From Playrooms to Forests: The Therapeutic Revolution Happening Indoors and Outdoors
No Forest? No Problem: Bringing Nature's Healing Powers Indoors
There's something almost magical about watching a child pick up a stick and start drawing in the dirt. No instructions needed, no fancy equipment required—just an innate human response to the natural world that seems to transcend culture, age, and circumstance. This simple observation lies at the heart of a growing movement in play therapy that's taking healing out of the traditional four walls and into the great outdoors.
Dr. Kate Renshaw and Meg Ellard, both Registered Play Therapist’s (APPTA RPT-S™) in Australia, recently sat down to explore this fascinating intersection of nature, play, and therapeutic healing. Their conversation reveals how reconnecting with the natural world might be one of our most powerful, and underutilised tools for supporting children's mental health and development.
The Organic Journey Back to Nature
Meg Ellard's path to nature-based play therapy began organically during her decade-long career in early childhood education. It was her discovery of "bush kindergarten"; an Australian take on the forest school movement, that sparked a profound realisation about the therapeutic power of natural environments.
"When I heard about bush kindergarten, it almost felt like a return to my own childhood," Ellard reflects. Growing up in the Yarra Valley, she was the kind of child who stayed outside until the streetlights came on, finding safety and authenticity in natural spaces. "I really found that that was a huge, valuable part of my childhood where I was able to really feel safe and like myself in those settings."
This personal connection led Meg to establish her own bush kindergarten program and eventually to pursue research on nature-based play therapy for her Master's thesis at Deakin University. Her findings, published in the British Journal of Play Therapy, reveal the remarkable breadth and accessibility of nature-based therapeutic approaches.
The Spectrum of Nature Integration
One of the most compelling aspects of Ellard's research is her "spectrum of nature play immersion"; a framework that makes nature-based therapy accessible to practitioners regardless of their setting or resources. At one end of the spectrum, therapists can simply bring natural objects into traditional playrooms: shells, rocks, crystals, feathers, or even potted plants. At the other end, therapy takes place entirely in wild, unstructured natural environments.
"We don't decide what's in that space necessarily," Meg explains about outdoor settings, "and we're going to come up against unexpected changes based on weather or season." This unpredictability, rather than being a drawback, becomes a therapeutic asset, offering children experiences of safe challenge and adaptive problem-solving that structured environments can't replicate.
The middle ground might involve using school playgrounds, backyards, or local parks. The key insight is that nature doesn't have to mean wilderness; even small doses of natural elements can provide therapeutic benefits.
The Science Behind the Magic of Nature
When Ellard analysed existing research through the lens of play therapy's "20 therapeutic powers of play", recognised agents of change in child development, two benefits stood out as most frequently documented: self-regulation and resilience building.
This makes intuitive sense. Nature presents children with what psychologists call "eustress"—positive, manageable challenges that build confidence and coping skills. Whether it's figuring out how to climb a tree safely, building a fort from sticks, or navigating around a spider, natural environments offer countless opportunities for children to practice risk assessment and problem-solving in low-stakes situations.
"Children generally are good at testing: is this branch safe?" Meg notes from her experience supervising tree-climbing adventures. "The self-esteem and the positive experience of climbing up to a space that you thought 'I was a bit nervous about this, but I've done it'—that positive growth for children is a really nice example of what builds up that self-esteem and self-regulation."
These early experiences of calculated risk-taking and mastery may be particularly crucial in our current era, when many children have fewer opportunities for unstructured outdoor play. The skills developed in natural settings: bodily awareness, risk assessment, and emotional regulation, transfer directly to the kinds of decisions young people face as they mature.
Breaking Down Barriers: Nature for Every Child
Initially, Ellard worried about how nature-based approaches would work for children with diverse needs, those with ADHD, Autism, mobility challenges, or other differences. What she discovered challenges common assumptions about accessibility and inclusion.
"Because there's no minimum standard to be able to access nature, it was actually easier to make it inclusive for everybody," she explains. Unlike structured environments that might require modification for different abilities, nature offers multiple ways to engage: some children run and climb, others lie on the grass watching clouds, and still others find the contained classroom challenging but discover regulation in the freedom of outdoor spaces.
This insight is particularly powerful for children who struggle with traditional therapeutic settings. As Meg puts it, "Something about being outside, and the freedom that it feels to be in that space, is regulating and containing for them in a way that we find challenging to do in the room, because the four walls make it more tricky for them."
Beyond Therapy: Nature as Daily Medicine
The conversation between Dr. Renshaw and Meg Ellard reveals how nature-based approaches extend far beyond formal therapy sessions. Both practitioners describe incorporating natural elements into their offices and playrooms: plants, crystals, sticks, pebbles, sand and more! Meg described sun catchers at the Playroom Therapy clinic that create rainbow light displays; creating what she calls "magic o'clock" moments that naturally interrupt the day and invite mindful presence.
This integration reflects growing research on "nature prescriptions" for mental health. Simple practices like 15-minute walks, indoor plants, or even listening to nature sounds can provide measurable benefits for stress reduction and emotional regulation in both children and adults.
"Nature does give us those prompts to stop and to tune in," Meg observes, noting how even autumn leaves visible during morning commutes can serve as mindfulness cues in our busy lives.
The Deeper Connection: Nature as Humanity
Perhaps the most profound insight from their discussion is how nature-based play connects us to something essentially human. Ellard describes watching children intuitively create stories in natural settings, drawing parallels to oral traditions and folklore across cultures, from Aboriginal Australian dreamtime stories to folktales from around the world.
"It feels very human, and very cross-cultural," she reflects. "Children would make up stories about the space collaboratively or individually... That feels very human, and very much represented in different cultures in different ways."
This observation suggests that nature-based play taps into something deeper than therapeutic techniques, it accesses our fundamental humanity. In a world increasingly dominated by screens and structured environments, natural spaces offer what sociologists call a "third space", neither home nor work/school, but a place where we can simply be ourselves.
Practical Steps Forward
For practitioners, parents, or educators interested in exploring nature-based approaches, Ellard's research offers encouraging news: you don't need wilderness access or extensive training to begin. Small steps can yield meaningful benefits:
In therapeutic settings: Add natural objects to playrooms: crystals, shells, smooth stones, or dried leaves; that children can touch and explore
At home: Incorporate plants, natural materials, or even sun catchers to create moments of natural beauty
In communities: Advocate for natural elements in waiting rooms, schools, and public spaces where people spend time
The key is starting where you are and building comfort gradually. As Meg learned, moving from requiring bathroom facilities at outdoor sites to becoming comfortable with camp toilets happened naturally as her confidence grew.
The Future of Healing
As our society grapples with rising mental health challenges among children and adults, the integration of nature into therapeutic practice offers a hopeful path forward. It's cost-effective, accessible, and taps into resources that have supported human wellbeing for millennia.
Ellard's dream of facilitating infant-parent groups in natural settings, or Dr. Kate's vision of nature elements in everyday spaces, point toward a future where healing happens not just in clinical offices but in the world around us.
The message is both simple and profound: sometimes the most sophisticated therapeutic intervention is as basic as stepping outside, picking up a stick, and remembering what it feels like to be human in the natural world. In our fast-paced, digital age, this might be exactly the medicine we've been missing.
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For those interested in learning more about nature-based play therapy, Meg Ellard can be reached through Playroom Therapy in Melbourne or her website, Wattle Play Therapy. Her research has been published in the British Journal of Play Therapy in 2021, and in the Nature-Based Play and Expressive Therapies book published by Routledge in 2022. Meg’s research continues to inform practice across Australia and beyond.