Healing Spaces Therapy: a hand connecting with a tree.

Therapy

Melissa Clews-Hunt

Integrating the calm and restorative presence of the natural world into our therapy conversations can bring peace, perspective, and can illuminate how interconnected we all are. Some people experience anxiety, depression, stress related to work-life balance, or struggles in relationships. Outdoor therapy is an opportunity to slow down, attune to the wisdom that is available to you, and realign with your values.

Group Therapy for the Climate Concerned

Facing Our Pain and Resilience Together

For those concerned about the state of our earth, come together in community to support each other, discover that what you are feeling is a natural response, and cocreate resilient ways to move forward in these times. As you get in touch with your deeply felt emotional responses to the climate crisis, be validated that so many are feeling those same things.

Drawing from the work of Joanna Macy, Climate Cafes, anti oppressive practice, and traditional psychotherapy, this group provides a space to dive deeper into what it is like to live at this time of climate crisis and how as a collective we can move through this time. Together we can widen the individual lens common in psychotherapy and collectively cocreate synergy that is bigger than any one of us.  

These virtual meetings are facilitated by Melissa Clews-Hunt, MSc, RP, RMFT-SM, who has been a psychotherapist for 20 years, is a Registered Psychotherapist, a Registered Marriage and Family Therapist, and an Ecotherapist. Each week we will move through themes with guided questions to help us process through what we are feeling about the climate crisis and to mobilize how we want to respond. Together we will create space for our cherishing, our suffering and joy, call in our intersectional positions of power and privilege, explore what it means to be hopeful, and contribute to building a new narrative of reciprocity with the earth. Create space in your day to reflect and integrate ripples of healing into your everyday life. Allow our common concerns to become part of a collective response to support each of us, one another, and all of the earth.

6 weeks, 12:00 noon -1:00 EST, Tuesdays starting January 28, 2025

Virtual

$300 no tax, Check if your benefits cover group psychotherapy

Space is limited to a small group environment, so please register early

Deadline to register is January 21, 2025

Healing Spaces Therapy: Melissa Clews-Hunt, Registered Psychotherapist in Ontario, a Registered Marriage and Family Therapist sitting outside with client in nature, therapy session

Photo Credit: Alexia Cina Photography

Outdoor Therapy

Walk together comforted by nature’s peace. Allow the sway of wildflowers, the calls of birds, and the stillness of the forests invite you to attune to your own heart. As we slow we often uncover our deeply felt emotions, both in response to challenges in our lives and our feelings about the earth crisis of our time.

Many people are experiencing profound eco anxiety, or worry related to our future as humans and the vast implications for all life on earth. Many experience guilt, grief, feeling overwhelmed, and not knowing what to do. You are not alone.

Together, we can create space for all that you are holding. That we as humans feel these things shows just how interconnected we all are. We can uncover what place you have in the vast web of all life, what place you occupy in the dismantling of old oppressive ways, and in the bringing about of a new narrative.

Some people experience a meaningful spiritual connection with the natural world. Our work can nurture that connection and your overall love for the earth.

We can invite curiosity into your personal experiences. We can explore how your past impacts your present, and how you can find empowerment to make the choices you want now, and into the future. All while being held, nourished, and supported by Mother Earth. She offers her wisdom if we can learn to listen.

We can remember your sense of belonging as individuals, as communities, and as kin to all of the earth. We can cocreate a new paradigm based on reciprocity, in ways that benefit us as humans and all of the earth. We can bring about ripples of healing inside ourselves, into our relationships, and into all of the earth.

I invite you into this healing space.

NIHB Therapy Available

Individual therapy for Indigenous people in Ontario with status, feel free to connect

Healing Spaces Therapy: a woman sitting outside smiling at her phone.

Virtual & Phone Therapy

Virtual meetings also can include nature’s healing presence in your therapy journey. As we discuss themes close to your heart, the energy of the earth seems to often move through these conversations. Perhaps it is our ancestors guiding us, perhaps it is air flowing through us, helping inform how we show up in this world. A paradigm shift I have intentionally been supporting is noticing that we are drawing on our intuitive ways of knowing as additional sources of knowledge, to support our intellectual or cognitive ways of knowing. We can lean into your intuition as a guide for this work.

Phone therapy sessions can take place while you sit by a peaceful river or walk on a local trail. During our phone conversations together we can pause to connect with the earth. We can notice how what is happening around you in nature may offer wisdom for what you are personally experiencing, and we can offer back awe and gratitude to the earth for her healing capacity. For some people movement helps to process emotions or move things held in their body.

Healing Spaces Therapy: a happy couple sitting on a bench outside.

Couples Therapy

Taking couples therapy outside can facilitate special connective moments together. Some couples find outside therapy can integrate playfulness, space to be more vulnerable, and can enliven creative and meaningful connection. Couples often recall significant moments outside together like watching the sunset, holding hands while walking on a beach, or adventures hiking and exploring together.

Whether outside or meeting virtually, couples therapy is a space for partners to reconnect with each other and to uncover your deep longing for each other. Couples therapy can support your work to repair old wounds and to take active steps into the future together.

Couples therapy focusses on relationship enhancement rather than high conflict.

Mother Earth is a Powerful Cotherapist

Healing Spaces Therapy: a happy family connecting with a tree on a hike.

Family Therapy

Taking family therapy outdoors inspires a greater sense of playfulness, creative ways to express each person’s experience in the family, and meaningful moments for connection. Nature sessions can create space to share vulnerability with each other. It can provide an opportunity to put words to how family members are feeling about their future and their climate distress about future generations.

Whether outside or integrating nature through virtual sessions, ecotherapy family sessions can support meaningful connection with each other.

As a family, you can realign the values you want to each embody as individuals, how you want to show up in your family, and what you want to emanate into the world. The process of including nature can invite you to find inspiration and motivation to contribute to healthy relationships within your family and send ripples of healing into the earth.

Adult families are welcome. For children, those under the age of 12 are seen as part of family therapy with the parent(s) involved. For youth ages 12-18, they are welcome to meet with me one-on-one, while parent(s) are encouraged to participate in some of the sessions.

Healing Spaces Therapy: Melissa Clews-Hunt, Registered Psychotherapist in Ontario, a Registered Marriage and Family Therapist standing outside

About Melissa Clews-Hunt

MSC, RP, RMFT-SM | THERAPIST & CLINICAL SUPERVISOR
PRONOUNS: SHE/HER

I am a Registered Psychotherapist in Ontario, a Registered Marriage and Family Therapist, and an Approved Supervisor & Supervisor Mentor with the Canadian Association for Couple and Family Therapy (CACFT).

In addition to my clinical training and experience, my specialty is including nature in my work. That could be outdoor therapy sessions walking together and pausing to attune to the earth, meeting virtually to address eco anxiety concerns, or having a phone session while walking in a forest. I have been providing clinical supervision to therapists for approximately 20 years. I bring warmth, intelligence, open-mindedness, and creativity into my work. I am an outdoor enthusiast and a proud mom of two children.

Photo Credit: Alexia Cina Photography

Supervision Services

Ecotherapy Clinical Supervision for Therapists

Therapists looking to expand your self reflective practices, to integrate ecotherapy into your clinical work, and to explore an anti oppressive lens. Outdoor clinical supervision sessions are available. Clinical supervision is an individualized way to meet professional accreditation such as with CRPO.

Ecotherapy Group Supervision for Therapists

A collaborative space to cocreate safety and vulnerability together. Explore how to integrate ecotherapy and anti oppressive practice into our clinical work. Be part of virtual or outdoor group clinical supervision. Maximum of 6 therapists attend, and counts toward CRPO group supervision.