Bringing Nature Into the Therapy Room: How Ecotherapy-Informed EMDR Deepens Trauma Healing
In recent years, there has been a growing call within the mental health field to expand trauma treatment approaches in ways that are more culturally responsive, humble, and inclusive. The COVID-19 pandemic pulled back the curtain on long-standing social inequalities, while global movements like #BlackLivesMatter, #MeToo, and #FridaysForFuture have spotlighted the necessity of viewing trauma through a sociopolitical, cultural, environmental, and historical lens, especially when working with clients who identify as Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC).
At the same time, we’re seeing unprecedented levels of global displacement due to conflict, political instability, economic hardship, and climate-related disasters. These intersecting factors demand a more holistic response to trauma—one that meets people where they are, culturally and spiritually, and reconnects them with innate sources of resilience. This is where Ecotherapy-Informed EMDR can make a profound difference.
Reimagining EMDR Through an Ecocentric Lens
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is a well-established, evidence-based therapy for treating trauma. It supports the body’s natural healing processes, helping clients reprocess painful memories and shift into adaptive resolution. However, traditional EMDR language and clinical framing can sometimes feel overly medicalized or disconnected from a client’s lived and cultural experiences.
Ecotherapy-Informed EMDR reframes the EMDR model using nature-based metaphors and ecological principles, offering a more intuitive and universally resonant approach. Rather than viewing trauma healing as a strictly psychological process, this perspective re-roots it within the interconnected systems of body, mind, community, and the natural world.
Whereas Eurocentric frameworks tend to separate the mind from the body and the individual from their environment, an ecocentric approach recognizes the deep interdependence between people, their cultural communities, and the ecosystems they live in. This approach aligns with many Indigenous and non-Western worldviews and can create a more inclusive and healing space for clients from diverse backgrounds.
Nature-Based Metaphors for EMDR's Eight Phases
One of the most powerful contributions of this approach is the use of nature-based metaphors to describe EMDR’s core concepts and eight-phase protocol. These metaphors help demystify the process, making it more accessible and emotionally resonant, especially for clients who may be unfamiliar or uncomfortable with Western clinical terminology.
Take, for example, EMDR’s three-pronged protocol (past, present, future). Ecotherapy-Informed EMDR likens these to three strands of a braid or branches of a river: fluid, interconnected elements of a whole that must all be addressed for deep and lasting healing. This simple metaphor provides an intuitive, culturally-neutral way of understanding trauma work and helps clients visualize how different parts of their story are woven together.
Another compelling metaphor is the internal river, which represents the brain’s Adaptive Information Processing (AIP) system. In this analogy, our innate healing mechanism is like a flowing river. When we experience trauma that is too overwhelming, the memory gets stuck like a fallen tree blocking the current. Debris builds up, the flow becomes obstructed, and the system cannot function optimally. Healing, then, becomes a matter of gently removing the blockage and allowing the river to move freely again.
These images are not only emotionally evocative but deeply grounding. They return clients to a sense of connection with the Earth and with themselves, inviting them to see healing not as a foreign intervention, but as a natural, life-affirming process they already hold within.
Integrating Culture, Creativity, and Connection
Nature-based approaches open doors to incorporating culturally relevant elements into trauma therapy, such as ritual, rhythm, music, movement, or traditional materials. They also support clients in reconnecting with their cultural identity—a process that is often central to trauma recovery, especially in communities impacted by colonization, systemic oppression, or forced migration.
Ecotherapy-Informed EMDR doesn’t introduce something “new.” It reclaims something ancient. It honors traditional healing wisdom that predates the biomedical model and is still alive in many Indigenous and non-Western communities. For therapists, this approach is an invitation to listen more deeply, adapt more creatively, and practice more humbly and recognizing that the client is the expert on their own healing, and that nature can be a profound co-facilitator in that journey.
As therapists, we have an opportunity to walk alongside our clients not just as clinicians, but as guides back to wholeness through the stories they carry, the roots they reclaim, and the rivers they learn to flow with once again.
By connecting the core concepts of EMDR to the natural world, this book provides a universally understood reference point for the protocol that clients across all cultures and settings can understand.
Jennifer Marchand is a Canadian Certified Counselor and EMDRIA-approved consultant with over 10 years of clinical experience in a diverse range of cultural contexts, including with Indigenous populations in Northwest British Columbia, in Vietnam, Ghana, Kurdistan, Afghanistan, and Southeast Europe. Based in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia since 2021, she is dedicated to the field of global mental health and working in underserved settings. In addition to her private practice, she supports projects working with survivors of conflict-related sexual violence, including in Ethiopia, and provides trauma sensitivity training to health professionals in conflict-affected settings with a human rights organization called Medica Mondiale.
Speaker Disclosures:
Financial: Jennifer Marchand has employment relationships with GIZ and Medica Mondiale. She receives a speaking honorarium from PESI, Inc. She has no relevant financial relationships with ineligible organizations.
Non-financial: Jennifer Marchand has no relevant non-financial relationships.
