Every few weeks I get an email from someone asking how they can become an ecotherapist. The usual scenario is that they’ve looked online but haven’t been able to find anything very conclusive.

Their search usually starts with an assumption that ecotherapy is an established profession - based on a coherent model, with a clear training pathway and an overarching institution that provides registration, qualifications and credibility.

Anyone already engaged with ecotherapy will immediately recognise why this assumption is flawed!

Working out how to become an ecotherapist can be a frustrating process. This article attempts to provide a guide to make things easier.

Mapping the Terrain

Ecotherapy describes any practical application of the broad theoretical field of ecopsychology, which emerged simultaneously from several places. These include environmental, transpersonal and social psychology, ecology, and environmental philosophy. It has many deeper roots too - for example, in indigenous and ancient worldviews, cosmologies and practices.

In the context of contemporary Western thought, its first real coherence came through Theodore Roszak, Mary Gomes and Allen Kanner’s seminal text, ‘Ecopsychology: restoring the earth, healing the mind’ published in 1995.

The fantastic diversity of ecopsychology as a subject has led to an equally rich range of practical applications. These include everything from taking traditional forms of psychotherapy outdoors and bringing ecological issues into the conventional therapy room (eco-psychotherapy), to forest bathing (Shinrin Yoku), wilderness therapy, animal-assisted therapies, adventure therapy, nature-based therapy and various forms of bodywork. There has also been a proliferation of existing traditional practices like yoga, mindfulness, rites of passage and shamanic work being done under the ecotherapy banner, often by simply doing them outdoors.

Probably the most significant distinction is between approaches that are primarily about therapeutic outcomes for the individual and those that see ecotherapy as a reciprocal process. In the individual approach, nature is used as a tool to provide personal therapy. In the reciprocal one, personal therapy is just one outcome of working to heal nature as a whole. You can read more about this important distinction in my book, ‘Ecotherapy: A Field Guide’.

Ultimately, ecopsychology is ubiquitous: everything can be seen through an ecopsychological lens. Consequently, applying it in practice promises an astounding array of possibilities. This is exciting … but it can also be extremely problematic because so many aspects of the subject are contested.

To call yourself an ecotherapist, you do not need any qualifications or membership to a professional institution. There is no single code of ethics or model of practice. You do not need to subscribe to any particular worldview. You can do whatever you want, wherever you want, with whoever you want - for whatever fee you want to charge. Simple! But this is also a recipe for exploitation, malpractice and serious harm. It invites both unintentional and malicious abuse.

All this makes becoming an ecotherapist very simple, extremely complicated and potentially dangerous - at the same time!

The potential danger means that some ecotherapists are keen to establish a profession in the conventional sense. They want accredited courses, professional institutions, formal procedures, a code of ethics administered by an elected board, guidelines, standard operating procedures, specialist insurance policies and training pathways. All the trappings of ‘mainstream’ therapies. However, others find even the idea of such a structure abhorrent. After all, it represents the worldview that has devastated the planet and turned mental illness into a pandemic. They believe that these structures should be avoided at all costs and that ecotherapy cannot exist in conventional forms - it must be radical and counter-cultural to be authentic.

And yet. And yet thousands of us call ourselves ecotherapists and many of us provide immensely helpful and important support to our clients, and to the rest of nature. So how can we navigate through this wild and paradoxical terrain? How can we safely, compassionately, humbly, ethically and professionally call ourselves ecotherapists?

Intention

The first and perhaps most important question is what is your intention as an ecotherapist?

Are you intending to work with people referred to you, who have been formally diagnosed with mental health issues? Or are you hoping to engage those who self-refer because they feel they need some kind of help and support?

If you are working with serious mental health issues, perhaps referred to you by another professional, then it is my opinion that you will need to be qualified as a clinical psychologist, psychotherapist or psychiatrist. This is probably a self-limiting scenario, as you are unlikely to receive these kinds of referrals through the formal health system without conventional qualifications and registration.

If you are working with people who have self-selected or who have been referred from a nonclinical source, then I do not feel you need to be clinically qualified in a conventional sense. For example, those suffering from anxiety or mild-to-moderate depression (MMD), needing physical rehabilitation (perhaps after a cardiac event or surgery), or with health issues caused by social isolation, loss, bereavement - or combinations of these types of issues.

I have also seen outdoor approaches help those struggling with addictions and post-traumatic stress (PTSD), something which is well evidenced in certain contexts.

For me, the guiding principle is to ask yourself the question: is this work ‘psychotherapeutic’ - where you are consciously engaging with serious mental health issues? Or is it ‘therapeutic’, where you simply (Of course it’s not that simple!) intend to facilitate the therapeutic benefits that can naturally emerge through time spent outdoors?

A further helpful guideline is whether or not your client has ever been prescribed medication for mental health issues; has ever harmed themselves or others; or has been ‘sectioned’ - detained by the state for mental health reasons. I feel this is a less clear guideline with a lot of variables. It should perhaps be part of your thinking, but not strictly applied.

Context

The next question should be, where do you want to work and what potential is there for harm in that context?

If you or your client are bringing ecological issues into a conventional therapeutic setting, then obviously the potential for harm is no more or less than bringing any other issue into the consulting room. If, however, you are taking your clients on a three-day trek through a mountain range, then clearly the potential for harm is radically different.

And there are all the points in between. Working in your local urban park or woodland. At a city allotment or in a private garden. Or perhaps out on a day walk (or canoe trip, bike ride or wild swim).

So once you have your intention clarified, where do you want to work? If you’re working one-hour sessions with ecological issues in a consulting room, then you will need different skills and experience than if you are working in a remote wilderness area on an unsupported 21-day programme!

Thinking about the context of your practice provides a better understanding of what training, qualifications and experience you may need to operate safely. The next step is to understand risk and how to manage it.

Risk

Risk is usually defined as the potential for loss. This could be loss of life or limb or perhaps of belongings. But it could also be a loss of confidence, pride, power, or cultural, sexual or spiritual identity, for example. Loss is never only physical and material.

Any therapist or facilitator will also know about Loss of Process (LoP). This is a bit trickier to grasp but is when a process - like building trust - is negatively impacted by something that happens. Working outdoors, an example might be that the facilitator or therapist doesn’t know how to use a map and compass, so gets themselves and their client lost. Working indoors, perhaps the therapeutic container is disrupted by another client turning up early due to the therapist’s poor planning.

Risk is not a fixed measure - it’s profoundly dynamic. Classic interplays include those between ‘real’ and ‘perceived’ risk, between the likelihood of something happening and the ensuing consequences, and between the technical competence of the protagonist and the type of risk they might encounter.

Managing risk in outdoor ecotherapy practice depends on your own personal background, training and experience. For example, psychotherapists may see all the psychological risks but be completely blind to those visible to the outdoor leader. On the other hand, there are many examples of highly qualified outdoor leaders becoming overwhelmed in a psychological emergency.

Depending on your context, have you assessed and mitigated risk to the lowest possible level … and then formally disclaimed the remaining risk to your client? Are you qualified to take responsibility for the type of risks you may encounter? Can you even ‘see’ all the risks involved?

You need to feel personally confident that you have managed risk to a level of professional best practice. For physical risk, this means to a level that is at, or below, that which is experienced in the client’s everyday life.

You must also be able to demonstrate your risk management process to a court of law, to avoid being exposed to potential claims of criminal negligence. This applies regardless of your context or intention.

Managing metaphysical and psychological risks is much more complicated. Perhaps another blog topic! However, in my 25-plus years of professional practice, I have formally assessed risk for hundreds of programmes and courses. Without a doubt, the most prolific, serious, intractable and frequent risks of working outdoors are physical. So if you intend to work outdoors, please bear this in mind!

