Ecotherapy and Nature Writer
My Journey
Simon’s compelling* nature writing draws upon a wide range of fields: ecotherapy, neuroscience, environmental and evolutionary psychology.
Simon is fascinated with the origin of homo sapiens and what we can learn from the evolution of our emotional engagement with nature. His focus is on the felt experience of being in nature and how this informs our understanding of our internal landscape.
In the early 2000s, Simon spent two years as a book seller in Covent Garden before retraining to become an art psychotherapist (2009 to 2012). His masters dissertation, Art Therapy Images of the Tree of Life, looked at clients’ relationship with life, death and transformation when they create symbolic images of trees.
Simon also trained in Environmental Arts Therapy (EAT) created by Ian Siddons Heginworth. Ian’s book, Environmental Arts Therapy and the Tree of Life, has greatly inspired Simon. His experience of integrating EAT into his London practice resulted in contributing a chapter to Environmental Arts Therapy: The Wild Frontiers of the Heart.
For two years Simon worked on an educational farm in Kent. It was here that he conceived of using wild clay therapeutically and resulted in a paper for the international Journal of Applied Arts in Health. Simon co-founded Community Outdoor Art Therapy Service in 2012 (COATS) which is currently running wild clay bead workshops. Simon has written several readings that offer participants metaphorical links between personal and elemental transformation.
Simon’s most profound outdoor therapy has been when an emotional connection with his clients has been created through experiencing nature together: staring at a spider’s web, gazing at a tree that has been struck by lightning or contemplating a client’s piece of natural artwork. A curiosity around the hidden neuroscience behind this behaviour turned into an obsession that continues to fuel the writing of his first book: Our Sharing Nature: Connecting to Others through the Natural World.
Simon moved to Somerset three years ago and is a member of the Frome Writers’ Collective. Monthly meeting with Lorraine Fish, an ecopsychologist, and Andy Dean, a natural gardener, have been invaluable. Simon is part of the Habitat Management Team at the rewilding project, Heal Somerset. The experience has been so profound, so imbued with hope, that he started a monthly blog about rewilding. Reflecting on the communal nature of being in nature together, they have enhanced the development of Our Sharing Nature.
*The description used in Heal’s Social Impact Report.