Dave is an inspirational, calm and creative facilitator allowing all participants to feel comfortable and able to connect with the wonders of nature.
In this beautiful peaceful setting, where you can literally hear the leaves fall, it is easy to have ‘thinking time’ and how important it is too; I can hardly believe what has come up for me today.
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.
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.
Dave’s course was the beginning of my journey with this incredible work.
I learned a lot about myself, and this has ultimately meant I can work with other people with a much deeper understanding of change processes. I loved that the course was self governed – for me this meant I could go on my own exploration, and pull on the threads that interested me.
Dave is very attentive and flexible toward personal needs, it is less ‘teacher-student’ focused and more collaborative and supportive, which I feel is exactly what is needed in this world.
I would do the course again and again.
Dave helped me realise that I am strong enough to make change in my life that will benefit me and others. The confidence is now in me to say what I think and not say what I think others want me to say.
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.
The course experience was truly incredible, and I was taken by surprise at the level of intensity and personal response to what I thought would be a challenging week, but not to the degree that occurred.
Hold your nose and dive in at the deep end – the course will take you to places you haven’t imagined, good and bad, and will be truly formative as an investment of your time and energy.
Dave is an outstanding facilitator with a fantastically engaging and inclusive style, great humour, insightful with deep rapport building abilities.
Dave has given me the confidence and capability to set and lead my global organisation’s climate strategy.
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.
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’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.
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!
The course cleared a lot of clutter from my head and allowed me to focus and determine the deeper underlying questions of my life and of my connection to Nature. Since then, I have pursued a deeper relationship and conversation with the natural world that has constantly informed my life.
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.
I heartily recommend David’s work to anyone wishing to deepen their understanding and experience within the broad purview of ecotherapy. The bespoke nature and pacing of the work, together with David’s extensive experience, strong companionship and challenge gives a blend of embodied practice with imagination and study, making for a profound synthesis and optimal conditions for deep change.
For me it was a tremendous vessel in which to simmer and steep, one that promoted the risky business of leaping, that served encountering the nobly camouflaged layers of self and led me to “be able to stand in the wreckage of what used to be (my) certainty” and have that be a flourishing of wild and previously unseen truths.
I recommend David, the man and his work, to anyone with heart enough to commit and head enough to set the compass.
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.
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.
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.
Having recently completed Dave’s course, I feel I have stepped through a threshold; one which has transformed me, and how I contribute to our world. Dave has gently facilitated us through his process, with care, quiet determination and clarity. Our world needs more people to work with Dave, to change how we connect, love and serve with positive agency, our natural world.
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.
The course has acted as a catalyst for all kinds of ideas and actions, both personal, professional and as a group. I think the phrase might be “watch this space”!
A considerate, generous, and passionate coach – I am thankful to have had the opportunity to work with David!
Dave’s course has given me permission to silence the white noise. It has helped me to sift out what matters. It’s pretty subtle. It’s liberating.
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 gained a massive amount of insight both personally and professionally. I was profoundly moved by the process. I came away refreshed and inspired.
Dave has helped me to reach a deep resolve in my choices for the direction of my life and the work that I wish to do in the world.
Dave co-taught a 3-week course on Ecopsychology at Schumacher College with Mary-Jayne Rust. The course was well planned and the group gave very positive feedback of what they learned and how the process was facilitated. Dave is extremely organised and a good planner, as well as being a committed and inspiring teacher.
David is very knowledgeable and experienced and provided me with access to a wide variety of resources which we would then discuss within the sessions. Because they were individual sessions, David was able to tailor them to my interests and what I wanted to explore.
This is a very flexible course and very worthwhile.
The course played a subtle but powerful part in deepening my commitment to a life of working for positive change. It opened windows in my thinking, and reinvigorated trust in working with intuition and metaphor that have since shaped my working path.
Don´t hesitate. Just do it! You will feel great, brave and you won´t be disappointed – I promise you.
A newness has been thrown into the now, that will affect almost everything from this point. I find that exciting. We may be in uncharted water but that doesn’t mean we’re going down. Who knows where we could go…
I discovered Dave’s work when I was managing the film output for the World Wildlife Fund in the UK where he had been consulting on Natural Change. Nature Psychology seemed to me to be the solution to get us out of this natural mess – by turning toward environmental destruction, and building relationship with it, we start to move into recovery – what a radical and beautifully simple idea!
Dave’s course in ecopsychology was the beginning of my journey with this incredible work and I chose to make it almost entirely experiential – carrying out practices in nature that Dave ‘prescribed’. I learned a lot about myself, and this has ultimately meant I can deliver the material to other people with an understanding of how it really works.
I loved that the course was self governed – for me this meant I could go on my own exploration, and pull on the threads that interested me. It’s an excellent foundation, Dave is very attentive and flexible toward personal needs, it is less ‘teacher-student’ focused and more colloborative and supportive, which I I feel is exactly what is needed in this world. I would do the course again and again.
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.
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.
It feels like I’m in the process of enlarging my heart. And it’s kind of painful, but also joyous and also really crucial.
The course has brought me a deeper awareness and ability to listen. This has enabled me to understand the broader impacts of my business and provided me with the skills to find different responses and action, rather than merely repeating past actions.
I am literally in a different physical and psychological space as a result of my involvement.