Nature Connection

For sure, we often experience nature connection through moments of coming into joy, awe, beauty, and rest, brought to us by the tumble of water over there or the fragrant honeysuckle in the hedge. We know about connection through our compassion for everything wild and the meaning in life which nature makes with us, sometimes by the turning seasons or the rising moon. Pathways of connecting to nature’s subjective otherness imbue us with a sense of completeness, a feeling of our intimate, indivisible tie with the rest of nature. At times we feel the truth of the part nature plays to make us who we are:

For it is only by turning our bodily attention toward another that we experience the convergence and reassembly of our separate senses into a dynamic unity. Only by entering into relation with others do we effect our own integration and coherence. Such others might be people, or they might be wetlands, or works of art, or snakes slithering through the stubbled grass. Each thing, attentively pondered, gathers our senses together in a unique way. This juncture, this conjoining of divergent senses over there, in the other, leads us to experience that other as a centre of experience in its own right, and hence as another subject, another source of powers. Incomplete on its own, the body is precisely our capacity for metamorphosis. Each being that we perceive enacts a subtle integration within us, even as it alters our prior organisation. The sensing body is like an open circuit that completes itself only in things, in others, in the surrounding earth. (David Abram, 2010, Becoming Animal, p. 254).

It goes without saying then that the benefits to wellbeing from nature connection include us feeling more resilient, more able to regulate difficult emotions and promote uplifting and resting feelings, and our sense of spirituality grows too, as does our motivation to protect nature. Then there is the way nature settings restore our wellbeing through oils and bacterium in the air from trees and soil, as the voices of birdsong bring us into the present moment and away from life concerns.

My offerings consist of one-day explorations through the year (say Beltane Celebration, Summer Solstice, Connect with Nature, Write with Nature, and Connecting with Trees), and in different locations in Northumberland, or sometimes in the Trossachs and Cairngorms. With nature as companion, these explorations provide openings to enter more fully into ‘conversation’ and connection with nature, and reflect on your life meaning and journey. Informed by research and theory into the benefits of time with nature, and factors which help increase nature connection, the format of the days consist of a balance of reflective walking (mostly without conversation), self-guided explorations, and conversations in a facilitated group. But most importantly, the aim of the days is nature connection rather than simply walking through.

The explorations sit firmly within the field of ecopsychology and are therapeutic, though the focus of the days is not psychotherapy.

My training in this growing field includes:

• MSc in Psychology (specialising in nature connection, including as a way to increase life meaning);
• Professional Positive Neuroplasticity Training with Dr. Rick Hanson;
• ecopsychology programme at Re-vision;
• Schumacher College (before it became Schumacher Wild);
• Deep Time Walk facilitation;
• the ‘new systems view of life’ course with Fritjof Capra (‘The Capra Course’);
• More than 30 years of experience and professional development in the fields of psychotherapy and depth psychology (especially Jungian, archetypal, and transpersonal psychologies), and includes an MSc in Consciousness and Transpersonal Psychology.
• Since 1998, my psychological focus is complemented by training in nature spirituality pathways, including the Order of Bards, Ovates, and Druids, and an ongoing interest in the links between Celtic mythology, psychotherapy and psychology explored in my book, Portals into Deep Imagination.