspired, renewed and hopeful on this emergent journey of mine. To anyone who wants to understand what it really means to climb down from our human superiority and truly inhabit the world as nature intended – and lead others in doing so – I can’t recommend Dave enough.
I am pleased that I decided to do this course with David. I got a lot out of the experience. I appreciated the open and flexible style of our sessions, and enjoyed the diversity of our valuable discussions.
David made me feel seen, heard, and supported throughout the journey. He is a true wealth of knowledge – and customised the course to meet my personal interests, by providing plenty of useful study resources.
Dave has helped me enormously over the past year, l have really enjoyed the coaching sessions and they have helped to develop therapeutic work outdoors with young people. I have learnt so much about the process and how to develop and structure our nature therapy sessions. I feel l have also learnt so much about how everything links up and all the connections between establishing a healthier planet in conjunction with healthier people. Thanks so much Dave.
Dave is an exceptional practitioner, teacher and thinker. We worked together for three years; if the right project came along, I’d have no hesitation in asking Dave to work with me.
I was greatly impressed by the depth of Dave’s expertise, insights and empathic connection to the landscape as he led our group of wild lawyers through the wilderness of the Knoydart Peninsula in Scotland.
Dave is an outstanding facilitator with a fantastically engaging and inclusive style, great humour, insightful with deep rapport building abilities.
Dave is a very gifted facilitator who is able to connect people from all walks of life and to create a safe environment in which learning, practice and storytelling can happen for everyone. I came away from this course feeling enriched and with a new sense of direction for my own life and work path.
Dave has given me the confidence and capability to set and lead my global organisation’s climate strategy.
I gained a massive amount of insight both personally and professionally. I was profoundly moved by the process. I came away refreshed and inspired.
Dave’s deft touch can be found as traces of invisible thread through many of Eden Project’s experiential learning programmes. He is a gentle and artful consultant that will help you make the most of the resources you have to hand; be it people, places, kit, knowledge, or time. He is equally capable of directing you, unblocking your problems, or simply guiding you towards the right solution for your programme needs.
A considerate, generous, and passionate coach – I am thankful to have had the opportunity to work with David!
When I contacted David, I had no idea where my interests would lead me! I loved his non-prescriptive approach, the flexibility and openness which allowed me to explore so many different strands of this fascinating topic.
I thoroughly enjoyed our sessions and found David to be an inspirational, enthusiastic and sensitive coach who focused on helping me identify my particular areas of interest and feeding my curiosity. I have only scratched the surface and I hope some day to expand my knowledge further and apply it even more to my work.
When that time comes, I know who to turn to.
I am grateful for the 12 hours of coaching I had with David Key. The sessions were very helpful in opening up possibilities for how I can use an ecotherapy approach in my clinical work as a psychologist. They were also extremely valuable personally, in helping me to navigate my way into a new phase in my life. I guess you could say that they were transformational!
Dave co-created our Natural Change process for engaging with the natural world. He has run this exercise for us twice with a diverse group of people over an extended period. The results have been inspiring and Dave has been great to work with.
The wilderness solo: a touchstone for sustainability leadership.
The solo and story-circle undoes our everyday way of being and thinking. It rattles the cultural architecture which we've learned to accept, exposing fallacies and unearthing new possibilities. Read more→
The Allegory of the Pit
One of the joys of coaching is that I meet some amazing people. I also feel that I learn as much from them as they might from me. A client recently sent me a link to a quite incredible article about the Allegory of the Pit, written by Bayo Akomolafe and published by the Emergence... Read more→
Why being outdoors heals us #2: Do the Evolution
We know being outdoors can heal us - but why? How does it work? What is it about being outdoors that is therapeutic? Read more→
Why being outdoors heals us #1: A Hitchhiker’s Guide.
We know being outdoors can heal us - but why? How does it work? What is it about being outdoors that is therapeutic? Read more→
The paradox of not being able to cope with paradox
A common theme among the people I have worked with over the years is that they feel themselves to be trapped in a paradox: they feel painfully aware of the ecological crises facing us but utterly unable to respond in a way that feels adequate. This often leads to frenetic action driven by fear, grief... Read more→
Our ecologic mental health crisis
A few months ago I wrote an article about ‘Climate Grief’. It created a bit of stir and led me to think more deeply about the impacts trauma might have on our ability to respond to ecological crises. As part of that exploration I came across an excellent piece on ‘Climate Trauma’ by Zhiwa Woodbury.... Read more→
No Words
Words become inadequate at the boundary of new experience. They are so often the first and most obvious companion for a journey to the edge of Being, but sometimes they fail us. Read more→
Why we should get out more: evidence from over four decades of research
In this post Osbert Lancaster and I take a quick look at some of the ways outdoor experiences benefit us, society and the environment. We know that spending time outdoors is good for our health and well-being. But it also has other benefits that often get overlooked. Outdoor experiences can help us live more fulfilling... Read more→
Natural Change – a retrospective
WWF Scotland has developed a programme where individuals encounter the natural world on its own terms with no link beyond your immediate surroundings. Read more→
VIDEO: Ecopsychology for Social Change
If you would like to find out more about Ecopsychology for Social Change, please do get in touch.