Outdoor coaching sessions: why moving outside isn't enough

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Prefer to read? The written version starts just below.

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My guess is that there's a deeper reason you want to work with clients outdoors than a change of scenery from a boring office. I'd bet it goes deeper than the potential for adventure, movement, and challenge, and maybe even deeper than the physiological and stress reduction benefits. Those reasons are all great. But if you're like me, the pull to work with clients outdoors is connected to something more core, more primal, and more about the insights and healing that only nature can provide.

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Coaching outdoors and on the land has the potential to be transformational and life changing for your clients. Creating that experience, though, is more involved than moving your sessions outside. A normal, run of the mill coaching session won't work out there. Without a framework, your session runs the risk of feeling like an everyday coaching session that would have happened inside, except now it's happening under a tree.

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I've been teaching coaches to close that gap since 2008. I'm Michael Jospe, founder of Earth-Based Institute and creator of the Nature-Connected Coaching Certification Program, and I've trained hundreds of nature connected coaches in this method.

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Key takeaways:

• Moving a session outdoors changes the venue. Whether it becomes transformational depends on whether you invite your client to engage with the environment.
• We relate to nature at three levels: transactional, therapeutic, and transformational. Nature-connected coaching works at the third.
• A nature-connected coaching session moves through three sequential stages: intention, experimentation, and integration.
• Run this way, sessions ask less of you, not more. You become a mediator between nature and your client rather than the one who has to have the answers.
• The three stages come from two sources that describe the same process: ancestral wisdom and the neuroscience of change.

Why moving your sessions outdoors isn't enough

There are always benefits to being outside. And there is a big difference between sitting outside under a tree having a coaching session and accessing the depth of transformation and healing that we know is accessible in our relationship to nature.

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The difference is not the location. It's whether you invite your client to engage with the environment. Without that invitation, nature stays scenery, and the session could have happened indoors.

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To put this into perspective, think about our relationship to nature in three levels.

The three levels of relationship with nature

Level one is transactional. Nature is a backdrop, a venue, a place you go out to for exercise or adventure. You're in a beautiful place you love, and it's wonderful to be there, but you're not making any sort of connection.

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Level two is therapeutic. This is where forest bathing and forest therapy live. You start to access the physiological and psychological benefits of being on the land, which are well documented in peer-reviewed research. You know this level because you've experienced it yourself.

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And that's probably one of the reasons you're called into this work: to help other people experience that same depth.

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Level three is transformational, and this is the realm of nature-connected coaching. These are the deep breakthrough moments in a life that are influenced by nature. You've most likely lived this yourself, whether in a single vivid moment or built slowly over years on the land. In this shift of perspective, nature almost becomes an active participant in your process, like a guide. It's almost as if nature is listening to what you're saying, how you're being, how you're acting and responding. Nature becomes a reflective source of truth.

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At level one, nature is where the session happens. At level three, nature becomes a co-coach with you and with your client. That's where we want our coaching sessions to get to.

The three stages of a nature-connected coaching session

The process I teach my Nature-Connected Coaching students works whether the session is out on the land, indoors, or on Zoom. It moves through three stages, and the stages are sequential. The first one sets up everything that follows.

Stage one: intention

Intention here is more than words. Forming an intention follows a neurological process, and it primes your mind and your body for the next moments.

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Think about why somebody comes to coaching in the first place. They want to change some aspect of the experience they're having. That day-to-day experience is built on beliefs, patterns, attitudes, and behaviors that were useful at one point and no longer serve them. Their brain has been formulating intentions for them all along, based on what was originally programmed as important. Now the person is saying: I want to do life differently.

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But there's a problem. We can't create a new intention from an old way of being. We have to move beyond the old stories of ourselves to create it. That's what this first stage of the session is about: moving beyond the old stories and into a new intention.

Stage two: experimentation

Once your client has that intention, the transformational relationship with nature kicks in. You take the new intention out onto the land, or into whatever environment you're in, and your client begins to notice new things about themselves. In the past, they engaged with their environment from an old way of being. Now they get to ask: how is the environment responding to me now?

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This rests on a concept: your way of being in this moment has a presence, and that presence has an impact on your environment. You've noticed somebody walk into a room and change it just by being there. Your client has that same impact. When they change their way of being, they carry a different presence. A different presence creates a different impact, and that impact is what they get to learn from.

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So the invitation in this stage is to stop thinking about the new way of being and become it. Try it on. The only way to learn is to try. That's how information turns into wisdom.

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It takes a tremendous amount of trust on everyone's part, because your client is walking into the unknown. And the unknown is where the magic happens: novelty and attention are what jumpstart the change process in the brain. When somebody willingly walks into an unknown experience, it creates the prime condition for the brain and the mind to evolve. Your client starts to look at nature through new eyes, which immediately invites nature in as an active participant. That tree you're sitting under is now something different in their mind, and the more they tune into that, the more they learn about their new way of being.

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One practical note on setting. A wild natural location is ideal in many ways, because there's so much nature can reflect back. But any environment will do. What matters more is the difference between neutral and non-neutral environments. A natural setting is neutral, and it gives your client a lot to work with. A home, a workplace, a social situation: those come with pre-programmed triggers that activate the old self very quickly. The more your client practices with you in a neutral environment, the more the neural connections of the new self strengthen before they walk back into the non-neutral ones.

