Many of our colleagues and clients feel better when we take our practices outside. One of our aims in writing this book is to share our convictions for the capacity of contact with nature to assist in the healing process. We are at risk of being accused of simply suggesting a return to an earlier and more primal way of being in the world. We can point out that, as a species, we have become more detached from nature than at any time in our collective history. If we don’t pay attention to the negative effects of urbanization, technification, and an increasingly unstable climate and deteriorating ecological health, we may find ourselves even further away from human health and well-being. While Spanish philosopher and humanist George Santayana offers his advice above to pay attention and listen to the Earth, he was more famously quoted saying, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Let us not lose track that we are collectively participating in a larger movement here to address and reconcile global ecological and social crises as well as human dis-ease accompanying them. Even in our review of the research and literature associated with nature-based therapy, we read messages and hear calls to action that have fallen on deaf ears for decades. We need to look back and pay attention to our collective pasts to better inform our work as we move forward.
We need to accept some level of responsibility in writing this book to help you as reader understand some of the core reasons for this approach, and how it works. To do so, we will first establish why we believe nature-based therapy is an ideal modality to address personal, family, and societal issues. Our rationale includes a brief review of research outcomes from similar and related practices, and the theories that help explain how it works. The theory of nature-based therapy, as exciting as that sounds to read about, is simply our field’s collective best guess at this point. By chapter’s end, you will recognize that there is also much we don’t know. In fact, during our time writing, we have found new and innovative research being published suggesting alternative explanations as to how our practice works. We hope we can convey this with as much excitement as it brings us.
The definition of health, as stated by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 1946, goes beyond just the absence of disease or infirmity, suggesting that health is the “complete state of physical, mental and social wellbeing.” Other definitions commonly include the ability to adapt and function under changing circumstances. In short, health could be the ability to manage and optimize participation in life, be it through relationships, employment, education, recreation, or other aspects of daily life. While the dominance of the biomedical model’s influence on psychological treatment (e.g., DSM) in many nations carries on today, alternative approaches (e.g., mindfulness) are becoming more commonly accepted and utilized for health promotion and therapy. Participating in outdoor activities either alone, with family, or with others contributes to engagement across domains—physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual—and may be considered an ideal example of a socioecological model of health care, for people and the planet. Care for the Earth, care for others, and care for self are intertwined in one’s ecological self. In describing the awakening of our human role in the web of life, renowned physicist Fritjof Capra stated, “Over time the experience of ecology in nature gives us a sense of place. We become aware of how we are embedded in an ecosystem; in a landscape with a particular flora and fauna; in a particular social system and culture.”1 Capra suggested that learning about nature and developing a deeper sense of connection to the ecological system that provides us with life make it more likely children will grow up with a sense of responsibility to all living things and systems.
Nature-based therapy, in this regard, could be described as an ecologically sound approach to therapy. In more practical terms, this integral approach would be classified as a complementary approach to the biomedical model and to health promotion in a more general way. Why, after a century of technological advances across society, are we now proposing going “back to nature” for therapy? What has changed in the lives of humans that would call for this stepping back toward a simpler relationship between humans and the environment that sustains us all? What is current in the minds of the population that can support our conversation about the value of nature? What is it that hasn’t already been suggested in nature writing and the philosophies across cultures for millennia? Are we only now recognizing how far removed our daily lives are from the lives of our ancestors who were deeply linked with nature, sacred places, and other species? These questions are of importance to us and many other researchers interested in health and well-being. The literature we have drawn on crosses a spectrum of disciplines from urban planning to forestry to deep ecology. While we do not provide a comprehensive review of the literature that supports our theses herein, we will dip in and out of it and share what we believe may be of importance to you, the readers.
More than half of the 7.6 billion people on Earth now live in urban settings, and on average, many nations have greater than 80% of their populations compressed into large towns and cities. Within these communities, urban development slowly consumes vacant lots and wooded areas, and human access to nature and natural areas is in decline. Even cities with progressive park planning are finding urban densification is limiting human contact with nature in significant ways. In North America, we currently spend almost 90% of our days indoors and another 5% in our cars. While that may seem outrageous, you only have to track your activities for a week to come to the same conclusion: apart from your holidays, unless you work outdoors for a living, you too are likely spending considerable time indoors. With this in mind, the majority of people, at least in Canada and the United States, will be living and spending their time predominantly in built rather than natural environments. Does this matter? Research seems to suggest it does, and we think so too. Since you are reading this, we assume you may also be in agreement.
