Returning to Nature: The Healing Power of Ecotherapy Across the Seasons
In a world that rarely slows down, many of us find ourselves disconnected, from our bodies, our emotions, and the natural world around us. Yet, healing often begins not in doing more, but in remembering how to be, to sit, to feel, to breathe, and to return to the innate rhythms that live within us and around us. Nature, in all her quiet wisdom, offers us this reconnection.
Ecotherapy is a form of therapeutic work that gently invites us back into relationship with the earth, with the seasons, and with the deeper, often quieter parts of ourselves. By aligning with nature's cycles, winter’s stillness, spring’s awakening, summer’s abundance, and autumn’s letting go, we find the metaphors and physical experiences that support trauma recovery, emotional regulation, and a return to a calm, centred self.
The Seasons as Medicine
Each season offers something essential to the healing process. Winter, with its bare branches and hibernation, invites us into stillness. It gives permission to rest, to turn inward, and to allow what no longer serves us to fall away. This can be a deeply supportive time for those working through grief, trauma, or burnout.
Spring follows with gentle encouragement to begin again. New shoots break through frozen ground, often unseen at first, just as new insights and beginnings often emerge slowly from within. There is no rush in nature, healing, too, takes time.
Summer brings warmth, light, and expansiveness. The long days invite joy, community, and a sense of confidence. It is a time to nourish the parts of ourselves that have begun to grow.
Autumn, in turn, is the season of release, letting go of what we no longer need. Just as trees release their leaves, we too can learn to shed old stories, habits, or expectations. This cyclical process mirrors the journey of therapeutic healing.
Regulating the Nervous System Through Nature
Many people experience trauma or distress as a dysregulation of the nervous system, swinging between states of hyper-arousal (anxiety, panic, restlessness) and hypo-arousal (numbness, disconnection, fatigue).
Ecotherapy can help support them back into their window of tolerance, the space in which we feel safe, calm, and able to respond effectively to life.
Spending time in natural environments, particularly ancient woodlands, near bodies of water, or in open fields, has been shown to reduce cortisol (the stress hormone) and regulate heart rate and blood pressure. A study conducted by the University of Illinois found that simply being near trees can reduce stress and enhance emotional well-being.
Nature invites our senses into presence. The rustling of leaves, the scent of damp earth, the sound of birdsong, all these quiet stimuli help to ground the body and re-establish a sense of safety.
Earthing or grounding, standing barefoot on the grass or walking along a beach, helps the body reconnect physically and energetically to the earth, often bringing about an almost immediate sense of calm and reconnection.
The Power of Liminal Spaces
There are particular places in nature, where the land meets the sea, where forest edges fade into fields, that hold a unique kind of magic. These liminalspaces often echo the in-between states of the human mind during periods of change, healing, or uncertainty. In Ecotherapy, these spaces can become powerful metaphors and safe containers for exploring difficult emotions.
At the coast, where the tides move in and out, clients often find a space to let emotions rise and fall naturally. The rhythm of the sea mirrors the breath, the tears, and the waves of sensation in the body. It is here, too, that the rawness of emotion can be met with compassion and spaciousness.
Colour, Sound and Sensory Healing
Nature offers not only beauty but therapeutic colour, texture, and sound. Greens soothe the nervous system; blues calm the mind; the browns and earth tones provide a grounding presence. The gentle buzz of bees, the flutter of butterflies, or the call of a robin in the hedgerow all serve as reminders that life continues, and so can we.
Creating your own nature therapy space, whether in a back garden, a balcony with plants, or a local park, can be a powerful act of reclaiming peace. Sensory gardens with fragrant herbs, soft moss underfoot, and flowers that attract bees and dragonflies can become small sanctuaries for healing.
Even if you cannot physically access nature, visualising these places and tuning into the senses through guided imagery can help regulate the nervous system. The body remembers what it feels like to be safe, even when the mind forgets.
Moon Rhythms and Natural Time
Our ancestors lived by the moon and the tides, by the stars and the shifting light. These rhythms are still embedded in our DNA. Honouring the transition of day into night, or the phases of the moon, reminds us to slow down and observe. The moon governs the tides, and we too are bodies of water, it is natural that we feel its pull. Learning to let go at dusk and not carry the burdens of the day into the night is a healing practice in itself.
A Personal Invitation: Working with Phiona
For those in or near Hampshire, Phiona offers both face-to-face Ecotherapy in tranquil, natural settings and therapy sessions from her peaceful garden space, a haven designed to support deep rest and inner growth. Whether among the trees, in a quiet meadow, or walking the forest paths, Phiona invites clients to gently reconnect with the healing forces of the earth.
