What is Nature Informed Therapy?
Nature-Informed Therapy (NIT)
Nature-based therapies are clinical and wellness interventions that incorporate elements of the natural world to support healing, growth, and emotional well-being. Backed by scientific research, these therapies harness nature’s proven benefits to help individuals reconnect with themselves, others, and the environment. This therapeutic approach includes a wide range of modalities, such as: Wilderness Therapy, Ecotherapy & Ecopsychology, Horticultural Therapy, Animal-Assisted Therapy, Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy, and Shinroku ("Forest Bathing"), to name a few.
Science & Philosophy of NIT
As Western science deepens its understanding of trauma, it has become clear that human physiology plays a central role in mental health. Therapies that reintegrate the mind-body connection—such as EMDR and Somatic Experiencing—have proven highly effective, especially for clients who haven’t found relief through traditional talk therapy. Yet even with these advances, many still struggle in conventional office settings, finding it difficult to feel safe, grounded, or truly connected to their providers. TSH believes that healing is most effective when it includes a relationship with the natural world. Our approach is rooted in Stress Reduction Theory (SRT), Attention Restoration Theory (ART), Human Attachment Theory, Object Relations Theory and biophilia—the innate human desire to connect with nature—a connection believed to be encoded in our very DNA. Research shows that time in nature can lower cortisol levels, reduce blood pressure and heart rate, improve sleep, enhance focus and creativity, ease depression and anxiety, and even accelerate recovery from illness or injury.
Nature as a Co-therapist
If we consider that mental illness often arises as an adaptation to unhealthy environments, then offering clients access to restorative natural spaces (open fields, forests, gardens, and even symbolic landscapes of the mind) can be a powerful step toward wellness. That’s why we work in partnership with Nature as a Co-Therapist. Nature offers our clients metaphor, mirroring, mentorship, and secure attachment that may be difficulty to access and receive from human others. It teaches, reflects, inspires, and invites us to slow down, shift perspective, and rediscover a sense of belonging. When we’re willing to listen, nature becomes a wise and compassionate guide on the path to healing. Backed by scientific research and thousands of years of time-tested practices across cultures, these therapies harness nature’s proven benefits to help individuals reconnect with themselves, others, and the environment.
Nature Attachment & Ecotransference
Ecotransference is a psychological process in which an individual projects onto the natural internal experiences, such as emotions, memories, expectations, and relational patterns. Evolving from the psychoanalytic concepts of (counter)transference, ecotransference may include the personification of nature, while also encompassing a broader and less specific projection of lived experience and attachment patterns onto landscapes, ecosystems, and non-human life. Through ecotransference, the natural environment becomes a relational and symbolic space that receives, mirrors, and shapes psychological meaning, serving as a site where attachment, care, fear, longing, responsibility, and repair are emotionally and imaginatively enacted. Whether we are conscious of it or not, we are frequently relating to nature and that means it can serve as a critical relationship in understanding ourselves.