Toward New Forms

Most psychotherapists who want to work outdoors have not trained formally in outdoor leadership, so have absolutely no idea about the complex field of outdoor risk management. In my experience, they see risk as primarily psychological.

Meanwhile, outdoor leaders ‘read’ the environment around them constantly, weighing up multiple risk dynamics and actively reducing the potential for physical harm. To them, psychological risks are secondary - something to be ‘dealt with’ during the ubiquitous ‘debrief’ (I prefer the word ‘review’ as debrief harks back to the military age of outdoor leadership). However, at the first sight of a psychological crisis, they start to feel out of their depth - fearful of the unknown and mysterious world of psychology. Clearly, there is room here for some collaboration!

There are also the ‘super-ecotherapists’. They have both formal outdoor leadership and psychotherapy training and experience. They are quite rare, and they are usually the product of more than ten years of training and assessment. However, there are several reasons why this combination might actually be unhelpful to both the clients and the practitioner - yet another topic for further exploration elsewhere!

Along with the ‘supers’, there are those who have done their ’10,000’ hours, as the Buddhists would say. They have - by hook or by crook, qualified or not - managed to get so much practical experience that they can work safely and effectively across a broad range of ecotherapy scenarios. They have effectively completed an apprenticeship.

In my opinion, whether through the formal or apprenticeship approach, ecotherapy is way more than simply a combination of psychotherapy and outdoor leadership. While deeply informed by these two, it is a whole new profession in its own right.

I believe it is those who fully embrace this ‘new form’ that represent the true spirit of ecotherapy. They are able to draw what is most useful from both psychology and outdoor leadership - and importantly ditch what is less helpful. They can then add a vast array of new ideas and techniques from myriad other sources, to craft a whole new profession.

The Embodied Ecotherapist

Whether you are a psychotherapist, outdoor leader, super-ecotherapist or have earned your stripes through countless hours of doing the work, the heart of good practice is your own heart.

Your work as an ecotherapist must be based on your own experience of yourself as an ecological being - your own self as part of the rest of nature. For me, a lifetime of professional practice is only possible with one of personal practice. This work is fundamentally embodied and to practice it, the facilitator or therapist must embody it too.

Governance

Why do ecotherapists need governance? For me, it is about ethics and credibility.

As we’ve discovered, you don’t need qualifications or professional registration to call yourself an ecotherapist. In fact, ecotherapy currently sits almost completely off the mainstream professional map. This brings both challenges and benefits.

On the one hand, being off the map places ecotherapy outside the worldview of our industrial growth culture. This allows it to be counter-cultural and to potentially challenge and change that worldview. Outside the constraints of convention, ecotherapy brims with the possibility of radical transformation, at the deepest levels of self and society.

On the other hand, being positioned on the map as a conventional profession - with a governing body, standard ethical framework, training pathways and formal procedures for complaints - would make it a lot easier for funders, organisations and clients to engage with. This question of credibility is a very common issue brought up frequently by my coaching clients and ecotherapy trainees.

One paradox of ecotherapy governance then, is how can credibility be established in the conventional world, while simultaneously challenging that world?

Of course, questions about ethics precede those of credibility. Ethics transcend all cultures and worldviews and do not need to restrict radical ways of being and doing. The challenge with ethics - and the thing that makes them useful - is consensus. I feel ecotherapy peers can establish a consensus on ethics, without institutionalisation.

In the meantime, the bioethical mantra “first, do no harm” forms the central governing ethic of my own practice. How harm is defined is another matter! Once again, though, this could be agreed upon by peers in any specific context.

The most obvious and immediate governance possibilities lie where ecotherapy overlaps with an existing profession. For example, when governance can be incorporated into an outdoor programme, psychotherapy, or coaching process, often the existing systems for those professions are enough.

Almost immediately there are issues with this approach though, because ecotherapy isn’t one or the other of these professions. It’s therefore likely that if there is an incident, it will have to be decided which governance system it best fits into. This is not ideal and feels quite ‘leaky’ as a framework. While this is currently the most common approach to ecotherapy governance, it is clearly flawed. At some point it will get tested beyond breaking point - probably at the cost of both the client and the therapist, in one form or another.

My approach to date has been to take what governance is offered by overlapping conventional professions and then back everything up with a web of additional activities. These include

1. regular personal practice;

2. continuing professional development;

3. regular supervision;

4. peer-group support and moderation;

5. being qualified, experienced, registered and insured (see below) in at least one relevant professional framework;

6. clear contracting with your clients.

In the meantime, I imagine that various forms of specialist, institutional governance will start to emerge in different regions. I think this is inevitable, and that it will eventually fragment the diverse ecotherapy community and cause a fundamental redefinition of terms.

Ultimately, the governance ‘bottom line’ is the law of the land in which you work. Nothing insulates you from criminal negligence, except not being negligent. It is essential you do everything you can to minimise any potential harm and can demonstrate clearly and beyond doubt how you have gone about it. To do that, you need to be able to ‘see’ the risks - whatever they are. I feel that naivety and professional arrogance are the main barriers to this and that both are exacerbated by a lack of collaboration across relevant professions, and by isolation from the consensual moderation of peers.

Insurance

I am not an insurance expert, and I am approaching this discussion as a practitioner, not an insurance broker. Please always take professional advice.

My approach is to have public, product and professional liability insurance as an outdoor leader. This is partly because it is already my profession. But more importantly, I insure the outdoor aspect of the work, rather than the therapeutic part, because by far the greatest element of risk in my context is from the physical aspects of working outdoors.

If I am working at a level of psychological depth at which I feel uncomfortable not being insured, I would seek to co-facilitate with a registered psychotherapist or clinical psychologist who is insured. Quite apart from insurance, it would be unethical of me to intentionally practice at such depth without being registered. This is a ‘belt and braces’ approach through collaboration, which I feel best serves my clients.

Supervision

Before we get to supervision, I feel it is really important for ecotherapists to have experienced traditional psychotherapy themselves. This is to ensure effective management of therapeutic boundaries and to avoid getting caught up in unhelpful projections, projective identification, transferences and counter-transferences - amongst many other things. If you are or want to be an ecotherapist and you aren’t familiar with any of these concepts, then perhaps this is a clue that you need to experience psychotherapy for yourself!

For me as an outdoor leader, supervision is mainly about the psychological aspects of my work. This is where I feel I need the most support to operate effectively and ethically. For psychotherapists, while psychological supervision is often a condition of registration, they may also want support for the outdoor, or other, aspects of their ecotherapy practice.

I believe the key to supervision is getting enough professional support to feel safe, confident and effective in your practice. Working without adequate support is potentially dangerous for both therapist and client. It is therefore essential for self-care, ethics and efficacy.

Over the last 15 years, there has been an epic amount of rhetoric about ‘resilience’. From the word’s origins in systems science, specifically ecology and engineering, it has been reframed and repurposed many times. The burgeoning wellbeing industry is notable in this regard. In the context of workplace burnout, resilience is bandied about as the primary solution. Similarly, it has entered the nomenclature of mental health, and health generally. Resilience is the default strategy for everything from bullying to anxiety, and from depression to postoperative care.

But there is more to it. This helpful and dynamic concept has led us astray, deeper into the very trauma many hoped it would relieve.

In ecology, resilience is the capacity of an ecosystem to absorb disturbance and reorganise while still retaining its essential structure and functionality, rather than collapsing or flipping (bifurcating) into a different state. Once the capacity for resilience is breached, a new ecosystem emerges, one that is completely different to the original.

If you happen to be one of the organisms living in the ecosystem, several things can happen. You can adapt to the changing circumstances, or die. If you adapt, those circumstances will likely become increasingly hostile until you die anyway.

