What is Wild Therapy?

Wild Therapy is quickly explained as 'forest school with therapeutic outcomes'. Sessions vary as much as the participants on them and can be tailored to suit each individual's needs.

Within wild therapy, practice ranges from bushcraft to mindful arts and craft to forest bathing and a vast range in between.

Sessions generally run for 90 minutes.

What does Wild Therapy involve?

A child with attachment disorder, for example, may need someone who simply 'shows up' for her, so our sessions can be anything from play-based forest school to completing the Arts Award, CREST science awards and Woodland Trust's nature detectives. The objective of these sessions may be to have a child learn to trust someone new, and believe that they will show up when they say they will.

A child who is frequently excluded from school may not be able to focus in the classroom, but in the outdoors they can complete the Junior Forester or John Muir Trust Awards - achieving an award when they've grown to believe they aren't capable and never will can do wonders for self-belief and confidence. If you can saw down a (dead) tree, what else can you achieve?

Adults often have to be persuaded to allow ourselves down time, so something as simple as mandalas for leaf-dipping or other outdoor art can be incredibly therapeutic! People say after an hour of outdoor art they feel more refreshed than they do after week-long holidays. Mindful outdoor art practice is incredibly therapeutic as is time spent sitting around a fire for talk therapy. One-to-one sessions of walk-and-talk therapy often take the pressure off too, making it much easier to talk openly.

Please get in touch with Luschka for more about wild therapy.