Nature Connection for
Workplace Wellbeing
Facilitating spaces that care for both employee wellbeing and nature.
Thriving People.
Thriving Organisations.
Thriving Planet.
Support your teams to be more resourced, resilient, healthy and connected.
Invest in wellbeing whilst addressing the ecological and climate emergency.
Through facilitated nature connection practices both people and planet can flourish.
Why Nature Connection?
People.
Wellbeing
Positively impact mental health and stress reduction by proactively preventing or mitigating ill-health.
Connection
Reconnect your teams to themselves, each other, to mission & purpose and the natural world. Time to regenerate and foster the growth of healthy communities and the flourishing of our environment.
Engagement
Time and space to connect with nature supports people to be more relaxed, resourced and resilient, leading to more engaged and purposeful teams and organisations.
Organisations.
Environmental
Stewardship
Inspires individuals to engage in pro-environmental behaviours and take actions to help nature recover, providing a social return on your investment through a legacy of ecological impact
Responsible Business
Supports your organisations' desire to continue and further expand on existing responsible business efforts.
Diversity, Equity & Inclusivity
An inclusive approach that welcomes everyone regardless of physical ability; empowering all to be present and participate and benefit from the program in their own unique way.
Planet.
Evidence & Research
Nature connectedness ‘can help address the global calls for a new relationship with nature required for a sustainable future’.
See 'Improving Nature Connectedness in Adults, Agenda 2022' and further evidence and research here.
Being With
Supports the 'be' rather than 'do', to be alongside nature and in a relationship with it. This approach has a direct impact on restoring nature, and is a radical shift from our our society's current dominant mindset.
Reciprocity
Nurtures a mindset of reciprocal and mutual relationship, that support both personal needs, alongside the social and environmental.
Our Approach
The Nature Collective C.I.C. is a not-for-profit social enterprise that creates space for people to slow down and spend time with nature; to reconnect to themselves, each other and the wider world.
We work in partnership with organisations of varying size and type, applying ecopsychological practices that value and invest in employee wellbeing, together with a connection to the natural world. This creates a more productive, satisfied, healthy and resilient team, leading to more successful organisations, and ultimately a thriving internal and external ecosystem.
Our work is grounded in extensive training in applied ecopsychology and nature-based practices with The Natural Academy. This spans nature connection for health and wellbeing, working closely with the NatureWell programme, the Natural Self Ecotherapeutic model, and Eco-Depth nature-based interventions.
Our programmes are fully inclusive, supporting people and nature to recover in an accessible and equitable format that is flexible depending on the group. We value working with both large and smaller break-out groups, to enable people to experience the time and space to really hear, be heard and listened to.
All of our programmes take place outdoors, in places and spaces where connection to ecological recovery is practised by land owners or the current custodians of the land.
Connecting with nature has a legacy. Everything is rooted in a shared belief that any action to support people’s health and wellbeing supports a broader environmentally sustainable future, one that positively impacts all of our communities, both human and non-human.
Our Offering
All of our sessions are tailored to your organisation and the aims and objectives that you want to achieve from our time together. Example content and structure of our sessions can be found below:
Practicalities
Our Nature Connection Wellbeing offering for organisations, is inclusive and accessible. It ranges from mindful walks and taster sessions, to full-days and bespoke longer term programmes.
Sessions are held at dedicated outdoor locations, in partnership with land owners and custodians whose values are aligned with our work, and the responsible and sustainable environmental commitments of your organisation too. We tend to work with a maximum number of 16 participants per session and usually a minimum of two facilitators.
We encourage organisations to work together with us over a period of time, often in line with the seasons throughout a year. This consistency in revisiting the resourcing of your team, deepens their reciprocity with nature, encouraging further pro-environmental behaviours, making it more impactful and sustainable long term.
Content
Unlike a day of physical activities, session are framed around nature based interventions focusing more on 'being rather than doing', with invitations to notice, reflect, and participate in practices that develop nature connectedness that leads to health and wellbeing outcomes. We work with different practices and models some of which are part of the NatureWell model developed by The Natural Academy. These include nature-based mindfulness and grounding activities, alongside the Five Pathways to Nature Connectedness, a researched and evidence based study from University of Derby.
The '3 Rs' of: Relaxation, Restoration and Revitalisation are typical outcomes from the interventions offered. With nature as partner, mind and body are invited to attune to sensations that can foster a sense of safety or wellness however small they may appear - attending to our wellbeing, to a felt sense of ‘okayness’. Reminding our nervous systems that it can experience stress and then come back to a state of calm and rest.
Structure
Our sessions work closely with seasonal themes and their structure follows this framework; Mindful Grounding, Check In, Nature Based Intervention*, Reflective Space, Check Out, Gratitude. Nature Based Intervention themes tend to be based on the Five Pathways to Nature Connectedness; Contact, Beauty, Emotion, Compassion, Meaning.
*Examples of interventions, practices and processes that we might work with that support this are mindfulness in nature, breathwork, grounding, mindful walking, emotional regulations, stress reduction, self compassion development, healing processes, wholeness experience and self-acceptance, feeling and sensing aliveness, witnessing and integration of challenges.
In addition to the above, our programmes can also be tailored to include additional offerings; Living Systems Work, Breathwork, Facilitated Conversations to support navigating particular challenges, and Immersive Residential Programmes.
Connect with us for more details.
Testimonials
Our Team
We are a diverse group of facilitators each with our own personal connection to this work, united by our shared belief in the importance of taking time to notice and engage with nature, both around and within us. We are passionate about the power these shifts can have on impacting change and have come together as this collective, to share and cultivate the compassion and curiosity of these rich spaces. We are DBS certified, First Aid and Mental Health First Aid trained.
Evidence
and
Research
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University of Derby 2023: 'Nature Connected Organisations Handbook: A guide for connecting organisations with nature for sustainable futures and workplace wellbeing' https://findingnatureblog.files.wordpress.com/2023/09/nature-connected-organisations-handbook.pdf
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Biological Conservation 2023 : ‘Psychological and physical connections with nature improve both human well-being and nature conservation: A systematic review of meta-analyses’. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0006320722003950
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CIPD’s Health and Wellbeing at Work survey 2022: https://www.cipd.co.uk/knowledge/culture/well-being/health-well-being-work
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Improving Nature Connectedness in Adults 2022 : A Meta-Analysis, Review and Agenda. https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/19/12494
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United Nations Environment Programme 2021 : ‘Making Peace With Nature: A scientific blueprint to tackle the climate, biodiversity and pollution emergencies’https://wedocs.unep.org/xmlui/bitstream/handle/20.500.11822/35114/MPNKM.pdf
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Mental Health.org.uk & YouGov Poll 2021: https://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/our-work/research/nature-how-connecting-nature-benefits-our-mental-health
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Journal of Environmental Psychology 2020: 'Nature contact, nature connectedness and associations with health, wellbeing and pro-environmental behaviours.'https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0272494419301185
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University of Derby 2017: 'Beyond knowing nature: Contact, emotion, compassion, meaning, and beauty are pathways to nature connection'https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0177186