Introduction to Ecotherapy

Would you describe yourself as a person who

• Loves nature and want to spend more time outdoors and connecting to the non-human world,

• Appreciates the healing and restorative power of being outdoors and want to find opportunities bring nature into your work and life,

• Is exploring how to incorporate nature-based therapies, coaching or counselling to enhance your offerings to clients and patients, or

• Have an interest in ecotherapy but do not know where to start?

Did you know that ecotherapy (also called nature-based therapy or green therapy) and nature-based personal development activities are growing in popularity?

• The majority of people spend 80% of their time indoors (and Vit-D deficiency is a big health issue around the world)

• People all over the world have a renewed interest nature-based personal growth and leadership training

Why Imade this course

Starting off in nature-based therapy can be intimidating. It's hard to know where to start and most people think you need to go on long hikes or know the names of trees or be an expert in psychology or ecology.

In this course I will show you that its much easier to start than you think, and teach how you can bring ecotherapeutic activities into your work, home and communities.

I invite you to become an Ecotherapeutic Guide

This online, self-paced positive eco-psychothereutic course shows you how to connect nature-based activities with personal growth, learning and wellbeing goals.

The purpose of the program is to develop you own experiential understanding of positive ecotherapy, and articulate it in your own words based on personal insights and engagement with nature during the learning journey.

The program content integrates easily into daily life, including work, home and community - against the busy lifestyles and backdrop of remote work and studying.

This experiential program teaches simple nature-relatedness skills, using both indoors and outdoors activities to bring more nature-connected ways of thinking, relating and doing into people's lives.

What you are going to learn

• What ecotherapy is

• Why ecotherapy is becoming more popular

• The importance of biophilia (love for connecting to nature) for human wellbeing

• How to do ecotherapy (instead of just theory)

• A simple framework and repeatable and scaleableecotherapeutic model, practice and tools

• Three cognitive skills to support attention restoration, gain more clarity, improve decision making and enhance creativity

• How to achieve goals and realize your potential learning from nature

  
  

Benefits of completing this Introduction to Ecotherapy course

• Immersing yourself in the indoors and outdoors course activities will promote subjective, personal wellbeing and nature intelligence;

• Builds confidence by following a simple, structured process, practices, tools and content to guide others in how to integrate and cultivate personal and cultural transformations with nature as mentor;

• Restorative (including identity restoration, attention restoration, mood restoration and relationship restoration);

• A fun way for people to get together again (online and offline);

• Promotion of positive emotions;

• Building trust and hope;

• Helps to protect and restore your inner and outer life from machine influence and marketing;

• Supports your future fit career development: help yourself and support your team and clients; and

• Fosters cultivating high performance cognitive skills of focused concentration, intentional mind-wandering and soft fascination.

Certification

Upon completion of this course, you will receive an Ecotherapeutic Guide certification issued by Udemy. To receive the formal EcoNova Positive Ecotherapeutic Guide Certificate, you will need to complete a few additional steps which I will describe in the course.

Managing your learning expectations

Forest therapy

In this course you will learn more about many different types of nature-based therapy, with the goal of encouraging versatility in approaches, such as gardening therapy, wild swimming and more. You will be able to integrate what you learn in this course in your own forest therapy practices.

More about the style of learning design and delivery of this course:

This course design integrates applied positive psychology, the AGESneuroleadership model for adult learning, neurosequential model of education/therapy, therapeutic arts and contemplative practices.

The course content and approach is based on years of research, including scientific papers, training with nature-based traditions, and corporate experience in designing and delivering professional leadership programs.

The course is a contemplative practice experience and personal regenerative journey, encouraging you to learn from nature and find ways to express your knowledge and understanding in your own words and visual language.

Tools and competencies to guide others in positive ecotherapeutic practices once the course is completed:

Many students find each module to be rich in depth and with sufficient theory and experiential activities and tools to immediately start offering their own positive nature-therapeutic guidance of others.

They are able to do that without my assistance, using their guidebooks and going back to the course content where needed and support from the learning forum members. For example, a student has been designing and hosting group events (including incorporating ecoart activities) for more than six months just working her way through the different modules.

A knowledge space and learning forum on Mighty Networks with peer support:

Curated and private learning platform free from advertising and other social media challenges.

Peer-to-peer mentoring on the learning forum helps everyone build on their practice - from those starting off to people with more experience.

Opportunities to connect with and gain perspectives from people with different worldviews and cultures and nature environments, such as Greece, Germany, USA, Canada, Ireland, Peru, South Africa and more.

In the private Mighty Networks learning forum I provide more in depth supplementary resources, and you will find a comprehensive knowledge library including wiki established since 2019.

I am also available on the forum for chats, direct mentoring and offer additional free events to support your learning journey.