Do you love nature or just being outdoors? Maybe you’re not sure whether talk therapy on its own is entirely for you? Perhaps you have a spiritual connection to the land. This episode on Forest Therapy is for you!
In today’s episode you get a glimpse of what it is like to sit Inside the Therapy Room or rather the outdoor therapy space. Where we discuss why being in nature is so powerful, Matt shares his profound personal and professional experiences, and how forest therapy is different from just going for a walk.
Our latest episode is now live on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and all major podcast platforms. And guess what? The transcript is available below for your reading pleasure. Happy listening!
You can find out more about Matt Glover on his website – https://mgacounselling.com.au/
For more information about Forest Therapy head to https://www.foresttherapyvictoria.com.au/
Transcript
SAM SELLERS:
[00:11] Hello and welcome to Inside the Therapy Room. I’m your host Sam Sellers. I’m a registered therapist, a wife and a fur mama, and I am passionate about breaking down the barriers and stigma that’s attached to therapy.
Today I want to begin by honouring the traditional custodians of the land we live and work on. Today Matt is on Wurundjuri Land and Sam is on Gundungurra Land. We pay our respects to the Elders past, present and emerging for they hold the memories, the traditions and the cultures of our First Nations people. We must always remember that the land below our feet is, was and always will be Aboriginal land.
[00:55] Today I’m chatting to Matt Glover. Matt is an accredited counsellor with the Australian Counselling Association and holds a master’s degree in counselling from Monash University. Since 1998 Matt has been involved in a variety of counselling and pastoral care roles ranging from home-based healthcare to emergency relief and crisis support. He is the Director of MGA Counselling Services and provides individual, couple, family and group counselling at the Croydon Hills and Warrandyte Centres in Victoria. Matt provides professional and personal development courses on a range of topics and speaks regularly at conferences and in the media on sexuality and mental health. He is also the founder of Forest Therapy Victoria. Matt has a special interest in relationship counselling, grief, trauma, abuse recovery, high sensitivity and spirituality.
[01:51] He uses various person-centred techniques in his counselling rooms and runs individual and group forest therapy sessions. He is also available for speaking engagements on forest therapy and mental health, which is why we have him today. Tune in to hear him share about what forest therapy is, discuss the benefits of getting out into nature and how it differs from just going on a casual walk yourself. He shares stories of how impactful nature has been for him personally and for the people he works with, and what myth he would love to smash about forest therapy. And he gives it a red-hot crack at trying to convince me to do a forest therapy session with him. We hope you enjoy joining us inside the therapy room.
[02:42] Welcome, Matt.
MATT GLOVER:
Thank you, Sam.
SAM SELLERS:
How are you going?
MATT GLOVER:
I am well. How are you today?
SAM SELLERS:
[02:47] Good. I’m good. How is Victoria sunny today or dreary?
MATT GLOVER:
[02:54] It is a beautiful sunny day, blue sky. It’s about, I don’t know, 20 degrees or something like that. Perfect. Just come back inside from a four-hour forest therapy session with some other counsellors doing a training session. So, good day so far.
SAM SELLERS:
That is a nice little segue, wasn’t it?
MATT GLOVER:
Absolutely. Proud of myself.
SAM SELLERS:
[03:14] I’m sure that probably was not planned, but nice little segue. Matt is going to be chatting about forest therapy today. I have a running joke that basically this episode is just going to be about trees and how you walk among trees and take photos of trees, and that that’s what your social media is, which, to be fair, is not that much far from the truth, is it?
MATT GLOVER:
[03:40] I was going to say you just described it perfectly.
SAM SELLERS:
Yeah, exactly. There might be a random photo of a river as well in there, I feel like.
MATT GLOVER:
Yeah. That’s kind of it, really.
SAM SELLERS:
[03:51] So, let’s kick off with what is forest therapy?
MATT GLOVER:
I love the feigned attempted interest there. It’s good.
SAM SELLERS:
For anybody who has never met me in real life, people, I am not a nature person. Forest therapy, Matt’s been trying to get me to go down to Victoria to do a forest therapy session for about, I don’t know, the last three years. Still has not happened, but I’m sure he is about to convince every one of you about all the benefits of trees.
MATT GLOVER:
[04:24] Absolutely. Is there any scope to add a poll to this podcast about getting you down to experience a forest therapy session?
SAM SELLERS:
Absolutely not, even if there is. I am not researching whether that’s a possibility.
MATT GLOVER:
Okay. All right. Somebody just email me and let me know. We’ll make that happen.
SAM SELLERS:
Absolutely.
MATT GLOVER:
[04:41] So, what is forest therapy? Now, it absolutely depends on which angle you’re coming at forest therapy from. So, from my perspective as a counsellor, forest therapy is one of the modalities that I use in my therapeutic practice. So, for some people with burnout, for instance, if they’re coming to counselling for recovery from burnout, forest therapy will be one of the modalities that I use to help bring some of those symptoms under control to lay a foundation for healing and moving forward. So, it’s not all of what I do. It’s part of what I do. So, that’s in the counselling side. But of course, my counselling practice is MGA Counselling Services and Forest Therapy Victoria is part of that. So, the Forest Therapy Victoria side also runs forest therapy events for the public where people buy a ticket and come along. And so, it’s not a specific therapeutic intervention for those people. It’s more of a health and well-being exercise where they learn to use nature just for their general health and well-being.