Of note, at the time of writing this book, there were more than 65 million refugees worldwide, many displaced from their homelands and living in unsafe and unstable places such as refugee camps and temporary housing. As the global diaspora continues due to political, religious, economic, and environmental factors, we want to be clear that we are not writing about connecting to nature as a global panacea to the world’s problems and for all individuals. The nature-disconnect dialog in current mainstream literature is primarily a modern Western and middle- to upper-class conversation. Suggesting connection with nature for therapy to groups or individuals across cultures and contexts would be insensitive, and we want to reiterate that our recommendations need to be relevant to your region, culture, and population served.
We assume readers will primarily be dealing with clients, students, and families in schools, community, private practice, and social service settings. Under the right conditions, nature can be a healing space and provide respite and rejuvenation to those living under difficult circumstances.
Rates of mental and physical health problems for those living the hurried and technologically driven modern lifestyle are rapidly increasing and could be argued as epidemic. The negative impacts are seen most critically in children and youth during their developmental years.2 North America has witnessed a near meteoric rise in internalizing mental health issues such as depression and anxiety, as well as lifestyle diseases including obesity and diabetes. Urban populations are now living longer, and medical advances have reduced infant mortality and infectious diseases. We have also seen an increased global burden of negative mental health effects, mood disorders, and a reduced ability to deal with, or buffer, life stress. Further, whether linked with health issues or as a result of societal or parental influences, research has identified a steep increase of narcissism in youth over the past forty plus years. While not wanting to cast dark clouds over our introduction to nature-based therapy, we do recognize and experience, on a weekly basis, some of these trends effecting children, youth, and families. We will extend the conversation related to mental health throughout the book and locate the role that this approach may play in tackling current issues. Case examples will address anger, self-regulation, depression, anxiety, ADHD, grief and loss, and declining social skills, among other issues. We will also share how nature can address these issues through the design and facilitation of accessible opportunities for children and families to connect more deeply with themselves, each other, and the Earth within a supported therapeutic space. Research providing empirical support for the benefits of nature-based therapy will be woven throughout, but again, we do not claim to provide exhaustive coverage of the literature, but rather we focus on content that provides guidance to the practitioner.
We know, in North America, that 1 in 5 youth have been diagnosed with mood or behavior disorders such as depression and anxiety. Reporting of these disorders is generally conservative, that is low, due to the stigma of reporting and because many young people have “sub-threshold” symptoms in that they do not meet the full criteria for diagnosis. Growing and developing children seem to suffer the most from the effects of urbanization, rapidly growing technification of our lives, and a significant increase in sedentary lifestyles, often coupled with entertainment and distraction. TV, once the devil in the living room destroying our children’s minds in the ’70s and ’80s, is hardly an issue compared with today’s access to screen time for gaming, YouTube, Snapchat, and other social media. We now see uninterrupted access to screens of all kinds and an increasing child disconnect from nature, and outdoor activity in general. On many fronts, therapy and pharmacology have been increasingly offered as antidote to these significant societal lifestyle shifts and subsequent ill health, yet we also know that many children, youth, and families are underserved.
While not suggesting all childhood issues are due to a nature deficit, we do hope to address what we see as significant change in human-environmental behavior experienced by many in modern Western societies. We believe the exposure to and growing dependence on screen time, especially in children and youth, can be addressed in a cost-effective and generally accessible way. Following Santayana’s sage advice above, we have listened to the music the Earth has offered, and we propose options for different situations: individual counseling, group work, family settings, and school-based approaches.
