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4 Ecotherapy Patricia H. Hasbach Here beyond the urban boundary in the foothills of the Western Cascades —with a whitewater river as my foreground—the senses are engaged with a natural world that ever changes. I love when day gives way to night and the long shadows meld into darkness. The air cools, birds quiet, and the sound of the rushing water becomes more prominent. In winter, it snows heavy on high, and so the elk feed low. In spring, the river swells with the thaw of the mountains’ snowpack. The osprey pair returns to the nest that sets high atop a snag that stands directly across the river from my house. I sometimes see osprey plunge into the icy water and when lucky rise slowly under the weight of a fish too large, circling several times in an attempt to gain elevation—its catch looking like a tail of a kite, sometimes still struggling to break free. The death of one supports the life of another. So goes life on the river. The natural world is full of transitions. As a clinician for more than 25 years, I have had the privilege of working with people whose lives are in transition. They are settling in, moving out, connecting, disengaging, grieving and celebrating, and despairing, confirming, exploring, working with vulnerabilities and building on strengths. These transitions can lead to their growth and unfolding. They almost always do. In my sessions with clients, I draw on many traditional therapeutic approaches. Most of these approaches have as a basic tenet that to address if not solve a problem, one needs to know the origins of the problem. Sometimes these problems are comparatively straightforward, involve recent choices and events in a client’s life, and are solved in a handful of sessions. But often the problems are long-standing, and their origins go back further, often to childhood. They take time to uncover and bring to light so that they have less unseen power over us. It is also the case that we exist within social systems of increasing scope—family, 116 Patricia H. Hasbach friendships, communities, and culture—and the origins of problems can lie more within one than another. But one account of origins that has become increasingly clear to me over the years is hardly recognized within the therapeutic communities: to no small degree, the origins of clients’ problems also involve the human dissociation from the natural world. For hundreds of thousands of years, our species came of age interacting with nature that has shaped the human psyche and nurtured us body, mind, and soul. With our increasingly urban and technological age, the distance between then and now is large. With that distance come psychic costs. Therein lies part of the problem and part of the solution. That is the basic idea that lies at the heart of ecotherapy. In this chapter, I characterize and argue for what ecotherapy is and is not and seek to expand the traditional boundaries of ecopsychology. I describe specific practices and methods that incorporate nature into the therapeutic process. My goal is to offer an ecological view of the human psyche and with that deepen the discourse about how healers might approach work with clients in a more comprehensive way—one that takes into account our origins and deep rootedness in the natural world. What Ecotherapy Is and Is Not Ecotherapy is an emerging form of therapy that enlarges the traditional scope of treatment to include the human-nature relationship. At its most fundamental level, ecotherapy encompasses all that good traditional psychotherapy entails, which is many things and is different for different therapists. But there are some common features. First and foremost, therapy involves a deep therapeutic relationship between the therapist and the client. To build such a relationship, the therapist employs active listening and nonverbal communication skills. She offers unconditional positive regard to the client and uses techniques such as mirroring—reflecting back what has been heard—to deepen the discussion. She makes a client feel comfortable, welcomed, and accepted, much like a skilled host or hostess welcomes a cherished guest. The therapist has learned to listen deeply to what is being said and especially what is not. She interjects questions or makes observations at critical junctions in a client’s story and works to create an intimacy that is unique. Such intimacy takes time to develop. The therapist offers the client an abiding, steadfast presence. The therapist conveys a strength and confidence...

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