On November 4 I partnered with two amazing individuals on a Nature Therapy Inspired Team Building workshop at the 2023 Chesapeake Watershed Forum in Shepherdstown, WV:
Carolyn Schuyler, a Visiting Scholar at the University of Virginia, the founder and former Executive Director of Wildrock, and a psychotherapist (on the left)
Dorothe Bach, the Associate Director of the Center for Teaching Excellence at the University of Virginia (on the right)
Why Nature Therapy Inspired Team Building? A few of the stressors that I see across our Earth loving community range from staff retention, a change in relationship to the natural world once it becomes your profession or once your knowledge deepens of being able to recognize characteristics of an unhealthy ecosystem, burnout and anxiety from a constant sense of urgency to reach large goals and never feeling like its enough! Finding ways to integrate simple practices into your own day, your team check ins, strategy sessions, partner meetings, etc. can lead to teams that feel more connected, restored, and better able to take on the good work together. Research shows the great benefits of connecting with others, and the benefits of being in the natural world. Florence Williams, in her book The Nature Fix, reports that just after five minutes in a forest surrounded by trees, the heart rate slows, facial muscles relax, and the prefrontal cortex quiets. And in this article, shared by Carolyn, it found that patterns of communication to be the most important predictor of a team’s success.
We started the morning indoors where we got to know others in the room, enjoyed a brief meditation and breathing exercise, and introduced the topic. Then we headed outside and took a mindful walk down to the Potomac River. Participants got to practice two different activities including a a playful exercise of creating nature mandalas and a deep listening exercise through Radical Listening (check out this resource that Dorothe shared!).
Finding ways to connect more deeply with your team mates, especially outdoors, is not something extra or "fluff", but at the very heart of great teams. Check out the gallery from the workshop below!
Amber Ellis
Founder of Find Your Nature
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