Another option is to leave the system altogether. Some organisms, including humans (but not trees, for example), have this option, even if it is often extremely challenging to take. The problem is when the system you’re trying to escape is the whole biosphere. There’s nowhere else to go. Even if you’re a techbro with a trillion dollars spare, your options are fantasies.

When the concept of resilience is applied to psychosocial systems (which are part of ecosystems), like employee wellbeing within an organisation, mental health within a community, or, in fact, any measure of health within a society, things start to get complex.

Let’s take the case of an employee who is burnt out and has been provided support to help them ‘build their resilience’ (usually access to a bunch of self-help books, websites and apps, and sometimes some counselling or sick leave). The assumption here is that the employee will become more able to remain functional in the organisational system. Often, despite the best efforts of those providing the support, this doesn’t happen. Instead, the employee leaves the organisation to escape the conditions that are causing the burnout, often, ironically, into another dysfunctional system.

There are assumptions buried here. One is that the issue is sited in the employee, not the organisation. The conditions of the organisation must be better adapted to, rather than made less inhospitable. Another is that changing the organisation to reduce employee burnout is impossible. Often, we can’t even imagine the new organisation: ‘it is what it is’, ‘what can you do?’

Some practitioners working with resilience would say both these are true. The employee needs support, and the system needs to change. Fair enough. Except, the system rarely gets changed, leaving the burden on the usually powerless and bewildered individual.

But how do you change the system? And if you could change one social system, your organisation, for example, how do you change the larger social systems it is part of, and on which it depends to survive? This is a Russian Doll problem the size of a planet. We’ll come back to it in a minute.

So far we have explored the example of an employee within an organisation, the experience of the organism within a system. But what about the system? Why might it have become so hostile to the organism in the first place? What has made the organism need to become more resilient?

The system is hostile because it is being moved further towards the limits of its capacity to maintain its present structure and functionality. It is doing this in response to its context (larger systems). External disturbances force systems to reorganise to maintain their present structure and function. This reorganisation process is facilitated by feedback (communication) loops within the system. In essence, the change process is stimulated externally and responded to internally. Several reasons determine how long this process can run. For example, the amount of energy available within the system, the efficiency of the feedback loops, and the nature, speed and extent of the external disturbances.

Psychologically, people (also systems) exist in communities and organisations (also systems) which exist in ecosystems (you guessed it, also systems), which exist in the biosphere (again) (Russian Doll). Personal wellbeing, the health of the organism, happens at all these scales.

As disturbances increase, the capacity for creativity (’novelty’ in ecology) gets increasingly diminished, feedback loops get more and more complicated and less effective, and the energy runs out. At the point just before the system fails altogether, we see ‘peak complexity’. The maximum amount of structure possible before no structure is possible. Once this happens, the system fails. And, as the Humpty Dumpty principle in ecology shows us, it can never be put together again. A new system emerges. The process starts again.

Individuals can never have the capacity to adapt at the scale of a whole system. The contemporary resilience movement is selling an impossible lie. Normalising people to this process through ‘resilience’ work is making them cope with increasing levels of stress within systems that are doomed, in the vain hope of maintaining them. This cannot work. It doesn’t work in nature. And we are nature.

However, it can create a whole multibillion-dollar wellbeing industry, one that feeds off the chaos of our social systems. One that depends on those systems continuing to generate the dis-ease of industrial culture. A form of disaster capitalism.

So what’s the solution? Sounds like these organisational and social systems will fail anyway, releasing us all from the misery of trying to live within them. I believe that’s true, because as ecology shows us - that is precisely how nature works when pushed too far. But letting them fail might not be a very nice experience for billions of people, as we are finding out in real time. It’s also one that we don’t need to resign ourselves to - it is entirely possible to live within healthy systems that respond to external stimuli, reorganise and adapt, all without the stress being sited in the individual as a personal health issue. After all, we humans have been doing this extremely well for in excess of 150,000 years, up until relatively recently.

In the meantime, we need to change the systems that are causing the harm, not destroy ourselves by trying to cope within them.

It is essential to support each other as our organisational and social systems become increasingly intolerable, in response to the increasingly intolerable world around them. But we must also fight to change these systems, including preparing for their inevitable collapse if they are already too far gone. We can bypass some of the personal pain and trauma by shifting our energy into imagining and building new systems, rather than wasting it all trying to maintain the old ones. And in my experience, this work heals at every scale, including the individual - true resilience.

Back to the Russian Doll problem and the systems change solution. How do you change systems at every scale simultaneously? Not with imposed models or frameworks, not with endless restructuring, not with ‘targets’, or leadership based on individualism and private power. No. You work in the domain of relationships. Creating healthy relationships within and between systems is how you change them at every scale, and how you make them resilient.

I’ve often wondered why outdoor therapies are so hard to engage institutions and funders with. Over the years, I have literally worked with hundreds of people - on courses, projects and through coaching - who have been trying to get outdoor ecotherapy programmes off the ground, only to be turned away. And I have been turned away myself, more times than I can remember. Back in the day, the excuse was often about lack of evidence, but that argument has now worn extremely thin, and this article aims to succinctly kill it off entirely.

There is now extensive, bio-medical and peer-reviewed evidence to support therapeutic outdoor practices. And it keeps growing.

The first wave

The first major wave of research established a remarkably consistent picture. Outdoor experiences reduce depression,^[1,2,3] mental fatigue,^[4] anxiety^[5] and stress.^[6,7,8] They improve mood ^[9] and cognitive function.^[10,11] They reduce symptoms associated with trauma,^[12] psychosis^[13] and addiction.^[14,15] They show promise with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.^[16] They slow cognitive decline,^[17] increase longevity,^[18] and improve quality of life for people living with Alzheimer’s and dementia.^[19] They moderate the experience of pain.^[20]

A significant pathway for many of these effects runs through immunity.^[21] Outdoor approaches increase immune function in ways that appear to reduce risk across a striking range of conditions: cardiovascular disease, diabetes mellitus, cancer, upper respiratory infections, migraines, and more.^[4,22,23] The breadth of this list is not incidental; it reflects the systemic, whole-body nature of what happens when we spend meaningful time outdoors.

Beyond the purely clinical, the evidence describes something more diffuse but no less significant. Improved sleep, increased energy, patience, creativity and motivation;^[24,25] greater confidence and self-esteem; ^[26] an expanded sense of wellbeing and happiness;^[27] and more pro-social behaviour. ^[28,29,30] These are not minor quality-of-life adjustments. They describe a fundamentally different way of being in the world.

The new wave

The new wave of literature reinforces all of this and sharpens it considerably.

A 2026 meta-analysis found that outdoor interventions significantly decrease tension, fatigue, confusion and negative affect, while increasing positive affect, vigour and sense of wellbeing.^[31] These are not marginal effects. When physical activity undertaken in outdoor environments is compared directly to indoor exercise, it consistently produces superior mental health outcomes, alongside greater enjoyment and a stronger intention to repeat the experience.^[32,33,34]

The physical health evidence is equally striking. A systematic review and meta-analysis of 143 studies found that outdoor exposure is associated with reduced cardiovascular risk, lower incidence of Type 2 diabetes, all-cause and cardiovascular mortality, improved metabolic markers, including decreased salivary cortisol, and better pregnancy outcomes, including reduced preterm birth.^[35] For people already managing somatic or mental health conditions, structured outdoor activity produces improvements in quality of life, physical function and mental health outcomes.^[36]

Now there is also good evidence on ‘dose’ - although this terminology feels compromising, as outdoor experiences are far more sophisticated than even the most advanced pharmacology. However, the research is still interesting. For example, data from nearly 20,000 people points to a threshold effect. 120 minutes outdoors per week is associated with significantly higher odds of good health and high well-being, with benefits peaking somewhere between 200 and 300 minutes weekly. Whether that time is accumulated in one go or across shorter visits makes no difference to the outcome.^[37]

Neuroimaging is starting to contribute to the discourse about why time outdoors heals, too. Convergent findings across EEG, fMRI and structural MRI show that outdoor exposure produces acute reductions in stress-related brain circuit activity, shifts neural states toward patterns associated with attentional restoration, and is linked to long-term structural advantages in regions associated with cognition.^[38] An 18-country study involving over 16,000 participants found that visits to landscapes, and inland- and coastal-water spaces were consistently associated with higher wellbeing and lower mental distress across diverse populations and seasons, and with lower likelihood of using antidepressant medication.^[39]

One thing the evidence does not show is contraindications. The diverse and flexible nature of outdoor experiences, the fact that they can be undertaken in a dizzying array of forms, by almost anyone, makes this one of the most inclusive and cost-effective therapeutic approaches available. There are rare exceptions like photosensitivity and certain phobias. But as a general rule, time outdoors appears to be beneficial across a very wide range of human diversity, at a remarkably low per capita cost.