A simple internet search yields thousands of sites for programs, services, and items for sale to help you connect with nature. The notion of reconnecting with nature has recently become common in educational and community settings, although without a patterned or common approach or theoretical grounding. While often heard, seen, and generally accepted as a good idea, the actual practice of nature as therapist has not yet been critically challenged. In fact, contact with nature as healer has, in our minds, become near cliché. Popular books have attempted to comb the research to provide some theoretical understandings of why nature is healing. While this is positive and helpful, most become long literature reviews of scientific studies and leave little to work with on a day-to-day practical level. We have also found many hands-on books about nature-based activities and building human-nature connections, which we use in our own work and trainings and recommend to colleagues, parents, and friends. What we haven’t yet seen, however, are neither well-supported therapeutic practice descriptions nor clear directions about how a practitioner can integrate nature as co-therapist in their work with children, youth, and families—most have been aimed at psychotherapy with adults. It is worth noting that many Indigenous and conventional healing practices that include human-nature relationships are not widely shared and, therefore, are mostly unknown to Western practitioners. And so we write with caution that alternate healing ways may seem to be lacking in modern Western society yet are present and in use by therapists and cultural groups. Research has shown a fairly strong indication that nature can assist in achieving positive social, psychological, and health outcomes with clients, but little has been offered to the practitioner in terms of specific knowledge and skills for practice. The questions about “why nature for therapy” and “how does it work” still need to be answered, even though we have strong biases and do believe it works.
We do not claim to have all of these answers. In fact, we know this is simply a starting point for further research and dialog among practitioners. We hope what we can offer will help, knowing that it may be challenged, advanced, or even dismantled by future research and practice interpretations; we are willing to take the risk. We provide practical applications of nature-based therapeutic work grounded in the theoretical understandings and evidence we have found and incorporated into our practice. The conversation will include theory from adjacent fields of psychology (including neuropsychology), education, and clinical counseling and other conventional therapy practices. Before we dig into the theory which supports nature-based therapy, we share our understandings of what may have happened over time to land us in the situation we now find ourselves, looking to nature for help in dealing with human issues and crises.
Social psychologist Erich Fromm wrote in his classic book, The Sane Society, that as humans alter the world, they also alter themselves, thereby creating many unintended circumstances.3 Environmentalist and deep ecology author Paul Shepard, following up on Fromm’s ideas in his classic Nature and Madness, suggested that the Western world’s consumptive behavior is creating a lack of connectedness, rootedness, meaning, and self-identity and that this growth leads to insanity of greed, ambition, and in essence, a form of madness. He goes on to suggest that modern Western society has not entered into a mature stage of development relative to its relationship with the natural world.4
While arising from complex issues, Shepard’s thesis is simple: humans have stalled out in their development; we have become stuck in adolescence—that place where exploration and boundary pushing are backed by a well-armed ego and lowered concern for impact on self and others. Youth are more impulsive and seemingly selfish at this stage, and that is fine in the bigger picture of human development. Many advances in human capacity have occurred because this state exists, although it may be hampered in more recent decades through our increasingly risk-averse society. The adolescent brain interprets and enters into risk-taking in a very different manner than that of a child or an adult. As we now know, brain development carries on until mid- to late-twenties, and judgment and self-preservation seem to go hand in hand with those last frontal lobe developments. So, the ado lescent brain operates with increased risk tolerance, hyper-rationality for those risk-related activities, and lowered concern for others.5 This reality originally led to further ranging of human communities into new hunting territories and bolstered bravery in combat defending homelands. In modern times, this reality has led to the breaking of sports records and continually accelerating demonstrations of human achievement in the physical realm at least (e.g., base jumping, squirrel suit flying, triple backflips on a motorbike...). Shepard’s thesis was most critical of this stalled development in that it has resulted in atrocities against mother nature in general due to the lack of rootedness or connection with nature, and a failure to reach mature and elder/mentor stages as a society. While pursuing the ultimate possibilities of achievement, including financial success, many adults have carried on within a stage of adolescent development where the achievement model equates to conquering, regardless of human or environmental costs.
The teaching of basic food production and local knowledge of flora and fauna, let alone excursions into wild nature, are often considered novel and unique experiences. Further, we are also now witnesses to the gravest conditions of global environmental health, from species and cultural extinction to climate change and deteriorating air quality and food security issues. While not hard to rationalize, or demonstrate, poor environmental health has been linked to poor physical health. Harder to legitimize is the relationship between ill environmental health and its negative effect on the human psyche, ill mental health. Ecopsychology theory depicts our psychological health as intricately related to environmental health. We may yet come to accept the links between current global environmental problems and increasing rates of mental illness as a society. Was Eric Fromm correct fifty-five years ago in suggesting that a significant cataract in the universal vision of our relationship to nature may have caused us to go insane?
