Victoria Park I

Victoria Park and Ecotherapy

 As an umbrella term for nature-based methods of physical and psychological healing, ecotherapy points to the need to reinvent psychotherapy and psychiatry as if nature and the human-nature relationship matters.

The treatment by ecotherapy and its perspective reveals the critical fact that people are intimately connected with, embedded in, and inseparable from the rest of nature. In Toronto's Victoria Park, it becomes clear that what happens to nature for good or ill impacts people and vice versa, leading to the development of new methods of individual and community psychotherapeutic diagnosis and treatment. 

Ecotherapeutic work as Clinebell conceived it takes guidance from an Ecological Circle of three mutually interacting operations or dynamics: 

Inreach: receiving and being nurtured by the healing presence of nature, place, Earth. 

Upreach: the actual experience of this more-than-human vitality as we relocate our place within the natural world. Outreach: activities with other people that care for the planet. 

Closing the circle keeps ecotherapy from narrowly focused self-absorption, further nature exploitation for human purposes, feel-good maneuvers, or thinking good thoughts as planetary panaceas. Note that a certificate in ecotherapy is not a license to do psychotherapy. Nevertheless, ecotherapy techniques are being taught to practicing psychotherapists, whose concentration on mending relationships and inner conflicts benefits from placement in the wider ecological context in which all human activity unfolds.

Overlapping Core Commitments of Ecotherapy without which ecotherapy would not be ecotherapy: Because human beings are an integral part of the natural world, what nourishes or diminishes that world nourishes or diminishes us. Although ecotherapy interventions tend to be much less invasive than drugs or psychotherapy, ecotherapists always put the well-being of clients first and carefully monitor potential safety and health concerns. 

 Ecotherapists believe that nonhuman forms of life have a right to exist for their own needs and purposes, and that this right includes leaving plant and animal ecocommunities intact and protecting the needs, health, and sense of agency of our animal companions.

 Ecotherapists regard the work as part of an ongoing collective effort to build just and sustainable communities in which all forms of life can delight and mature. Psychotherapy aims to help individuals understand and create meaning from emotional and psychological difficulties they are experiencing. 

Ecotherapy, utilising psychotherapeutic principles, forms a relationship to the natural world in order to enable us to make sense of our inner emotions and life experiences. Spending time in nature provides the space for inward reflection and the potential for transformation as we become conscious of our interconnectivity with the world around us.

Ecotherapy or ecopsychology, is the study of our psychological relations with the rest of nature on our planet.

Ecopsychology provides a solid theoretical, cultural, and critical foundation for ecotherapeutic practice.

We regard ecotherapy as applied ecopsychology. So both the terms can be used to describe the phenomenon.

Ecotherapy takes into account the scientific understandings of our universe and th indigenous wisdom

Grasping the fact of importance of ecotherapy deeply shifts our understanding of how to heal the human psyche.

We can learn more about the currently dysfunctional and even lethal human-nature relationship.

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Ecotherapy as applied ecopsychology employs many methods in attempts to reconnect the psyche and the body with the terrestrial sources of all healing.

Ecotherapy is different from psychotherapy in its focus on transforming our relationship to the natural world and in its reliance on non-risky and non-intrusive interventions.

Ecotherapy recognizes and seeks to address how the pain of the ecological world shows up regularly and systematicaly as pain within and between human beings.

All the work unfolds within an Ecological Circle (see the work of founding father Howard Clinebell) that ethically links receiving and experiencing healing from nature, place, and Earth with giving something substantial back to the earthly sources of healing.

The Circle underlines the personal and collective need to transition from spectators, exploiters, and destroyers of the natural world into appreciators, lovers, advocates, and witnesses building a consciously regenerative relationship with that world.

Relationships of healing with nature, place, creatures, and Earth require us to acknowledge our participation in industrial, governmental, or organizational actions that harm the environment and to seek alternative actions whenever possible.

The relationship with nature holds diversity- cultural, ecological, epistemological, spiritual-to be a precious source of enrichment, value, and, ultimately, survival.

The more diverse the ecosystem, the greater its resiliency, creativity, and resourcefulness. That's the rule of vital importance in the healing.

According to Howard Clinebell, who wrote a book on the topic, the term Ecotherapy refers to healing and growth nurtured by healthy interaction with the earth.

Howard Clinebell also called ecotherapy “green therapy” and “earth-centered therapy.”

Ecotherapy is a union between the ideas of ecopsychology and psychotherapy.

Fundamental to ecotherapy is connection to the natural world we live within.

Ecotherapy uses a range of practices in order to help us connect with nature and with our ‘inner’ nature.

Personal distress can be alleviated by developing the mutual ultimate connection between inside and outside.

Through careful and constant learning to care for the natural environment we learn to care for and nurture ourselves.

Ecotherapy is about personal healing and healing for the earth.

Ecopsychology focuses on our connection with the natural environment.

In traditional psychology, the ‘psyche’ is seen in isolation from its natural environment.

Ecopsychologists see this split between mind and nature as being at the heart of our current ecological crisis.

”Understanding one’s existence as such is always an understanding of the world” (Martin Heidegger)

How we encounter and interpret the natural world creates a personal narrative that gives meaning to our emotions.

We may feel depressed, anxious, lost and alone, overwhelmed by our thoughts and feelings and unable to draw upon previous ways of coping.

Psychotherapy in combination with the natural environment allows us to develop new ways of understanding ourselves and feel integrated in our lives.

Spending time in nature provides the space for inward reflection and the potential for transformation as we begin to understand the universe.