Coaching Outdoors: Reflections from the event
July 2024
It's been a week since the Coaching Outdoors Podcast Live and I've been reflecting on how fantastic it was! The whole event was outside. Everyone seemed excited to be there. I experienced genuine desire for community, connection, learning, sharing and momentum. Every design touch was consistent with the subject matter. There was nothing unnatural about it. And the vegan lunch was absolutely delicious! My kind of event. And so it seemed for many others too.
My biggest reflection from what I heard is:
Our ways of working and our digital lives dampen our senses and connection to nature. And yet, the natural world is one of our best antidotes to the digital world! We need both to live well. Wellbeing products and services tend to work on resourcing us from the inside out, whereas nature gives us the outside as a way of connecting to what's within us. If you're in doubt, there's growing evidence for nature exposure and the benefits of outdoor coaching thanks to the energising Jonathan Passmore!
In terms of deepening the impact of coaching outdoors, walking and talking in nature is a good start, but it's only the beginning. The next step is engaging all our senses which we can do in fun and playful ways. Think Lego Serious Play, but with nature. Seeing, listening, touching, smelling and tasting (!) nature is hard-wired in us, so we can build our sensory awareness through nature-based reconnection activities, bringing back a child-like sense of awe and wonder!
Growing our awareness of nature also helps to decrease our environmental impact, so the scope for connecting people to nature as a way of addressing sustainability and climate change challenges feels like a big opportunity to me.
I feel excited about the growing momentum behind outdoor coaching and the opportunities for it, along with my continuing learning and experimentation. Right now I'm full of ideas for playful nature-based activities I can bring to clients to support better outcomes and to get more people and organisations using the outdoors to do their work!