Beyond doubt

There are some gaps. ^[35,39,40] But the overall direction of the evidence is beyond doubt. The breadth, consistency and growing methodological rigour of the literature, from neuroimaging to large-scale epidemiology to meta-analysis, make a compelling case.

Outdoor approaches work; they work across a wide range of conditions and populations, and they carry negligible risk. The evidence is clear.

The question is not whether outdoor therapies are evidence-based and credible. It is why they remain peripheral to the mainstream health and education systems that claim to care about exactly the outcomes they reliably produce. Despite the evidence.

References

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[2] Corazon, S., Nyed, P., Sidenius, U., Poulsen, D., & Stigsdotter, U. (2018). A Long-Term Follow-Up of the Efficacy of Nature-Based Therapy for Adults Suffering from Stress-Related Illnesses on Levels of Healthcare Consumption and Sick-Leave Absence: A Randomized Controlled Trial. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 15(1), 137.

[3] Park, B. J., Tsunetsugu, Y., Kasetani, T., Kagawa, T., & Miyazaki, Y. (2010). The physiological effects of Shinrin-yoku (taking in the forest atmosphere or forest bathing): Evidence from field experiments in 24 forests across Japan. Environmental Health and Preventative Medicine, 15, 18–26.

[4] Li, Q. (2009). Effect of forest bathing trips on human immune function. Environmental Health and Preventive Medicine, 15(1), 9–17.

[5] Bratman, G. N., Hamilton, J. P., Hahn, K. S., Daily, G. C., & Gross, J. J. (2015). Nature experience reduces rumination and subgenual prefrontal cortex activation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 112(28), 8567–72.

[6] Tyrväinen, L., Ojala, A., Korpela, K., Lanki, T., Tsunetsugu, Y., & Kagawa, T. (2014). The influence of urban green environments on stress relief measures: A field experiment. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 38, 1–9.

[7] Tsunetsugu, Y., Lee, J., Park, B. J., Tyrvainen, L., Kagawa, T., & Miyazaki, Y. (2013). Physiological and psychological effects of viewing urban forest landscapes assessed by multiple measurements. Landscape and Urban Planning, 113, 90–93.

[8] Triguero-Mas, M., Donaire-Gonzalez, D., Seto, E., Valentin, A., Smith, G., Martínez, D., ... Nieuwenhuijsen, M. J. (2017). Natural outdoor environments and mental health: Stress as a possible mechanism. Journal of Environmental Research, 159, 629–638.

[9] Berman, M. G., Jonides, J., & Kaplan, S. (2008). The cognitive benefits of interacting with nature. Physiological Science, 19(12), 1207–1212.

[10] Torquati, J., Schutte, A., & Kiat, J. (2017). Attentional Demands of Executive Function Tasks in Indoor and Outdoor Settings: Behavioral and Neuroelectrical Evidence. Children, Youth and Environments, 27(2).

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[13] Engemann, K., Pedersen, C. B., Arge, L., Tsirogiannis, C., Mortensen, P. B., & Svenning, J. C. (2019). Residential green space in childhood is associated with lower risk of psychiatric disorders from adolescence into adulthood. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 116(11).

[14] Panagiotounis, F., Theodorakis, Y., Hassandra, M., & Morres, I. (2021). Psychological effects of an adventure therapy program in the treatment of substance use disorders. A Greek pilot study. Journal of Substance Use, 26(2), 118–124.

[15] Bennett, L. W., Cardone, S., & Jarczyk, J. (1998). Effects of a Therapeutic Camping Program on Addiction Recovery: The Algonquin Haymarket Relapse Prevention Program. Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment, 15(5), 469–474.

[16] Kuo, F., & Taylor, A. (2004). A potential natural treatment for Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder: evidence from a national study. American Journal of Public Health, 94(9), 1580–1586.

[17] Harada, K., Lee, S., Park, H., Shimada, H., Makizako, H., Doi, T., Yoshida, D., Tsutsumimoto, K., Anan, Y., Uemura, K., & Suzuki, T. (2016). Going outdoors and cognitive function among community-dwelling older adults: Moderating role of physical function. Geriatrics and Gerontology International, 16(1).

[18] Fortes, C., Mastroeni, S., Sperati, A., Pacifici, R., Zuccaro, P., Forastiere, F., Agabiti, N., Piras, G., D’Amicis, A., & Ebrahim, S. (2013). Walking outdoors four times weekly for at least 15 minutes is associated with longevity in a cohort of very elderly people. Annals of Nutrition and Metabolism, 63(1).

[19] Hernandez, R. O. (2007). Effects of Therapeutic Gardens in Special Care Units for People with Dementia. Journal of Housing For the Elderly, 21(1–2), 117–152.

[20] Oh, B., Lee, K. J., Zaslawski, C., Yeung, A., Rosenthal, D., Larkey, L., & Back, M. (2017). Health and well-being benefits of spending time in forests: Systematic review. Environmental Health and Preventive Medicine, 22(1). BioMed Central Ltd.

[21] Song, et al. (2016). Physiological Effects of Nature Therapy: A Review of the Research in Japan. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 13(8), 781.

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[23] Lowry, et al. (2007). [Immunity and disease reduction through nature exposure]. (Cited in summary.)

[24] Morita, E., et al. (2011). [Improved sleep and increased energy, patience, life satisfaction and motivation through nature exposure]. (Cited in summary.)

[25] Astell-Burt, T., Feng, X., & Kolt, G. S. (2013). Mental health benefits of neighbourhood green space are stronger among physically active adults in middle-to-older age: Evidence from 260,061 Australians. Preventive Medicine, 57(5), 601–606.

[26] Atchley, R. A., et al. (2012). [Improved confidence, self-esteem and creativity through nature exposure]. (Cited in summary.)

[27] Yuen, H. K., & Jenkins, G. R. (2019). Factors associated with changes in subjective well-being immediately after urban park visit. International Journal of Environmental Health Research, 1–12.

[28] Piff, P. K., et al. (2015). [Increased pro-social behaviours through nature exposure]. (Cited in summary.)

[29] Suttie, J. (2016). [Increased pro-social behaviours through nature exposure]. (Cited in summary.)

[30] Weinstein, N., et al. (2009). [Increased pro-social behaviours through nature exposure]. (Cited in summary.)

[31] Brandt, L., De Prisco, M., Nocera, D., et al. (2026). Climate-Related and Nature-Based Interventions for Mental Health. JAMA Psychiatry. doi:10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2026.0037.

[32] Liu, X., Sun, Z., Wang, X., Dong, D., & Samsudin, S. B. (2026). Effects of Green Exercise on Mental Health: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. Frontiers in Psychology, 17, 1802759.

