Join Nature Rx@UMD for a special talk on Nature, Race and Relational Trauma by Beth Collier, a "nature allied" psychotherapist and ethnographer who teaches woodland living skills and natural history. Her work explores relationships with people and with nature.
“Nature offers us the core conditions of an ideal primary caregiver and is a significant other in our lives. There is a trauma in being disconnected from her as a source of positive attachment and as a secure base.”
This talk explores the relational trauma in being disconnected from nature through the lens of Nature Allied Psychotherapy, a modality of ongoing client practice taking place in natural settings - working in allegiance with nature to explore our emotional world. Beth's book, Nature Allied Psychotherapy; Exploring Relationships with Self, Others and Nature is forthcoming with Routledge.
Nature provides the conditions for our optimum health, yet we have formed a dysfunctional relationship with the city, tolerating environmental stressors which harm human health, whilst many no longer see time in nature as a meaningful part of everyday life.
People of color and those on low incomes are more likely to live in urban areas with a deficiency of access to nature and higher exposure to city stressors. Many people of color have been disenfranchised from nature through human interference, experiences of racism have created barriers for some, to feel safe in nature, cutting us off from habitats, which are physiologically, emotionally, and spiritually supportive.
Beth will discuss the UK context, in which people of color spend less time in natural settings than white communities. Whereas in countries of heritage we tend to be deeply connected to nature, a disconnect seems to occur in the west. Beth will share findings from her ethnographic research exploring people of colors' relationship with nature in the UK, and work being done by her organization Wild in the City to address issues of racism trauma, loss and healing in accessing green spaces and the countryside.
About Beth Collier, MA, MBACP
Beth is a Nature Allied Psychotherapist and ethnographer, teaching woodland living skills and natural history. She has degrees in Comparative Religion and Social Anthropology, Human Rights and Psychotherapy.
Beth specialises in working with relational trauma in our connections with people and with nature. As a therapist Beth works exclusively in natural settings and has developed Nature
Allied Psychotherapy as a modality exploring our relationship with the natural world in addition to our human social relationships. She provides professional training through the Nature
Therapy School.
Beth is Director of Wild in the City, an organisation supporting the well-being of people of colour through connection with nature, offering experiences in woodland living skills, natural history, hiking and ecotherapy; using the skills of our ancestors to nurture a deeper relationship with the natural world and a sense of belonging to communities past and present.
As a naturalist her work aims to reignite the oral tradition for learning about nature within families and challenges racism within the environmental sector. As a researcher her ethnography has documented people of colours relationship with nature in the UK, the
development of cultures which shun nature and white attitudes towards black presence in green spaces. She is currently writing chapters for Bloomsbury, Springer and Routledge.
Beth's practice has been featured in BBC Cities, Nature's New Wild, Ep3 Outcasts, BBC Countryfile and Therapy for Black Girls. Her writing has been published by The Ecologist, Runnymede Trust, Media Diversified, Blavity and Nesta.
She is a Fellow of the UK National Association for Environmental Education and is a member of Natural England's Nature Recovery Network Management Group.