Ecopsychology Video
Posted By laurel on February 3, 2010
What is Nature Therapy?
Posted By laurel on January 30, 2010
Many hear the term “nature therapy” or “ecotherapy” and think, isn’t that just about spending time outside enjoying nature? How is nature therapy different from how most of us spend our time outside of buildings and cars? Isn’t this just a walk in the woods? Why do I need a facilitator for that?
A couple of weeks ago after telling a community gathering about the work I do, a woman grabbed me firmly by the elbow and said, “Please keep doing what you are doing–it is such important work.” She related a poignant tale about a difficult divorce she had undergone, and how much an ongoing walk in the woods near her home saved her life. Almost apologizing for how short the walk was, she was nevertheless clear and passionate about how much it helped her survive something that otherwise would have been unendurable. She managed, on her own, to pull from the woods a sense of healing that is readily available to anyone at any time.
How did she do this? I believe it is because of the state of mind she was in. But how can we replicate what happened to her without having to undergo extreme difficulty or grief to get there? First, we must understand how her grief facilitated this opening within her.
When undergoing extreme difficulty, we are more impacted by what happens to us. Areas of our brains are highly activated, and some researchers believe, are more responsive to undergoing physical changes. We are raw and open to both the insults and the beauty that cross our paths. We all know how much more sensitive we are in the negative sense when distressed or grieving. But there’s a less spoken of opening that many are aware of when undergoing grief–we hear about this in sessions–how the beauty of life strangely stands out, or hits us in a new or meaningful way. Once when I was in despair about something, I suddenly noticed how beautiful a particular sunset was, so striking that I can still visualize it many years later. I’ve seen many beautiful skies and sunsets since, but for some reason that one stays with me, although I’ve since forgotten what the despair was about.
Researchers working in the area of neuroscience have recorded through magnetic resonance imaging scans how our neurons are more likely to restructure themselves when moving through deep emotions. Diana Fosha comments on this in her work with clients, bringing them into these emotional states regularly to impact and change how their limbic brains regulate emotions (Fosha, 2000). Siegel and others have discovered that trauma is often an opportunity to create an emotional shift in a client, if it can be revisited and reconstructed consciously in the therapeutic setting (Siegel, 2007; Solomon & Siegel, 2003; Wilkinson, 2006).
It doesn’t surprise me that the woman at the community meeting mentioned earlier, and others like her, have approached me with their stories, or how often I hear about epiphanies people experience in nature. Our connection to the earth is essential, and one’s mental and physical regulation depend on harmonizing with the powers of the earth. This makes intuitive sense, and in the future, I believe neurobiologists will be writing in the same way about how not only intimate relationships create healing limbic regulation, but also our ability to create this same kind of intimacy with nature.
There are many ways to create limbic resonance with the natural world. Approaches vary. From hands on wilderness therapy to Jungian Dream work applications, I’ve notice that the strongest current of similarity running through most is an emphasis on slowing down. Watching videos of Diana Fosha and her cohort at work, I’ve seen how radically slowed down the sessions are, giving clients the space and time they need to feel great emotion within a safe connection. Just as a baby and a healthy parent interact, this is not a rushed process. Since the pathways of the brain need time to “wear in,” this can be a slow process. A baby learns to smile by being smiled at many times and hearing the caregiver’s tone of voice. She is exposed to many hours of face to face contact through the actions of caregiving, and this actually builds structures and patterns in her brain (Lewis & Lannon, 2000). Although our capacity to build neural pathways when we are older slows down, our brains maintain the ability to change throughout life.