[05:44] But also, it’s sometimes used by corporate bodies for health and well-being days, team days and things like that just to equip their workplace for some more stress management tools. And more recently, and I suspect some of this is unique to Melbourne because of our strict lockdowns that we had during COVID, just encouraging people to get back outside, away from their screens and reconnect with nature because some of the mental health symptoms that we’re seeing now can pretty much be stemmed back to just being inside and on the screen too much. So, in that sense, forest therapy can be different things for different people and different organisations as well. But for all of them, at the heart is getting out into nature and slowing our systems down so we can then receive the health benefits that are on offer from nature.
[06:37] If you think about our human history, so this represents how long that we’ve existed. At one end, this is where we appeared, and the other end of that timeline is where we are now. For most of that time, we have lived and worked outside. And so, our health systems have developed in partnership with nature. And it’s only this last little bit of history that we have started to live and work inside, inside the room, for instance. Do you like that? And that coincides with where our mental health as a society has started to plummet. So, forest therapy is about reconnecting ourselves to nature. There’s a term known as biophilia, and biophilia describes our inherent connection with nature, almost as if it’s within our DNA. And the biophilia effect of the health benefits that we receive when we do reconnect with nature.
[07:30] So, forest therapy is about listening to the biophilia within us and working towards that biophilia effect, the health benefits. So, it’s quite a slow process. Forest therapy is not adventure therapy. It’s not bushwalking or anything like that. We’re not abseiling or climbing trees or anything like that. It’s a combination of mindful, sensory and creative nature-based activities, all designed to slow your system down, to experience time in the same way that nature experiences time, and then open yourself up to receive those health benefits.
SAM SELLERS:
[08:06] Sounds legitimate.
MATT GLOVER:
Did you think I was just making all this stuff up?
SAM SELLERS:
[08:11] Absolutely. What drew you to forest therapy?
MATT GLOVER:
[08:15] Look, it’s been a long journey that started in my childhood, really. Where I grew up, it’s a place called Hopper’s Crossing, which is out in the western suburbs of Melbourne. But at the time that I grew up, it was rural. Our house was in the middle of fields and paddocks, and we didn’t have any neighbours and dirt roads and barbed wire fences and all that sort of thing. And my family was a relatively poor family. I didn’t know that at the time. My parents did a really good job of raising my sister and I to not feel like we ever needed anything. It was only on reflection that I realised that we lived way out there because that was the only place my parents could afford. So, what I would do to entertain myself as a child was, I would get on my bike and I’d ride down to the river or I’d ride out to the mountains and things like that and just spend the whole day exploring.
[09:01] My dad used to like photography and so I used to grab the little film canisters that you used to get with film cameras and I’d load my pockets with those things and I would collect water from all the different ponds and things like that and I’d bring them back to my house in the evening and look at the water under the microscope that my parents had got me and just look for all the different bugs and growing things and all that sort of stuff. So, I just would immerse myself in nature basically every spare moment that I got. You know this is back in the day where there were no mobile phones or anything like that. The only rule I had was I had to be back before the streetlights came on. So, I’d be gone all day. Parents had a rough idea where I was like, “he’s somewhere in western Victoria” and if I was back that was all okay. And so, I really connected with nature in that way. It was a big part of my childhood.
[09:49] The first holiday that my parents took me on was to a place called the Grampians which is in the western district of Victoria. Its Indigenous name is Gariwerd. At this point in time—
SAM SELLERS:
[09:58] I’m going to give our listeners fair warning here. Matt is about to probably fangirl over the Grampians. He talks about it all the time, like literally all the time.
MATT GLOVER:
You make it sound like a bad thing.
SAM SELLERS:
I know but I’m just fair warning if the next 20 minutes are spent talking about the Grampians that’s why.
MATT GLOVER:
[10:23] Right you would think they would sort of sponsor me or something by now.
SAM SELLERS:
I know.
MATT GLOVER:
Anyway, keep on going. Where was I up to?
SAM SELLERS:
The Grampians.
MATT GLOVER:
[10:31] All right okay. So, yes, nine years old my parents took me to the Grampians and the reason that they took me there was it was only sort of two and a half hours from home. At the time when I was nine years old it wasn’t a national park, it wasn’t a tourist destination and they would take us in the middle of winter when nobody was around, so it was affordable for us, so quite a cheap holiday. I was nine, my sister was six and what would happen is we got there, we’d do a hike or a bushwalk during the day and then in the afternoon when we got back to our accommodation my parents would sit around the campfire with the other adults that were staying in the same location. They’d all have a glass of wine or something, and then just like I did at home I would disappear up the mountains afterwards and I would just explore as if I was the only person that had ever been there. And I loved those moments alone in the mountains because Hoppers Crossing is very flat. It’s flat as far as you can see. And so, on this holiday to the Grampians the first time I encountered mountains for the first time it just captured my imagination.
