Rewilding Therapy
EcoSystemic Theory and Practice
EcoSystemic Theory and Practice
Chiara Fortina Santin
ISBN PAPERBACK:
978-1-7397733-0-4 ISBN EBOOK: 978-1-7397733-1-1 |
Overview
This book is about doing therapy in Nature, with Nature as your co-therapist. The handbook provides you with an EcoSystemic map which offers you guidance on how to use key systemic ideas to rewild your practice outdoors and indoors. This bricolage approach shows examples of how you can use creative activities to facilitate therapeutic conversations with individuals, couples, families and groups in the wild!
It is a professional development book for people working in the health and social care professions as psychotherapists, psychologists, social workers, nurses, doctors, counsellors, community and support workers. It is for people dealing with people in crisis. When you are working with people going through hard times, you need to know yourself well.
This book by Chiara Fortina Santin shares stories from her own relationship with nature, from her family life. She offers poems as a method of reflection and going further in the relationship between her professional and personal selves.
What others say about this book
Dr Leah Salter, Centre for Systemic Studies, Wales; University of Bedfordshire, UK; Murmurations: Journal of Transformative Systemic Practice
"This delightfully engaging book is somewhat of a multi-tasker. In part it offers practitioners (from multiple modalities and whether trainees, newly qualified or long experienced) a way to re-wild their therapy and embrace eco-systemic practices. This is timely and vital and described in ways that are easy to follow and truly inspiring. There is also, here, a rich overview of important theory, relevant to rethinking (and disturbing) systemic practice, not shying away from unsettling "truths". Amongst this, woven throughout like a fine web are Chiara's personal stories, reflections, poems and images. As a reader I found many points of connection with her stories- both humble and bold in the telling- and also enough difference to create curiosity and tension, tensions that invite the reader to reflect on their own influences and ecologies of practice. Whether you are looking for theory, models, practice examples, personal reflections, creative activities, advice or guidance- you will find it all here, beautifully presented and shared with generosity of spirit. What a gift!"
Dr Imelda McCarthy, Fifth Province Practices, Dublin Ireland
"Chiara Santin brings her whole body, mind, soul and nature into her writing of this book. Images from her alpine Italian childhood, St. Francis, and her Nonna intra-mingle with her experiences of moving to live in the South of England and (with)in a second language. All seamlessly appear and both poetically and artistically interweave a Batesonian pattern through scenes with her co-explorers as she invites them to share similar spaces in themselves in Nature as Nature. She moves along with the metaphor and practice of hospitality, creating bricolages of languages, practices and nature artwork culminating in her Nat-Gathering Map which lightly steers her Ecosystemic approach. We, the readers, are offered well known systemic and Ecosystemic practices that she has found resonant with families and nature practices. For those who might be a bit overawed of a therapy in Nature, Chiara shows us gentle and pragmatic ways to be together with those who ask for our help with/within Nature herself. A must read for anyone wanting to take a step on the gentle and wild side. This needs to be required reading for all students of systemic practices."
Roger Duncan, Systemic Eco Psychotherapist, NHS and independent practice, UK
"This book is an important and much needed bridge between Systemic Psychotherapy and the emerging field of Ecopsychotherapy. Chiara has skilfully woven together her deep knowledge of the academic literature with her own personal experience, practice and poetry. This book is a rich resource for anyone coming new to the field of Eco Systemic Psychotherapy as well as qualified Systemic Psychotherapists wanting to include outdoor work and nature into their practice. This book points a way to the future of systemic Psychotherapy as we face the social implications of the unfolding global ecological and entangled mental health crisis."
Lorna Edwards, Independent Systemic Psychotherapist, Cymru/Wales
"Chiara Santin's Rewilding Therapy is a gift to systemic practitioners at this time of panmorphic crisis. We are invited to move outdoors in doing our work and nature is described as co-therapist - which decreases therapist power and honours our widest context. She weaves her life story with theory, poetry and her rewilding practice. I was fortunate to experience a nat-gathering practice (described in Chapter 8) with Chiara at an online workshop. We were invited to connect with our values and to articulate ways of acting them in our lives. By sharing our intentions, we became accountable to ourselves and our community. Chiara's book invites us to live and practice differently, imagining ourselves beyond the anthropocene."
