Ecotherapy

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The group leaders had “discussion prompts” for us to use in this exercise, but I didn’t wait around to grab the list they were handing out. I heard them say “lunch with a tree” and instantly fled the circle to go explore the surrounding forest and grab a bite with some bark. 😉

It was noon on Sunday, Day 2 of last weekend’s Philadelphia Ecotherapy Fall Training event, and I’d had more than my fill of human contact by that point. I’d signed up (and paid $250 of my husband’s money) to join 15 other trainees in the woods of Wissahickon Valley Park and learn from real therapists integrating nature into their counseling practices throughout the area.

When I first heard the term ecotherapy, I knew it was for me, and though I’m years from hanging my own shingle, my goal in the training was to gain knowledge — What’s the science behind nature’s medicinal effect on our mental health? What does “reciprocity” in our relationship with the environment really mean? How do you say, “I’m from Philly” in the language of the Lenape? — and pick up practical skills and techniques so I can one day help my clients experience nature in a more therapeutic way. 🤞🏻

I also, selfishly, came here craving my own therapeutic experience in the Great Outdoors. There is precious little “eco” in the therapy I’m currently doing as a grad school intern at a drug and alcohol treatment clinic in the suburbs — and I, my friends, am a wild creature who was not built for office, and maybe not even indoor, work. 🐺

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My job starts before dawn, three days a week, and confines me mostly to a tiny, windowless box, where I pour all my HSP energy into listening, attending, empathizing and processing with “fellow travelers” on the recovery road. Any time in between sessions is spent hunched over my desk, feeding the ravenous paperwork beast or logging mandatory training hours via online modules and Zoom meetings.

Leaving the office in the afternoons, I feel like Tony Soprano throwing open the back door of the pitch-black Bada Bing after spending the night passed out on a dressing room couch, and getting slammed by a wall of blinding sunlight. I, too, feel hung over, from all the emotion I’ve absorbed. My brain is foggy, my eyes tired, head throbbing, neck aching… I’m ready for bed at 3PM.

Unless you count occasional laps around the parking lot when clients don’t show, the only “nature’s call” I’m in tune with during the workday is my overactive bladder. 😫

In other words, I’m really no different than any other middle-aged member of the American workforce — sedentary, stressed, always kinda sick, slogging through the daily grind wondering if this is all we’re meant to do until we die. Except I, unlike most folk, don’t have booze or weed to obliterate my reality or ease my angst at the end of the day.

The way I rage against the slow dying of my light, and any threats to my sobriety, existential or otherwise, is to move my body outside, even when it’s dark — or, especially when it’s dark. If I had to pinpoint the main reasons I’ve been able to stay away from alcohol for 4 years and (almost) four months, it’s my loving hubby’s steadfast support and a neighborhood where this scene is the norm:

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I never knew, when I moved here at age 24, how perfect a home Bucks County, PA, would turn out to be. My spirit has always felt at peace amid the big skies, fresh air, open fields and tall trees this area is famous for, and since my days as a gangly, hyperactive little girl running and riding around my grandparents’ farm in Wisconsin or camping and hiking with my Girl Scout troop, I’ve sought natural relief from my restlessness by spending as much time as possible outdoors.

For 20 years, I thought I could find that same euphoric freedom in a bottle. My battle with addiction ultimately led me back to my roots, and I claimed Mother Nature as the “God of my understanding” when I got sober with the 12 steps.

Now, I probably get the same mental health benefits from plopping my butt down on a pile of leaves under a towering beech — as I did last weekend at the Wissahickon Environmental Center/Andorra Natural Area — that I do from parking it in my own therapist’s chair for an EMDR session with a $120 price tag.

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I found the perfect spot for a “lunch date” with my new foliage friends on Sunday afternoon, resting my back comfortably against a tall, sturdy, smooth trunk and balancing my Rubbermaid salad tub on my lap. The tree I chose gave me an ideal vantage point for an hourlong powwow with my higher power; it also tilted me up an incline and against the wind, so my hair stayed out of my mouth as I ate. 💪🏻 I listened to the melodic whooshing of air and rustling of leaves as I watched the forest sway back and forth, sunlight flashing through occasional breaks in the dense green-and-gold canopy.

I’m not 100% certain what I saw as I looked around. I have much to learn about identifying plants and acknowledging lands. However, if the assignment is conversing with God’s creation, breathing out awareness and appreciation while breathing in acceptance, wisdom, serenity — and sanity — I would consider myself an old pro.

Of course, the point of being trained in the divine art/science of ecotherapy is learning how to connect with other people while communing with nature. There’s more to it than simply taking a client outside and shouting, “Look at this stuff; isn’t it neat?” 🧜🏼‍♀️

I mean, just because my spirit feels instantly freed when I hang out with trees doesn’t mean I can effectively identify, much less wield, the full range of tools nature offers as an effervescent “co-therapist.” The work is to develop a map by which to guide each client to/through their own subjective experience of and relationship with the environment.

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Ecotherapy also fosters respect and appreciation for the tremendous gifts the Earth offers us — the air we breathe, the water we drink, the land we live on and off of, the great life force that connects all beings, the ancient wisdom the universe has whispered to our species through the ages.

We are here not to consume but to cooperate. Our purpose is not to keep gaining, but to continue growing. We’re meant to ebb and flow with the tides, ride the winds of change, and evolve over time, working to move our lives forward while staying mindful of our shared history and aligning our personal values with the greater good. Peace comes from accepting what is, rather than always trying to bend the world to our will.

If you’re in recovery, these principles should sound really familiar. And rather rebellious! I mean, cultivating an abundance mindset — the idea that we already have everything we need to weather the seasons of our lives — is quite a challenge when capitalism conditions us to live in desperate fear of scarcity. Practicing gratitude seems counterintuitive in a “hustle culture” that teaches us to never settle, to keep rat-racing away from our discomfort via constant distraction/medication/consumption/“productivity.”

Ecotherapists understand what we would-be overachievers and recovering alcoholics learned the hard way:

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It didn’t take much for me to go “all in” as an aspiring ecotherapist. After my experience in training last weekend — I must acknowledge the privilege of an intern being able to afford such an opportunity! — I joined the organization’s monthly supervision group, even though I’m not currently doing anything in the field that they need to supervise.

I just want to continue to learn and stay connected to the community while I wrap up my master’s degree, and hopefully, the “networking” I do now will bear fruit down the road. I’m already dreaming of a Philadelphia Ecotherapy Bucks County branch…can you imagine if I opened a private practice that did most of its work outdoors? 🤩

Of course, a big part of me doubts whether anyone will want to pay an hourly rate to sit, hike, stargaze, leaf peep or “forest bathe” with me. Will I ever be able to market myself as a real therapist, eco or otherwise, and actually earn enough of a living to make this midlife grad school experiment worthwhile?

I tell my clients at the clinic that “if you can beat an addiction, you can do anything,” and “no one gets sober unless they believe it’s still possible to live their dreams.”

Maybe I should take a break from chatting with trees to tap into my own wisdom. 🤔