[11:30] On this one trip, it was in the first holiday that we had there, I was exploring up the mountain after a bushwalk and the Grampians are a very rocky mountain range and so I was making my way around this huge rock that was about the size of a house. As I was walking around it, I had my left hand on the rock just sort of feeling my way around, and as I came around a corner, I came face to face with what felt like a giant kangaroo. Now I’m a relatively small person and I was a very small child, so it was probably an average size kangaroo, but it felt giant, okay? let’s go with that. In that moment though face to face nose to nose with this animal there was no fear, there was no stress or anxiety, it was a calm moment. And so, I just clambered up on top of this rock and for the next 45 minutes or so I hung out with this kangaroo, and I just sort of lay there on my stomach and I watched it forage and eat and you know, watch the sun start to set. And then eventually it did start to get dark and it’s like I must go back.
[12:24] So, I scrambled down off the rock and look, I don’t know whether this happened in real life or it’s just part of my imagination, I would like to think that this part really happened, but as I scrambled down off the rock I looked at the kangaroo and I kind of nodded my head in gratitude for that time that we had together and in my mind I can see the kangaroo nodding its head back at me saying “this has been really cool, thanks for hanging out with me.” Because of this experience and just the things that I would encounter in the mountains I was just captured; this place was magic to me. And so, my parents took me back every year and it might surprise you looking at these youthful looks but I’m significantly older than nine now.
SAM SELLERS:
[13:03] For anyone listening you’re now going to have to venture onto YouTube to see Matt’s youthful looks despite using the terminology back in my day. Those two things don’t tend to go hand in hand.
MATT GLOVER:
[13:16] Yes, thank you for pointing that out. So, I’ve been back to the Grampians basically every year since then, multiple times. Each time I went back the same sort of thing would happen. And as an adult I have two sons, now they’re almost 21 and almost 19. When I first took them, they were 9 and 11, so the youngest one was about the same age as me. And they were looking forward to a holiday, we’d had some ordinary things happen to us in terms of grief and loss and trauma, so we were looking forward just the three of us going away together and spending some time. They weren’t jumping out of their skin though because they didn’t really know what to expect, they’d never been there before. So, we go along, and we’ve been there for I don’t know maybe three hours, half a day max. We unpacked our stuff we’re just getting used to our little cabin and exploring the surrounds. And after about half a day my oldest one, Tom is his name, he came up to me and he grabbed me with both hands, he grabbed both of my arms and he looked me in the eye and he said, “dad we have to come back here next year.” You know, we haven’t even barely started our holiday and already he wants to come back.
[14:22] And then about two days into it we’ve done a hike and Tom and I are sitting on the veranda just sort of relaxing he’s playing his guitar, and Jared is wandering around. Jared’s the younger one, he’s wandering around in the bush out the front of the cabin and it’s almost like he’s in a trance of some sort, he’s sort of wandering around mesmerized and he’s looking up at the canopy and he’s reaching down to smell the leaf litter and he’s putting his hand on the trunks of the trees. And I asked him, you know, “what’s going on for you here, matey?” and he goes, “oh dad, I’m not really sure, it’s really hard to find the words to describe”, so “just give it a go.” And he said, “Well, I know we’ve just got here but it just feels like I’ve always belonged here.” And when he said that I remember thinking the same thing when we drove away from the Grampians on that very first holiday. As we drove away, and I saw the sawtooth ridge of the Grampians disappear into the background out of the back window of the car. It felt like I was leaving part of my soul behind, it felt like I’d always belonged there.
[15:22] And so, for my son to say the same thing all those years later it made me start to question what on earth is going on here? And when he said, “it felt like I’d always belonged here” and echoed my thoughts and words from when I was the same age, it triggered a memory. And so, when I went back home, I went to my parents place and I rummaged around, I found the box with all the old photo albums. And in the Grampians, did I mention it was the Grampians? I’m not sure if I mentioned that or not, did I?
SAM SELLERS:
Yeah. Just for the record, the Grampians.
MATT GLOVER:
[15:51] Okay good. So, in the Grampians there’s a famous walk known as the pinnacle, and it finishes at a rocky outcrop that looks down through the valley over the township of Halls Gap. So, any tourist brochure or website that features the Grampians will have the pinnacle on it. Now, when I got the old photo albums out, I realized that I had a photo of my great grandfather standing on the edge of the pinnacle back when there was no fences around it or anything like that. I also have a photo of my grandfather standing on the edge of the pinnacle, I have a photo of my dad standing on the edge of the pinnacle, I have a photo of my sister and I standing on the edge of the pinnacle, and I have a photo of my two sons standing on the edge of the pinnacle. Five generations of my family have been drawn back to this place. None of us have ever lived there and none of us have ever worked there. So, I wanted to know why.
