The Nature Practice: Ecotherapy

At dawn

While the city is still asleep, I leave the last houses behind and walk along a lonely path. The path is narrow, a trail of trodden clay that leads me through the fog – pastel gray, as if the night had left its breath on the fields. With every step, the asphalt dissolves beneath my soles, giving way to the soft resistance of the earth. The hills of the landscape sway gently, as if carrying me until the forest begins.

Here, between the trees, the dew lifts like an invisible curtain. My breath becomes deeper, slower, as if the air itself were teaching me to breathe again. The noise of the past week—the vibration of my cell phone in my pocket, the roar of engines, the bright flickering of screens, the flood of news that hits my head like stones—all of it loses its power. Not because I am running away. Not because I am hiding. But because I remember.

I am not in the forest to escape. I am not here to hide or to avoid the pain of the world. I am here to remember what attention is: not focusing on a single point but widening my gaze until it touches the edges of the visible. I am here to strengthen myself—not against the world, but with it. To heal what civilization has opened in me: the wound of alienation. And to make a contribution that arises not from calculation, but from belonging.

The wound of modernity

Our history is one of distance. We settled down, drew boundaries, and defined property. We founded nations, invented systems that detached us from the earth like leaves from a branch. Nature became a resource, infinite and silent—a warehouse, not a living being. But what we did to the earth, we also did to ourselves: we reduced ourselves. Our lack of connection to this planet ate away at us like rust. Indifference spread, then disrespect, and finally the various faces of destruction that we are reaping today.

Our lack of connection to this planet ate away at us like rust. Indifference spread, then disrespect, and finally the various faces of destruction that we are reaping today.

We know that we live in an ecological web – that every breath, every step, every decision is a thread in the web of life. And yet, we are not yet fully awake. Most of us live in a kind of half-sleep, numbed by the noise of modernity. We believe we can heal the wound with the same logic that caused it. Green technologies, climate-neutral products, CO₂ compensation—all important tools, but they remain trapped in the old paradigm. They change the machine, not the spirit that drives it.

Electric cars hum more quietly, but they roll on the same roads. Compostable plastic decomposes faster, but it is produced with the same greed. Seeds that defy climate change grow in hollowed-out soil. We are replacing the tools, not the attitude. And so the noise does not diminish—it just becomes different. It penetrates deeper.

The noise and its victims

Noise is not just sound. It is the sum of all unanswered questions, all suppressed fears, all ignored warning signs. It makes us "short of breath" in our heads, as if the air were running out. Sleep becomes shallow, attention frayed, self-confidence crumbles. Over time, the numbers rise: more depression, more exhaustion, more of that strange, nameless sadness that settles on the skin like a damp cloth. Blood pressure climbs, inflammation markers rise – the body cries out what the soul can no longer say.

Only when the forest swallows the noise do you realize how much it has upset you. Like a false note that finally falls silent. You sit down on a warm rock, your hands wrapped around your knees, and breathe out longer than you breathe in. Suddenly, the sounds are what they should be again: landscape. Not attack. The wind in the treetops, the crack of a branch, the distant murmur of the stream – they become a language you had almost forgotten.

This is where Ecotherapy begins: the art of belonging. Not as an escape, but as a homecoming. As an exercise in mindfulness that focuses not on the self, but on the web in which it exists. It is a threshold step – the conscious crossing of a boundary. A place in nature where you settle down until the earth recognizes you again. A quiet thank you that re-establishes the threads between you and the place.

The premise is simple: the self is not an island. It arises where breath meets weather, where skin feels the wind, where feet touch the ground. Healing is not the repair of a defective part, but the care of this living boundary. It is not about "being outside" as a backdrop for therapy that remains in the mind. It is about participation.

The therapists are not people. They are the wind rustling through the branches. The shadow that falls across the ground. The smell of damp earth after rain. The call of a bird that suddenly breaks the silence. The rough surface of basalt under your fingertips. The steep climb that makes your lungs burn. Elements that invite our nervous system to regulate itself—not through control, but through response.

How the therapy feels:

A session begins with consciously crossing a threshold. You orient yourself: Where is east? What do you hear at the edge of your hearing? What does your body already know about the weather before your mind can name it? Then you slow down your pace. You place one hand on the bark of a tree – cool, rough, alive. You hold the other hand in the air, feeling the invisible currents. You learn to distinguish between distant, middle and near: the rustling in the treetops, the beating of a bird's wings, the pressure of the moss under your feet.

You sit down. On a rock, a fallen tree trunk, a mossy ledge. Your breath becomes as wide as your gaze. The light untangles the knots in your forehead, the wind sorts through your thoughts like leaves. A bird call gently pushes your attention to the side – and suddenly you are no longer the observer, but part of the action.

Then comes the unhurried action. Turning over a leaf and discovering the tiny creatures on it. Following a trail of water that winds its way to the stream and understanding where the rain you cursed yesterday is going. Rubbing a handful of earth between your fingers, reading its crumbs like a message: thirsty. Patient. Alive.

Sometimes the session becomes an adventure. A steep slope that requires courage. Wet rocks that teach caution. A river that can only be crossed with a clear view and a steady step. Challenges that are not overcome, but experienced – and that teach you to trust yourself and the place.

What remains

When you get up, the world is not suddenly healed. The news continues to tick, the machines whir, the crises await. But something has shifted: the relationship. You feel again that you are not standing above the earth, but in it. That responsibility is not a burden, but a consequence of this connection.

Ecotherapy does not promise miracles. It is a process. A learning to stabilize attention, to release paralysis, to clarify values. It works with the human operating system: Attention. Regulation. Reciprocity. It teaches us not to live as visitors, but as participants – in a community, with responsibility, in one place.

We will not recycle our way out of our crisis. Technology will not save us. But we can learn to belong again. And from this belonging, we can build cultures that not only survive, but heal and transform.