This group may be for you if you are:
- A licensed mental health professional.
- Interested in a small, closed group setting.
- Curious how your relationship with nature and animals can enhance your clinical work.
- Open to a peer-led, experiential, and nature-informed approach.
- Eager to learn together, support, and consult with one another.
- Interested in deepening and expanding connection with self and nature.
The intended outcomes from participating include:
- Experiencing the possibilities of inviting nature in as a consultant to clinical work.
- A deeper and more expansive sense of connection with yourself and the natural world.
- Strengthening skills of attunement, observation, and awareness, and
- Generating a sense of community with other therapists.
Register Now
This peer consulting group is for licensed mental health professionals who are curious how their own relationship with nature and animals could support their clinical work through a peer-led, experiential, and nature-informed approach. The purpose of the group is to provide an opportunity to learn, support and consult with one another about clinical work, as well as strengthen connection to oneself and nature.
The guiding belief is that we can learn from our relationships with nature and animals and can do so more intentionally through nature-informed practices that may help to provide insight and guidance. Such ideas and practices may be unique to each person. There will be space for peers to share about their own ways of connecting with nature and to support one another with developing or expanding their practices further. Peers are not required to share nor conform to the same beliefs, ideas, or experiences regarding connection with nature, animals, and self.
The group opens with a sharing of intentions and questions we each have for the day. There will then be a guided grounding experience to help us arrive in the space together. We will then transition to the outdoors to experience connecting with nature and the animals in our own ways. This will be a chance to engage in experiential and experimental ways of inviting in a nature-informed approach to generating questions, insights and
guidance for clinical work. In the first peer group meeting, we can discuss ways to understand connection and ways to connect more deeply to generate ideas to try out. We will then gather back together in the group, to reflect and share our experiences with one another, and sip some tea. Peers may ask to be witnessed by the group while they share, ask the group to share reflections or observations in response to what is shared, request the group to ask questions, or ask the group to support in some other way they choose. We will then close the space and share any final takeaways from the experience. The group opens with a sharing of intentions and questions we each have for the day. There will then be a guided grounding experience to help us arrive in the space together. We will then transition to the outdoors to experience connecting with nature and the animals in our own ways.
This will be a chance to engage in experiential and experimental ways of inviting in a nature-informed approach to generating questions, insights and guidance for clinical work. In the first peer group meeting, we can discuss ways to understand connection and ways to connect more deeply to generate ideas to try out. We will then gather back together in the group, to reflect and share our experiences with one another, and sip some tea. Peers may ask to be witnessed by the group while they share, ask the group to share reflections or observations in response to what is shared, request the group to ask questions, or ask the group to support in some other way they choose. We will then close the space and share any final takeaways from the experience.
The intended outcomes from participating include experiencing the possibilities of inviting nature in as a consultant to clinical work, experiencing a deeper and more expansive sense of connection with yourself and the natural world, strengthening skills of attunement, observation, and awareness, and generating a sense of community with other therapists.
Hosts
Lauren Petrilli, LICSW
Lauren Petrilli is a licensed independent clinical social worker in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, graduating from Boston College School of Social Work in 2017. Since then, Lauren has worked with individuals and groups in traditional clinical settings. Her journey with horses began in early childhood, and she began providing equine assisted
services in 2021, after becoming certified in Level 1 Embodied Equine Psychotherapy from the Institute for Equine Assisted Practices Inc. Over the years, Lauren has immersed herself in the teachings of Narrative Therapy, Ecotherapy, and Somatic Therapies that influence her work as well.
Kate Ford, LICSW
Kate Ford is a licensed independent clinical social worker
(LICSW) in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, graduating from the Boston College School of
Social Work in 1998. Since 2000, Kate has worked with individuals and groups in traditional clinical
settings. She began her journey providing equine assisted services in 2006. Most recently, Kate
became certified in equine facilitated psychotherapy, level 2, through The HERD Institute (Human
Equine Relational Development) and has been a licensed riding instructor through the
Commonwealth of Massachusetts since 2008.