[33] Laezza, L., Vacondio, M., Fornasiero, A., et al. (2025). Evaluating the Benefits of Green Exercise: A Randomized Controlled Trial in Natural and Built Environments Assessed for Their Restorative Properties. Psychology of Sport and Exercise, 80, 102883.

[34] Thompson Coon, J., Boddy, K., Stein, K., et al. (2011). Does Participating in Physical Activity in Outdoor Natural Environments Have a Greater Effect on Physical and Mental Wellbeing Than Physical Activity Indoors? A Systematic Review. Environmental Science & Technology, 45(5), 1761–1772.

[35] Twohig-Bennett, C., & Jones, A. (2018). The Health Benefits of the Great Outdoors: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Greenspace Exposure and Health Outcomes. Environmental Research, 166, 628–637.

[36] Ahler, J. R., Busk, H., Holm, P. M., et al. (2024). Benefits and Harms of Structured Outdoor Physical Activity for People With Somatic or Mental Diseases: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. Preventive Medicine, 183, 107966.

[37] White, M. P., Alcock, I., Grellier, J., et al. (2019). Spending at Least 120 minutes a Week in Nature Is Associated With Good Health and Wellbeing. Scientific Reports, 9(1), 7730.

[38] Baquedano, C., Olguí, A., Contreras-Huerta, L. S., Rosas, F. E., & Estarellas, M. (2026). Your Brain on Nature: A Scoping Review of the Neuroscience of Nature Exposure. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, 183, 106565.

[39] White, M. P., Elliott, L. R., Grellier, J., et al. (2021). Associations Between Green/Blue Spaces and Mental Health Across 18 Countries. Scientific Reports, 11(1), 8903.

[40] Jimenez, M. P., DeVille, N. V., Elliott, E. G., et al. (2021). Associations Between Nature Exposure and Health: A Review of the Evidence. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 18(9), 4790.

It is now well evidenced that spending time outdoors can be therapeutic for both our physical and mental health. Over the last ten years, especially, there has been a tsunami of research about therapeutic outdoor experiences. This covers everything from walking to mindfulness, to gardening, to working with animals, to surfing, to Forest Bathing, to wilderness adventure.

But really, most of us don’t need the research – the only evidence we require is our own personal experience. Anyone who spends time outdoors knows it’s therapeutic. No-brainer.

So we know outdoor experiences heal us – whether we trust our own experience or head to the University library to drown in the ocean of peer-reviewed evidence. But why do they heal us? How does it work? What is it about being outdoors that is therapeutic? This article is the third in a series that offers some responses to these questions, based on my own professional practice over the years.

The first article explored the role of interconnection as a reason why being outdoors is therapeutic. The second explored that of our evolutionary memory. This one takes a look at love …

Biophilia

An aspect of evolution that often gets missed was made popular by the biologist Edward O. Wilson. ‘Biophilia’, he wrote in 1993, ‘is the innately emotional affiliation of human beings to other living organisms.’1

The idea of biophilia originated with Erich Fromm, who in 1973 wrote that it is ‘the passionate love of life and of all that is alive.’ The word itself is constructed from ‘bio’ – life and ‘philia’ – love2.

As a biologist, Wilson developed the idea beyond Fromm’s human focus, into the social field of all living things (inventing ’sociobiology’ along the way). His thesis was that our emotional affiliation with other living organisms is part of our evolutionary heritage.

What I find most striking about Wilson’s definition is that the ’emotional affiliation’ we have to other living organisms is ‘innate’. It’s in our nature. 

Meanwhile, Fromm adds love to the lexicon. Combining them, biophilia is an innate love of living things. We love nature. We have evolved that way. Loving it has proffered us an evolutionary advantage. Loving it has allowed us to survive. Not loving it will be the end of us.

Sensing outdoors

When outdoors, we literally come to our senses. They attune to our earthy reality, and we feel closer to nature. 

Of course, ecologically, we are never apart from nature. We couldn’t survive without it for more than a few minutes. But we don’t often feel this way because modern life creates an illusion of separation, one that is profoundly pernicious. But outdoors, our senses reveal the material truth: we are part of nature.

The sensation of being in – and of – nature stimulates a lush deluge of feelings and emotions. Surrender, tolerance, belonging, desperation, ecstasy, vulnerability, humility, tenacity, passion, fear, joy, inspiration, intimacy, awe, desire …

These connect us to the giddy wonder of our evolved capabilities. To adapt, create, grow, respond, navigate, care – and to love. They also bring the sobering fall of our frailty. The stark apprehension of our gossamer dependence on nature’s entire myriad web.

Being outdoors allows us to sense life directly, as a whole. All at once in the blood-and-bone certainty of the flesh. When we love nature, we feel it most profoundly in the mountains. In the forests and deserts. As river, wave, eddy, ocean.

When our ‘passionate love of life and all that is alive’ is allowed to flourish through intimate, somatic engagement with the rest of nature, our illusory separation becomes untenable. And then ridiculous. Our senses reveal the vast net, each one of us a single tiny knot. Each one of us is tied in tight, regardless of industrial attempts to cut us out.

Entanglement

Ultimately, this changes the way we behave toward nature itself. We come to experience it as it is: the matrix of all life, including our own. This can compel us to protect, conserve and regenerate it. To live within nature’s limits, realising they are our own limits too.

Being outdoors offers this boundless healing potential to both person and planet. It invites a full reciprocal exchange; it calls us into deep empathy. It entangles us irrevocably in life’s pattern.

Loving nature is to love ourselves as nature, creating the ultimate dynamic equilibrium between meaning and survival.

A common theme among the people I have worked with over the years is that they feel trapped in a paradox: 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, panic and anger, which then gets overtaken by stress and burnout. Feeling exhausted and unable to cope fuels the sense of inadequacy, and the process becomes a traumatic spiral.

As the wheels spin off, their efficacy plummets. Dwindling energy and fragmented focus stifle creativity and agency. They seek ways to cope by pushing away the difficult feelings. They blame others – corporations, the government, anyone who doesn’t seem to see the world the way they do. They become overwhelmed by bitterness and cynicism. Or else they hold all this bile inside and blame themselves – and end up feeling bewildered, ashamed and alone.

This is the story I hear. And it is my own story too.

The paradox, then, is that we are all complicit in creating the crises we seek to avoid. All of us. Even if many of us feel that this is because we are trapped in an ecologically impossible culture.

John Keats described his notion of Negative Capability as, ‘when man [sic] is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason’1. I think there is something fundamentally important about this: something that could free us from the paradox of complicity.

I think that Keat’s offers a subtle but powerful message with real practical implications for the environmental movement. On one hand, we’re compelled by the knowledge of our own complicity to act. And that action, in our culture at least, tends to be dominated by an intellectual, factual, logical, rational, technical response. We recycle our stuff, install solar panels, drive an EV, use public transport, ride our bikes, buy organic food, and refuse to fly in a jet. We do not respond by creating beauty, listening deeply, writing poetry, singing, dancing, playing, preparing food together, making music or performing. Not as deliberate forms of activism anyway. And if we did, such acts would be considered naive and frivolous distractions - not real activism. They would be seen as inferior to acts informed by ‘fact and reason’. Fiddling while Rome - and the Planet - burned. But actually, these creative arts offer much more than fact or reason ever can. They bring us into relationship with each other, with our ecology, and with ourselves.

This is what we need most at this time: connection.

Negative Capability offers what Meg Wheately might describe as being ‘beyond hope and fear’. It offers a way into the ‘lichtung’ – the light-filled clearing in the forest that Martin Heidegger used to describe the nature of Being2. This space is still, but it is not passive; it is stable but also dynamic, never static; it is calm but also fizzing with potential. It is a state of holding still in extreme situations – and, more importantly, of having the energy, resolve, clarity, community, creativity, and courage to act appropriately at the precise moment when the opportunity arises.

