#95 Julie Brams on re-earthing psychotherapy practice for collective healing
“We’re conditioned to believe that this is just the way it is, rather than recognizing it as trauma response to this severing from our environment. The severing is mental, and the trauma is a major gaslighting, a major cognitive dissonance, because our bodies know we’re connected but we’re having to behave as if we’re not.
It’s funny to me because a lot of times when therapists turn to nature, they look to it as a tool and how nature benefits human beings? It’s hard fact, science upon science that we are healthier when we are in relationship with the outdoors. At the same time, when we’re going to nature to relax, we’re not getting to the root problem that is causing the stress, which is that trauma. We’re not shifting the paradigm back into reality; we’re just using what we’ve been torn out of as the medicine, but not really letting us re-root. ”
Nature “connectedness” is often prescribed as a healing modality for our trauma states but this eco-psychological approach fails to get to the root of our socioecological problems - the separation of the human being from nature. Whilst utilising the benefits of nature immersion to aid our healing journeys is essential, how can we move away from individualistic healing paradigms to re-earthing the nature-embedded mind, bereft of social conditionings on human exceptionalism, to heal and regenerate in the collective?
In our first guest episode of the year, we invite to the show Julie Brams, an Earth-centered psychotherapist, meditation practitioner/teacher, and author of The Nature Embedded Mind: How the Way We Think Can Heal Our Planet and Ourselves. The Nature Embedded Mind is a groundbreaking new book at the intersection of psychology, ecology, and social justice. Certified as an ANFT Forest Therapy Guide, and founder of the nature-informed retreat and education organisation Elemental, Julie integrates Earth-centred psychotherapy, neuropsychology, meditation, and nature immersion to help individuals and communities heal their relationship with earth.
Drawing on clinical practice, evidence based methodology, and scientific research, as well as lived experience and relational work, Julie guides us on how healing our disconnection from our Earth is the next frontier of psychology.
What will be covered:
Reviving the natural mind (unconditioned by dominant culture) - mind more than our thoughts and conditioning (that separate us from the rest of nature)
Challenging anthropocentric paradigm in pyschotherapy and mental health practice to nature embeddedness
Need for therapy to diagnose systemic severing from nature as a trauma
Moving away from seeing nature as a tool for therapy to re-embedding therapy practice in nature
Commodification of nature deepening rupture in human-nature relationships e.g. water losing its spiritual, cultural and agentic value when “sold” as a resource to be exploited by humans
Importance of re-rooting to place to value nature and her gifts for us
Need to ask yourself how do we want and need to be in relationship with nature through remembrance of how we once were in relationship with nature
As a certified forest therapy guide, Julie promotes self-discovery through facilitating nature immersion and not pushing a psychotherapy agenda onto clients as they navigate their inner and outer worlds in a forest
Healing as a human has to be done in relationship with other humans
Reviving deep listening as a relational and playful practice we engaged in frequently as children but also as activism to galvanise e.g. Julie’s re-rooting course
Centring play and creativity in all aspects of life
Re-strenghtening grief rituals and spaces to move forward from loss to love
Validating heartbreak so our spirits stay strong —> intimate connection of joy and sorrow
Reframing grief as love without home/place, a liminal space between loss and recovery —> need to come from place of patience when trying to find love’s place again
Allowing the more-than-human to hold us in grief and healing (what you need will be brought to you)
Episode resources:
Connect to Elemental - nature-informed retreat and education organisation co-founded by Julie
Read The Nature Embedded Mind: How the Way We Think Can Heal Our Planet and Ourselves here
Apply to the Re-Rooting course here
Connect to Julie on Instagram @experience.elemental