[16:41] What is it about this place that keeps drawing us back? So, I was really fortunate that a few years ago now I had the opportunity to sit with an Indigenous elder to explore this topic and I told him the story in as much detail as I could, and after I finished he got very thoughtful and very contemplative and went quiet for a moment, and then he leaned forward and he said to me, he said, “Matt, I have no idea what that means.” It’s like, “oh, come on, you’re supposed to know this stuff.” Then what he went on to say was, “what I can tell you, Matt, is that my people consider Gariwerd the most spiritual place in Victoria. So, whatever it is about the spirituality of your family and the spirituality of this location, it draws you together, and this is where you find healing and wholeness on your journey.” And that was exactly right.
[17:36] Whether it’s been the Grampians most of the time, but whether it’s there or whether it’s the Dandenongs where near I live, the wetlands, the Yarra, if there’s trees and there’s bush there, that’s where my boys and I have often gone to heal from the grief and the trauma of the journey to this point. And so, using nature for my own healing has always just been inherent in who I am. And so, then eventually having it come across into my counselling practice kind of just made sense.
SAM SELLERS:
[18:03] So, there was, when you were talking about the Grampians, I’ve never actually told you this before, but there is one part of nature that I do really like and that is rock faces, and gigantic rocks and things like that. There is a running joke in my friendship circle because when we went camping one time, all I wanted to do was walk around, and I’ve literally only ever been camping that one time because I hate it. But all I did was find all the giant rock faces and took photos of them. And my camera reel or gallery was just full of photos of rocks. So, there is a running joke in my friendship group around liking rocks and things like that. So, I do understand, I may not understand trees, but I do understand the beauty that comes in a rock formation and the differing colourings and dimensions that it brings.
MATT GLOVER:
So, maybe you should go to the Grampians. Have I ever mentioned that?
SAM SELLERS:
[19:14] I knew you were going to try it. Look, one thing at a time. It’s taken three years to try and get a forest therapy session. It might be a little bit longer for the Grampians.
SAM SELLERS:
[19:27] But how is forest therapy different than just me telling my clients to get out and walk in some grass as a grounding exercise? How is it any different from that?
MATT GLOVER:
[19:46] Well, in a sense, how is normal counselling any different to just sitting down and having a chat with a friend? There’s a lot of overlap and a lot of benefit from just doing exactly what you said, going out and to walk in the grass. But of course, with counselling, they’re guided conversations with people that are a little bit more removed and to take you places that perhaps you wouldn’t go on your own. So, that still happens when you’re out in nature using nature as a counselling intervention. However, one of the main differences is when I take people outside, my role changes. Nature becomes the therapist and I just become a guide. So, I will take people to there and then nature does what nature is going to do. And sometimes that’s a little bit hard to predict. So, for instance, yesterday, I took a public group on a forest therapy experience at the wetlands just near my house here. Now, a public forest therapy experience is where just random people buy a ticket off the website and they come along. So, I don’t know who these people are. I don’t know anything about their story. All I know is that they want to come and experience three hours of forest therapy.
[20:48] So, I do the introduction and then I take them outside and we do the experience. And at the end of the day, they go home, and, likely, I’ll never see them again. So, that’s what a public forest therapy experience is. But there was one exercise that we do or that we did yesterday. And afterwards, this woman was sobbing like you would not believe, just that full on snotty nose, full body sobbing. And in the public events, I do say at the start, there is no obligation to share with anybody what’s going on for you. And if the emotions come, just sit with the emotions and let it be. And we can talk afterwards if you would like to. So, she sobbed, and she sobbed, and she sobbed, and people were very respectful of that and let her be. The next exercise she was sobbing still, or again, she kind of pulled herself together and then went back into it afterwards as we’re doing some nature-based art. And then afterwards, I just said to her, “You’re doing, okay?” and she said to me, “I just heard some things that I needed to hear today.” And that’s it. That’s all she said to me. I don’t know what she heard. I don’t know who said what was said, but whatever it was, that’s what she needed to hear. So, nature was the counsellor in that sense.
[21:56] Now, today, just a day later this morning, I ran a training session for other counsellors and social workers that are wanting to incorporate forest therapy into their therapeutic practice. And about two hours into it, we’re in the same location that we were yesterday. And I sent the group out to do an experience sitting at a base of a tree that was of their own choosing. And one of the counsellors that were there was there, sat at the same tree that the woman did yesterday. And after about 20 minutes, the counsellor today was bawling her eyes out. And it’s like, I don’t know. Same thing I say to everyone. If the emotion comes during our training today, you sit with that, and we can talk afterwards. And she said almost the same thing to me. She said, “there were just some things that I needed to deal with, and the tree helped me deal with them today.” That’s all I know. So, the main difference, I know it sounds like a bit of a cop out, but when I take people outside, nature takes over and nature does its thing.
[22:54] There’s a beautiful sense of healing and wholeness that comes from nature-based stuff, because there’s no mind tricks or trying to find metaphors that help us relate to things differently or anything like that. It’s just nature doing whatever it does. And often we can’t even explain what that is, but the results speak for themselves. You know, there are just some things that happen out there that will never happen inside my counselling room, just won’t.
SAM SELLERS:
[23:21] So, my first instinct, and this might be my own sort of cynicism and scepticism, which you have first-hand experience of.
