Green Art Therapy
I am a fully trained Forest School Leader and can bring the Art Therapy session outside safely. Green Art therapy draws on ecotherapy and ecospychology ideology. Ecotherapy works with the concept
that when we are connected to our natural environment, we are healthier and happier. It works to develop connection between people and their environment in order to encourage mental health. Ecotherapy sees nature as a co-therapist in the process and draws on natures ability to provide metaphors for life situations, to place the client’s problems in the wider cycles of life, and to contain emotions.
Sessions are likely to happen in parks, by river banks, and in woods. In a green art therapy session, nature is our art palette, and you are free to find metaphors in nature to help you express how things are for you, to manipulate natural materials like logs, sticks, stones, and leaves. Using natural materials as art materials has been championed by artists like Andy Goldsworthy and Chris Drury. You can experience the environment in the presence of the therapist, and use elements of the environment as metaphors to talk about life. It has been scientifically proven that nature effects mood and benefits our health when we have contact with it. Nature can heal our emotional troubles if we let it.
During a green art therapy session, I encourage participants to develop their connection to the natural world through exercises and games that connect us to our senses and our bodies, and with art activities that use the natural materials at hand as part of the process of creative expression.
