Touching the earth: creating steps towards re-establishing a connection with nature

With the emergence of an industrialised and urbanised world, much of our environment has been damaged or destroyed. Our consumer-driven economy has resulted in fast and stressful lifestyles that are increasingly disconnected from nature. In an era where time is so limited, self-care is easily set aside; yet maintaining resilience when working closely with people is paramount to a healthy therapist’s clinical practice. Contact with nature has long been known to be beneficial to our well-being, and the use of art is well established as an effective tool for insightfulness and healing. This research project used an autoethnographic inquiry to investigate how making art could be combined with nature as a self-care strategy for therapists.