MATT GLOVER:
I don’t know what you’re talking about.
SAM SELLERS:
Is it all a little bit hippy-dippy?
MATT GLOVER:
[23:38] Totally, absolutely. And then we hand out the weed and smoke together. Not true, we don’t do that.
SAM SELLERS:
I was like, what sort of like witchy rituals are we doing with these trees?
MATT GLOVER:
[23:51] See, that’s the thing that’s, what’s the word? Not a conundrum, but it’s one of those things that you hear it, and you’d think, “yeah, okay, there’d been smoke dope beforehand” or something like that. But in our session this morning, our training session this morning, we had an hour and a half of theory, scientific theory, all the theoretical underpinnings of what forest therapy is. And we talked about counselling interventions and how they can match the forest therapy stuff that we’re doing. And then we went outside to practice them. So, it was all very cold and clinical and then bang, it happens anyway. And that idea that people hear things from the trees, let’s just say, it does sound like, “well, these people are high on something and where do you get it from?” But I’ve just seen it happen so many times now that I can’t explain it to you and I can’t give you a reason for why it happens, but it’s just happened so many times that I can’t deny its reality.
[24:48] And in a sense it’s not that different from what happens in the counselling room. You know, you might be having a conversation with someone and then suddenly the penny drops and it’s like, oh, there’s that aha moment and life changes from that point. You know, what’s the difference? Does it matter if it comes from the voice of a human or from the voice of nature, if it happens? So, do we have time for me to tell you a story?
SAM SELLERS:
Sure, go for it.
MATT GLOVER:
[25:12] Sure. So, I was working with this young couple about six or seven years ago now. They were individual clients of mine. They’re both coming to counselling for trauma, and both had significant childhood trauma, like the kind of the worst of the worst stuff. It just happened to be that they were going out. And so, they asked me if they could do a couple’s forest therapy session together. So, we arranged a time, and we went out into the wetlands for about two hours. And one of the exercises that we do, we call it meet a tree. And this is where we imagine that a tree is a sentient being. So, it has an awareness. It can hear and contain your story for you. And so, the rings in the trunk of a tree no longer are just an indication of age, but also of the stories that that tree has heard and hold safely.
[26:02] And so, what we invite people to do is to wander out through the forest area and to choose a tree and to sit by that tree and then just to gently, quietly tell them a little bit of your story. And the other thing we invite people to do is to wander around or to wander around and stop when they feel a tree chooses them. Now it’s hard to explain what happens when that happens, but it happens most times. Like today, for instance, there was a woman that was making a beeline for a tree with a smooth trunk. And then this old gnarly tree, these are her words that she said this morning, “that old tree just sort of called to me and drew me close. So, that’s where I had to sit.” So, we invite people to go and sit with a tree, either of their choosing or one that chooses them. And then to simply have a chat, get to know that tree, tell as much of your story as you feel comfortable to do.
[26:51] So, this young couple, I left them out there. He went to a tree that was about 50 meters in one direction. She went to a tree that was about 50 meters in another direction. So, they weren’t within earshot of each other. And I just left them there for about 25 minutes or so. Then I went over to where he was sitting and just to check on him, make sure he was okay. And I got there, and he had this bewildered look on his face. He looked quite shocked. And I said to him, “mate, what’s going on for you? You, okay?” And he said to me, “yeah, man, I’m fine. But it’s really, weird.” It’s like, “well, what do you mean?” He goes, “well, I feel like the tree has been talking to me.” So, I said to him, just on a bit of a hunch, “well, what’s the tree been saying?” And he said to me, “well, when I look down low, I can see that this tree has been wounded and marked and scarred by animals or children or something. But when I look up high, I can see that there’s new growth, new branches, new leaves all reaching towards the sky, strong and firm,” And he said, “it feels like the tree is telling me that that’s what my life is like. I’ve been wounded early on, but there’s new growth and new things to look forward to in the future.” And I thought that was beautiful, like really beautiful.
[27:59] So, I left him there just to contemplate that a little bit longer. And I went across to where she was sitting, about 100 meters away. And she had that same bewildered look on her face when I got there. And I said to her, “hey, you’re doing, okay?” She goes, “yeah, I’m fine, Matt, but it’s weird. It feels like the tree has been talking to me.” I’m thinking, “hmm, this is interesting.”
SAM SELLERS:
[28:19] I can see where this is going.
MATT GLOVER:
[28:21] Yeah, this is total truth. This is not made up. So, I said to her, “what’s the tree been saying to you?” And she goes, “well, when I look down low, I can see that this tree has been wounded and marked and scarred. But when I can look up, when I look up high, I can see the new growth reaching for the sky. And it feels like the tree has been saying that that’s what my life is like.” It’s like I’m thinking, “I think I’m unnecessary in this place at the moment.”
SAM SELLERS:
You felt very needed.
MATT GLOVER:
[28:50] So, I brought them back together and I said to him, “tell her what the tree said to you.” And he recounts his story, and her jaw just drops. And then I say to her, “well, tell him what the tree said to you.” And she recounts her side of the story. And then they embraced each other. And they sobbed and they sobbed, and they sobbed. And it was a beautiful moment of healing for both of them. And for me, that kind of personifies what you’re asking me before. When I take people outside, I’m just the guide. Nature is the therapist in that instance. And nature did its thing for that couple.