In the same way, nature therapy seeks to establish limbic connection by ongoing contact with the natural world. One ecopsychologist I know has his clients gaze for a long time at a single leaf, just experiencing the leaf and spending time with it. Another walks slowly with her clients in places where large trees are present, providing opportunities for stopping and sharing the experience of connection with the trees. Still other therapists delve into dreams about the natural world, and build connection that way. I often use writing exercises after time spent outdoors to help clients reflect on their experiences–this also helps them rekindle those experiences when they are unable to access nature. The one thing all these practices do is SLOW the client down, to look and feel. By slowing down nature has the opportunity to enter us and speak to us, so that we can hear what is being communicated to us, and this is the vehicle whereby we can experience healing.
So, a walk in the woods is a wonderful thing, but it’s not the whole story. The woman soaked in grief and loss in the above story was slowed down by her grief and loss. In my moment of despair, I was brought to halt in my life, which enabled me to open, and allowed nature to touch me. But we needn’t always be in a tragic situation for this poignancy to occur. Grief is just one vehicle that interrupts our flow long enough for us to see, sometimes for the first time, the life that surrounds us. Intimacy with anyone or anything requires a slower pace, and speed is often a means used to create distance, perpetuate aggression, or just to avoid intimacy. This is the primary reason that I combine contemplative practice with nature therapy. Meditation on the natural world, walking very slowly, breathing, seeing our surroundings, is elemental in creating the conditions to receive what nature has to offer us. We can speed-walk in the woods a thousand times, go on athletic hikes, bicycle rides, etc., and still miss out on the mental healing nature has to offer.
A yoga teacher once said during a class I was in: “Slow down so you can feel.” She was speaking about our muscles and tendons, but I never forgot the phrase. Allowing ourselves to slow down in nature and open up not only allows us to feel, but also allows an empathic capacity to emerge within us. We begin to feel with nature, feel for nature, and I believe, feel what nature is feeling. I have seen in my own life how reassuring the green world is. My dreams and those of others have shown me how much we are wanted by the green world–and how much this world wants to give to us. I have also felt the pain of how we as a species have taken too much, and how our insensitivity impacts the environment. We are the vehicles through which nature speaks, and many of us who listen have taken up the pen to voice the concerns of earth. This is some of the most deeply satisfying work we can do. We can only get to this receptive place by slowing down, listening, allowing into ourselves the healing that the earth offers, and then giving that healing back, in whatever form we can access.
Fosha, D. (2000). The Transforming Power of Affect: A model for accelerated change. Perseus Books, (No location)
Lewis, T., Amini, F., & Lannon, R. (2000). A General Theory of Love. New York: Vintage.
Siegel, D. J. (2007). The Mindful Brain: Reflection and attunement in the cultivation of well-being. Norton: New York.
Solomon, M. F. & D. J. Siegel (2003). Healing Trauma: Attachment, mind, body, and brain. Norton: New York.
Wilkinson, M. (2006). Coming into Mind: The mind-brain relationship: A Jungian clinical perspective. Routledge, New York.
Healing Severed Belonging
Posted By laurel on October 27, 2009
“Our desperate efforts to enhance and protect this fragile self have caused an unprecedented degree of severed belonging at all levels in our society. In our attempt to dominate the natural world, we have separated ourselves from the earth. In our efforts to prove and defend ourselves, we have separated from each other. Managing life from our mental control towers, we have separated ourselves from our bodies and hearts.”
Tara Brach, Awakening from the Trance of Unworthiness
When I wrote my master’s thesis on the topic of Severed Belonging, I had no idea that years later I would encounter the concept of Re-emplacement as outlined in Craig Chalquist’s Terrapsychology theory as its antidote. The more I studied European history, the more I realized how fraught with disease, displacement, tragedy, war, and tyrrany it was. As the European populations spilled out into and colonized the rest of the world, they brought with them a sense of entitlement and disconnection, and a conquering mentality that can only be described as viral. Many of the things that happened to the ordinary people of Europe were also carried out in the lands the Europeans and the English would later come to dominate. The uprootedness of our Severed Belonging goes very deep, and very far back. Indeed, in the early 1800s Jefferson wrote about this land loss with regard to natives, and envisioned how to bring it about:
“To promote this disposition to exchange lands, which they have to spare and we want, for necessaries, which we have to spare and they want, we shall push our trading uses, and be glad to see the good and influential individuals among them run in debt, because we observe that when these debts get beyond what the individuals can pay, they become willing to lop them off by a cession of lands….”
