EcoTherapy

Why Walking Therapy Changes Everything

The transformation that happens when therapy meets the path.

For years now, I've been taking my sessions outdoors. Not because I read it in a manual or because someone told me I should, but because something shifts the moment I take myself outside and I trusted that it would benefit my clients as well as we stepped out of the clinic and onto the track together.

I recently came across an article in Psychology Today titled "Walk-and-Talk Ecotherapy Sessions Could Change Your Practice" and found myself nodding along, recognizing truths I've witnessed time and again in my own work. The author explores how outdoor therapy sessions have the capacity to create an experience that fundamentally transforms both the therapeutic relationship and the healing process itself.

The Magic That Happens Outside Four Walls

There's something about being in nature that removes the clinical coldness some people associate with traditional therapy. I've had clients tell me: "I would never have stepped foot in a therapy office, but walking and talking? That I could do."

And isn't that wondrous? That we can make healing more approachable simply by changing the setting and utilising the healing power of our natural surroundings.

When we walk together, something shifts. The article speaks of how walk-and-talk sessions facilitate embodied empowerment, and I've seen this truth play out on every pathway. I check in with each of my clients at the start and along the way - what kind of path feels right today? Sometimes they choose the flat, gentle route. Other days, they're ready for the steep climbs.

For those who've been silenced, who've felt disempowered in their lives, this simple act of choosing becomes profound. They have a voice. They co-create our direction. They practice advocating for themselves with each choice of which way to turn. And these skills? They begin to translate to life choices when they go home.

The Science and the Soul

The Psychology Today article beautifully articulates something I've long understood in my very soul - nature plays a relational role in the healing process.

The research backs up what we intuitively know - time in nature lowers cortisol, improves mood, increases confidence, and enhances sleep. But there's something the statistics can't quite capture. The article mentions experiences of awe: spider webs catching morning light, a bird landing at your feet, fungi pushing it's way upward, sun rays piercing through the canopy above.

Awe shifts our perspective outward, interrupts rumination, connects us to something larger than ourselves. It reminds us we belong to this earth, this living system that breathes with us.

What Qualifies This Work?

The article addresses something practical too - not all therapeutic approaches translate easily to walking the track. However ecotherapy, experiential work, somatic approaches, mindfulness and play - these naturally weave into the rhythm of walking.

And here's what no AI can replicate, what no app can provide: being in a living environment that regulates the nervous system, that offers transformation through direct experience and connects us to the pulse of life itself.

The Invitation

So am I qualified to take therapy outdoors? The answer is YES. Through two decades of lived experience, through training in multiple modalities, through the privilege of holding space for thousands of clients, through showing up again and again to the sacred work of healing.

But more than that - I'm qualified because I understand what the research is only beginning to articulate: we are nature, and nature is us. When we separate ourselves from the living world, we become unwell. When we return, we remember who we are. It is largely due to the remembrance of our wholeness and our interconnectedness that we heal.

The pathway doesn't judge. The forest doesn't shut it's doors to you. The river continues flowing whether we witness it or not. But when we do witness, when we walk, when we talk, when we allow the natural world to be part of our healing journey - that's when the real transformation happens.

That's when we remember we belong.

If you're curious about walk-and-talk ecotherapy sessions or want to experience the magic of nature-based healing work, I'm ready. Let's walk together.

Reference:

Psychology Today: Walk-and-Talk Ecotherapy Sessions Could Change Your Practice by Jennifer Heisz, November 2025