ECOTHERAPY PRACTICES Adopted by: Martin Jordan m.jordan670@ntlworld.com
Ecotherapy – DefinitionsEcotherapy is the clinical practice of ecopsychology or ‘applied ecopsychology’. This practice can take many diverse forms, Linda Buzzell and Craig Chalquist have published a book on ecotherapy entitled “Ecotherapy: Healing with Nature in Mind” (2009, Sierra Club Books) It outlines many kinds of ecotherapy, including horticultural therapy, "green" exercise, animal-assisted therapy, wilderness therapy, natural lifestyle therapy, eco-dreamwork, community ecotherapy, dealing with eco-anxiety and eco-grief and much more. Psychotherapy has traditionally located human suffering in broken relationships with other humans, ecotherapy argues that our suffering arises out of broken relationships to the natural world, our disconnection form the more-than-human world is a cause of our suffering .At the heart of ecotherapy is reciprocity. How do we form reciprocal healing relationships with the natural world.Ecotherapy has become a word that is used to describe the positive affects that contact with nature can have on mental health. The MIND report on ecotherapy did a lot to promote evidence for the benefits and has led to the creation of an ecotherapist post working in the National Health Service to promote the therapeutic benefits of contact with nature in the form of gardening and green exercise. There are some in the movement who argue that this definition of ecotherapy doesn’t meaningfully touch upon the much deeper issues of consciousness and psychology which are at the heart of our destructive relationship with the natural world. Drawing from the ideas of deep ecology which accord the more-than-human world a consciousness independent of the humans who come into contact with it, some ecotherapists argue that a much deeper change needs to happen. Ecotherapy for these practitioners is much more about conscious practices that promote reciprocity with the natural world, seeking to heal both ourselves and the natural world in the process, this is essential they would argue, if we are to avert both environmental and human breakdown and catastrophe.
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