Outdoors Therapy
Recognised by the World Economic Forum, spending time in natural surroundings, most specifically as experienced in the contemporary Japanese practice of forest-bathing (shinrin yoku) around trees, can bring about improved levels of health and well-being. Trees emit oils, known as phytoncides, to protect against germs and insects and these can have a helpful effect on our immune system. Scientific results have shown that periods of quiet contemplation immersed in a wood or forest can lower blood pressure, reduce stress hormones, reduce depression and boost our energy.
A new treatment developed in the Netherlands to work with trauma resolution, 3MDR (Modular Motion assisted Memory Desensitization and Reconsolidation), combines elements of EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing) with walking. Clients are asked to walk on a treadmill whilst watching 'emotion provoking' images and listening to sounds related to specific traumatic memories. Something about literally walking towards these traumatic memories allows the client to transcend their avoidance and face their fears. This process has been termed divergent thinking and I believe something similar is both available and achievable when incorporating dual-attention tasks whilst walking and being outdoors in nature.
My own experience is that when I am in the natural healing environment of my local woods, the bilateral stimulation I enact when walking signals and activates an integrated embodied awareness of safety-in-me (SIMs) over danger-in-me (DIMs); a counteracting, disconfirming holistic experience in my body that both calms and resets my nervous system.
The creative adjustments that we make in utero, as infants and as children to survive and flourish alongside the means we construct and develop to get through difficult situations are, by their nature, limited in scope. There comes a point in our lives where, rather than coping with a perceived lack of love and connection, we need to discover a different, more engaged way of being in the world. This involves a process of coming back into the body, of it being safe to do so, of putting healthy boundaries in place, and calling out what is harmful. I have found that working outdoors in a connected, resourced, natural environment allows healing to occur in ways that aren't available in traditional talking therapy.
I spent some months living in the lush, dense, tropical natural environment of the Colombian cloud forest. Every hanging branch was a potential python, mosquitoes incessantly bit through my clothing, howler monkeys more than lived up to their name, furry tarantulas stealthily scuttled in and out of the wooden shacks we slept, and it rained and rained and rained. After a few weeks of stubborn but futile resistance, the only response was to let go and be with things as they were.
I started my therapy practice working in a small room above the vibrant atmosphere of Brick Lane in East London. Noticing a number of my clients were experiencing an ongoing conflict between how they wanted life to be against the reality of how things were, I wondered if being outside with the year-round unpredictable weather of London could offer a similar experience for my clients as I had encountered in Colombia.
Initially, I drew clients who appreciated both the freedom to move and to not have to look directly at me as we walked side by side. My experience since has been that clients are more willing to move, jump, shout, push, pull, and hug, as they express themselves outdoors. Paradoxically, there is something about being outside in a shared space in proximity to other people that allows clients to release their anger in outstretched elbow swings and to raise their voice with an ease that isn’t as readily available indoors.
Over the past decade, working outdoors has become my passion. London is said to be the greenest big city in the world. I have held sessions in over 200 different outdoor locations within London. The sessions typically last for an hour, or for longer periods by negotiation, and can take place in the woods of Dulwich and Hampstead Heath, by the lakes in Regents Park and Battersea Park, in the local tree-filled parks of Victoria Park, Peckham Rye Park, Dulwich Park, Brockwell Park and Greenwich Park, the expansiveness of Richmond Park, and in more urban settings such as Burgess Park in Elephant and Castle.
The necessary boundaries of the counselling relationship remain including a mutually agreed focus for our work together and an agreement regarding confidentiality. Sessions can involve walking, sitting, lying, various mindfulness and meditative techniques and sensory awareness practices. There is no fitness requirement needed to benefit from outdoor counselling. We are the forest!
Working Outdoors with Trauma
One of the principal reasons I work outdoors is to facilitate working with trauma, most especially how to reregulate ourselves when we experience the reactivity of neurological dysregulation. Outdoors, we have the space to move freely and without inhibition. We are able to observe our responses as we slow, pause, notice and move. The natural environment is essentially a space in which we naturally belong. This offers a fantastic means to work with the dynamics of safety and danger in a held and safe way.
