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JOHN
V DAVIS HOME
TRANSPERSONAL PSYCHOLOGY
DIAMOND
APPROACH
WILDERNESS RITES OF PASSAGE, VISION FAST, AND
SCHOOL OF LOST BORDERS
ECOPSYCHOLOGY AND ENVIRONMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY
--Ecotherapy
AUTHOR INFORMATION
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ECOTHERAPY
Ecotherapy
brings the natural world to psychological healing and growth. It is a
broad term with a variety of meanings. For many, ecotherapy refers to
any ways nature can be used to promote mental and emotional health,
including using nature as a resource in psychotherapy, wilderness
retreats, wilderness rites of passage,
nature-based soul work and personal growth, stress reduction using
contact with nature,
and using natural objects such as plants or pets into an office or
hospital room.
Others have
used this term is a narrower way as a
specific way of doing psychotherapy. In this use, ecotherapy is an
application of nature in traditional psychotherapy settings. This sense
of ecotherapy as
a type of psychotherapy includes working with a client's feelings
and reactions to environmental problems as well as positive responses
to nature experiences.
In
the past I used the term, ecotherapy, in this narrower sense. Now, I
think it makes more sense to expand it. The healing potential of nature
is vast, and the breadth and depth of this potential should be
recognized and used.
Before I
give
an outline of ecotherapy, here are some examples of
nature-based psychological healing. I consider each of these to fall
within the broader definition of ecotherapy.
- A
therapy group begins with each member choosing an object from a box of
various kinds and shapes of stones. Using their stone as a sort of
"projective device," they describe themselves by describing the stone.
They are more self-disclosing than they had been in the past.
- A group for sexually-assaulted women meets in a
local park. Participants report feeling more free when they meet
outdoors, and their sharing is deeper.
- Violent men come to terms with their violence
through working with horses, and their capacity for empathy grows.
- A psychotherapist recommends an anxious client take
daily walks in his neighborhood. These walks reduce the anxiety.
- Exercise has benefits for depressed people, and
exercising outside has more benefits than exercising inside.
- Former
child combatants and children orphaned by fighting go on a 4-day
wilderness retreat led by other former child combatants in South
Africa. Direct contact with the earth is a key element in their
"rehabilitation" and healing.
- A therapist's office with plants promotes a
stronger sense of safety and wholeness than a sterile office.
- Children diagnosed with Attention-Deficit Disorder
who a greater ability to focus and complete tasks in a natural setting.
- Prisoners whose windows look out on fields and
trees have fewer behavioral problems than those whose windows look out
on built environments.
- While
getting a new client's history, the counselor asks about any special
experiences in nature the client has had. A long and emotional
discussion ensues about some highly meaningful childhood experiences in
nature which the client had not previously talked about. While the
issues which brought the client to therapy are still worked with, she
now has begun to reclaim her relationship with the Earth as a healthy
resource to deal with them.
- A
wilderness rite of passage retreat helps a father of three accept that
he is a man, not a boy. While his work continues, he has the experience of an intensive wilderness solo to draw on.
- On
the same trip, a woman celebrating her 80th birthday spends the night
alone in a wilderness setting. At one point, she finds herself standing
on a small rise with a line of trees stretching out behind and ahead of
her. This image crystallizes a feeling that she is now a
part of a lineage of wise women going back through her mother and
grandmother to the original Eve and going forward to her daughter,
granddaughter, and all those who will come after.
NOTES ON
ECOTHERAPY -- COMING!
Context of Ecotherapy (Assumptions and foundations)
Content of Ecotherapy (Issues it may focus on)
Process of Ecotherapy (Examples of practices)
RESOURCES
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