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THERAPY | SELF-HELP
How to Solve Problems While You Walk
Go out into nature and use your surroundings as metaphors
In 2019 I participated in a workshop called “Taking Therapy Outside” where I and 11 other therapists lived in a cabin in the woods for four days. We cooked and ate as a community, and spent most of our waking hours outside. It was July, and we were in England, so our instructions said to bring clothing for all weathers.
Our workshop took place in Shining Cliff woods, in Derbyshire. After breakfast each day, we would meet as a group at the fire pit, receive our instructions for the day, and go off alone into the woods around us, or sometimes in pairs if we were doing therapy.
One memorable exercise was to use the metaphor compass (my version of this is the image at the start of this story) and choose a direction in which to walk e.g. adulthood (the present), old age (the future), adolescence (the past) or childhood (the deeper past). We were told…
