Books by our team members

We are proud to have team members who are contributing to the counselling field through the expansion of knowledge and practices in the following books and journal articles.

Nature-Based Therapy

The number of children, youth, and families seeking help for a wide range of mental health concerns is growing at an alarming rate. Unplugging from technology and reconnecting with the web of life is a powerful antidote to the highly technological and fast-paced realities of so many. Nature-Based Therapy addresses this underlying disconnection between humans and their ecological home, exploring theories and therapeutic practices undertaken with children, youth, and families, including:

• Nature as Co-therapist 
• Developing sensory awareness of outer and inner landscapes
• Understanding the roles of play, regulation and risk
• Family and group applications with NBT
• Ethics and logistics 
• Case examples with a diverse range of settings, intentions, and interventions.

Nature-Based Therapy is for counselors, therapists, youth and social workers, educators, and parents working in educational and therapeutic settings who want to take their practice beyond the office walls and into the powerful terrain of the wild, partnering with nature as a co-facilitator to create lasting change.

“Even in the toxic conditions created by the Industrial Growth Society, there is health and well-being to be found in opening ourselves to the web of life. Right now when we need it so much, these authors bring to our attention many wonderfully useful methods and tools, along with the stories of how they have been effective. Especially welcome is the authors’ discussion of the value of risk-taking in our hyper-protective, soul-deadening society.”

Joanna Macy, author, Active Hope: How to Face the Mess we’re in without Going Crazy

“A profound and sensitive exploration of the healing capacity of nature and how counselors from all disciplines can expand their practice into the outdoors. Nature-Based Therapy provides plenty of convincing evidence to support the argument that time in nature can have biological, psychological and social advantages for children, youth and families. If you have ever felt the need to take your clinical work beyond four walls, this book will inspire you to step outside, no matter your client’s diagnosis or the weather. Nature-Based Therapy is a tantalizing blend of clinical anecdote, research and social critique of our disconnection with nature and what we can do to reimagine therapy as a process of reconnection.”

Michael Ungar, PhD, Canada Research Chair in Child, Family and Community Resilience, Dalhousie University, Canada, and author, Change Your World: The Science of Resilience and the True Path to Success

Outdoor Therapies

Drawing on the leading voices of international researchers and practitioners, Outdoor Therapies, edited by Nevin Harper and Will Dobud, provides readers with an overview of practices for the helping professions.

Sharing outdoor approaches ranging from garden therapy to wilderness therapy and from equine-assisted therapy to surf therapy, Harper and Dobud have drawn common threads from therapeutic practices that integrate connection with nature and experiential activity to redefine the “person-in-environment” approach to human health and well-being. Readers will learn about the benefits and advantages of helping clients get the treatment, service, and care they need outside of conventional, office-based therapies. 

Providing readers with a range of approaches that can be utilized across a variety of practice settings and populations, this book is essential reading for students, practitioners, theorists, and researchers in counseling, social work, youth work, occupational therapy, and psychology.

This book recognizes the relationship between humans and nature as fundamental to human experience, and perhaps most important for the practitioner and policy maker alike, this book brings together the many streams of nature-based interventions and shows how underneath the superficial appearance is a fundamental reality that is vital for the future of the planet. This integrated approach is needed to support the field and inform all stakeholders of the possibilities inherent within outdoor therapies.

Eric Brymer, PhD, associate professor and author of One Health: The Well-being Impacts of Human-Nature Relationships

Human-Nature Counselling Society does not sell these books. Please head to your local bookstore, library or publisher for more information. You can purchase our books online here:

NATURE-BASED THERAPY (Harper, Rose, Segal)

• Amazon.ca
• New Society Publishers

OUTDOOR THERAPIES (Harper, Dobud)

• Amazon.ca
• Routledge