Dr Joe Hinds, Psychotherapist and Senior Lecturer, University of Greenwich
"Interwoven with biographical, reflexive insights and poetry this book brings into the fold of systemic therapy an important wider family member, nature. Chiara, drawing on a comprehensive multidisciplinary literature covering ecology (including rewilding), ecotherapy, systemic therapy, embodiment and self, introduces Ecosystemic therapy as an integrated approach to wellbeing. To illustrate these ideas, Chiara brings her unique approach alive by presenting a breadth of case study material based on her work outdoors and interweaves these experiences with theory. A wonderful and novel addition to the broad ecopsychology and eco-psychotherapeutic corpus."
Hugh Palmer, Systemic Psychotherapist, Yorkshire
"Chiara Santin has written an important contribution to the emerging field of ecotherapy, offering us an inspiring bricolage of colourful threads that illuminate and weave together significant theoretical ideas, her personal journey from the Italian Alps to Sussex, some delightful vignettes from her work with other on Nature as well as some beautiful, reflexive poetry. Reading this book has been like taking a walk in Nature with Chiara, who gently guides and provides space for the reader to discover hidden treasures, creating opportunities for us to shift our understanding of and connection to the living environment in which we are all part. Chiara asks us to reimagine our relationship with ourselves and with Nature. She locates Nature as a co-therapist, rather than merely a resource to be used and exploited. This, perhaps, is one of her key messages. She lives the dictum of being the change she wishes to see in the world and sets a gentle and hopeful example to us all."
Dr Matteo Santin, Director, Centre for Regenerative Medicine, Brighton University
"With this book, Chiara wants to share the journey that, through nature, has led to fulfil herself in the help of others. A journey that, starting from childhood family experiences and youth camps, has gradually unravelled into a mature realisation that there is an immense field to explore where inspiration can be found. Chiara's love for nature emerges in a simple, yet multi-faceted and profound approach to family crises. In sharing her love for nature Chiara connects with children like a flower attracting bees towards sweet and nutritious feelings. Through nature Chiara helps their parents to abandon the linearity of the rut in which they have become constrained and invite them to branch out into unexplored pathways of hope. Like a squirrel on a tree, Chiara moves from a state of deep reflection to an outburst of search for new sources of life. An old friend once told her: "you will be mother of hundreds of children"; children who have met her as well as those she may never meet. Children whose future Chiara will never see as well as those whose past she will never witness. In this book all comes together, openly and humbly (yet unapologetically), to be shared with fellow professionals to branch out towards struggling, yet resourceful, evolving, kids and parents."
Joanne Hanrahan MSc, Integrative Psychotherapist, Ecotherapist, Supervisor and Trainer. Private practice, Ireland
"It is with great enthusiasm and gratitude I welcome and endorse Rewilding Therapy. As an Ecotherapist who has researched and brought my Psychotherapy, Supervision and group facilitation practice outdoors over the last 10 years, I believe this book is a wonderful addition to the literature in the field. Chiara, expertly weaves an impressive depth of academic reading, with her own personal natural growth story. Her poetry and reflections, along with her sharing of vignettes from her work with individuals, couples, families and community groups outdoors, are a gift to the reader. In addition, her Ecosystemic model offers a theoretical framework for psychotherapists from all modalities to consider their ecological practice. Chiara's inspiring book is a book of hope. It encourages us to 'rethink, re-vision, re-landscape mental health services' and reminds us that working, for the good of people and planet 'together we are not a tree, we are a forest'."
Efrosini Moureli, psychiatrist, group analyst, family therapist, Institute of Systemic Thinking and Psychotherapy, Thessaloniki, Greece
"The book is a metalogue, as defined by Bateson: a form of discourse that exemplifies the subject matter, i.e. systemic therapy in, within and with Nature. Nature breathes in its language, poems open up beyond the words, clinical vignettes present a multi-dimensional reflexivity and a robust clinical experience. It is a therapist's endeavour to get over our, otherwise fatal, alienation from Nature."
Contents
ePub copies: enquiries@eicpress.com
Bulk Orders: enquiries@eicpress.com
This book is about doing therapy in Nature, with Nature as your co-therapist. The handbook provides you with an EcoSystemic map which offers you guidance on how to use key systemic ideas to rewild your practice outdoors and indoors. This bricolage approach shows examples of how you can use creative activities to facilitate therapeutic conversations with individuals, couples, families and groups in the wild!