With an apparent cultural “forgetting” of modern Western society’s earlier relationship with nature, and possible evolutionary preferences being denied, it is easy to conceive that we should be taking action to restore our relationship with nature from a psychological and health perspective. If our societal madness has detached us from an equitable and beneficial balance with our environment, what is the antidote, and how does it work? If contact with nature, as simply proposed here, is an antidote, and a key in the context of nature-based therapy, what theoretical support exists to articulate it?
Current trends of denser urban settings and dwindling green and natural spaces have resulted in reduced access and exposure of children to nature. Regarding child and youth development, this reduced access has been clearly linked to obesity and diabetes, whereas increased contact with nature has been seen to benefit children’s overall physical and mental development.6 Other findings examining children living in urban settings, with access to parks and nature spaces, showed those who consistently played in nature during recess performed better on motor skills tests than others who played on a traditional playground; nature contact improved motor fitness, enhanced attitudes toward increased physical activity, and positively affected social, emotional, and cognitive development. What is made clear in the literature is that natural play spaces which engage children in active and dynamic play produce a wide array of physical, social, and emotional benefits through increased imaginative play and creativity along with increased levels of physical activity.7 Naturescapes are design elements attempting to bridge the gap between modern playscapes and more natural physical areas, especially where wild nature is not accessible. These manufactured spaces may take the form of increased variability in topography, forested areas, boulders, logs, or gardens. The literature reviewed suggests natural elements added to schoolgrounds and local parks act as a catalyst for child development and well-being through increased affordances for creative and risky play. All good for us too as we seek possible locations for sessions relative to our clients’ levels of ecological engagement. (See chapter 4 for ecological assessments.)
Less than 10% of Canadian children and youth are currently meeting the recommended physical activity guidelines; a recent national Report Card on Physical Activity graded their overall physical activity levels at a D−.8 These disturbing Canadian trends were reflected in report cards across 38 countries9 and increase the probability of childhood disease and insufficient fundamental motor skill development and decrease the probability of children being physically active adolescents, and consequently as adults. This fact is easy to connect to the current crisis in childhood sedentary behavior and related lifestyle illnesses of obesity and diabetes. A growing body of evidence shows the positive relationships between outdoor time + physical activity = decreasing sedentary behavior and increasing levels of fitness.10 The built and natural environment’s effect on health and well-being is influenced by complex interactions of infrastructure and social factors. Human interaction with more natural environments provides an overall benefit to mental health; increases levels of physical activity and the potential for, and actual; fundamental motor skill development;11 reduces anxiety and boosts psychological well-being;12 and reduces behavioral symptoms associated with attention deficits in children and youth.13
To summarize, significant evidence now demonstrates the physical and psychological benefits of children simply playing in natural spaces, whether physically active or not.14 While showing a fairly strong body of evidence for positive benefits of spending time in nature, Gill still called for increased “early intervention and prevention initiatives from the health sector.”15 This review highlighted increased benefits of more playful engagement with the environment, encouraging use of natural spaces and features of the environment that allow for free play, exploration, and child-directed play and learning.
We wouldn’t want to make claims for our nature-based approach, even with the supportive research outcomes, without also providing explanations of how nature is contributing to the positive therapeutic outcomes described earlier. To embrace theory provides us with guided intention in our practice and rationales for our methods, and whether proven to be true in the long term or not, they also are exceptional tools for teaching and training outdoor therapists and leaders about using nature as a co-therapist (which we will explore in chapters 7 to 11).
If you work with children, youth, and families, the following experience may sound very familiar. You are working indoors, let’s say at a school or residential treatment center, and someone is unhappy, getting frustrated, and leaning toward an impulsive outburst, and the need for intervention from you as leader or facilitator is imminent. The first need is to ensure everyone’s safety, and the easiest resolution is to ask someone, preferably not requiring any force, to go outside with you. We are not simply suggesting all will be well once you are outside.
