Wild Facts

In a world that urges us to tidy our edges, tame our grief, and translate our aliveness into usefulness, wild therapy offers something else entirely:
 a remembering.

Not a technique. Not a fix.
 But a return to the tangled, breathing, aching web of life.

Ecopsychotherapy and nature-based practice are not add-ons. They are undoings. Unfastenings. They call us back into relationship—
 with Earth, with body, with sorrow, with wonder, with the mysteries that defy domesticated language.

Even in the hard-edged sprawl of city life, the wild still hums beneath it all.
 A crow’s cry at dawn. The crack in the pavement where green insists.
 The scent of rain-soaked earth rising through concrete.
 These are not accidents. They are invitations.

When we listen, therapy becomes more than a conversation.
 It becomes a co-walk with the unseen,
 a rhythm felt through moss and breath and bare feet,
 a conversation with thresholds—inner and outer, human and more-than-human.

Power shifts here.
 Not abolished, but made visible.
 Not held in titles, but in the incline of a hill,
 in how we choose to pause or proceed, speak or stay silent.
 These moments unravel the domesticated versions of who we think we must be.

We, wild therapists, do not carry polished answers.
 We bring baskets woven with lineage, land, loss, learning, and love.
 We carry maps that blur at the edges, songs that have no lyrics,
 and the kind of presence that holds complexity, contradiction, and timing that doesn’t bend to the clock.

This work is relational down to its roots.
 It listens with the body.
 It learns from grief.
 It trusts the intelligence of wind, bone, and compost.
 It invites transformation not through force, but through consent, reciprocity, and reverent attention.

Because something in you remembers.
Something your professional training didn’t name.
Something your muscles know when your hands touch soil.
Something your breath recalls when the wind speaks your name.

You might already be a therapist, a trainee, a bodyworker, a youth worker, a coach, a listener by vocation or necessity.
Or you might be a human longing to re-member yourself—to come into relational, Earth-rooted practice that holds complexity, contradiction, and more-than-human connection.

There is no one path here.
No checklist. No hierarchy.
We don’t require a specific credential—
what we look for is a felt sense that this work is calling you,
and a willingness to approach it with humility, openness, and courage.

Our Introduction to Wild Therapy weekends are designed to offer just that:
a taste. A play. A pause.
You’ll explore working outside as well as inside, with wildness not just as a location, but as a way of being-with.

It’s a chance to feel into the ideas, try them on, see what stirs.
No pressure to commit. No obligation to continue—
just an invitation to listen with your whole body.

If you can’t attend one of our Introduction weekends, or feel pulled towards something different…
our full range of Wild Therapy Experiences [link to Experience page] offers opportunities to taste this work, each facilitated by a Wild Therapy practitioner.

Become a Wild Therapist .

This is not a training in the traditional sense. This is a returning. A descent into the tangled root systems of your own aliveness, in kinship with deer, stone, bramble, and dream.

Since 2011, this year-long journey—seeded by Nick Totton and carried forward by a web of facilitators —has grown like a mycelial network: each cohort emerging with its own texture, rhythm, and unexpected fruiting. There is no fixed map. We move with the weather of the world, with the griefs and gifts each person carries, with the land itself.

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The bones of the training are simple and sacred: 

A series of closed-group residentials where we live in close relation with more-than-human kin—tree, buzzard, river, sky. 

Each day begins with a social dreaming matrix, where we speak the language of our night and waking dreams, weaving individual symbols into a collective dreaming.

We find a sit spot—a place to return to, spending longer within the forest  over time. 

We work in pairs, in triads, and as a whole group, not just on but with the land—as co-therapists, as curious apprentices to its teachings.

This training is about composting what no longer serves,

so you can root back into the wild intelligence that never left you.

It is a re-membering.

A shift from a human-centred gaze to an earth-centred presence.

From “holding space” to being held.

Through this deep immersion, you will begin to attune to the wider dreaming of Earth—wisdom that pulses beyond the limits of individual understanding. You will begin to sense the world through your skin again.

You’ll explore how to be with others outdoors,

not as a technician,

but as a responsive node in a living web.

This work seeps into how you show up with clients—indoors, online, in cities or forests—because it changes the way you listen.

No essays. No evaluations. No performance.

Just presence, practice, and the deep listening that reweaves what’s been disconnected.

There is no single shape a wild therapist must take.
 Some come with qualifications. Others arrive with grief, with longing, with lived experience that never fit inside formal boxes. Some are trained. Some are tired. Some are ready to listen in a new way.
We welcome those drawn to this path—especially those the dominant culture has pushed to the edges.
 If your story hasn’t always belonged in therapy rooms, know this: difference is not a detour here. It’s part of the pattern.
 You are not an exception.
 You are part of the field.
This path is for therapists, trainees, space-holders, healers, edge-walkers, misfits—
 and for those who feel the wild stirring in their bones, even if they’ve never had the language for it.

We know that the path into therapy—like the path into the forest—is not the same for everyone.
 Some are handed maps.
 Others carve trails through underbrush alone.

We actively welcome those whose lives, bodies, ancestries, and identities have been pushed to the margins of therapeutic spaces—
 Including (but not limited to) those who are Black, Brown, queer, trans, disabled, neurodivergent, working class, chronically ill, grieving, mad, not-categorizable, wild in ways the dominant culture doesn’t know how to name.

 You are part of the ecology.
 You are needed.