If we apply this to the range of responses available to us in the environmental movement, we see something new emerging. Not frenetic activism fuelled by fear and blame, or passive denial. Not relentless analysis, or endless models of change. It’s something else. It is each of us opening to a kind of active acceptance, where we can find the space to focus on building the relationships without which we cannot survive. We must hold the paradox as a space of transformation, and prepare to act completely, skilfully - and together - when the time comes. Which it will.

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There has been a lot of talk about ‘getting back to normal’. The dominant narrative assumes we should return to how things were before COVID-19 and before the flow of oil got pinched in the Straight of Hormuz. Politicians, economists, and public institutions rarely question this goal. But what, exactly, is this ‘normal’ they want to restore?

In our culture, poverty is normal. Violent conflict is normal. Women being paid less than men is normal. White advantage is normal. Anxiety is normal. Inequality is normal. Most of all, living beyond the Earth’s capacity to provide resources and absorb pollution is normal. Ecocide is normal.

This is the normal we are hoping to return to.

The idea of abnormality becoming accepted as normal was brilliantly explored in Adam Curtis’s film, ‘Hypernormalisation’. This documentary explores how social abnormality gradually becomes accepted as ordinary. Like the metaphor of a frog in slowly heated water, change happens incrementally, until it is no longer noticed. And the frog dies. Curtis traced this process through late Soviet and post-Soviet culture, where increasingly surreal social phenomena were absorbed into everyday life without resistance. And then Putin.

That dynamic is visible now. We inhabit a hypernormal reality shaped by misinformation, ultra-consumerism, celebrity aspiration, technological fantasy, political distortion, and Donald Trump (perhaps the best example of hypernormalisation ever). These forces erode the conditions that sustain life, yet they pass as ordinary, as normal.

What we are really seeking when we long to return to normal is a sense of security.

For many, the last time life felt stable was before COVID-19. That period now appears, in hindsight, as a kind of golden age. Yet this is nostalgia in its truest sense: a longing for a past that never actually existed. The stability we remember was always fragile, propped up by failing systems already in overshoot.

Today, as uncertainty deepens - through ecological breakdown, geopolitical instability, pollution, peak complexity, and resource constraints - the desire to return to that imagined stability intensifies. Governments promise a restoration of normality. But the conditions that defined that previous normality are precisely those that created our current, dizzying instability.

So we are left with a choice. We can cling to a nostalgic version of normal, mistaking familiarity for safety. Or we can recognise that what felt secure never truly was, and begin to respond to reality as it actually is.

The question is not how to return to normal, but whether we are willing to let go of it.

=

I had a dream where I was standing with a group of people on the edge of a fathomless gorge. We were surrounded by fog and had to find a way across because we were being chased by something invisible and lethal, lurking in the mist behind us. The only way to do this was to start building a bridge, hoping to find the other side of the chasm.

Our tenuous bridge edged out further and further into the mist; all the time, the other side of the canyon remained obscured.

I woke up at the point where we were halfway, the structure feeling fragile and unsafe but holding out nonetheless, just as a conversation had started. Should we not just go back to the familiar ground behind us, even though we knew in our hearts it would be fatal? Or should we continue building our flimsy bridge out into the fog - despite our fear and trepidation - searching for the real security of new ground?

=

We must choose between fear and courage. Do we fearfully rush back to an apparently safe - yet hypernormal and ultimately fatal - past, or do we muster the courage to continue building the bridge?

After all, some have already seen glimpses of something brightly beautiful through the mist.

If we are to adapt to ecological change, we need to change ourselves. But this begs one of the most important questions any of us will ever ask: what is my ‘self’?

Modern psychology is based on an idea of the human self that has become highly popularised. I rarely meet anyone, for example, who isn’t familiar with the term ‘ego’. Today, if you ask someone to point to themselves, they will most likely point to their body. “I” am contained within my skin. This makes perfect sense because that is what we have been taught for hundreds of years by the dominant stories of industrial culture, inside which contemporary psychology squarely sits.

But it isn’t true.

Skin & Wave

Our skin is a semipermeable membrane across which billions of interactions continuously occur. Some are molecular, some atomic, and many more are likely subatomic or quantum.

Without needing to tackle the thorny questions about the nature of consciousness, “I” am not just inside my skin.

I find a wave in a river a helpful metaphor. You can see the wave, photograph it, draw or paint it, even point it out to others: it has an “intersubjective” reality, as Edmund Husserl would say. But if you scoop it from the river into a bucket, it vanishes - only to be replaced by another, ‘different’ wave.

The form we recognise as a ‘wave’ exists because of the rocks on the riverbed, the friction of air on the water, any material moving through it, the dimensions of time and space, and the interactions of light and energy. It is a product of its environment: the result of an infinite number of relationships with everything around and within it.

When removed from these relationships, it disappears.

The wave is a useful metaphor, but only because we have been so comprehensively conditioned to believe the human self is separate from nature. As any physicist would confirm, we are also waves.

If we are the product of our relationships with everything in the world - that is, with nature - then the self does not stop at the skin. We do not exist in a vacuum; we only exist ‘in relationship’.

Our Vanishing Self

Our dominant culture is not based on this profoundly simple physics. In our modern daily lives, we live as if we are separate from the rest of nature. That makes it possible for us to destroy the rest of nature, believing such activity to be somehow beneficial to humans. But - of course - because we are part of nature, we are destroying ourselves as well. If we remove ourselves from the relationships that define us, we are diminished - or we cease to exist altogether. Like the wave, we vanish.

We do not exist outside nature because we cannot exist outside it.

Dig Deep

If we want to challenge and change our dominant industrial culture, we cannot rely on the narrow definition of the self offered by contemporary psychology, because it is foundational to that culture. The skin-bound ego will always conflict with the ‘others’ - other people, other species, other ecosystem processes.

The individualised self misguidedly seeks to maintain its illusory shape, unaware that it can only really exist without it.

Unfortunately, nearly every change programme I have ever seen stops short of asking what self (or selves) it is trying to change. They focus on knowledge and technique, frameworks and values, strategy and policy, technology and implementation. These things can be helpful, of course, but they are not at the root of change.

That is why, I believe, we haven’t yet successfully responded adequately to the social and ecological crises of our time: we haven’t dug deep enough yet.

We must begin with the premise that our task is to help people shift from a narrow, skin-bound sense of self to one that is understood purely as a product of relationships. This includes more-than-human relationships, which are by far the ones that define us the most.

We have to start by digging at the root of human identity.

Without this foundational shift in selfhood, programmes and projects that aim to lead and support personal, social and systemic change will always be shallow, temporary and ineffectual. Just Google “change leadership” for endless examples.

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I am republishing this piece in response to Laura Copley’s excellent blog article on LinkedIn (What working in conservation taught me about knowledge, power and nature). It was first published by Proboscus as part of their Topography & Tales project in 2006. Not sure where those 20 years went, or why we’re still having to push these messages into the resounding silence.

‘On Banks Island, in the Canadian Arctic, environmental shifts are happening so fast that the Inuvialut inhabitants do not have the words to describe what they now see around them.’¹

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. To run out of words is to stand at the edge of the unknown, at the cusp of The Mystery. There is something both frightening and exhilarating about this: the excitement of an impending adventure, the fear of formlessness.

Where the words finish, and the white page is left, where the blizzard-filled sky meets the pure white of a snowy horizon: At this edge, we can choose either to enter a dead end of desolation and nihilism, or a space filled with infinite possibility - the ‘potential space’ ² for creating a new form of consciousness altogether.

