Cascadia Training for Professional Development

Introduction to Nature Therapy: More than a Walk in the Park
2025-09-20 09:30 - 17:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Shoreline Center, 18560 1st Ave NE, Shoreline, WA, 98155, United States
2 Law & Ethics CEs!
Introduction to Nature Therapy: More than a Walk in the Park
Presented by: Becky Robbins, MA, LMHC, CEAT, CYT, NBT
When: Saturday, September 20th, 2025 | 9:30 am – 5:00 pm Pacific Time
Where: Live, In-Person event at Shoreline Center & At noon, we will break for an hour lunch and will then reconvene at Hamlin Park, located at 16006 15th Ave NE, Shoreline, WA, at 1:00 for the remainder of the workshop, which will be outdoors.
Continuing Education Credit Hours: 6 CEs – 2 count as Law & Ethics CEs | $190.00
This Introduction to Nature Therapy: More than a Walk in the Park workshop offers participants the opportunity to become familiar with nature-based therapy, and specifically, what is involved in a “walk-and-talk” therapy session outdoors in a natural setting. Participants will become aware of the legal and ethical considerations necessary to provide this option for client sessions. Participants will learn the key concepts and significant benefits to providing therapy sessions outdoors, in a natural setting, complemented by using expressive arts modalities. The presenter will also teach how these approaches connect through a polyvagal lens.
Participants will learn what it takes to provide ethical, impactful, confident, and competent therapy for clients in an outdoor natural setting. The presenter will teach participants how to include expressive arts modalities and somatic awareness techniques into nature therapy, as these techniques will be interwoven throughout this daylong experience. Experientials will be facilitated to aid participants in their own embodied experience of a session in nature. Participants will leave this course ethically and legally prepared to facilitate an outdoor, nature-based therapy session, understanding the client appropriateness (what clients are a good fit for this type of therapy), location considerations (parks, trails, beaches, weather conditions, parking, etcetera), and critical skills needed for facilitating a helpful walk-and-talk session outdoors (multidimensional awareness, various approaches to facilitation, and safety considerations). Participants will leave this experiential workshop feeling confident and inspired to offer a more integrated clinical approach than they thought possible!
Objectives:

Consider legal, ethical, and documentation implications for doing nature-based therapy outdoors.
Identify important considerations for specific populations.
Understand the legal and ethical considerations of practicing nature-based therapy in a walk-and-talk session.
Describe differences among ecotherapy, nature-based, adventure-based, and wilderness therapies.
Identify key concepts of ecotherapy and nature-based therapy
Assess who to work with and when, where to go and why, what to expect and consider in various regions and environments when using nature-based therapy.
Understand the therapist’s identity in nature-based versus ecotherapy practices.
Introduce common types of nature-based approaches into walk-and-talk therapy sessions.
Understand how to incorporate several approaches from a range of ecotherapy, expressive arts, and nature-based modalities.
Learn appropriate applications of each of these approaches.
Gain an experiential understanding and demonstration of three nature-based and expressive arts concepts with specific populations and/or symptomologies.
Explore and practice techniques for doing walk-and-talk therapy sessions that can be used immediately with appropriate clients through demonstrations in this workshop.
Identify the benefits of nature and the use of expressive arts modalities as a way to complement your existing clinical practice.
Learn how to become a better container for working with your clients through self-care, self-regulation, and personal practice.

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