It is a professional development book for people working in the health and social care professions as psychotherapists, psychologists, social workers, nurses, doctors, counsellors, community and support workers. It is for people dealing with people in crisis. When you are working with people going through hard times, you need to know yourself well.
This book by Chiara Fortina Santin shares stories from her own relationship with nature, from her family life. She offers poems as a method of reflection and going further in the relationship between her professional and personal selves.
What others say about this book
Dr Leah Salter, Centre for Systemic Studies, Wales; University of Bedfordshire, UK; Murmurations: Journal of Transformative Systemic Practice
"This delightfully engaging book is somewhat of a multi-tasker. In part it offers practitioners (from multiple modalities and whether trainees, newly qualified or long experienced) a way to re-wild their therapy and embrace eco-systemic practices. This is timely and vital and described in ways that are easy to follow and truly inspiring. There is also, here, a rich overview of important theory, relevant to rethinking (and disturbing) systemic practice, not shying away from unsettling "truths". Amongst this, woven throughout like a fine web are Chiara's personal stories, reflections, poems and images. As a reader I found many points of connection with her stories- both humble and bold in the telling- and also enough difference to create curiosity and tension, tensions that invite the reader to reflect on their own influences and ecologies of practice. Whether you are looking for theory, models, practice examples, personal reflections, creative activities, advice or guidance- you will find it all here, beautifully presented and shared with generosity of spirit. What a gift!"
Dr Imelda McCarthy, Fifth Province Practices, Dublin Ireland
"Chiara Santin brings her whole body, mind, soul and nature into her writing of this book. Images from her alpine Italian childhood, St. Francis, and her Nonna intra-mingle with her experiences of moving to live in the South of England and (with)in a second language. All seamlessly appear and both poetically and artistically interweave a Batesonian pattern through scenes with her co-explorers as she invites them to share similar spaces in themselves in Nature as Nature. She moves along with the metaphor and practice of hospitality, creating bricolages of languages, practices and nature artwork culminating in her Nat-Gathering Map which lightly steers her Ecosystemic approach. We, the readers, are offered well known systemic and Ecosystemic practices that she has found resonant with families and nature practices. For those who might be a bit overawed of a therapy in Nature, Chiara shows us gentle and pragmatic ways to be together with those who ask for our help with/within Nature herself. A must read for anyone wanting to take a step on the gentle and wild side. This needs to be required reading for all students of systemic practices."
Roger Duncan, Systemic Eco Psychotherapist, NHS and independent practice, UK
"This book is an important and much needed bridge between Systemic Psychotherapy and the emerging field of Ecopsychotherapy. Chiara has skilfully woven together her deep knowledge of the academic literature with her own personal experience, practice and poetry. This book is a rich resource for anyone coming new to the field of Eco Systemic Psychotherapy as well as qualified Systemic Psychotherapists wanting to include outdoor work and nature into their practice. This book points a way to the future of systemic Psychotherapy as we face the social implications of the unfolding global ecological and entangled mental health crisis."
Lorna Edwards, Independent Systemic Psychotherapist, Cymru/Wales
"Chiara Santin's Rewilding Therapy is a gift to systemic practitioners at this time of panmorphic crisis. We are invited to move outdoors in doing our work and nature is described as co-therapist - which decreases therapist power and honours our widest context. She weaves her life story with theory, poetry and her rewilding practice. I was fortunate to experience a nat-gathering practice (described in Chapter 8) with Chiara at an online workshop. We were invited to connect with our values and to articulate ways of acting them in our lives. By sharing our intentions, we became accountable to ourselves and our community. Chiara's book invites us to live and practice differently, imagining ourselves beyond the anthropocene."
Dr Joe Hinds, Psychotherapist and Senior Lecturer, University of Greenwich
"Interwoven with biographical, reflexive insights and poetry this book brings into the fold of systemic therapy an important wider family member, nature. Chiara, drawing on a comprehensive multidisciplinary literature covering ecology (including rewilding), ecotherapy, systemic therapy, embodiment and self, introduces Ecosystemic therapy as an integrated approach to wellbeing. To illustrate these ideas, Chiara brings her unique approach alive by presenting a breadth of case study material based on her work outdoors and interweaves these experiences with theory. A wonderful and novel addition to the broad ecopsychology and eco-psychotherapeutic corpus."
