As an accredited psychotherapist and mindfulness / compassionate mind teacher, I have worked with people seeking support for their mental health and wellbeing for over 35 years. As an academic, I am interested in developing other practitioners and therapists.
Personally, I believe that one must embrace both traditional, evidence based approaches to therapy but also engage in a process of reflection and personal experiential learning. As such, I have my own mindfulness and compassionate mind practice and include these approaches in my therapy practice.
What is Mindfulness?
It has been suggested that we spend approximately 48% of our life living in automatic pilot! If you think about it, we could easily generate a list of activities that we do habitually and lose our present moment awareness. We constantly think and it is estimated that we have at least 70 to 80.000 thoughts in a day.
So if we are in automatic pilot we are not always fully aware / concious of our thinking. We know that thoughts can easily activate our emotions and often if we are unaware of thoughts and emotions we can react habitually.
Mindfulness is about leanring to be present in the here and now, enabling to recognise how we are feeling or thinking and provide us with space to invite wise mind to assist us in our responses or to simply allow ourselves to do nothing...
Bryan is a trained and experiecned Mindfulness Practitioner. He maintains his own minfulness practice and has delivered MIndfulness Based Cognitive Therapy Groups.
What is Forest Therapy?
Forest Therapy, is also known as Shinrin-Yoku, has been described as a ‘preventative medicine’. The term ‘therapy’ perhaps denotes something medical and indeed there is a growing literature that emphasises the many physical and mental health benefits of Forest Therapy. Some people refer to it as ‘Forest Bathing’ and this perhaps suggests a looser, and more personal experience with nature rather than a formal experience of ‘receiving’ therapy. It offers a great opportunity to spend time in nature, immersing yourself fully across all of your senses to promote physical and mental wellbeing. It involves a trained guide leading participants on a slow-paced experience, encouraging sensory engagement rather than physical exercise.
he evidence base would suggest that Forest Therapy for provides us with an excellent opportunity to spend time in nature and as such lower cortisol, helping to reduce feelings of anxiety. There is also a growing base of knowledge to suggest that forest therapy has also been shown to alleviate symptoms of depression and fatigue. Forest environments are rich in phytoncides, natural chemicals produced by trees, which can help to enhance our immune system as well as increase the production of white blood cells. Walking in nature has also been shown to improve attention skills and increase creativity and our ability to problem solve. Time spent in forests can also improve out overall cardiovascular health (reducing blood pressure and reducing heart rate). Overall, reconnecting with the natural environment promotes a sense of well-being and mindfulness and this also fosters pro-social attitudes and helps build communities. There is a growing awareness of the benefits of forest therapy across a number of different physical and mental health needs.
If you are interested in Forest Therapy, I will be running groups as we enter spring and summer but if you wish to incorporate this into your therapy with me, we can also discuss this.
Contact me in confidence on tel: 07301 260039 or by email:
