Nature-Based THERAPY vs. Nature-Based Learning: Principles, Purposes, Processes, & Precautions
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Laura Park Figueroa: Welcome to Therapy in the Great Outdoors, the podcast where we explore the business and practice of nature based pediatric therapy of all kinds. If you're an outdoor loving pediatric practitioner in the fields of occupational, physical, or speech therapy, social work, or mental health, this podcast will help you start and grow a successful nature based practice or program.
I am the ever honest, always 100 percent real, you'll hear it all on this podcast, Dr. Laura Park. My name is Laura Park Figueroa. I'm a pediatric OT with over 20 years of experience and I run a thriving nature based practice with profitable locations in two different states and multi six figures in revenue.
I also host the free online community at therapyinthegreatoutdoors. com to help you pursue your nature based therapy dreams too. Are you ready to take action on those dreams? Let's jump in.
Hi everyone. Today, we are going to talk about the topic of nature-based therapy versus nature-based learning. What makes our work as therapists different from other nature-based programs or outdoor programs that are out there in the world? So this is something I have strong opinions about, and I want to share with you all. How you can think about this, and hopefully this episode will help you.
If you are a therapist thinking about which route you want to go in, your nature-based work with children. Do you want to offer therapy or do you want to offer enrichment or learning type services? Hopefully this episode will give you some fodder to think about. And I want to. Say before I start out that. There are many ways of thinking about nature-based therapy.
And what I am going to share in this episode is really just my experience and based on what I've read in the literature. I'm going to share some of the choices I made for my business to hopefully help you when you are thinking about how you want to go about doing your own practice. This is something that I often, this topic is something.
I talk about a lot in my Contigo approach training because I really. Believe that if we are doing therapy, we need to be doing something different than what other programs are doing. So there are four different things that I want to cover in relation to nature based learning versus nature-based therapy. And those are the principles, the purpose, the process, and the precautions in marketing for each.
So there are different principles that influence therapy and. Nature-based programs, enrichment programs. There are different purposes for each of those. There are different processes involved in those, and there are different precautions that you need to take in your marketing for each of those. So I'm really big on pneumonics and ways to remember things.
And. Creating fun acronyms. So they're all P words, principle, purpose, process, and precautions. I am going to talk about each one at a time instead of sharing the purpose of both. At the same time in the process of both at the same time, I think it's easier to talk about, we'll talk about nature-based learning first and then move into nature-based therapy. Okay. When we talk about nature-based learning, I am thinking about forest school programs or programs like tinker garden or TimberNook or nature-based preschools free forest school is a popular forest school program.
So when we talk about nature-based learning, we're talking about children being deeply engaged in play. That's what we're talking about, essentially using nature and being out in nature and learning through play. Although, I may say those programs, I mentioned maybe about play. We also have the whole field of environmental education.
And sometimes the purpose is really learning. Like they're seeking to teach science principles, but nature based learning experiences are typically playful. They're trying to teach children through play. By being out in nature and learning through play. So that is the purpose of the program.
The principles that guide nature based learning are general overall objectives that are usually based on the age range of the kids.
The program is providing developmentally appropriate activities in nature, based on the age range of the children that are participating in the experience. So those are the principles that guide the provision of that service. It's an overall objective. Now therapist can provide these nature-based learning services.
I alluded to that at the beginning of this podcast, but they are not therapy. The purpose of nature based learning could be facilitating, play, like having a positive play experience or promoting. Kids wellbeing and health and wellness promotion. All of us as therapists are about promoting health and wellness of children. it Could be community building building community among kids and families in your community.
I know Brad Williams, who is a nature-based therapy cyst in Australia is huge on the community building and the prevention aspect of nature based services. It's wonderful. So we also could be doing nature-based learning experiences for. Prevention of disability or prevention of developmental challenges. But those could all still be nature-based learning experiences. So we're looking when we provide a nature-based learning experience, we're looking at prevention and health and wellness promotion for a general population or group of children.
The process involved in providing a nature-based learning experience or service for children and families is generally that you group them by age or by certain demographics that they may have in common. And then you organize your learning services for those, for that specific group. So you group them in some way and you plan activities that are in general, good for the group of children. That you are servicing in that demographic. You might also have some sort of documentation or reporting that you do to the families that participate, but that's not always the case.
So with forest schools, they're not documenting after every single day of school that would become too. Too much of a workload for their teachers, there may be a report given at the end, but I think different programs do it differently, but in general, There may be some kind of documentation for the children, but there probably are not specific outcomes being measured. That's not to say that some don't, but in general, a nature based learning experience or outdoor program are not taking individualized data on each child.
So I'm alluding to some of the things here that you may be doing or that you have to do when you're providing therapy services. We'll talk about those. In a bit.
For the principles of nature based learning. They are guided by overall general objectives based on the group of children that are being seen in that program. The purpose is that health and wellness promotion, community building prevention. The process is grouping kids in some way, and then providing activities for them all to do that are fun and engaging out in nature to facilitate their nature, connection, their health and wellness or whatever the other goals of the experience may be, environmental learning, whatever it may be. All right now, let's get into, I'm going to save the precautions for marketing. At the very end, I will compare the two of them together for precautions, for marketing.
Oh, and I forgot to say. Because of that process being. A lighter load honestly, than it is in the therapy process. Nature based learning services typically cost a lot less money. We're going to get to that in a minute, but I think it's really important to think about this. If you're starting a business around this idea of nature-based practice. You have to be thinking about the service that you're going to be offering and how you can charge people for it.
So if you create some sort of nature-based offering in your community, It's just a reality that if you're offering a nature based learning service, that you're not going to be marketing as therapy, it is going to cost a lot less money for the people involved, which is a good thing, because maybe it increases access to a wider group of people. If that's your intention, but you also have to think about it from a business perspective on your end. If your business can't be financially viable, you will not have a business anymore to serve those people. So think carefully about making sure that whatever service you are going to offer can be a financially viable service. Even if you're running. Outdoor learning experiences for children that are serving a wide group of people.
I want you guys to really love and enjoy your work and be compensated well for what you're doing. So make sure you're thinking about that. That you are going to be bringing in enough income. So the reality of the situation is that you will bring in less if you are doing a learning service, because that's really, the reality is you're not going to charge a high amount for that learning service as you would for an individualized therapy service. Which we're going to talk about now. So therapy for a therapy service, a nature-based therapy service.
I use this term as a tagline. When I teach the Contigo approach. So I have a slide at the beginning that, that has a tagline that says not just nature play. And it's meant to be a little bit provocative because we all, as pediatric therapists know that nature play is super important, right? It's like none of us would argue with that.
We all believe that nature play is important. And we all believe that nature is one of the best environments for kids that it's so therapeutic and so important for their development. I could go into a million. There's a million videos on the benefits of nature for children or podcast and information and articles.
But my point in saying not just nature play
is to remind you all. I want therapists to remember that if you use a therapy approach, if you are giving therapy to children, there is a process behind it. There is a therapy process that goes on behind the scenes. The same way that we offer therapy in an indoor setting. And there is a therapy process behind providing a nature-based therapy service.
So not just nature play. Quote, unquote is a way to, to remind us like a cheeky and provocative way to remind us that. We are not, if we are offering a therapy service, we are not just taking kids out in nature and letting them play or having a general kind of free play experience for them. There is a therapy process to it that involves ongoing clinical reasoning and ongoing adjustment of everything for individual children in that session.
So let's get into the specifics on this.
It's not just nature play. Therapy is for kids who need extra support. We all know that, we're all therapists here listening. We work with kids that have special needs. We know there are some kids. That while they would benefit from outdoor play and a nature based learning experience. Like what we just talked about.
They need extra support to get more benefit, to get extra work on developmental skills. That they may need extra support and therapy to address. There's a reason why kids get therapy. They need that extra support in order to make those developmental gains, to participate in life effectively in a variety of different areas. So I want to share a little story here because it's a really good story that illustrates this point.
While I was talking with a nature based therapist for one of my assignments for school. And I had to do an interview with her qualitative interview and develop themes from the interview. This was in my class that I was taken to learn about research. Initially, this wasn't the actual research I did for my PhD, but. One of the things she said stuck with me.
And she really talked a lot in that interview about the importance of supporting children's free play. So when children are free playing out in nature, this is a great example of how play is so great for kids. In some ways we could call it therapeutic, right? Quote unquote, it's therapeutic for kids to be outdoors, playing. Because play is that ultimate way that kids learn. But what this therapist said to me was. Some kids just really need the extra support from a therapist or an adult who is guiding their learning because some kids, if you just let them free play in the woods with sticks. She her quote.
That was so funny was she was speaking about one specific kid that was rigid in his play. And she was like, he'd just be in the woods playing with that stick, like a lightsaber for 20 years, and she was joking, but I think it's a good kind of example of how some kids are not going to gain play skills without a skilled therapist or adults guiding and facilitating and helping them to achieve skills that they might not.
If we just left them to play with sticks in the woods with their friends. They'd just be Luke Skywalker with a light saber 24 7. And that's great play like that's imaginative play, but I hope you understand what I'm saying, that we want to support expansion of play for the kids. And that's what this therapist was talking about was that. She really tried hard in that session to work in different types of play themes in order to get this child in particular and some other kids in her group to expand the repertoire of play experiences that were available to them. And that is therapy. We want to support the kids that need extra work on those developmental skills.
That's what therapy is for. Also, if you can charge more money for a therapy service, the reason you can charge more money is because of everything. I'm going to tell you now about the process and everything involved. It is a more extensive process to provide a therapy service for kids, a nature-based therapy service. So let's get into those P words.
Now, the principle that nature-based therapy is based upon is that it's guided by individualized specific treatment goals based on assessment, the same way therapy would take place in any other setting. So this is something in my PhD research one of the participants was very adamant with me that there's no such thing as nature-based therapy, you're either an occupational therapist, a physical therapist, a speech therapist.
You are your licensed profession. You are not a nature-based therapist. There's no licensed profession for nature-based therapy. Okay. So she was very, and I agreed with her. I, I agreed because I have always taught this. The Contigo approach has always been based on the idea that you have to do assessment and you need to guide your services outdoors in nature, based on assessment that you do.
There are some different things you may do in nature-based practice for assessment intervention and treatment planning. But that's what we teach in the Contigo program. But do not say that you are doing therapy. If you have not done an assessment with a child and you have not thought and used your clinical reasoning. And done the work to interpret the assessment. So this is the process I'm getting into now.
That process of assessing a child of writing goals, collaborating with the family and then planning intervention based on those goals. That is the process of nature-based therapy.
I got a little out of order there. It was supposed to be principle, purpose, and then process. But the, everybody knows that the therapy process requires that assessment and planning of treatment. And inter intervention with the child based on what the assessment discovered right.
So I covered principle and process
the purpose of nature-based therapy is individualized intervention. Even in a group. So you are individualizing the experience for each child in that group, and you're providing more support than you might in a nature-based learning experience. You are cuing in to that child and you are attending to their needs and alignment with what you found out in the assessment.
And you are providing a nature-based therapy experience for the child with modifications and adaptations that they may need in order to participate in the group or in the experience that they're having outdoors with you. You're facilitating play in a way you might not have two and a nature based learning experience.
And you're focusing on a specific goal that child has by. You're wanting to support those individualized goals or outcomes for the children.
So let's review. For nature-based therapy. The principle that it is guided by is individualized specific treatment goals based on assessment. The purpose is individualized intervention. And the process you need to go through. If you're providing nature-based therapy services, is that you need to assess the children.
You need to interpret the assessment based on your clinical reasoning as a therapist. And you need to plan treatment in accordance with that assessment based on current evidence that is out there using best practice.
You're also writing goals. You're writing individualized goals based on that assessment for each child in your services.
Oh, and I didn't mention, you're also progress reporting. You're reporting back on those goals to families. So that's the whole therapy process. Is that assessment. The interpretation of the assessment, the planning of goals, the planning of treatment and intervention services.
And then the reporting back to families about those goals. So it's a lot, right? It's that process. That is the process that we use in my practice at outdoor kids, OT. I was very intentional early on. About we are a therapy service. Okay. So again, I'm just sharing about my experience here that, so you can take it or use it or don't use it, but this is just my experience.
I'm just sharing to hopefully help you. But. My thought process when I started the business, was that. The benefits for therapy of having a group together that it's really therapeutic for kids to be in a group and to have the benefits of nature in an immersive nature setting. So in my mind, This was therapy all along.
I always did the therapy process and our whole Contigo approach grew out of that therapy process that we were doing in my practice. So it is nature-based therapy. And I'm going to be very Frank and honest with you guys that it is more lucrative to do nature-based therapy and it is less work. In my opinion, I've done some really large group nature-based camps when I started early on and we still do camps, but they're much smaller and higher staff to child ratio because the kids that we serve really need that. And when we use our Contigo approach in a camp model for children, that is a smaller group and a more intensive model than those larger group camps I was running, but I was really overwhelmed by the amount of kids who needed. A lot of extra support in a large group setting, like with, 20 kids at camp, 15 kids at camp. And I felt like I could not give them the level of support that they needed in that large group setting.
So that's in that experience was when I realized I needed to develop some sort of method or framework to help us support the kids who need to work on play skills before they can really engage in those larger group camp experiences and engage in free play in a way that's safe and meaningful and fun for everyone involved.
So that was my process and how the Contigo approach grew out of me offering those larger nature based learning experiences for children. I felt like planning, smaller groups for kids that had those therapy needs, that really needed therapy goals written to specifically gaps and their development. Would help them be more successful participating in play with friends and then eventually going into those larger group settings. It also was less stressful for me to plan small groups for these kids than it was for me to plan a camp for 12 15, 20 kids are our camps in my practice.
The largest we go is 10 and the last several years we've run them. As groups of six. And so it is a lot of work. When you think about planning activities and supplies for a large group of kids versus a much smaller group of kids. It's a lot less work to plan. Even if you are doing documentation and things afterwards,
also with providing therapy services.
I was then able to pay myself a living wage as a therapist now. I will say when I first started out, and this is true for anyone first, starting out, you don't pay yourself a lot when you're first starting out, because you're just starting your business, but eventually you're able to pay yourself more as a therapist when you are offering therapy services, because you're just providing a higher level service that will bring in more income into your business.
Now, along those lines, you can charge more, but you also do have to spend a little bit more time when you do therapy services. Because you have to do the documentation. You have to manage staffing. You need a higher level of staff usually to do group therapy services. And you have to pay your staff.
If you have staff for any time that they spend outside of sessions, planning or documenting, and the documentation piece does take time. I in my practice, I pay all of my therapist for their planning time and for their documentation time, I pay them for their time talking to parents before and after the group, I pay them for their time consulting with parents, talking on the phone with parents.
Okay. The last thing I wanted to talk about are some precautions for marketing.
I want to give a little bit of a warning to you all, because if, be careful about if you're a therapist, if you are a licensed therapist, And your website says that you offer therapy, but you also offer nature-based playgroups or something that are not therapy. You have to be very clear in your marketing about these because confused customers do not buy you have probably heard me say that before.
I don't know who originally said that. It's probably some marketing guru person from years and years ago. But when people are confused, they do not buy your services. And you're just going to have a headache and a heck of a time trying to explain the difference between the two services. So if you are going to offer a nature based playgroup and a therapy service in your practice, Be very clear and the prices are going to have to be very different for you to provide a quality service on both ends. The value is different and you need to communicate that very clearly on your website and in all of your marketing materials therapy costs more because it's an individualized service that requires a lot of time and clinical reasoning and your expertise as a therapist. So you should be charging a therapy rate.
If you are offering a nature-based therapy service, you are adding value to that service by taking your work outdoors with kids. So I learned really as a little story from really early on in my work, I worked with a business coach. The first business coach I ever worked with, she was a parent and my youngest child's elementary school class, and her and I became friends.
She's actually the one who encouraged me to just start my business. I said, I just want to work outdoors with kids. And she was like do it. You go home right now and you make a website and you announce that you're in business. And I was like, really? And she's yes, do it. And that night I made a website.
So Christina Sanders, wherever you are now, I have lost touch with you, but I love you. And you're the reason my business exists. So anyway, she was a business coach and she helped me early on. We did sessions at her house. And I was telling her I wanted to charge less because it was a group. I thought they don't have to charge as much as they are for an individual service because it's a group. And she said to me, you are adding value to this service by taking it outdoors and offering a service in groups with other kids.
So don't dumb down your costs. Don't lower your costs. You're adding value. Think about that? Think about the value you're adding to that service when you are offering a nature-based therapy service. So you should at least be charging what you would charge for any clinic based service for children. We struggle with this as therapists with charging a lot. Quote unquote for our services, but I want to encourage you to charge a high rate for your service.
If you are offering therapy services. Charge what therapy is worth charge a professional rate., make sure to keep your business profitable. You can always offer scholarships for kids. You can always offer low cost services for people. But you need to establish a base of income coming in order to have a successful business, to keep serving people.
All right. I know that I say this all the time, but I really want you to hear this.
Okay, that's it for this episode. I just want to remind you though, that the enrollment for the Contigo approach nature-based therapy certification and mentoring program is now open. We are open from January 15th until the 19th. For our next cohort, we will have mentoring calls in the month of February for four consecutive weeks. And I want to invite you to join us.
I would love to see you there. If you are uncertain about whether or not you should join, then please book a call with me. I am happy to hop on zoom with you and talk with you about the Contigo approach and when it might be right for you to enroll. So I have said this before, but this program is for people who really want to become experts in nature-based pediatric therapy. It's not a quick. 30 day, little thing. It is a long-term commitment that we make to you to mentor you throughout your nature-based therapy journey when you join Contigo, if you want to see everything that's included, when you join, you can go to Contigo approach.com. It's C O N T I G O approach. Dot com and get all of the information there. And you can book a call with me to get your questions directly answered by me. I know sometimes you just want to talk to a person. So I will put that link on the Contigo approach website and you can book there. All right, I'll see you next week.
Bye.
Thanks for joining me today for therapy in the great outdoors. If you want valuable advice, as you start or grow your nature based pediatric practice, get my free ebook, the nature based practice roadmap. It is a guide to help you focus and avoid. as you start or grow your outdoor work with children. In it, I share the four stages of nature based practice, what you need to focus on and common mistakes to avoid in each stage, plus a checklist of specific action steps for you to take at each stage in the process.
Get it at therapyinthegreatoutdoors. com roadmap. So until next time, get outside, connect, reflect, and enjoy therapy in the great outdoors.
