OUTDOOR COUNSELLING
Outdoor Counselling is for those who being outdoors is their preference. It can be a powerful form of counselling, more impactful and memorable, or simply an environment that's more suited to your needs. It is standard therapy done outside.
It can range from sitting in a garden to finding a good riverside meander or an interesting view point, a local fell or mountain walk as a setting for a therapy session.
The common way to describe outdoor counselling is 'walking and talking'. It can take place anywhere the terrain is easy to moderate and within the ability of participants or this can have a more adventurous twist!
It can be a one-off session, complimenting standard indoor counselling, or be exclusively Outdoor Counselling.
It can sometimes be a well-planned adventurous experience that informs the therapeutic work taking the form of a meaningful and enhancing challenge.
Henry David Thoreau, Walden: Or, Life in the Woods
“We need the tonic of wildness... At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be indefinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature.”
John Lubbock
“Earth and sky, woods and fields, lakes and rivers, the mountain and the sea, are excellent schoolmasters, and teach some of us more than we can ever learn from books.”
ABOUT CHRIS
I have worked in the outdoors for a long time now throughout my career. First, as an outdoor instructor in 1997, then after completing my Outdoor Studies degree in 2001, Development Training at the best outdoor centres in the UK and lecturing in colleges and universities that specialise in outdoor learning in all its forms. I founded the first Outdoor Counselling service in the UK at South Lakeland Mind in Cumbria.
Over the years, I have been qualified in various outdoor activities, and have completed first aid training. I have been accredited by the institute for outdoor learning for my work with individuals and groups outdoors.
Personally, I am still out walking or mountain biking almost every weekend, and have recently got into paddle boarding.
At Kendal Therapy I offer Outdoor Counselling and use the river Kent and local fell walks around Kendal, occasionally venturing into the higher fells of the Lake District.
Extra care and thought for you
In addition to the standard counselling agreement, you will be asked to read and sign additional terms and conditions for outdoor therapy. There is also a health questionnaire to complete. I will help you with the faffy stuff, so we can get on with it and plan your first outdoor counselling session. It is really very special to complete counselling outside. I will go through all this with you in the first session.
£55.00 (per one hour session)
Reduced fees may be negotiated for short-term work.