SAM SELLERS:
[29:25] I mean, it’s very beautiful, poetic imagery. And my first instinct is that the trees are very gossipy because they’re telling each other what the other person is saying, which just like the trees don’t understand confidentiality. But yes, I mean, it is very, you’re like, “you’ve just ruined a beautiful story.”
MATT GLOVER:
[29:48] I was going to say. Maybe I shouldn’t take you out into nature because one of the trees is going to drop a branch on you or something like that, just to teach you a lesson.
SAM SELLERS:
[29:58] I love using metaphors with my clients, so I can understand even just like that imagery that they get from a tree can be powerful in owning your story.
MATT GLOVER:
[30:14] Absolutely. Story and metaphor are a really important part of forest therapy, particularly with grief and with trauma, the things or the motives that we see in nature helps us make sense of our own stuff. And whether it’s that that was happening for this couple or not, at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter. Healing happened for them. If they feel they heard the tree speak, then as far as I’m concerned, the tree spoke.
SAM SELLERS:
[30:37] Yeah, of course. And I’m sure that your answer is going to be everyone when I ask this, but I’m going to ask it anyway. Who is forest therapy going to benefit?
MATT GLOVER:
[30:50] Everyone except cynical supervisory students that live in a different state.
SAM SELLERS:
Everyone except me. The trees hate me.
MATT GLOVER:
[31:01] Totally. Look, no, in all honesty, it doesn’t benefit everybody. And it’s important to point that out. But usually, the people that it doesn’t benefit are those that carry trauma stories, and those trauma stories are based in nature. So, it might be that they’ve survived a bushfire, or they might have been attacked in the local park or something like that. So, taking people like that outside to do forest therapy, it’s not necessarily a good idea. Look, it can still bring healing. There’s no question about that in terms of maybe doing exposure therapy or something like that. But you must be super sensitive to that. And so, we need to know at least a part of people’s stories before we take them out there to make sure that that’s not going to re traumatize them.
SAM SELLERS:
[31:49] I’m thinking like my brain, I guess, sort of goes to people who struggle with traditional modalities of talking and cognitive based therapy. I would assume it would help those types of people, sensory based people, neurodivergent people.
MATT GLOVER:
[32:10] Yeah, it’s good. One of some of the other programs I run is called Nature Play for Kids. And it’s like forest therapy but aimed at children specifically. The only thing really that is replaced in forest therapy, the aim is to slow people down to receive what nature has to offer in the nature play program. We add in unstructured play so it can be slow, but it can be fast, whatever. But we let nature guide that, so we don’t structure the whole time that we’re together. We just let kids follow whatever, wherever nature leads. One of the pilots we did for that was with a family with two kids on the spectrum, two boys. And so, we planned a two-hour pilot program with them. And we ended up being outside for like four hours because it was just going so well. They were having a great time. I was having a great time. So, we just kept on going. And the mom said afterwards, “I’ve never seen my boys like this before. I’ve never seen them be able to focus on one task for longer than 10 minutes.” And here they were creating this giant nature-based mandala in the clearing, going and foraging for stuff and bringing it back. And mom was arranging it and dad was helping them.
[33:22] And they did that for 45 minutes without missing a beat. I didn’t have to coach them or anything. They just kept going. And that was that was nature, again, being the therapist and helping them do their thing. So, more and more research are being done on this area about the benefits of nature for different cognitive abilities, different ages, different genders, everything. And time and time and time again, the results are coming back as it’s good for you.
SAM SELLERS:
[33:48] Yeah. Okay, I’ll give it thought. No, I mean, in all seriousness, kids, I mean, we look to kids for natural creativity. We tend to lose imagination and creativity the older we get. So, I can imagine how being outside, we know that unstructured play works for kids and the benefits that can have. So, I can only imagine when kids have the freedom to explore, to create, to imagine what a tree is saying, that that’s going to, the only word that’s coming to mind is that it could be magical for them because the imagination will just run wild.
MATT GLOVER:
Now you’re talking my language. Look at you go.
SAM SELLERS:
[34:44] Yeah. So, I guess for people who are sceptical or who are maybe thinking “I don’t have a level of fitness to go on a hike. I don’t get out much. I might have a disability.” What do you say to those people about forest therapy?
MATT GLOVER:
[35:07] Sure. So, I suppose one of the misconceptions about forest therapy is it’s bushwalking. It’s not bushwalking at all. We don’t walk very far, like today’s event that I just mentioned before. I think in total, over four hours, we walked a kilometre and a half. So, hardly anything. And it’s certainly not very fast. And it’s never on rocky or steep terrain either. Some of the public events that I run; they’re called all-ability walks. So, we specifically choose places or parks or reserves that have good accessibility. They might even have made paths, at least very flat paths, and they might have all-ability toilet facilities and things like that. So, yeah, while there might be some walks that might be inaccessible to some people, there will always be a walk that is accessible to everybody. That makes sense.