You step outside and walk with the youth to a bench under a tree. “It’s pretty chilly out here; winter’s coming,” you say to the young person. She takes a second to pause and pay attention, long enough to notice it is cold out. This minor distraction, and intentional guidance toward the temperature, engages the young person in sensory awareness and shifts her thinking away from the crisis and, instead, to the surroundings outside. Does it dissipate her anger? No, not completely, but the flow of negative energy has been interrupted. Bodily she recognizes that her cheeks are cold to the touch and the wind is blowing softly, adding to her chilled state. You may then mention how the leaves have begun to change colors as fall marches on, another effort to engage her mind in nature’s presence. While sensory awareness is not a novel concept to a youth worker or therapist, doing it outdoors has a distinct added advantage: nature can help replenish necessary resources to deal with stress and difficult situations. One critical resource is attention.
Indoor built environments, and many human activities within these spaces, are not what we were evolutionarily designed for. Most North American homes are built with straight lines (e.g., walls and window shapes), artificially consistent distances (e.g., evenly spaced stairs of 7¼ inches in height), and numerous materials that reduce air quality (e.g., paints, glues, plastics). Natural environments, in contrast, do not have straight lines, provide diverse topography to negotiate, and not always, but often, provide sunlight and clean air to breathe. Activities indoors may include screen time for work, life management, or entertainment, most often the latter. On average, young people are spending 50 hours or more each week staring at some form of screen. The environment and activities are taxing our abilities to think straight, are draining our attention, conditions hard to operate effectively in, let alone be our best selves. Smart phones, use of computers and screens in school, YouTube, and other social media are quickly speeding the lives of our children up through the sheer volume of materials shared. Time to be quiet, reflective, or even alone have been diminished significantly.
Couple these technological influences with life stress due to personal or family crisis, health and behavioral problems, limited community resources, and restricted access to natural outdoor spaces, and you have a significant recipe for disaster. Attention is needed to make sound decisions (executive functioning), manage our behavior (self-regulation), and process new experiences (reflection). Without this resource, we are truly at the whims of our instincts and baseline selves, often not our best selves. This critique of humanness is not new. John Dewey, education philosopher and to some the granddaddy of experiential education theory, suggested that it is a human endeavour to define and describe one’s subjective experience of life.16 He claimed that the unanalyzed world does not lend itself to control and that, by nature, humans desire to constrain some of the unpredictability and, in doing so, create and maintain a separation from nature. In short, if the natural order is very complex, and we are simply a part of it, Dewey believed the human mind needs to rationally protect itself by creating distinctions and distance. Time in nature can restore our attention and concurrently reduce levels of stress. The late Stephen Kellert, professor of social ecology at Yale University, suggested that “our inclination to connect with nature also addresses other needs: intellectual capacity, emotional bonding, aesthetic attractions, creativity and imagination, even the recognition of a just and purposeful existence” and that these benefits may provide an antidote to the pressure and what he called the “relative unattractiveness” of the modern world.17
Attention restoration theory (ART) provides some guidance for us in explaining how time in nature can replenish the necessary attention for executive function and self-regulation. The idea of human consciousness as an ongoing depletion and replenishment of attention was first theorized in the late 1800s but only more recently taken up as an area of research. When we are forced to work to pay attention—think of that hard-to-understand lesson in school or maybe reading an overly theoretical book—we are using our directed attention. When our attention is overtaxed, we become irritable and mentally tired, lose concentration, and make more mistakes. Another type of attention is involuntary and does not result in attention fatigue but rather can restore our resources for directed attention and dealing with stress. To engage involuntary attention usually requires a change in environments, and here is where our preferences for all things natural kicks in. Nature seems to be idealized as the preferential environment for improvements to attention. Around the world, being in aesthetic natural spaces is often sought for solace and pleasure. Harvard professor Edward Wilson dubbed this biophilia hypothesis, or the love of life (or all living things).18 Being in nature provides stimulus to engage our involuntary attention. Seminal researchers in ART, Rachel and Stephen Kaplan, have broken the theory into four fairly easily understood constructs: Being away, Fascination, Extent, and Compatibility.19 Further research in ART has extended the number of constructs and how they fit together, as well as developed measures of the perceived benefits. We will describe these briefly and include examples of how these constructs can be intentionally planned for and show up in a nature-based practice.
