Everything comes together: ecopsychology and communication at Sacred Earth

Working at Sacred Earth has enabled me to combine things that I’m good at with things that I care about: ecopsychology, earth care and people care.

Twenty-odd years’ writing and communications experience comes in handy when you’re trying to spread a very important message.

Sacred Earth is doing something really unique: recognising the importance of the connection between people and nature, and using it to create communities and improve wellbeing.

A new movement

We’re at the forefront of a new movement, where land-based organisations like ours can become community builders, ethical farmers, micro-business hubs, environmental custodians, educational and therapeutic pioneers.

Our courses and workshops focus on building a closer connection with nature for the benefit of our mental health. Seeing how they’ve helped other people has inspired me to train as a facilitator myself.

I’ve experienced at first hand – through surfing and working on the land – how nature can support, inspire and enchant us. These experiences have totally transformed my life for the better. I believe that, as a practitioner, I can help others gain some of these benefits for themselves.

There’s another important reason: when people get closer to the natural world they start to care more about it. Facing increasingly rampant climate change and environmental destruction, we need to understand that nature is not a commodity or resource to be used for making money. It is our home – and we should cherish it.

All about ecopyschology

I’m currently doing my foundation year training in ecopsychology and nature-based practice at the Natural Academy. Reading theorists like Bill Plotkin and Andy Fischer had taught me that our mental wellbeing is intrinsically linked to that of the planet. When we damage the earth, we damage ourselves.

Early humans understood that their wellbeing – and indeed, their essential identity – was connected with the natural world around them, from the local flora and fauna right out to the cosmos itself. There are still tribes of people around the world who live with this type of connectivity.

But the birth of agriculture, and the industrialisation that followed, have led the western world away from nature to such an extent that most of our belief systems are based on the assumption that we are entirely separate from it. The natural world is seen as a commodity or resource to be exploited. It has no intrinsic value.

Modern western psychology has split our internal world away from the outer one. There is not a single recognised disease of the human psyche that connects madness to the non-human world.

One of the aims of ecopsychology is to redress this balance. How can we not be emotionally affected by the death and destruction we are wreaking on the planet – our home? A stated aim of many in the field is to build on this connection so that we develop a more caring attitude to nature. Both our mental health and the world around us would benefit.

My long term aim is to practice as an ecotherapist but to continue using my communications skills to spread a wider message: about how we can build a more positive future for all.