Description:

This workshop explores the role of art in nature-based therapeutic practice through the existential-phenomenological lens of Martin Heidegger’s ontology of art — particularly his understanding of art as a site of truth (aletheia), a happening of unconcealment, where beings emerge into presence (Heidegger, 1971). The session considers how engaging with natural materials in natural settings can open space for clients to encounter and disclose aspects of their being that often remain hidden in everyday life. This ontological foundation offers practitioners a radically different orientation — not through analysis or intervention, but through presence, disclosure, and dwelling.

Rather than treating art as symbolic expression or communication, this approach understands artistic activity as a site where truth happens — where the world and the self are revealed in their becoming. When situated within the natural world, artistic engagement becomes a clearing (Lichtung): a space where the hidden dimensions of existence — the inapparent — may emerge. The therapeutic act, then, is not one of directing or interpreting, but of guarding this space and supporting the conditions for presencing.

This perspective challenges dominant models of intervention by emphasising presence, process, and relational depth over directive technique. The therapist’s role is reimagined as that of a witness to emergence, whose task is not to interpret but to dwell with what is revealed. Therapeutic space becomes a site of shared dwelling (Mitsein), where client, practitioner, nature, and artwork participate in a co-poetic unfolding of meaning.

The theoretical grounding includes existential psychotherapy (Spinelli, 2007; van Deurzen, 2015), eco-phenomenology (Abram, 1996; Toadvine, 2009), and trauma theory (Ogden et al., 2006; Fisher, 2021), highlighting the relevance of such work in contemporary mental health practice. Recent empirical findings in eco-psychology and arts-based interventions (Buzzell & Chalquist, 2018; Malchiodi, 2020; Jordan & Hinds, 2016) support the efficacy of these methods in enhancing self-regulation, narrative integration, and existential coherence.

Ultimately, this approach invites practitioners to reconceive their role — not as interpreters or experts, but as facilitators of the space where the inapparent can emerge into presence. Nature, in this model, is not merely therapeutic — it becomes a co-creator of meaning, and art the medium through which this unfolding takes form.

Learning Objectives:

1 - Learn to approach artistic processes not merely as symbolic or expressive, but as ontological events where personal and existential truths emerge.

2 - Develop practical methods for integrating natural materials and settings into therapy sessions to support emotional presence, self-discovery, and regulation.

3 - Understand how art-in-nature practices support trauma recovery through embodied, non-verbal, and relational processes rooted in safety and presence.

References:

Abram, D. (1996). The spell of the sensuous: Perception and language in a more-than-human world. Vintage Books.

Buzzell, L., & Chalquist, C. (Eds.). (2018). Ecotherapy: Healing with nature in mind (2nd ed.). Sierra Club Books.

Fisher, J. (2021). Transforming the living legacy of trauma: A workbook for survivors and therapists. PESI Publishing.

Heidegger, M. (1971). Poetry, language, thought (A. Hofstadter, Trans.). Harper & Row.
(Original work published 1950s–1960s)

Jordan, M., & Hinds, J. (Eds.). (2016). Ecotherapy: Theory, research and practice. Macmillan International Higher Education.

Malchiodi, C. A. (2020). Trauma and expressive arts therapy: Brain, body, and imagination in the healing process. Guilford Press.

Ogden, P., Minton, K., & Pain, C. (2006). Trauma and the body: A sensorimotor approach to psychotherapy. W. W. Norton & Company.

Spinelli, E. (2007). Practising existential psychotherapy: The relational world. SAGE Publications.

Toadvine, T. (2009). Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy of nature. Northwestern University Press.

van Deurzen, E. (2015). Existential psychotherapy and counselling in practice (3rd ed.). SAGE Publications.