Being away is a conceptual versus physical transformation, although it often includes being in a different place, whether unique or familiar. When one is removed from their daily routines and burdens, and the necessary directed attention demanded of them, they perceive a shift in how they feel. Holidays are the ultimate example, and a physical manifestation of being away. The person, however, who chooses to continue working via cell phone, laptop, internet, etc. while on holidays may not fully experience the sensations of being away. A practice example that easily illustrates being away is when a family takes part in an overnight or multi-day therapy program. The shift from parental routines of home into a simplified way of living and traveling on the land (or just staying at a campsite) can be considerable in terms of where they focus their thoughts and subsequent energies.
Fascination has long been associated with involuntary attention, and hence the relief from directed attention, that which taxes our cognitive processes. This can occur without fatigue and carries the sensation of relaxing the mind and increases reflective states. One only needs to think of sitting and looking into a fire or listening to a babbling stream to grasp the concept of fascination. Moments of fascination can easily be aligned with reflective activities and allow for clients either to have mental space for themselves or to leverage the attentional restoration and engage in difficult conversations. In running month-long trips on Canada’s west coast, which usually included at least two meals each day cooked over beach fires, Nevin found the fireside conversations, especially the ones after dark, to be the most effective time for group work to occur. The adolescents he worked with in the justice system were often quite guarded emotionally and did not share their personal worlds openly. Fireside chats were most often the place where they took risks and became more confident articulating their experiences of family strife, negative life circumstances, and trauma. It likely resonates with most readers that when staring into a fire, with most of the world shut out by darkness, your ability to think lucidly and share without pretense is heightened.
Extent relates to the sensation of being a part of something bigger than oneself, of interconnectedness of the elements, and of the possibilities of exploration, learning, and growth. One example of this is our bodily reaction when reaching summits or attaining views of large open landscapes, sunrises over the prairies, or the afterglow of a sunset across a body of water; those moments when your brain is consumed with the beauty or immensity of the environment, and your relationship to it. With arms stretched up and out, as if to embrace the world, we recognize, possibly subconsciously, that we are a part of something greater than ourselves. This can, of course, happen in micro-environments as well. One such example is when we have taken youth to have a close look at the rainforest floor with magnifying glasses. If you take one square yard of rainforest floor and examine it as an archeologist may—with the greatest attention to detail—you can find hundreds of living things; most will be new to you. Some clients, and not always the children, have been overwhelmed with the biological diversity discovered. It is in these moments of awe, when they experience extent, that an exceptional space takes conversations into meaning-making and self-exploration on a personal level. Seeing the clients’ awe in the microimmensity of the forest floor, you might ask, “I wonder what we can learn about the day-to-day world we live in from this?” or “What advice do you think this snail might offer you for what’s troubling you?”
Compatibility speaks to the alignment between individual desires, environmental patterns, and actions required to match these all up. Understanding this construct, we choose our locations and activities appropriately relative to what is compatible with our clients. Chapter 4 will discuss an ecological assessment that allows us to identify preexisting relationships to nature and outdoor experiences, skills, and interests. Truth is, clients who come to us for nature-based counseling have some understanding of what they are seeking and often a positive bias toward the benefits of being outdoors. Still, what we may yet learn is that a client has never lit a fire or that the client’s outdoor skills are exceptionally developed, and yet they express a desire to benefit from developing a mindful approach to being outdoors. Having started to map out an ecological identity allows the therapist to better choose locations, activities, and objectives for sessions regarding compatibility between client and nature. As practitioners, we do not yet know with any level of sophistication how clients will respond to being in dark forests, standing near a cliff edge, experiencing an open prairie wind or hail storm, or even having a sunny day at the beach. These all will provide unique encounters to clients in relation to their lived experiences, evolutionary preferences, and influences of cultural, social, and economic forces.
