Eco-Creative Therapy
Find Wellness Through ​Creativity and Nature
WHAT IS ECO- CREATIVE THERAPY
​
Eco-Creative Therapy provides a one to one psychotherapy service, one of the few supporting services that continues to connect people in person in the Cork area.
​
Nowadays most people work for hours in front of computer screens. This can lead to isolation that can complicate all types of emotional detachment. Eco-Creative Therapy brings individuals into nature and away from the world of technology. It essentially, is a form of counselling in the outdoors.
​
In Eco- Creative Therapy there is generally an emphasis on mindfulness and impermanence, making it effective for managing anxiety, stress, fatigue, grief, loss, stress, and building coping and resilience skills.
​
Eco- Creative Therapy is a branch of psychotherapy which helps provide an approach that provides a different way of accessing trauma. By creating , emotions can be externalized, which opens the door to processing feelings.
GOING BACK AND THE SCIENCE
​
For centuries nature and being outside has been known to be a natural healer. Being outside boosts the immune system and sunlight can help reduce depression, anxiety and stress.
​
Silvotherapy ("forest bathing") is now known and practiced in many countries around the globe. We owe this invention to the Japanese government, which, in the 1980s, encouraged its population to take walks in the woods for physical and mental well-being. Since then, 62 areas in japan have been declared a "forest therapy base" or "forest therapy road".
​
During the current pandemic across the world, the country, throughout Cork we can see more and more people embracing nature by walking, running, cycling and reconnecting with friends in a safe way.
​
The addition of Eco- Creative Therapy facilitated by an accredited Art Psychotherapist can provide an extra dimension to the psychotherapeutic process. It can provide and evoke a natural safe sanctuary. Nature reflects and mirrors human behaviour as it constantly changing. Working in unison with the natural world, a Psychotherapist can provide a safe contained layer helping a person work through emotional or mental health concerns.
​
On a deeper level this type of creative process, takes a client away from the routine of everyday life into another realm and space where nature acts as the guide.
​
THE THERAPIST AND THE SESSIONS
​
Our natural outdoor environment has an abundance of creative material - from leaves to fallen branches. Items such as twigs, grass, pinecones, bark, mud, stones, logs, water, as well as found items that find their way into nature can all be used. The Creative Psychotherapist (Patrick) also brings an array of nature friendly creative materials that can be interconnected with a client’s creation. Transforming living materials into compositions, marking territory and changing spaces, as examples of the psychotherapy process can be hugely significant in the treatment of clients.
​
Eco- Creative Therapy provides a choice for clients who prefer to work outside in person to person rather than by phone counselling or teletherapy. The act of walking together can be a very safe way to begin to connect at the beginning of a session.
Patrick is very aware of the therapeutic value of outdoor life and being in nature. Patrick embraces nature in his everyday life and is a more than regular walker. He has walked most of the southernly mountain ranges in Ireland and has even undertaken five different long walking routes, of both the Portuguese and Spanish Caminos (one of which was the length of Ireland). In his Camino walks Patrick believes that nature can provide lessons in overcoming difficulties that can corresponded to life. The Caminos for instance, can throw up many obstacles and difficulties but also provides a lesson in how to transform oneself by managing to cope, to overcome and by find your way .