Language has limits, just like the human beings that use it. When we reach these limits, the words run out. Now that we are experiencing the unsettling symptoms of global climate change and of the Earth’s finite capacity to support us, should it be any surprise to find ourselves speechless?

It’s not just the Inavialut culture that is lost for words. While we have been busy evolving our post-modern languages to communicate the onslaught of technology and the giddy ecstasy of our own apparent cleverness, we have missed the fact that the world we have learned to describe - the world we have apparently evolved to live so well in - is increasingly a virtual world created by seductive marketing and the haphazard structural violence of our post-industrial culture. A language unhitched from the simple ecological realities of life.

English has been abused; it has been moulded to fit an arrogant, abstract, disconnected, technocratic, dominating and violent culture. It is less now a language from the land, more a trademarked and branded servant of industrialism.

From text to txt.

We are left unable to articulate the complex ecological danger we are in - a bewildering experience for our seemingly sophisticated species. Our intellectual separation of mind from matter and of body from spirit has led to a chasm between our contemporary description of selfhood and the blood and soil of our own Earthy existence.

Language emerges through humans from land, an expression of our connection to place.

To be lost for words is a call to reconnect with home.

=

The Inavialut language’s shortcomings in describing a rapidly changing human ecology point not to its inability to evolve, but to the way it connects a specific place with a specific language. When the exotic curiosities of another land suddenly arrive, the language cannot cope.

Lightning
Barn Owl
Hornet
Robin
Elk
Salmon
Wasp
Thunderstorm

These are words in English that the Inuvialut have no equivalent for in their own language, English words that describe things that have been displaced by climate change - change that is exceeding the speed of industrial evolution.³

Some languages are still connected, still embedded. ‘The Okanagan word for ‘our place’ and ‘our language’, writes Jeanette Armstrong, ‘is the same. The Okanagan language is thought of as the ‘language of the land.' ⁴

In Siberia, it’s a shift in emphasis that reveals the ecological change:

‘In Chukotka, where the natives speak Siberian Yupik, they use new words such as misullijuq — rainy snow — and are less likely to use words like umughagek — ice that is safe to walk on.' ⁵

There is less ‘umughagek’. We’re all on thin ice.

=

Many contemporary indigenous languages connect to concepts in ways that are geophysical. In modern European languages, Kenneth White calls this ‘geopoetics’ and suggests that poetry is the path to re-engage with land.

‘More than ‘poetry concerned with the environment’, more than literature with some sort of geographical content... Geopoetics is concerned, fundamentally, with a relationship to the earth and with the opening of a world.' ⁶

This is the way home: opening through poetry to a new consciousness. A new language of the Earth, born of the Earth.

=

Poetry sits at the periphery of language, the last linguistic outpost before silence, before blank white space.

William James wrote in 1902 that one of the four characteristics of a mystic experience is, “Ineffeability - its quality must be directly experienced; it cannot be imparted or transferred to others.” ⁷

Poetry is the metaphysical edge of human language, a conduit to the mystic, a place along the continuum of expression just before the point where experience becomes ineffable.

A loss of words indicates the presence of powers beyond human control, powers that contain human Being, along with the collective unconscious of the whole Universe. When we meet these forces in the physical realm, we are humbled - in any language. Our wordlessness is a testament to this threshold, and at this point, the balance of power in the socially constructed dualism between humans and Nature is dissolved. We go, as indigenous Australians say, “back in”.

In poetry, it is not so much the words themselves, but the whiteness around them, the spaces between them, where the possibility of a new language lies. It’s there in The Void, in the linguistic wilderness, that form can start to take shape around the nuclei of a new ecological consciousness.

It’s in the physical wilderness, too, that the same ecological consciousness can take root. It’s fascinating that in the vast white snowscape of the Arctic, where the language of the Inavialut embeds them in their oikos, their home, there lies a similar parallel ontology of white space. Nothingness, no-thing-ness.

=

To transcend the numbing complexities of human existence, the philosopher Martin Heidegger would take his students skiing. The ski tip breaking track in the snow, he proposed, was the closest he could get to a description of human Being. He called the space created as the ski tip broke the snow, ‘the clearing’.

‘Heidegger maintained… that the human being is not a thing but rather a peculiar kind of nothingness: the temporal-linguistic clearing, the opening, the absencing in which things can present themselves and thus ‘be’.⁸

Poetry signs the way into the clearing. Entering the whiteness of the page parallels a journey into wilderness, deep into the choice between nihilism and infinite possibility.

Is the poetry of the wild then, the clearing into which the new languages of the Earth can manifest? Is our loss of words not a loss at all, but the opening of a window into a new Earth consciousness?

=

high in a wild blizzard
undefined
adrift
edgeless

in the expansive white space
of the physical snowscape
the transcendent takes form

into white
skis straight ahead
featureless, without depth
no horizon
white time
white space
white noise

curiosity carries me
the sick twist of the unknown
draws me higher, lighter
no control
surrender
release

through seven heavens
a shaman’s journey
into boundless hues of opacity
towards the luminescent core
lost
in the centre of existence

gravity takes me
ski tips lift on the powdery snow
no sense of ground
flight

now lifted to nothing
now held weightless
now part of the snow
now just snow

=

With special thanks to Mary-Jayne Rust for helping me on my way.

1. Robert Macfarlane (2005) ‘The Burning Question’, The Guardian, 24 September.

2. Winnicott, D.W. (1971) Playing and Reality. London: Tavistock Publications. Pp. 44-62.

3. Usha Lee McFarling (2002) ‘The Arctic Meltdown: Quick Thaw Alarms Natives and Scientists’, The Seattle Times, April 15.

4. Jeanette Armstrong (1995) ‘Keepers of the Earth’ in Roszak et al (eds) ‘Ecopsychology: Restoring the Earth Healing the Mind’ San Francisco: Sierra Club. Pp. 323

5. Usha Lee McFarling (2002) in ibid.

6. Kenneth White (2004) ‘An Outline of Geopoetics’ in Kenneth White, ‘The Wanderer and His Charts’ Edinburgh: Polygon.

7. William James (1902) ‘The Varieties of Religious Experience.’ London: Penguin.

8. Michael Zimmerman (1993) 'Heidegger, Buddhism and Deep Ecology' in Charles Guignon (Ed). The Cambridge Companion to Heidegger. Pp243.

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Photo: Isaac Cordal's Berlin installation, 'Follow the Leaders', 2018.

Recent extreme weather events here in Aotearoa New Zealand are leading to an increasingly public narrative about ‘climate anxiety’. There has been a steady uptick in media stories over the last couple of years around the world. Last week, an article on the topic was published by Radio New Zealand, and today there’s a live interview on The Platform.

This is an affirmation to those of us who have been working (largely unnoticed) with these issues for, in some cases, over 30 years! But when I read or hear these stories, I feel frustrated that something essential is missing from the discourse.

Climate anxiety, like most media topics, has been simplified and culturally filtered to such an extent that it has become meaningless. Now it is just yet another human psychopathology — with a stepwise list of ‘things you can do’ for relief. From this stems the usual range of psychological treatments — all centred on the suffering human, and all basically the same as every other treatment or response to every other manifestation of anxiety.

As I have been ranting about here on Substack — and in the book I co-authored in 2023, and in every professional development training course, conference presentation, and public lecture I have led or given since 1996 — what’s missing is ecology. I am so tired of this rant that I no longer have the energy to repeat it — but you can read all about it elsewhere on the ecoSelf blog, and in my book.

Human beings are animals in ecosystems. We are anxious because those ecosystems are losing their ability to keep us alive, which is existentially terrifying. When we are exposed to stories describing ecosystem collapse, experience it for ourselves, or see hard evidence confirming it, we naturally feel anxious.