We won’t pretend this training is always accessible.
 It happens outside, on uneven, living Earth, with all the unpredictability that brings.
 But if your body asks: Is there a way in for me?—we want to meet that question in relationship, not policy.
 Let’s talk. Let’s listen. Let’s see what’s possible together.

Those called to the year-long Wild Therapy Practitioner training begin not with application forms, but with conversation.
 A felt, mutual exploration of readiness—not measured in polish or perfection, but in your ability to sit with discomfort, unraveling, and emergence.

Let’s be clear.
This training isn’t soft-focus nature therapy.
 It’s not about escaping the world.
 It’s about facing it—more naked, more honest, more accountable.

There will be mud.
 There may be rupture.
 You will meet parts of yourself that were exiled by politeness, professionalism, and productivity.

You might find yourself sobbing in the dark, or laughing hysterically with the wind for no reason you can explain.
 This isn’t therapy as usual—this is therapy as survival, compost, and ceremony.

We don’t come here to feel good.
 We come here to feel true—in all its mess, mystery, and magnificence.

The land doesn’t flatter your ego.
 She reflects it back to you—distorted, tangled, yearning—and then she waits.
 She doesn’t speak in bullet points.
 She moans, she withholds, she invites.

So if you're looking for tools, certainty, or a new modality to market—this probably isn’t for you.
 But if you're longing for a way of working that is rooted, raw, and resourced by the wider web of life—then maybe it is.

If you're hoping to become a more impressive therapist, this may not be for you.
 If you’re willing to become a less certain, more feral, more honest one—step closer.

If you think the forest will heal you gently with fairy dust—this is not that.
 If you're ready to be cracked open by slug slime, cold mud, and group dynamics that mirror your most avoided patterns—welcome.

If you're looking for a brand, a badge, or a shortcut—this gate won't budge.
 But if you’re ready to throw your credentials on the fire, and listen with your whole animal body—
 then the land might just start whispering back.

And bring your sense of humour. You’ll need it.
 Especially when your sit spot starts giving you feedback more honest than your supervisor ever dared.

Where does Wild Therapy sit alongside other ways of working therapeutically outdoors?
Wild Therapy is part of a wider, rich landscape of outdoor therapy, ecopsychotherapy, nature-based therapy, and earth-based therapeutic practices. It shares deep kinship with these approaches, yet brings its own flavour—one that is entangled, relational, and committed to complexity.

Like many forms of therapy outdoors, Wild Therapy recognises that the more-than-human world is not just a backdrop, but a participant in the healing process. Whether we are sitting with the trees, walking a muddy trail, or listening to the wind, the other-than-human is always in relationship with us. This isn’t metaphor—it’s felt, alive, and embodied.

What makes Wild Therapy distinct is its emphasis on:

✺ Interweaving: Rather than applying nature to therapeutic models, we entangle our practice with land, weather, place, and presence.
 ✺ Rewilding self: We support clients in composting internalised domestication, awakening their natural self, and embracing the full spectrum of feeling in wild spaces.
 ✺ Decolonising therapy: We explore how modern therapy often reproduces harmful patterns of control and separation—and how decolonising, relational, Earth-connected practice can interrupt that.
 ✺ Complexity over certainty: We welcome paradox, contradiction, and the unknown. This is not therapy for tidy outcomes, but for personal growth outdoors that is honest, tender, and brave.

Our Wild Therapy practitioners may draw from and contribute to wider fields such as ecotherapy, ecopsychotherapy, nature therapy, walk and talk therapy, and creative outdoor therapy. You might meet a wild therapist who blends modalities in unique ways—but what unites us is a commitment to relationship, to Earth as co-therapist, and to ways of being that do not reduce nature to a tool.

✺ Want to learn more?
 Whether you are seeking a wild therapist for your own journey [link], or looking to deepen your practice through wild therapy training [link], ecopsychotherapy training, or outdoor therapy CPD, this site offers a place to begin.

We also host nature retreats, in-nature workshops, and opportunities to experience therapy outdoors in its many wild and beautiful forms.

To be honest... we can’t tell you exactly. And that’s the point.
Wild Therapy doesn’t follow a script—it follows the land, the weather, the moment, the mystery.

What we can say is this:
Expect wildness. Expect to spend time outdoors.
Expect the possibility of stillness, movement, ritual, laughter, and silence.
Expect the full range of emotion—from deep sorrow to unexpected joy—to be welcome.

Every gathering is shaped by the facilitator(s), the group, the place, and the time.
Some offerings are solo journeys. Others are collaborative dances.
No two are the same, and none are centrally controlled.
Each one is born from the care, training, and creative intuition of wild therapists from our community.

If you see an event listed here on our site, you can trust that it’s held by a genuine wild therapist—someone rooted in deep training, relational practice, and Earth connection.

The best way to know more?
Follow your curiosity.
Explore the listing that calls you, and let the unknown be part of the invitation.

How do I find my way into Wild Therapy?

There’s no single gate, no tidy path—just many ways to step in.
 This website is a good place to begin your wandering.

☼ Want to become a wild therapist?
 Start here to explore the training pathway.

☼ Looking for a wild therapist to walk alongside you?
 Browse our practitioner list and feel into who calls you.

☼ Curious to experience Wild Therapy for yourself?
 Explore upcoming events—workshops, retreats, and wild gatherings offered by our community.

☼ Want to linger in the words, stories, and soil-scented reflections of wild therapists?
 Our Wild Writings page holds books, blog posts, articles, and composted insights to browse at your own pace.

And if your question doesn’t fit neatly into any of these pathways…
 you’re in the right place.
 Reach out to us directly—we’d love to hear from you.