I saw two swans mating on the edge of the Serpentine. It was like the myth of Leda and the Swan, as if Zeus had transmuted into the shape of a swan again to violently rape the other swan. Whilst the form of the male swan was a thing of beauty, the act itself was brutal. And I guess at its core we observe and learn that life spans such extremes of beauty and brutality.
A new treatment developed in the Netherlands to work with trauma resolution, 3MDR (Modular Motion assisted Memory Desensitization and Reconsolidation), combines elements of EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing) with walking. Clients are asked to walk on a treadmill whilst watching 'emotion provoking' images and listening to sounds related to specific traumatic memories. Something about literally walking towards these traumatic memories allows the client to transcend their avoidance and face their fears. This process has been termed divergent thinking and I believe something similar is both available and achievable when incorporating dual-attention tasks whilst walking and being outdoors in nature.
My own experience is that when I am in the natural healing environment of my local woods, the bilateral stimulation I enact when walking signals and activates an integrated embodied awareness of safety-in-me (SIMs) over danger-in-me (DIMs); a counteracting, disconfirming holistic experience in my body that both calms and resets my nervous system.
The creative adjustments that we make in utero, as infants and as children to survive and flourish alongside the means we construct and develop to get through difficult situations are, by their nature, limited in scope. There comes a point in our lives where, rather than coping with a perceived lack of love and connection, we need to discover a different, more engaged way of being in the world. This involves a process of coming back into the body, of it being safe to do so, of putting healthy boundaries in place, and calling out what is harmful. I have found that working outdoors in a connected, resourced, natural environment allows healing to occur in ways that aren't available in traditional talking therapy.
I spent some months living in the lush, dense, tropical natural environment of the Colombian cloud forest. Every hanging branch was a potential python, mosquitoes incessantly bit through my clothing, howler monkeys more than lived up to their name, furry tarantulas stealthily scuttled in and out of the wooden shacks we slept, and it rained and rained and rained. After a few weeks of stubborn but futile resistance, the only response was to let go and be with things as they were.
I started my therapy practice working in a small room above the vibrant atmosphere of Brick Lane in East London. Noticing a number of my clients were experiencing an ongoing conflict between how they wanted life to be against the reality of how things were, I wondered if being outside with the year-round unpredictable weather of London could offer a similar experience for my clients as I had encountered in Colombia.
Initially, I drew clients who appreciated both the freedom to move and to not have to look directly at me as we walked side by side. My experience since has been that clients are more willing to move, jump, shout, push, pull, and hug, as they express themselves outdoors. Paradoxically, there is something about being outside in a shared space in proximity to other people that allows clients to release their anger in outstretched elbow swings and to raise their voice with an ease that isn’t as readily available indoors.
Over the past decade, working outdoors has become my passion. London is said to be the greenest big city in the world. I have held sessions in over 200 different outdoor locations within London. The sessions typically last for an hour, or for longer periods by negotiation, and can take place in the woods of Dulwich and Hampstead Heath, by the lakes in Regents Park and Battersea Park, in the local tree-filled parks of Victoria Park, Peckham Rye Park, Dulwich Park, Brockwell Park and Greenwich Park, the expansiveness of Richmond Park, and in more urban settings such as Burgess Park in Elephant and Castle.
The necessary boundaries of the counselling relationship remain including a mutually agreed focus for our work together and an agreement regarding confidentiality. Sessions can involve walking, sitting, lying, various mindfulness and meditative techniques and sensory awareness practices. There is no fitness requirement needed to benefit from outdoor counselling. We are the forest!
Working Outdoors with Trauma
One of the principal reasons I work outdoors is to facilitate working with trauma, most especially how to reregulate ourselves when we experience the reactivity of neurological dysregulation. Outdoors, we have the space to move freely and without inhibition. We are able to observe our responses as we slow, pause, notice and move. The natural environment is essentially a space in which we naturally belong. This offers a fantastic means to work with the dynamics of safety and danger in a held and safe way.
I saw two swans mating on the edge of the Serpentine. It was like the myth of Leda and the Swan, as if Zeus had transmuted into the shape of a swan again to violently rape the other swan. Whilst the form of the male swan was a thing of beauty, the act itself was brutal. And I guess at its core we observe and learn that life spans such extremes of beauty and brutality.
