What is Walk & Talk Therapy?
What is Walk & Talk Therapy? While the name is pretty self-explanatory, this kind of therapy does differ from traditional talk therapy. Walk & Therapy is a movement based ecotherapy that infuses traditional talk therapy interventions with the great outdoors. Walk & Talk Therapy expands beyond the boundaries of the confined, traditional therapy office and allows the client and therapist to find healing in movement and nature.
As you probably already know, traditional talk therapy typically takes place in a private office space — 4 contained walls that create a safe space for a therapeutic relationship to blossom and information to remain completely confidential. Week to week, a relationship between the client and therapist is formed in the office, usually sitting and talking to one another face to face (or sometimes lying down in classic Psychoanalysis). Different kinds of therapy may extend their interventions outside of talking — playing, using worksheets, role-playing, yoga, dance, tapping, writing, drawing, or painting to name a few. In Walk & Talk Therapy, we use walking as an ongoing intervention, and nature is our office space.
The therapists’ role in Walk & Talk therapy is much the same as in the office: to guide, offer support, and hold space for emotional processing. While confidentiality boundaries look different in the outdoor office, they are still upheld with the highest degree of respect. Before starting with each new client, it is the responsibility of the therapist to check-in with the client regarding their level of comfort around potentially being seen out in public. This conversation lends itself to an opportunity for collaboration: together, the therapist and client can identify what to do if someone recognizes the client on the trail, or what the therapist will do/say if someone recognizes them. For the most part, it is the therapists’ job to contain the privacy of the conversation and guide the session away from crowded paths and use their professional discernment regarding when to pull off to the side to let others pass or pause for a moment. While Walk & Talk Therapy does take place in public outdoor settings, it does not break any HIPAA violation: no one has to know that the therapist and client are in a therapy session, and to the outside onlooker, the therapist and client may look like two friends, walking and talking as people naturally do when they go on walks together.
Lastly, Walk & Talk allows the therapist to infuse nature and mindfulness practices as healing interventions that may feel more organic and effective than they would in the typical office setting. For example, in nature, we are able to see the change of the seasons reflected on the growth of leaves on the bushes and trees depending on the time of year. This reminds us that time is always moving forward, as must we. Each step we take forward in a Walk & Talk session is both literally and figuratively a step forward in our healing journey. Rivers and streams flow in one direction, as must we. Nature offers symbols and metaphors for life’s greatest adversities and how to move through them on our journey.
