"One touch of nature makes the whole world kin" - William Shakespeare

ReWilding means re-establishing relationships of reverence and reciprocity with the natural world through ritual, ceremony and deeply embodied connection.

Most of us feel some sense of separation from other living beings and forms in our natural world. Perhaps you're experiencing anxiety or despair about the climate crisis and the extreme weather events we continue to suffer? ReWilding assists you reconnect in emergent, experiential and embodied ways. You'll be more able to face into the suffering of our world, with a sense of meaning and purpose. 

I am thrilled my colleague, Emma Green, is joining me to offer ReWilding Workshops for 5-8 people, starting in May 2024.

For us, as therapists, the recognition of humans as Ecological beings is deeply expansive and insightful. In our work we encounter a myriad of ways people can feel ill-at-ease, disconnected, dissatisfied, depressed, anxious, or overwhelmed. Most of these experiences also involve varying levels of physiological stress on a daily basis. 

ReWilding offers ways of profoundly slowing down, mentally and physiologically, which has a significant effect on health and wellbeing. You'll grow your capacity for deep attention, inwardly and outwardly. Being in the wild is certainly about having fun, and experiencing joy, awe and wonder. While you're likely to experience peace and tranquility, it's also a time to make space for anger, fear, or grief. These are all essential for healing. ReWilding is a way of coming home, in the broadest sense, to ourselves as a part of nature. It is a way to attend to the soul. 

Here in the Waiheke Island community, we are blessed with many environmental groups making fantastic efforts and effects in the motu. As a way of expressing our gratitude and being committed to reciprocity with the living world of this Island, we will make a koha, after each Waiheke group session, to such organisations in support of their work. For example, the Waiheke Marine Project, Te Korowai o Waiheke, Native Bird Rescue Waiheke, Love our Wetlands Waiheke, Forest and Bird Waiheke, Waiheke Resources Trust, and more.  

ReWilding Workshops 2024  Now taking registrations!

We are offering eight, day-long workshops in various locations on Waiheke Island. These dates are specially chosen to fall on important days in the Pagan (Celtic/Norse) Wheel of The Year which marks the Solstices, Equinoxes and the 'cross quarter' days mid-way between.

You are most welcome to register for one, or as many of these sessions as you wish. There will be some continuity between the workshops, and, each one will also stand alone as an enriching experience. Each day session will be followed up with a Zoom session a few weeks later. For more information see the ReWilding and Registration pages. Any questions, please call, text or email using the details on the Contact page. Emma and I are both Outdoor First Aid certified.

Waiheke dates: Saturdays 9am-6pm

• Samhain - 4 May 2024
• Yule (Winter Solstice) - 22 June 2024
• Imbolc - 3 August 2024
• Ostara (Spring Equinox) - 21 September 2024
• Beltane - 2 November 2024
• Litha - 21 December 2024
• Lammas - 1 February 2025
• Mabon (Autumn Equinox) - 22 March 2025

Zoom dates: To Be Confirmed

**I am likely to have some availability for new Psychotherapy clients in early 2024. Please make contact if you wish to book an initial session then.**

Beginning in February 2024 I will be offering a Psychotherapy Group on Wednesday evenings 6.15pm - 7.45pm. Numbers will be limited to 5-8 people.

Group Psychotherapy recognises humans as fundamentally social beings. Family is our first group where we develop ways of being and identities. This evolves throughout life, embedded in groups of many shapes and sizes, all within a cultural context. Group psychotherapy is a very fruitful (and cost-effective) way of exploring your relationships within groups. The therapy group will reflect the nature of groups in your life, and you'll have the opportunity to strengthen your sense of yourself personally, and feel to more integrated with your community, family and social network.

Group members may bring all sorts of life experiences to process together, often difficult or traumatic. The therapy group becomes a supportive environment, through the sharing of feelings and experiences. You will see yourself through the eyes of others and notice familiar patterns of relating, thinking, and feeling. Your growth and development emerges through exploring and experimenting with new ways of being, in the mutually open space of the group. The group will also be a place for discovering and enabling your creativity and aspirations. 

 ** As well as having unique therapeutic-effect, group therapy is a cost-effective option ** 

As a child, I daydreamed cradled in the arms of a magnolia tree. Resinous fragrance enveloped my conversations with woodshed slaters. I got ‘lost and found’ in the wilds of bush, ocean and mountains. Fishing for rainbow trout in burbling streams, prying stubborn mussels off craggy rocks, boiling a campfire billy, falling asleep to a ruru’s lullaby. I swam with pond frogs in an Iranian desert oasis! These elemental experiences were so sensuous and made porous my sense of the boundary between my self and the wild.

Adulting life of academic study, clinical, corporate and community work, and urban child-raising got in the way of my deepfelt connection to the wild, and blinded me to the loss of this extended family. That was, until a deep South tree told me I ‘belong’. And, the sparkling waters of Waiheke Island stole my heart and reawakened my soul. 

It is a never-ending, life-long journey of opening up to and learning from the rest of the living world. I am slowly becoming more able to look beyond my small daily human concerns, and seek ways to be in emergent and expansive relationships of reciprocity and reverence. 

This transformational reclaiming assists me to add Animism and Deep Ecology to my therapeutic offerings alongside Psychotherapy, Group therapy, Myth and Metaphor. Ecotherapy is founded on understanding humans as having an Ecological self, which I believe offers clients a beautiful gift of knowing themselves and their relationships so much more deeply. 

Psychotherapy and counselling have been my passion for more than 25 years, working in several community agencies with a wide variety of individuals and couples. I've also enjoyed some years in clinical roles in the corporate world. My private practice has flourished since 2012 and I'm thrilled to be offering ReWilding (Ecotherapy) on Waiheke Island, for groups and individuals. 

I am a Certified Transactional Analyst (Psychotherapy) and a Full Member of New Zealand Association of Psychotherapists/Te Rōpū Whakaora Hinengaro (NZAP). I served on the Board of the Aotearoa New Zealand Transactional Analysis Association (ANZTAA) between 2013-2022, holding several Executive roles, including President. I also have a BA (Psychology), Postgraduate Diploma in Counselling, Level 1 Certificate in Narrative Therapy, and certificate of Outdoor First Aid.  

About Emma Green, MNZAP

Some of my most significant childhood memories involve the beach right by my aunt’s house on the west coast of Scotland. What felt like entire summers were spent immersed in that shoreline, absorbed in discovery and wonderment at the sights, smells and sounds, and the feeling of being so connected to such a magical place. Shells, rocks, seaweed forms, sea pottery and glass smoothed by tide, rock pools filled with hermit crabs and starfish, the insistent cries of gulls, and of course, the beach and ocean itself, all captivated me completely.

That shoreline felt like a wild place, a sacred place, a place unfettered by clock-time and human rules; a place ruled by the breathing rhythms of the relentless tide.  These experiences, amongst others, have shaped me at my core, representing a time of wonder and the kind of contentment that comes from such profound absorption in nature.  In a way the experience is of ‘losing one’s mind (as we might conceptualise it in Western culture) to find one’s self’ – wholly a part of, and deeply interconnected with, the natural world around us.

In my work as a psychotherapist I encounter the myriad ways in which people can feel ill-at-ease, disconnected, dissatisfied, depressed, anxious, stressed or overwhelmed.  Although the sense of disconnection from the natural world is not always obviously at the centre of any of these feelings, more often than not a reconnection with the natural world somehow becomes part of the journey back to wholeness.  For me, ecotherapy becomes a way to re-mind ourselves of our embeddedness in and interconnectedness with the living world.  It is a way to attend to the soul.