Today, we witness with the credit crisis, loss of homes, increased medical bills, and high unemployment rates newer forms of this disease, and we can see how it is still very much alive. No amount of purchasing power, entertainment, or distraction seems to fill the void.
So how do we heal from this wounding, and how do we heal from the wounding we have brought to others as a result of our woundedness? This core sense of Earthgrief we experience must first be recognized and acknowledged. We need to know what we are grieving and why. It is a loss, the same as any other great loss, and it needs sacred and communal healing in circles, with communication from the heart.
I have developed a new workshop based on practices of Re-emplacement, because when we connect again with our land and with others, we will begin to see local solutions to the problems of displacement and Earthgrief. In my counseling work, I have seen the power individuals have of healing and solving their problems when given a good and supportive atmosphere. There is no one blanket answer–the answers that emerge are very specific to individuals and places. Practices that re-engage us are the necessary first work in healing Severed Belonging. These workshops have very specific practices around contemplation, sacred reading, re-emplacement writing, and group processing, all designed to slow us down and help us harmonize with one another and the spirit of the place we are in. All of our workshops have elements of these practices in them, and soon workshops specifically designed around re-emplacement will be posted to the website.
Using Mistakes To Improve Relationships
Posted By christopher on October 24, 2009
Laurel Vogel, my co-facilitator, and I were waiting at the Earth Sanctuary on Whidbey island, Wa to begin our Nature Therapy Retreat (NTR) and at 10 past 1:00, the expected starting time, I got a call from one of the couples stating that they would be at least an hour late. Since we were out in nature and working as a group I was excited and anticipating wonderful things happening for all of us. This was much different than couples couples or marriage counseling in my Seattle office in that nature provides so much more than four walls in an office possibly could.
The retreat really started at this point for all of us. All 8 of us, including the late arrivals, were in this together and all had feelings about this turn of events. At first, I was scared and a little panicked, running through possibilities in my mind about how to handle this. Fortunately, I was able to see this for what it was- an opportunity to demonstrate in the moment how couples can deal with changes, mistakes, and disruptions which happen all the time in everyday family life.
On top of this, I created another problem myself while we were waiting for late arrivals. Laurel, my co-facilitator and life partner (actually fiance), pointed out to me that I inadvertently shared with the group something personal and shameful about one of the attendees. Oops! A mistake already. I felt my feelings and sensations in my body and after my panic subsided, I was able to gather my wits and treat this just like I would a problem and a mistake in an office therapy session. Repair the damage done. After all, the purpose of the retreat was to help couples use stressful, difficult situations and turn them into opportunities for hearing and caring about each others feelings. This process would make their connection stronger rather than drive them apart as most conflict and stress normally does for families.
To repair my mistake and help the group adjust to the late arrival, my conversation went something like this:
Me: “Sarah (not real name), back there when we were talking about how you and your husband interact, I revealed to everyone something about you that I would imagine was uncomfortable and personal. I feel bad, sad, and a little disappointed in myself that I did that because that hurt you….what’s it like for you to hear that?”
Sarah: “Oh, that’s okay, I know you didn’t mean it.”
Me: ” No, it is not okay, and I think you are ignoring your feelings and my feelings as a way to protect yourself….This is a great opportunity for us to see what this retreat is about. I made a mistake and now I am using my feelings about this mistake to reveal to the group the feelings that both of us have about it and as a result you and I will be more open and connected and have a little more trust and connection between us….What do you make of that?”
Sarah: “I don’t know this is new to me but I do feel more relaxed and less anxious than I did before”.