Research across multiple fields is confirming the necessity of connection to nature for our health and wellness. In the literature related to child and family functioning and how our practice of nearby nature can help, research suggests that life stress can be buffered or reduced in children through simply living in proximity to nature20 and that exposure to forest environments can reduce cortisol levels, pulse rate, blood pressure, and sympathetic nerve activity.21 These are but two examples from a rapidly growing body of research, especially prominent in the past decade, that suggests that contact with nature offers much more than just the restoration of attention. In 2018, Danish researchers Schilhab, Stevenson, and Bentsen conducted a detailed systematic review specifically looking at attention restoration theory.22 They identified, analyzed, and clustered studies supporting contact with nature benefits, such as improved working memory, attentional control, visual attention, vigilance, impulse control, processing speed, and cognitive flexibility. These researchers also found growing support, but currently less well evidenced, for improved delay of gratification, reduced aggression, and improved logical reasoning abilities. While nature contact seems to be an ideal activity to assist with cognitive and behavioral problems, debates still remain over what exact processes are at work, and what conditions specifically bring about these results. One argument exists for a burden, or cognitive fatigue, to be present for restoration to then occur when in nature—which seems reasonable and in alignment with our work and experiences. Another is that some studies put participants in natural spaces to test restoration, while in other studies, they just look at nature on screens indoors. Research utilizing nature instead of just images has shown better outcomes—again, the idea that real nature experiences work better than virtual ones seems logical to us.
In an effort to share this research with college students in an environmental health course, Nevin used a method common to some studies in Schilhab and colleagues’ review. Students were subjected to a 15-minute lecture, with images, of the state of environmental destruction and social inequity in the world. This intentionally intense and depressing presentation was followed by a cognitive processing test called the digit span forward. Students were read a series of random numbers then asked to write them down. Four more sets of random numbers were given and written down, although each series became longer by one number (i.e., 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8 numbers). Following the last series, students folded up their answer papers, put them in their pockets, and headed outside. Nevin then led the students up a hill to a nearby woodland area for a slow and quiet nature walk. Entering an open area within a grove of large trees, students were asked to stand in a circle, take deep breaths, and participate in a very short guided meditation intended to relax their minds and bodies and to seek a connection with the forested area. Immediately after the guided visualization, they repeated the cognitive test with a new set of random numbers. The nature-connection portion of the class described occurred within 15 minutes of the digit span test taken in the classroom. Rather than just lecturing on ART in the classroom, the intention was to have students experience the process themselves. When asked, students expressed feeling more relaxed and at peace when in the forest. What they were not prepared to hear, nor did they perceive in the activity, was that the calculated difference in their scores showed a 20% increase in accuracy outdoors. In four years and with more than 100 students, only a few had ever scored better indoors than out.
ART stemmed from the early work of psychologist William James, who depicted types of attention as being less taxing on cognitive and emotional faculties and even possessing restorative properties. These properties were attributed to interesting or unique situations in which the individual is engaged but does not require concerted effort (i.e., directed attention) and experiences a reduction in mental fatigue.23 Rachel and Stephen Kaplan integrated theoretical understandings of stress with the restorative properties of natural environments and suggested that stress can be prevented or reduced through the restoration of directed attention.24 This “healing power of nature” is reiterated throughout the ART literature as vitality enriching and capable of restoring mental health. Another closely related yet less explored attempt to understand nature as restorative is psycho-evolutionary theory (PET), which describes nature’s ability to reduce stress. This suggests responses to nature are adaptive human traits that may be genetically determined, hence, evolutionary. Swedish researcher Roger Ulrich’s take on attention and restoration was different from that of Kaplans.25 Ulrich built PET on the assumption that humans’ immediate responses to nature are actually pre-cognitive, that being emotional and more aligned with affective processes, as opposed to ART, which is described as a cognitive process. PET suggests humans relate to specific conditions that produce restorative experiences. A long-standing academic debate has ensued between ART and PET theorists, which is of little concern to us in our practice; both provide solid working theories for nature-based therapy. ART: attention is restored in compatible natural environments and improves numerous cognitive functions. PET: people have emotional responses to natural environments that they then may respond to cognitively in positive or negative ways. Both help us to understand our work and to teach others why it works. What’s important to note is that both theories suggest we have evolutionary responses to nature, cognitive and affective, and that nature can restore resources necessary for vitality in life.