Hugh Palmer, Systemic Psychotherapist, Yorkshire
"Chiara Santin has written an important contribution to the emerging field of ecotherapy, offering us an inspiring bricolage of colourful threads that illuminate and weave together significant theoretical ideas, her personal journey from the Italian Alps to Sussex, some delightful vignettes from her work with other on Nature as well as some beautiful, reflexive poetry. Reading this book has been like taking a walk in Nature with Chiara, who gently guides and provides space for the reader to discover hidden treasures, creating opportunities for us to shift our understanding of and connection to the living environment in which we are all part. Chiara asks us to reimagine our relationship with ourselves and with Nature. She locates Nature as a co-therapist, rather than merely a resource to be used and exploited. This, perhaps, is one of her key messages. She lives the dictum of being the change she wishes to see in the world and sets a gentle and hopeful example to us all."
Dr Matteo Santin, Director, Centre for Regenerative Medicine, Brighton University
"With this book, Chiara wants to share the journey that, through nature, has led to fulfil herself in the help of others. A journey that, starting from childhood family experiences and youth camps, has gradually unravelled into a mature realisation that there is an immense field to explore where inspiration can be found. Chiara's love for nature emerges in a simple, yet multi-faceted and profound approach to family crises. In sharing her love for nature Chiara connects with children like a flower attracting bees towards sweet and nutritious feelings. Through nature Chiara helps their parents to abandon the linearity of the rut in which they have become constrained and invite them to branch out into unexplored pathways of hope. Like a squirrel on a tree, Chiara moves from a state of deep reflection to an outburst of search for new sources of life. An old friend once told her: "you will be mother of hundreds of children"; children who have met her as well as those she may never meet. Children whose future Chiara will never see as well as those whose past she will never witness. In this book all comes together, openly and humbly (yet unapologetically), to be shared with fellow professionals to branch out towards struggling, yet resourceful, evolving, kids and parents."
Joanne Hanrahan MSc, Integrative Psychotherapist, Ecotherapist, Supervisor and Trainer. Private practice, Ireland
"It is with great enthusiasm and gratitude I welcome and endorse Rewilding Therapy. As an Ecotherapist who has researched and brought my Psychotherapy, Supervision and group facilitation practice outdoors over the last 10 years, I believe this book is a wonderful addition to the literature in the field. Chiara, expertly weaves an impressive depth of academic reading, with her own personal natural growth story. Her poetry and reflections, along with her sharing of vignettes from her work with individuals, couples, families and community groups outdoors, are a gift to the reader. In addition, her Ecosystemic model offers a theoretical framework for psychotherapists from all modalities to consider their ecological practice. Chiara's inspiring book is a book of hope. It encourages us to 'rethink, re-vision, re-landscape mental health services' and reminds us that working, for the good of people and planet 'together we are not a tree, we are a forest'."
Efrosini Moureli, psychiatrist, group analyst, family therapist, Institute of Systemic Thinking and Psychotherapy, Thessaloniki, Greece
"The book is a metalogue, as defined by Bateson: a form of discourse that exemplifies the subject matter, i.e. systemic therapy in, within and with Nature. Nature breathes in its language, poems open up beyond the words, clinical vignettes present a multi-dimensional reflexivity and a robust clinical experience. It is a therapist's endeavour to get over our, otherwise fatal, alienation from Nature."
Contents
- Preface
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Contextual and Ecological Imagination
- 3 Rewilding Therapy, Ecopsychology and Ecotherapy
- 4 The Ecological Self
- 5 Core Principles in EcoSystemic Therapy
- 6 EcoSystemic Therapy and Ecological Change
- 7 A Bricolage Approach. My Evolving Ecotherapy Practice
- 8 Multiple Languages and Embodiment
- 9 Nat-gathering: An EcoSystemic Map for Practice
- 10 Open Futures
- Bibliography
ePub copies: enquiries@eicpress.com
Bulk Orders: enquiries@eicpress.com