The practice of outdoor walk-and-talk therapy has its roots in Ecopsychology, a growing interdisciplinary movement that seeks to integrate psychological and ecological concerns, focusing on the connection between human well being and our relationship with the natural world. Associated developments in psychotherapy go by a variety of names, including Ecotherapy, Wild Therapy and Deep Ecology.

Taking therapy outdoors presents us with the reality that there is a lot more to relate to than the one other human we find ourselves sharing the therapeutic hour with. The outdoor space becomes both the ‘holding environment’ of therapy and a ‘relational third’ in the therapeutic relationship, as both parties are reminded that they are subject to a world that is much larger than themselves. The boundaries of the consulting ‘room’ are expanded to include the entirety of the environment the participants now find themselves negotiating together. Synchronistic events can become commonplace, and free association tends to intensify in an environment that offers itself as a limitless source of metaphor. Will you choose the well-trodden path or beat a new track of your own through the long grass? Do you toil uphill because that is your characteristic approach to things, when all the while there has been an easier route to your desired destination?  Does your path, which minutes ago seemed so clear, run out?  All of these things can have meaning when the natural environment is recruited as ‘co-therapist’, as a mirror to one’s internal world. 

Walk-and-talk sessions take place at Oldbury Court Estate and Snuff Mills, a large area of parkland, heath, woods and waterways that abuts the Bristol neighbourhoods of Eastville, Fishponds, Stapleton, Frenchay and Downend. If the prospect of outdoor therapy appeals, please be aware that we would meet indoors initially, for a minimum of two sessions at which we would explore the possibilities for working together, think about whether walk-and-talk therapy could be a useful approach for you and, if so, agree a plan for taking therapy outdoors.