The theory of affordances was originally coined by J. J. Gibson as a learning theory of human relationships with objects and spaces.26 Almost 80 years ago, he was studying air force pilots’ capacity to perceive distances and accuracy of targets from fighter planes in World War II. His studies shifted toward more laboratory and day-to-day situations but always focused on the human-environment interaction. He was interested in how, often kinesthetically, humans adapted or adjusted their choice of actions and physical performance to successfully negotiate environmental conditions. When we consider how we choose to move clients out of the office and into a variety of environments, the theory of affordances speaks volumes. Our clients have increased opportunities for action and experience in a dynamic versus static environment. Gibson’s work was considered interactionist in that human responses were influenced by information available in the environment.27 Further, affordances were reasoned to be not just about stimulus-response, as was much scientific research in the ’50s and ’60s, but were instead argued to be about responses to new environments, differentiating characteristics in environments, and perceiving and acting upon them; in short, learning is about improving, and “of getting in closer touch with the environment.”28
What we can take from Gibson’s work is that our clients can both perceive and discover an environment relative to their abilities and constraints. Their abilities may include physical fitness or flexibility while hiking up a rough root-covered section of trail or sense of balance when crossing a log over a river. Abilities may also be how well one perceives distances, such as when throwing rocks into a lake or how far a walk may take at a set speed. Constraints, in the environment, may be overgrown trails covered in thorny blackberry stalks or a high tide preventing passage around a headland on the beach. Affordances describe the human as agent and environment as situation processes (agent-situation). From a practitioner’s perspective, picture yourself in a conversation going nowhere with a young client while in an office talk therapy session. Now imagine the two of you sitting beside a stream with a small rock waterfall. These two settings couldn’t be more different. One “affords” opportunities for attention restoration, quiet reflection, and distraction, distraction from the difficult conversation sitting across from the therapist. The calming and meditative sound of the water burbling and splashing over the rocks leaves the young person in a positive mood state, and a conversation can eventually take place while both, sitting side by side, gaze into the mesmerizing movement of the water. The easiest way to engage with the theory of affordances as a practitioner, or researcher, is to think about human-environment interactions and what elements may “afford” the client. Asking questions of the site for each session can stimulate new ways of exploring environments as well as allowing clients to answer those questions themselves. What does this environment allow you to do? Or, what does this environment ask of you when we are here, or travel through it?
When nature-based therapy is implemented with intention, it can be utilized in ways that facilitate improved relationships with the natural environment and with others. These outcomes can be enhanced through an appreciation of the uniqueness of the experience. Meaningful experiences in nature have the potential to be unconsciously equated with what Carl Jung referred to as sacred space, which is central and vital for our individual and collective health.29 We have observed, and heard from our clients, that nearby nature and wilderness therapy experiences have included deeply meaningful aesthetic, archetypal, or spiritual/transcendent aspects. Awareness of and openness with clients about the potential of sacred spaces, spiritual dimension of self, especially in young people, brings recognition to clients that something important may be happening to them and that being intentional about creating sacred spaces may become a meaningful process in their healing and their lives.
German theologian Rudolph Otto identified how most religious or spiritual experiences—he referred to them as numinous—are comprised of three components: mystery, terror, and fascination.30 Combined, these elements can be achieved in the majesty of nature, and we find them in activities such as climbing or trekking in the mountains and paddling oceans and rivers. The combined beauty, potentially overwhelming power (weather, viewing of large open landscapes), and evolutionary attraction of nature makes it an ideal venue for spiritual experience, which may be an unavoidable benefit to those who participate. The leader/therapist’s awareness of their client’s spiritual dimension may assist in preparing the client for these experiences. For those new to nature-based approaches, it should be an area explored in assessment and intervention because natural environments, and time spent in nature, have a tendency to accentuate spiritual aspects within individuals.
As a society, we are waking up to the need to re-experience the spiritual dimensions of nature. Spirituality is one dimension of human existence often left out of the modern health and well-being conversation. We as humans—in our modern Western world—are trapped by highly individualized thinking and have, in many ways, diminished our spiritual selves. Classic and contemporary literature on nature has repeatedly described our connectedness to nature as a journey or expression of soul. If intentionally facilitated nature experiences might assist in taking us beyond our usual human experiences and open us to the numinous, assuming spirituality is a meaningful contribution to one’s health, then we propose that our innate desire to connect with the more than human world may be central to our re-engagement with spirituality, leading toward increased maturity, spiritual health, and well-being.