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VANCOUVER — It was at the top of a mountain on Bowen Island, just outside of Vancouver, that the mist cleared for Nancy Routley.
During a weekend eco-therapy retreat, she walked in the woods, sang and kept a journal. Then, on the last day, Ms. Routley, a family therapist from Whistler, B.C., sat and watched the mist lift off the mountain and disappear.
"It was a real connection to myself," she says.
Ms. Routley is one of a growing number of people seeking out eco-therapy as an alternative to mainstream psychotherapy. The approach seeks to restore health through a variety of simple outdoor activities aimed at forging a deep connection with nature. Eco-therapists use breath, movement and sensory awareness exercises, along with ceremony and imagination.
Activities include walking meditation, in which participants walk slowly in silence; active attunement, in which they take note of physical and emotional responses to surrounding sights and smells; and tree study, in which people study specific trees in such detail that they could draw it with their eyes closed. But not all eco-therapy is organized; even less structured activities, such as gardening and nature hikes, can be considered forms of eco-therapy, some practitioners say.
Research suggests that eco-therapy, while it doesn't replace medical treatment for serious mental illness, could help ease such mental-health issues as social isolation and depression. Last year, an editorial in the British Medical Journal pointed to the beneficial effects of a form of the green therapy, stating that "people who take part in conservation projects report subjective health benefits, ascribed to being outdoors and to feeling part of a greater system connecting beyond the individual. Such projects can help overcome social isolation among people with disabilities."
In May, the British mental-health charity Mind released a report, based on studies done at the University of Essex, calling for eco-therapy to be recognized as a clinically valid treatment for mental distress. The report, the first to look at how green exercise affects people with mental-health problems, said that 71 per cent of participants were less depressed and tense after "a green walk."
Even small doses of green appear to help. Other studies have shown that a window view of nature boosts recovery from surgery, leads to a reduced use of health-care services among prison inmates and improves work performance and job satisfaction.
Not surprisingly, California has been leading the way in the eco-psychology movement, with several universities now offering courses. New books and magazines devoted to the subject have hit the shelves, and related organizations and blogs have been created.
In Canada, however, the greening of therapy is a relatively new phenomenon with a steadily growing handful of practitioners.
Eco-therapists Jennifer Scott and Toni Pieroni lead wilderness therapy retreats in Vancouver, including the session Ms. Routley attended. "People, especially in Canada, are just waking up to eco-psychology," Ms. Scott says. "I'm so delighted it's the 'in' thing. The 'Al Gore effect' has made a huge contribution."
Ms. Scott says that green therapy is about much more than going for a walk in the woods to escape the stresses of daily life. "It's about really connecting with your surroundings and noticing the effect they're having on you," she says. "I often see people hiking and talking about their lives and they're not at all connected to the environment. So I encourage people to go alone into the forest and come back and share what's happened."
Liz Wood, a social worker from Squamish, also attended Ms. Scott and Ms. Pieroni's retreat on Bowen Island. With a husband recently diagnosed with a progressive illness, Ms. Wood was feeling distressed. "It shook my whole plan for life," she says of her husband's diagnosis. She wanted to restore her sense of optimism and "get back on solid ground."
When a friend told her about the retreat, she signed up. "It was just a weekend, but it helped remind me how I could find peace in my daily life," she said. "Now, I regularly go for walks in nature, and the experience confirmed that, for me, nature is a spiritual place."
Sometimes eco-therapy can even happen indoors. Linda Buzzell-Saltzman, founder of the International Association for Eco-therapy, recalls a client who was struggling with alcoholism. He was in the 12-step program and was stuck on the program's requirement to believe in a higher power. He told Ms. Buzzell-Saltzman that he didn't believe in anything.
So she asked him: When was there a time in your life that you felt close to something sacred. "He started talking about the redwood trees," she recalls, "and suddenly he got that trees were his higher power and he could move forward with helping his addiction, just transposing nature with God."
Some practitioners say that eco-therapy, while new and unconventional to some, actually taps into a long-standing tradition in healing. "The idea that nature can be good for you has been around for a long time, from the time of Buddha," says retired psychologist John Scull, who has been leading eco-therapy retreats since 1998.
The outdoors as a cure has been overlooked, Mr. Scull says, because "psychologists, like everyone else, have been stuck in their offices."
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