[36:00] So, you don’t need high levels of fitness. You don’t have to be artistic or anything like that. There is a creative element to it. But we make a distinction between creativity and artistic. So, you don’t have to be artistic to come along and do it. And really, the only thing that it requires is an openness, an openness to slow down and receive what nature has to offer in that space. Now, plenty of people have been cynical about it. Present company excluded.
SAM SELLERS:
Yes.
MATT GLOVER:
[36:30] And in all the time that I’ve been doing this, and it’s probably 10 years now that I’ve been doing it as part of my therapeutic practice, there’s only ever been two people that have just point blank refused to participate. And with a little bit of more exploration with those people afterwards, it turned out that it wasn’t the forest therapy thing that was holding them back. They were both carrying some significant trauma, and they knew that if they slowed down, they were going to have to face it. And so, they didn’t want to do that.
SAM SELLERS:
[37:00] It wasn’t forest therapy. It was just therapy in general.
MATT GLOVER:
[37:02] Yeah. They knew that it would just be front and centre. And so, they didn’t do it. You know, I do say at the start of all my forest therapy events, whether it’s a public one or a private one, if we start to do something, and for whatever reason it’s too much of a trigger, then we don’t have to push through. Let’s just stop and do something else.
SAM SELLERS:
Have you had anyone go through the forest therapy process and still come out a cynic?
MATT GLOVER:
[37:27] Not yet.
SAM SELLERS:
Challenge accepted. Now, I have said publicly challenge accepted.
MATT GLOVER:
That’s it. We do another podcast on the other side.
SAM SELLERS:
We’ll do a part two.
MATT GLOVER:
[37:44] Yeah, that’d be good. I’ve had some people. Sorry, I’ve had some people do a forest therapy event or do a counselling session outside and will say, “yeah, I can feel the difference here, but this is not something I really want to do very often.” So, they see it. They recognize the benefits in it. They can recognize that there are some people that will really connect with it, but they prefer the talk style of therapy or maybe some art therapy or something like that. They’ll prefer something else. And that’s quite okay. Like any modality of counselling, there is no one modality that is 100% effective with everybody. So, just like with acceptance and commitment therapy, for instance, there are some people that you’ll take through that process, they’ll get some benefit out of it, they’ll see the benefits of it, but will say “that doesn’t really suit me, can we do something else?” Forest therapy is the same.
SAM SELLERS:
[38:30] So, is it similar in terms of people come to therapy with, I guess, an idea in mind of what they want to work on, what they want to talk about? They might be coming with a particular topic or issue. Is it like that? Or can they just be like, I’m just going to go and see what happens?
MATT GLOVER:
[38:54] All of the above. Because I’ve been doing this for such a long time now, some people will ring up and book in specifically requesting a forest therapy session. So, we’ve got something they want to work on, but they don’t want to do it in the counselling room. So, they say, “can I have some forest therapy sessions with you?” Fine. So, some people come expecting to do that. Other people will come to counselling for whatever reason, say it might be anxiety, and they don’t even know forest therapy is a thing. So, when we’re doing the treatment plan together and we work out some of the things that we’re going to do, I will say to them, “this is an option, would you like to try this?” Most of the time people will say yes. And so, we just work it in. And while I might see them for, I don’t know, say 10 sessions, we might do one or two of those outside. So, it’s a little bit of both there.
[39:41] And occasionally there will be just some people that say, “no, I don’t want to do that.” and that’s okay. Of course, it is very weather dependent. And sometimes we plan to do a forest therapy session and the floodgates have opened and it’s like, we’re not going outside to do that today. So, it’s all a bit flexible. I don’t ever say to anyone, “Yeah, absolutely 100% guarantee we’re going to be going outside.” I make it an option, but if it’s rainy or if it’s too hot or if it’s too windy, or where we are here, it’s not too far from where some of the bad bushfires have been. So, if there’s too much smoke in the air, then we just don’t go outside.
SAM SELLERS:
[40:22] Yeah. See, walking in the rain, that’s much more my language. But I would imagine that would be a safety issue.
MATT GLOVER:
[40:31] It can be. There’s a difference between some light rain and torrential downpours. If it’s light rain, we’ll still go out. You’re right. It can be lovely doing a therapy session in the rain. And there’s one of my— You have memories of the work that you do. One of the sorts of iconic memories of forest therapy for me is I was doing a walk with a group and it did start to rain quite lightly when we were about halfway through it. And this woman is standing there in a clearing, facing the sky and her arms outstretched to receive the water. And it just something was happening for her this day, I don’t know what, but it looked like she was being cleansed of something by the rain. And she was a different woman afterwards. And I’m not sure that we would have achieved the same thing had it not rained on that walk.
SAM SELLERS:
[41:22] Yeah. I love rain. I get that.
MATT GLOVER:
[41:25] So, we need to take you to the rocks in the rain.
SAM SELLERS:
[41:28] Yeah. Rocks and rain, that’s my jam. So, I get to this point in every podcast where I say, what myth are we smashing about forest therapy?