Me: “Wonderful, thanks for participating in that with me and the more you do that this weekend, the more you will be able to use mistakes and changes, and communicate your feelings with your husband and be connected to him…which is why we are all here….And this is a good time to point out that we all have feelings about the other couple being late. No one is bad or wrong here and when they arrive we will create an environment for us all to share our feelings about their tardiness just like we just did with my feelings and Sarah’s feelings….I found this scarey and exciting. What about you? Anyone want to share their feelings about their tardiness?
Thoreau’s Office
Posted By laurel on October 22, 2009
“When a traveler asked Wordsworth’s servant to show him her master’s study, she answered ‘Here is his library, but his study is out of doors.’” Thoreau, Walking
One of the more surprising aspects of moving my counseling practice from an office setting to one that is out of doors is feedback I receive from couples in retreat about how comfortable and at ease they are outside of an office, and how much more effective this is for them. I have yet to determine which aspect of the retreat is having the greatest impact on a marriage or relationship, and I suspect it is a combination of being in a group, being out of the therapy office, the selection of activities, and contact with the natural world. For this post, I will focus on how the outdoors impacts our sense of health and well-being–recognizing that this is far from being a novel idea–it’s just one many of us seem to have lost touch with.
Thoreau believed his health was in jeopardy unless he spent a certain amount of time in the woods every day: “I think that I cannot preserve my health and spirits unless I spend four hours a day at least — and it is commonly more than that — sauntering through the woods and over the hills and fields absolutely free from all worldly engagements.” These strong words underline how essential meaningful contact with nature was to his mental health, and are validated today by scientific studies, such as one done in hospitals*, that further prove this contact improves physical healing. Thoreau’s words ring especially true for me, as I also discovered that too little time outdoors was taking a toll on my health and well-being, and the only cure was going outside and moving around in the natural world.
More than just being outside, Thoreau advocated for being present as much as possible while in the woods. Carrying his preoccupations about town life out on his walks was disturbing to him, and he chastised himself when this happened. Part of the work we do with our Nature Therapy Retreat clients is to help establish a sense of connection with the natural world as soon as possible. Using various walking meditation techniques creates an immediate focus, and also assists in the process of slowing down and “arriving” at the retreat. Since these retreats are very short, bringing people into the spirit and calm of nature quickly is essential, although sometimes people can experience a bit of whiplash from slowing down so quickly! The shock of this however, creates its own impact, and often people resolve to change their lives. One couple remarked in tears about a hammock they had purchased, hung with care on their back porch and then used exactly once. Each time they passed the hammock on the way to take the garbage out they were reminded of the pace and rush of their lives. During the retreat, they resolved to slow down and use the hammock.
Why is nature so healing for us? As I walk through the woods, I can’t help but notice how patient the earth is, and how forgiving. To be held in this patience and forgiveness evokes a sense of tenderness in me, and it is easy for my feelings to shift from grief or despair to openness and ease. I am reminded of larger processes of which I am a small part. My sense of aloneness is alleviated. This is but one of the reflective qualities that feeds me during my walks in the woods. For Thoreau, the woods were life itself, and imagining himself locked indoors in an office many hours a day was the equivalent of slow death. But perhaps just getting people out of their routines for a weekend or a day is enough to rekindle that kind of connection with life–seeing the world we inhabit away from our distracting devices, habits, personal dramas and shopping malls can restore our perspective and give us the mental freedom and energy to find our priorities again. –posted by Laurel
(From http://www.sereneview.com/research.php: *Healing by Design, New England Journal of Medicine, Volume 333 (11). A retrospective study of patients who had undergone cholecystectomy showed that those assigned to rooms with a view of a natural setting had shorter postoperative stays and took fewer analgesic drugs than those whose rooms looked onto a brick wall. In a hospital study, views of nature were associated with reduced employee stress and fewer health-related complaints; students under the stress of examinations felt better after viewing nature scenes; prisoners with a view of nature were less likely to attend sick call.)