However, treating this type of anxiety as if it’s some kind of personal psychological illness is not the solution — it’s a short-term palliation that ultimately makes things worse.

The only real cure is to do something about the state of our ecosystems. Let me repeat that:

The only real cure is to do something about the state of our ecosystems.

I’m not sure what’s complicated about this statement, but you would not believe how hard it is to get people to understand it.

So, the last thing we need in response to climate anxiety (and other forms of eco-anxiety) is conventional psychotherapists and counsellors making us feel better, without any implication that we must fundamentally change the way we live.

What we need is to feel the fear and to delve into the anxiety. We need to do this without triggering unhealthy coping mechanisms and in a ‘cognitive frame’ where our experiences can lead to meaningful ecological change. An effective way of doing this is to work in supportive groups outdoors. Here we can directly feel and experience our interconnections with the rest of nature, which, when done in a conducive social context and with skilful facilitation, can lead to profound personal, social, and ecological change.

This type of approach is now well evidenced and compels us to take action to protect and restore the ecosystems on which we depend for everything, including our own personal mental health and wellbeing.

We can only really heal ourselves by healing the ecological systems that contain us. Please help give this aspect of the ‘climate anxiety’ story a breath of fresh air.

Ecotherapy Training Course

The group talked. As the dialogue developed, it became clear that each member had different ideas of what ecotherapy is, or could be. Moreover, it became apparent that there were no satisfactory definitions of the field and that the language used to describe it was often confusing and contradictory. We decided that the first step for this group, then, was to work out what ecotherapy is and how this disparate new topic might be organised in ways that support it as a field of theory and practice.

The idea emerged to undertake a scoping review of ecotherapy and some of the terms used to describe it. Ben Classen joined the process as a researcher and compiled a solid first draft review. Of course, this raised more questions than it answered. At this point, some of the group withdrew due to other commitments. With their blessing, Keith and I took the work forward, weaving some historical, cultural, and professional threads around Ben’s work in order to add context and respond to the questions raised.

Patterns started to emerge. Differences and similarities between terms, ideas, and practices crystallised. Eventually, the idea of defining ecotherapy fell apart altogether, yielding instead to the need for a much wider and more inclusive view. This led to the development of a metatheory, which provides an organising principle to the field, while, importantly, not forcing any one approach or practitioner into accepting a concrete definition: it allows diversity in unity.

However, we then found ourselves questioning just how much diversity the field could encompass. Where did ecotherapy come from, and who owns the terms, ideas, and practices that form its foundations? These types of questions led to the need for more voices to be heard, so we decided to invite various perspectives, including those of Indigenous peoples and practitioners who operate outside the formal boundaries of traditional, ‘western’ psychotherapy.

These broader views were humbling, and we acknowledge their richness in both expanding and challenging our original research.

This book truly emerged. It was actually never even intended as a book! It started as a conversation, a web of curiosities, a conundrum of tensions that became an inevitable work.

Having written it, we now see that it is a necessary text, and one that was long overdue. It attempts to stem the shallow flow of New Age fuzziness, individualism and consumer culture entering this powerful and revolutionary field. It also calls for humility amongst western practitioners and lays down a challenge against professional arrogance and appropriation, and the ‘narcissism of small differences’ that can pervade the industrial biomedical model.

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In 1902, William James, one of the architects of modern psychology, described four characteristics of what he described as ‘religious’ experiences.^⁠1 In today’s psychology, these are more likely to be termed transpersonal, self-transcendent or spiritual experiences. They are experiences of something ‘beyond the self’, of a self that is part of something infinitely greater. They are nearly always powerfully transformative, fundamentally changing the ways people think, feel and behave.

One of the characteristics James described is that these types of experiences are “ineffable”. They ‘defy expression’ and are beyond easy language. If you have ever had one, you will know what this feels like - a frustrating search for words and phrases that remain just beyond reach. Nothing you say seems to do justice to the experience you’ve had. Often, the only chance of being understood is by someone who has had a similar experience. Because of this, people who share powerful experiences often form very close bonds based on profound empathy - and the special camaraderie that emerges through the shared social isolation that can come from no one else really ‘getting it’.

Whoever you are trying to describe these experiences to, the type of language that feels most adequate is metaphor. I have often thought that the rich metaphoric terrain of poetry is the last outpost before words fail entirely.

My work is based on designing and facilitating transformative outdoor experiences of nature. The most transformative ones invariably include the type of self-transcendent and often spiritual experiences that William James wrote about all those years ago. In my programmes, though, the ‘something infinitely greater’ that is experienced is nature (perhaps all these types of experience are also of nature). But as James pointed out, these self-transcendent experiences are almost always impossible to describe. This makes engaging people with my work very challenging - unless they have already experienced it, which, of course, is a tricky paradox to resolve! However, now and then a metaphor emerges that elevates the whole conversation. One of these sang out from a participant on a recent programme.

Before they arrived on the programme, they thought of themselves as someone who loves nature and feels a deep connection to the natural world. Not only personally, but as a sustainability professional too - it is their work to try and help people to live within nature’s limits. You would think that this type of person already fully ‘got it’. That there was no more that could be done to deepen their sense of connection - that, in fact, it would be presumptuous and patronising to even try.

After the programme, and after first struggling with the usual problem of ineffability, they came to describe their deep love of nature before the programme as being like looking into a snow globe. They loved everything inside the snow globe passionately - every swirling flake, every tree, every rock. From this perspective, they couldn’t love it more but were, until that moment, unaware that the transparent glass barrier of the globe even existed.

Then one day, amongst the Punga, Kauri, ferns, bristling Tuis and burbling streams of the Waitakere ranges, they unexpectedly found themselves inside the snow globe.

This was a surprising and breathtaking experience.

They became momentarily aware of the glass barrier, only to witness it dissolve a moment later, right before their eyes.

An astonishing awareness was slowly revealed, highlighting that their previous understanding of nature had always been somehow ever-so muted and out of reach, even if their connection and relationship were genuinely and passionately felt. Suddenly, they understood the snow globe from within. Next, they realised that there was no outside at all. That there never was. That the outside, as with the idea that we are separate from nature, is an illusion.

Once you have experienced a reality like this, you do not get a choice: you have to adjust your life to fit it. You are compelled. You have to accept it. Or else you find yourself committed to a spiral of avoidance, denial, dismissal and false rationalisation - that becomes ever more untenable until, basically, it breaks you. Either way, the newly unearthed reality wins.

I love this snow globe metaphor. In all my years of doing this work, I’ve never come across one that gets so close to the subtle, yet powerful sensation of what hundreds of the people I have worked with have tried so hard to describe. It collapses dualism. Inside the snow globe, outside it. Inside nature, outside it. There is no inside and outside. There is just everything, all utterly interconnected.

The fluttering snowflakes fall from the actual sky.

This metaphor beautifully reveals the tension between cognitive, intellectual, abstract, and reductionist ways of knowing the world, and those that are somatic, tacit, direct, visceral and whole. It exposes our pernicious industrial growth culture, which peddles us the dangerous illusion that we are outside the snow globe. That the contents are real and beautiful, but separate and disconnected. And always for sale.

From an ecological perspective, the metaphor is simple. There is no snow globe: we are nature. We don’t get to peer in from the outside. What appears to happen ‘in nature’ actually happens to us all.

Access to the snow globe comes through the body and the senses - through unmediated experiences of nature. There is no other way in. You cannot think, read, research, fight, listen, meditate, pray or negotiate your way into it. Entry is physical - you have to literally enter it:

flesh - soil;

blood - water;

rock - bone.

If we want people to live inside the snow globe - within and as nature - then we must help them experience it for themselves.

There is no other way in.

-

I would like to thank Ranmalie Jayasinha for their gentle and thoughtful help with this article and for sharing their beautiful story.

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