Train with EcoWisdom to become a Nature and Forest Therapy Guide
Online 6-month training begins April 1 2024.
Consider joining us! info@ecowisdom.ca.
EcoWisdom promotes the view that the activities of caring for and benefitting from nature should be available to all.
Our innovative, flexible, and collaborative approach enables us to offer programming to people who live with disability/chronic illness or face other access or equity challenges. Participants from diverse backgrounds enrich our programs. Throughout our training we cultivate practices that are attentive to matters of inclusion, intersectionality, and equity. Our EcoWisdom certification not only leads to a solid foundation in nature and forest therapy practices but also it equips guides to adopt an inclusive approach with their peers and their participants in a variety of community and work settings. You will also be introduced to creative ways of applying the learning to your personal, community, and work life.
We have several EcoWisdom trainers and mentors who live with disability/chronic illness. We understand that developing a high level of competency and the need for flexibility/support can co-exist. This training program is based on our Accessible Nature Wellbeing Program (ANWP) model. Our approach is individualized, the cohorts are deliberately kept small, and we aim to build community so that collaboration can extend beyond the training period.
Scholarships are often available to participants who belong to groups that have been historically marginalized due to disability, race, and/or sexual/gender identity, and who are committed to using mindful nature connection programs to advance social or environmental justice.
We welcome conversations about accommodations that will support your full participation in our programs and training.
Application, Fees, and Scholarships
Program Components
Foundational Practices:
- Nature connection practice
- Nature-based self-care to foster resiliency
- Contemplative communication skill development
- Collaborative leadership
- Place-based learning
- EcoWisdom Forest Preserve conservation
- Cultivating compassion for self, one another, and the earth
Learning Modalities
- Online course curriculum with online discussion forum
- Monthly live training sessions with guest speakers
- One-to-one mentoring
- Small and whole group sharing
- Optional bi-weekly drop-in session to review concepts and practices
Supplementary Experiential Learning:
- Participate in public Accessible Nature Wellbeing Programs (ANWPs)
- Facilitate program components as a member of a team
- Engage in citizen science research
- Possible future connection with the EcoWisdom Forest Preserve, land, programs, talks,
collaborations, grants, or projects
Topic Areas:
- Forest bathing
- Nature connection practices
- ANWP program design – online and in-person
- Land Based Philosophies and Spiritualities
- Ecology
- Forest medicine research & citizen science
- Definition of self-care & wellbeing
- Community capacity building & peer-support
- Reciprocal care – individual, community and earth
- Mindfulness meditation & neuroscience
- Diversity, equity, inclusion & accessibility
- Spirituality & ritual
- Embodiment, art, & poetry
- Mindful self-compassion
- Forest bathing/forest medicine research overview
Application, Fees, and Scholarships
Testimonials
Linda McGowan, Peer Support Leader, Community Nurse, Mount Everest Trail-Rider &
Author
The EcoWisdom nature guide training is individualized and flexible. As students, we are encouraged to use the mindful nature connection practices learned to care for ourselves and ground our work as forest bathing program facilitators. This accessible training is an initiative to nurture collective mental and physical wellbeing within a non-judgemental, welcoming, online, international community! Together, we come to understand what nature teaches us about diversity in its many forms as we develop self-compassion and empathy for other beings whether human, tree or animal. We learned how to design and facilitate effective accessible forest bathing
programs that are inclusive and relevant to people living with disabilities, chronic illness, and seniors. With this training, I have better managed health crises, made life-altering decisions to improve the quality of my life and become in touch with what really matters. I have also co-facilitated numerous Accessible Nature Wellbeing Programs online and in-person to serve the disability community and beyond.
Erin Oluyemi, Health Life Coach & Public Health Outreach Worker
This training has helped me explore therapeutic nature engagement in new and
fascinating ways. Learning how to develop and implement a full Accessible Nature
Well-being Program has certainly been a great tool for me to offer the different
communities, groups and businesses I work with. In addition to my one-to-one
coaching clients, I am incorporating mindful nature connection practices, grounded in
neuroscience, into my work within public health. For example, I have used what I
have learned to support people who are in medical isolation within a hospital setting –
caring for houseplants, offering guided nature meditations and using the wisdom and
universal language of nature as a source of metaphor, meaning and validation for
patients and their unique experiences. Participating in the EcoWisdom Community
Gatherings throughout the training and afterwards, has helped me to continue to
develop creative, innovative and impactful applications of nature therapy for my
clients.
Beth McKinlay, Educator, Spiritual Companion/Director & Climate Activist
I appreciate Ecowisdom’s inclusive and holistic approach to wellbeing. I felt empowered to engage in the training using my strengths and interests. For me, that included deepening my personal practices of self-care and self-compassion, exploring the overlap between experiences in nature and the spiritual journey and being able to integrate my learning using different forms of creative expression. The training has allowed me to confidently offer accessible forest bathing programs to a variety of groups, both outdoors and indoors. I find that people are delighted to learn that they can participate in nature connection regardless of mobility impairments or other forms of disability. Nature is such good medicine. In this training, we learned how mindful nature connection practices can calm our nervous system and expand our ability to be more resilient -an essential capacity as we cope with social injustice, eco-anxiety/grief, trauma, etc. I witness this when I offer forest bathing programs to environmental activists. They appreciate that feeling more peaceful, grounded and connected helps them to sustain their engagement and also influences the approach they bring to their activism. The EcoWisdom nature guide training offers powerful gifts to society and the earth.
Rosemary Anderson, Physiotherapist & Green Prescription Provider
It has been a privilege to complete this training with EcoWisdom and remain a
member of the EcoWisdom Community. I am now registered with ParksRX to issue
green prescriptions and have also integrated what I have learned into outdoor pole
walking physiotherapy in urban ravines, parks and along beach boardwalks. As a
result of this training, I have expanded the range of services I can provide to my
clients. I have assisted EcoWisdom co-founder, Dr. Kari Krogh, with in-person forest bathing programs and the online Accessible Nature Wellbeing Programs. She is an exceptional facilitator and I highly recommend this comprehensive training.
