Nature Based Therapy

18/06/2026

🍃 EOFY is here… and it’s the perfect time to invest in your professional development.

What if nature became your co-therapist?

Many helping professionals are feeling exhausted by systems that prioritise productivity over presence.

We’re often taught to do more, fix more and carry more, yet many of us are longing for a more connected, sustainable and holistic way of working.

I’m excited to invite you to our Introduction to Nature Based Therapy – a live online training for helping professionals wanting to integrate evidence-informed, nature-based approaches into their existing practice.

🌿 Learn practical nature-based interventions

🌿 Explore holistic approaches to wellbeing

🌿 Understand the foundations of Nature Based Therapy

🌿 Experience nature-based mindfulness activities

🌿 Discover ways to care for yourself whilst supporting others

This workshop is suitable for Social Workers, Counsellors, Psychologists, Occupational Therapists, Nurses, Educators, Coaches and other helping professionals.

💡 With EOFY approaching, now is a great time to invest in your learning.

If you’re self-employed or your employer supports professional development, you may be able to claim this as a work-related study expense. Please seek advice from your accountant or tax professional regarding your individual circumstances.

✨ Sometimes professional development isn’t about learning something new.

It’s about remembering something ancient.

Nature has always been a teacher. We are simply learning how to walk alongside it again.

🔗 Learn more and enrol: https://www.naturebasedtherapyacademy.com.au/IntroNBT

An interactive online workshop for professionals seeking a holistic and sustainable approach to healing—yours and others’.

08/06/2026

🌙 REM Sleep, Dreams & the Spirit Realm: A Reflection Through My EMDR Training ✨

For thousands of years, people across cultures have believed that dreams are more than random mental activity. Dreams have been viewed as places of wisdom, healing, guidance, and connection—sometimes even as gateways to the spirit realm. 🌿🦋

As someone currently training in EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing), I have become increasingly fascinated by the relationship between dreaming, memory processing, healing, and spirituality. 🧠💚

Science tells us that REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep is the stage of sleep most associated with vivid dreaming. During REM sleep, the brain processes emotions, integrates memories, and supports psychological healing. 🌙💭

Interestingly, some researchers have suggested that EMDR may engage natural processing mechanisms that share similarities with what occurs during REM sleep. Through bilateral stimulation, EMDR helps the brain process experiences that may have become “stuck” following trauma or overwhelming life events. 🔄✨

Yet there is another dimension to this conversation.

Across spiritual traditions, dreams have long been understood as potential sources of guidance, symbolic wisdom, ancestral connection, and encounters with realities beyond ordinary waking consciousness. 🌌🕊️🌳

While science can measure brain activity, eye movements, and sleep cycles, there is currently no scientific instrument capable of objectively measuring whether someone has connected with a spiritual realm, received guidance from an ancestor, or experienced something sacred during a dream. 🔬

01/06/2026

Sometimes the deepest relationships are not built on health… but on wounds recognising wounds.

Often, two people with experiences of neglect, abandonment, shame or emotional pain find each other and form an intense connection.

One person may cope by over-giving, over-functioning, people pleasing, rescuing or loving harder. The other may cope through control, emotional distance, defensiveness, charm, anger or self-protection.

At first, it can feel profound.

One person sees beyond the armour — the pain, insecurity and wounded parts hidden underneath — and stays. They offer patience, compassion and understanding, hoping love will heal what hurt.

And for someone who has long felt unseen, this can feel deeply powerful.

But here is the difficult truth:

Compassion without boundaries can become self-abandonment.

Empathy can turn into over-responsibility.

Patience can become tolerating behaviour that slowly harms us.

You can deeply understand someone’s wounds and still recognise that understanding does not require sacrificing yourself.

Love matters.

Compassion matters.

But healing cannot happen for someone who is unwilling or unable to face their own pain.

Sometimes the hardest act of love is walking away — not because you stopped caring, but because you finally started caring for yourself too.

If this resonates, maybe the question is not “How do I save them?” but “What part of me needs saving, nurturing and healing?” 🌿

27/05/2026

🌿 Are Mental Health Diagnoses Just Trauma Responses? A Trauma-Informed & Decolonising Perspective 🌿

Many of us have been taught to see mental health diagnoses as disorders that sit within an individual — something “wrong” with a person that needs to be fixed.

But what if we asked a different question?

❓ What if many symptoms are meaningful adaptations to lived experience?

In many systems, diagnosis is based on clusters of symptoms — anxiety, emotional overwhelm, hypervigilance, low mood, dissociation, difficulties concentrating, relationship struggles, sleep disruption, distress, or behavioural changes.

And diagnosis can absolutely have value 💡

✔️ Supporting communication between professionals
✔️ Guiding treatment pathways
✔️ Validating experiences
✔️ Helping people access funding, care, and support

But diagnosis alone rarely tells the whole story.

A trauma-informed lens invites us to shift the question from:

❌ “What is wrong with this person?”

To:

✅ “What happened to this person?”

From this perspective, many experiences begin to make sense.

🌊 Hypervigilance may have helped someone stay safe in chaos
🛡️ Emotional shutdown may once have protected against overwhelm
🤝 People-pleasing may have preserved connection and safety
🔥 Anger may have been protection
🌱 Anxiety may have developed in response to unpredictability

What we often call “symptoms” may sometimes be intelligent adaptations to adversity, trauma, attachment disruption, grief, exclusion, or chronic stress.

Importantly, trauma does not just impact emotions.

🧠 It can shape biology and nervous system regulation
💛 Relationships, trust, and identity
🌍 Beliefs about self, others, and safety
🌿 Behaviour, coping, and survival responses

A decolonising lens deepens this conversation.

Rather than viewing distress solely as something located inside an individual, it asks us to consider:

✨ Context
✨ Relationships
✨ Community
✨ Culture and identity
✨ Connection to land, meaning, spirituality, and belonging
✨ Historical and intergenerational experiences

Healing, in many relational and Indigenous ways of knowing, has never been solely individual.

🌱 Healing happens in connection
🤝 Healing happens in relationship
🪶 Healing happens through story, culture, meaning, embodiment, and community

This does not mean diagnosis has no place.

Sometimes diagnostic language is useful and necessary.

But perhaps diagnosis is only one part of the story.

Maybe we also need to ask:

❓ What happened?
❓ What helped this person survive?
❓ What strengths remain?
❓ What conditions support healing?

Perhaps mental health care is evolving toward something more holistic, relational, culturally responsive, and compassionate 💚

From:

“What is wrong with you?”

To:

“What happened, what helped you survive, and what might support healing now?”

24/05/2026

🌿✨ Exciting new chapter in learning and healing ✨🌿

I’m excited to be beginning training in EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing) 🧠💫 — an evidence-informed therapeutic approach used to support people in processing trauma, distressing experiences, and stuck emotional patterns 💛

As someone deeply passionate about holistic healing 🌱, nervous system regulation 🫶, and nature-based therapy 🌳, I was fascinated to learn an interesting part of EMDR’s origin story 👣

Its founder, Dr Francine Shapiro, reportedly noticed during a walk in nature 🌿🚶‍♀️ that distressing thoughts seemed to lessen as her eyes naturally moved while walking through a park 🍃👀 This moment of curiosity sparked what later became EMDR therapy ✨

There’s something deeply meaningful in that for me 💚 — a reminder that healing can emerge through movement 🚶, curiosity 🔍, connection 🌏, nervous system regulation 🫀, and time in nature 🌿☀️

As I begin this training 📚✨, I’m looking forward to expanding my therapeutic toolkit 🧰, deepening my understanding of trauma healing 🧠💛, and continuing to explore how we support healing of mind, body, spirit, and nervous system in compassionate, grounded, and holistic ways 🌻🌊🌳

Growth as a practitioner is a lifelong journey 🌱✨

23/05/2026

18/05/2026

There is a sound older than language.

Before words, before stories, before the nervous system learned to stay alert to survive… there was vibration.

Humming.

Bees hum to pollinate life.
Hummingbirds hum while hovering in stillness.
Humans hum to soothe, regulate, and reconnect.

Research now shows that humming can support the nervous system by slowing the breath, stimulating the vagus nerve, reducing stress, and creating a felt sense of safety within the body.

Maybe healing is not always something we think our way into.
Maybe sometimes it begins with vibration.
With rhythm.
With breath.

A soft hum.
A hand on the chest.
A moment of returning home to ourselves.

Hum like the bee.
Hover like the hummingbird.
Heal like the body knows how.

Continue Reading: The Medicine of Humming: What Humming Bees, Hummingbirds, and the Human Nervous System Can Teach Us About Wellbeing
https://www.naturebasedtherapy.com.au/humming-for-nervous-system-regulation/

12/05/2026

Not everyone is called to this work for the same reason.

Some people join to integrate Nature Based Therapy into their professional practice and earn certification.

Others feel drawn to the journey for something more personal; a need to slow down, reconnect, reflect, and experience a different way of being.

That’s why the September 2026 intake of the Advanced Accreditation in Nature Based Therapy now offers two participation pathways.

Both pathways move through the same journey: Holistic health, Indigenous-informed perspectives, nature-based mindfulness, creative practices, holistic counselling, and self-care.

The difference is simply how you choose to engage. With only 12 places available, this remains a small, well-supported learning experience.

Applications for September 2026 are now open.
If something in you has been quietly saying there’s more to this… perhaps this is your next step.
https://www.naturebasedtherapyacademy.com.au/NBTAccreditation

Nature Based Therapy is an emerging field in both complimentary therapies and holistic health treatment which has been incorporated into the practice of many medical and mental health professions. Nature is a powerful healing resource.