MATT GLOVER:
[41:41] Look, the main one I think we’ve touched on already is that forest therapy is not about hiking long distances or doing adventure therapy or anything like that. It’s a really gentle practice and it’s about slowing down to receive.
SAM SELLERS:
Straight to the point.
MATT GLOVER:
Why beat around the bush?
SAM SELLERS:
Was that pun intended?
MATT GLOVER:
Yeah, totally.
SAM SELLERS:
[42:03] Is there something that you think people should know about forest therapy? If you want to leave people with anything, what is that?
MATT GLOVER:
[42:14] I think it would be to have an awareness of the contribution that nature makes to your health and wellbeing. And that if, even if you don’t have language for it, but you just feel a bit off and you think something’s not quite right, just go and spend an hour or two out at the local park or reserve, or even out in your back garden or something like that. Just spend a bit of time in nature and see if that adjusts things a little bit for you. Because like we were mentioning earlier in our session together, there’s something within us, part of our evolution that connects us to nature and our lifestyles have disconnected us from nature. And so, just spending that time outside can reform that connection and put things back into balance. Give that a try first.
SAM SELLERS:
[42:59] So, give it a go is what you’re—
MATT GLOVER:
Get the message?
SAM SELLERS:
Yeah. Got it loud and clear. I love that you had to— I got you onto a podcast for you to tell me to give nature a go.
MATT GLOVER:
[43:11] Yeah. Well, no, I’ve told you a thousand times. But it’s the first time I’ve got you to listen.
SAM SELLERS:
[43:20] No, I mean, I am certainly not anti-nature by any means. I can, I’m one of those people that I can see the benefits just as I can see the benefits in kale, but I’m not going to eat it. So, it’s just one of those things. But I can say that for some people, particularly those who are naturally drawn to the natural world would receive immense benefits.
MATT GLOVER:
[43:56] So, I do look forward to part two of this, after we’ve taken you out. I think we should see if we can do it live.
SAM SELLERS:
[44:03] Yeah. Let’s do that. I may have just set myself up for something I do not want.
MATT GLOVER:
I’m loving this. Let’s do this again.
SAM SELLERS:
[44:13] Yeah. We will not lock that in just yet.
MATT GLOVER:
Oh, it’s locked in as far as I’m concerned. Thanks for listening.
SAM SELLERS:
[44:22] And you have nature in your office, considering we talk about the outdoor room with forest therapy, I want to let you know, let’s pull back to the name of the podcast, which is Inside the Therapy Room, you’re outside the therapy room. So, inside your therapy room, you choose to bring pictures of trees, which I find largely humorous, and 10,001 plants, correct?
MATT GLOVER:
[44:52] That might be, that number might be slightly exaggerated, but there are a lot in here. And the screen that I’m looking at to see you now behind that is a big window. And I have a view of Mount St. Leonard’s and the Toolangi state forest. And it’s basically a nature-based view out of my counselling window.
SAM SELLERS:
[45:14] There we go. My virtual self is in nature.
MATT GLOVER:
[45:20] And look, that’s by design. There’s a famous study in the forest therapy world where people that were in hospital were having their recovery times measured. The variable was what they could see out the window. And so half the participants had a view of a brick wall, and the other half had a view of nature. And those that had a view of nature would discharge earlier than those that had the view of the brick wall.
SAM SELLERS:
Yeah. I must say, as somebody who just spent a significant time in hospital, I had a window view and I said to my wife many times that I can’t imagine what it’s like for people who don’t have a window view, even just simple things like watching the rain on the windowpane and things like that. It sort of, this is not a nature benefit, but it gave you something to look at. And it was something to distract you from everything else that was happening in the hospital setting. So, I’m not surprised by that research that having a window view would be beneficial.
MATT GLOVER:
[46:26] Yeah. So, my, my counselling room does look out into the window. You’re right. I’ve got lots of plants. The things on the shelves generally have some sort of connection to part of my story that will usually have a nature-based element to it. So, if I do have a client that can’t or won’t or it’s just not appropriate to go outside with, there’s still some of that nature-based benefit in the room.
SAM SELLERS:
[46:48] Well, I’m sure that you have convinced many a people to give forest therapy a go, present company pending. But, I think, I mean, if anything, I love people getting out and doing something different, and I love modalities that cater to the alternate route. Anything that’s not cognitive mainstream therapy, I am generally on board for. I love the alternative routes because I think that they tend to take in the whole self, not just part of a self. And I think that is necessary.
MATT GLOVER:
[47:32] Good. Well, I look forward to taking you out. Maybe we should make it a public event. Come and join Sam under the trees.
SAM SELLERS:
Oh boy. I don’t know that I’m ready for that just yet. But anyway, thank you. Like I said, I’m sure that many people are up for it and are much more pro nature, but yeah, I hope more people sort of at least explore the possibility that there are different things that there is more than just standard talk therapy to help people.
MATT GLOVER:
[48:07] Good. Thanks for having me.
SAM SELLERS:
[48:10] Thank you. We hope you enjoyed joining us inside the therapy room. Thanks for listening.