Chapter 12: Shifting the Human-Nature Relationship in Outdoor and Nature-Based Social Work Programs: Contributions to Teaching and Learning Relational Ecosocial Work

This chapter offers an overview of the steps undertaken during an intervention-research which aimed to co-create, with various community actors, an ecosocial outdoor and Nature-based therapy program for young people. Presented as a case study, we first describe our collaborative and embodied methodology and focus especially on how connectedness to Nature can evolve and be nourished in outdoor and Nature-based intervention settings. The chapter outlines the intervention protocol, and describes the program’s theoretical underpinnings (Rosa’s sociology of our relationship to the world and Wacquant’s carnal sociology) and main practice frameworks (outdoor and nature-based therapy, narrative therapy, and yoga therapy). Implications for teaching and learning relational ecosocial work are discussed and presented as possible pathways to foster resonant and embodied human/Nature relations in outdoor and Nature-based programs. These include: 1) Multiplying experiential opportunities to transcend binary thinking; 2) Shifting from individual action to community connections; 3) Unpacking and re-storying relationship to Nature and 4) Enriching ecosocial teaching and learning through embodied practices.