Online support is also available for those who are unable to access natural spaces physically. Through guided meditation, sensory work, and somatic awareness, it is still possible to access the body’s inner connection to nature.
A Life Rooted in Nature: Phiona’s Journey of Deep Connection with the Land
Phiona has always felt most herself among the trees, the herbs, the shifting skies and the ancient cycles of the seasons. Her life as a gardener has not just been a passion, but a quiet devotion, a deep listening to the land that many in today’s society have forgotten. Over the years, she has cultivated more than just plants; she has grown a profound relationship with nature’s rhythms, attuning herself to its subtle language and quiet wisdom.
There’s something sacred about working so closely with the earth, year after year. You begin to feel the pulse of the land, sense the shift in the wind before the storm arrives, and intuit the quiet promise held in winter buds. Phiona has come to know these signs intimately. The old weather rhymes passed down through generations—“Ash before oak, in for a soak; oak before ash, in for a splash”—aren’t just quaint sayings to her, but part of an inherited understanding of nature’s patterns.
Like many traditional farmers, she understands that nature is not something to be controlled or conquered, but collaborated with. Those who have worked the land for generations know the value of leaving parts of it wild, so the natural world can thrive alongside human activity. This respectful relationship with the earth allows for a different kind of harvesting, one that is reciprocal, sustainable, and deeply rooted in reverence.
While modern life has grown more detached, wrapped in screens and walls, Phiona continues to walk barefoot through the fields, foraging plants for cordials and winter syrups to strengthen the body through the colder months. It’s a way of life that would seem foreign to many now, but it is ancient and enduring. She watches the birds each spring, noting their nest-building, an early sign of the season’s shift. She sees the herbs begin to turn, marking the waning of summer and the whisper of autumn’s approach.
This intimacy with the land has shaped how Phiona lives, how she teaches, and how she guides others. Nature, she believes, is always speaking to us. You only need to slow down and listen. A flowering plant does not worry about whether it will bloom again. It simply is, fully present in its brief moment of splendour. There is much wisdom in that for us.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, while human society grew silent and distant, nature carried on undisturbed. If anything, it grew stronger, louder, more vivid. As traffic stilled and factories paused, birdsong filled the mornings and wildflowers returned to the verges. The earth reminded us that it doesn’t need us to survive, but we, perhaps, need it more than ever.
Phiona now shares this connection with those she works with. She helps others to remember a time when they were closer to nature, when they splashed in puddles, made perfumes from rose petals, and chased butterflies with wide eyes. She invites them to reconnect with that inner child who once knew how to listen to the wind, to talk to the trees, and to marvel at the tiniest creeping creature in the soil.
Nature, she teaches, is not separate from us. We are a part of its cycles, just another thread in its great, living web. When we remember this, we find a profound sense of belonging. In the woods, in the hills, in the wild forgotten corners of ancient land, there is healing to be found. Not because we escape our lives there, but because we return to something older than fear, older than trauma. We return to presence. To stillness. To now.
It is this presence that helps to heal, mind, body, and soul. In nature, nothing is fixed, yet nothing is lost. Everything transforms. Just as the seasons turn, so too can we release the past and let go of the future. In wild spaces, crumbling ruins, sacred stones, windswept fields, we remember: nothing is permanent, and yet everything belongs.
No one is ever truly alone in nature. There is always a sound, a sign, a sense of being held by something greater. Phiona’s life is a testament to this truth. Through her way of living, and the way she shares it, she offers others a way back to the land, a way back to themselves.
And it begins, quite simply, by stepping outside.
Nature is not outside of us—it is within us.
When we allow ourselves to align with the seasons, the rhythms, the elements, we remember who we are. Healing does not always look loud or fast. Sometimes it is a bud slowly unfurling. A wave meeting the shore. A leaf finally letting go.
Nature holds the memory of healing. All we must do is return.
Whether you're dealing with stress, anxiety, trauma, bereavement or looking to break habits, reframe fears, or phobias. Phiona can help you develop approaches to overcome these barriers that prevent you from living life to the fullest. Helping you navigate life’s challenges and take the next step towards a brighter, calmer future.
If you feel you would like support, and you feel therapy may be the answer. I offer 15 minute complimentary consultations, for you to have the chance to discover how therapy might support you. Visit my website for more information.
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