By Cassie Weymouth With editorial support from the Center for Nature Informed Therapy Resiliency. Transformation. Grounding. These are some of the words students used to describe their experience during the Peace in the Wild Alps Retreat, a nature-informed study abroad experience led by Dr. Heidi Schreiber-Pan and the Center for Nature Informed Therapy. The program brought together 11 Monmouth University students — both undergraduate and graduate — along with two professors f

Three practices for returning to the world around us Evening settles over Loch Raven Reservoir, while the living world continues around us. Recently, I was sitting in a beautiful place at sunset. The sky was changing color, and the light was settling across the landscape. I was also on the phone with my mother. My father is struggling with dementia, and we were trying to figure out his care so that my mother could come visit. I was brainstorming solutions, considering possibi

A drawing prompt, rhythm exercise, or nature mandala is not automatically clinical. What makes expressive work therapeutic is the intention beneath it: assessment, consent, pacing, ethics, cultural awareness, and thoughtful integration.

Spending time outside does not automatically create a relationship with nature. Heidi Schreiber-Pan explores how curiosity, attention, and the willingness to notice may deepen both connection and healing.

I watched every match. My wife scheduled a work trip. Somewhere between Argentina’s resilience, Scotland’s bagpipes, and Brazilian fans joining a Viking Row, the World Cup started to look a lot like nature: beautiful, messy, competitive, and deeply connected.

Sit a family at a table and the old roles snap back within minutes. Take them outside and something shifts: posture, eye contact, even who leads. How the outdoors quietly rearranges a family, and why it helps the work.

Before reassurance, a baby feels rhythm, and we never stop borrowing each other’s tempo. Why regulation is rarely a solo act, and how shared rhythm in nature and music helps two nervous systems settle together.

Summer can offer rich opportunities for outdoor therapy, but hot weather asks clinicians to practice with greater care. Drawing from CNIT graduate community wisdom, this Field Notes article explores how to adapt sessions with shade, water, slower pacing, cooling supports, body awareness, and flexible safety planning.

You are not a problem to solve. You are a living system to understand. A nature-informed take on parts work, where the same relational lens scales from your inner world out to the family and beyond.

When a client says “I don’t know,” it is often not resistance. Under stress, language is one of the first things the brain sets down. A look at why some healing begins before words, and how nature and creative expression open the door.

The final dispatch from Payton's three weeks on the Camino. He arrives in Santiago, attends mass at the cathedral, and offers a closing reflection on the joy of connection, the strange power of meeting strangers across language and culture, and a Spanish phrase he carries home: todos nosotros somos uno. We are all one.

An Untitled Meditation Trail Dispatch No. 5 from the Camino de Santiago bridge from Arcade to Ponte Sampaio Sometimes I find myself saying thank you, after an outstandingly pleasant section of going, to some part of that going. I'm not always sure which part it is exactly, that I'm thanking. Sure, sometimes there was an exceptionally wise tree or stunning waterfall, but sometimes it was just an area in space that felt perfectly right. It reminds me that at any scale of percep

Payton's fourth dispatch from the Camino. A reflection on the lasting power of the written word, two of his own journal entries (purple flowers along a stream in Redondela, an unplanned conversation in a churros line), and a small invitation: take one moment from your day and write it as if it mattered. It did.

Payton's third dispatch from the Camino. He leaves the Atlantic, follows the Minho River inland, and crosses the border into Spain by moonlight. A reflection on the many faiths along the trail, the one pilgrim who is all pilgrims, and a small Chinese poem about a hat, a bundle, and a staff.

A small village passed Payton by on the trail. On one farmhouse, in painted Portuguese tiles, a poem about joy. His second dispatch from the Camino de Santiago is an ode to the Atlantic that has walked beside him for a week, and a question for the rest of us: what brought you joy today?

"Beginning is an action that we must take, unlike beginnings, which we can simply watch occur to us." Payton sends his first dispatch from Porto, where the Camino de Santiago stretches out in front of him, one step at a time. A meditation on the quiet beginnings we keep on hold.

For a holiday meant to honor love, Mother's Day produces an extraordinary amount of silent grief. If your mother died, was absent, or is the wound — this essay is for you. A reflection on attachment theory, "earned secure" connection, and what neuroscience reveals about the mothering still available to us.

At the end of time outside, we pause to notice what might have attached. But this practice goes far beyond the trail. The tick check is a powerful metaphor for releasing the stress, tension, and emotional weight we carry — and a core principle of nature-informed therapy.

A husband’s final smile. A rose blooming a month early. This is a reflection on grief, awe, and the quiet strand that ties us back to the living world.

I never liked Valentine’s Day. Too commercial. But I found a gift that doesn’t wilt: adventure. A personal story about backpacking, arguing in the wild, learning to share the load, and finding connection again, one trail at a time.