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Which is exactly what happens right after the session ends, and it's the whole point of stage three.

Stage three: integration

Change can't hold in someone's life if the way their brain processes information doesn't change with it.

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One of the greatest gifts of our brain is efficiency. Staying focused and attentive takes a lot of energy, so the brain moves most decisions down into the unconscious, where they run on autopilot. That same efficiency is what keeps your client in their comfort zone, their default mode. What they want is for that default to become a different pattern. That takes consistent attention: getting ahead of the brain's tendency to tuck decisions back into the unconscious.

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In a standard coaching session, the end result we strive for is the to-do list. In nature-connected coaching, our focus is on who is doing the to-do list, which matters more than what's on it. It's really a to-be list.

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Say one of the to-dos is cleaning out the garage to make way for new space. Great. Who is going to clean out that garage: the old way of being, or the new one? Talk to the boss, talk to the partner, get to the gym more. All good things to do, and they may be exactly what living the new life looks like. But who is going to do them?

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So in this final stage, you help your client create clear, meaningful opportunities to practice their new way of being in real time, in their life. The more they stay engaged that way, the more the new self embeds and starts to become the default. The brain learns through repetition that this new way of being is what matters now. We're not working against how the brain works. We're working with it.

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Your coaching session is their first opportunity to practice.

Why this way of coaching is less work, not more

In a normal coaching session, you can feel a lot of pressure to have the answers for your clients, to have the next question ready, to come up with a solution. Especially when a client isn't fully clear and engaged, which happens quite a bit.

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When you bring your client into a transformational relationship with nature, everything shifts in terms of how much energy you're putting in. You become more of a mediator between nature and your client. You're holding the space rather than working hard to help your client make certain connections. Those connections come quickly and easily when your client is in that state. Once you start applying this framework, the amount of work you end up doing in a coaching session drops significantly.

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This is where you start to hear the kind of thing Sara, one of our graduates, heard from a client recently: "I got more out of that one coaching session than I have in four months of therapy."

Where the three stages come from

These stages aren't something I invented. When I started to research what was going on in this work, I found they come from two places that turn out to describe the same thing.

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One is ancestral wisdom: the patterns in how people have related to nature for generations, the rituals and practices that keep showing up across cultures and still matter today. The other is the neuroscience of change: how the brain and the mind actually shift from one way of being into another.

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Put them side by side and you begin to see it. Our nature connected ancestors were already following the process that neuroscience is describing today. They were listening to how change actually happens inside us. They just didn't call it neuroscience. They called it ceremony, or ritual. These stages are something I noticed, where ancient practices and modern science meet, and I've spent the years since 2008 teaching coaches to work with them deliberately.

How to try this in your next session

You learn this process the same way your clients do: by trying it, starting with yourself. So before your next session, whether it happens outdoors, indoors, or on Zoom, sit with these questions:

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• How comfortable are you being in the unknown? Your client's trust in that territory starts with yours.
• Which version of you is going to run the next session: the old way of being, or the new one?
• What near you counts as a neutral environment? It doesn't need to be wilderness. A park, a field, the trees behind the parking lot all give you something to work with.
• What would change if you were the mediator in the session rather than the one with the answers?

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All of this is already wired into you, and it's already wired into your client's brain. It's already a part of nature. Trust that process, try it, and you'll learn the different steps and how to do them well.

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Nature will show you.

FAQ

Does nature-connected coaching have to happen in wild nature?

No. A wild natural location is ideal in many ways because of how much nature can reflect back to your client, but any environment will do. It's about experimenting, moving, and being more than anything else.

Can I run these sessions indoors or on Zoom?

Yes. The same three-stage process creates that atmosphere whether your sessions are indoors, on Zoom, or out on the land. I teach my students to run it in all three.

What makes an outdoor session nature-connected rather than just outdoors?

Whether you invite your client to engage with the environment. If nature stays a backdrop, you have a normal session in a nice location. When your client engages with the environment from a new way of being, nature becomes an active participant in the session.

Is this scientific or spiritual?

The stages sit where the two meet. Ancestral practices across cultures were already following the process that the neuroscience of change describes today. They called it ceremony or ritual rather than neuroscience.

Does this kind of change happen overnight?

Of course not. That's why people hire a coach: to help them stay on track and on top of this change in their life. The brain learns through repetition that the new way of being is what matters now.

How do I learn to run sessions this way?

Try it. The best way to master the art is to practice it, and all of it is already wired into you. If you want hands-on mentoring and a professional credential as a nature connected coach, that's what our certification program is for.

Ready to go deeper?

If you'd like one-on-one mentoring, a professional credential as a nature connected coach, and a community of nature focused coaches and guides, take a look at the Nature-Connected Coaching Certification Program.

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About the program: Nature-Connected Coaching is ICF Level 2 accredited coaching education, 315 hours. Students are certified in about 14 months and credential-ready in one to two years, depending on their professional experience and how quickly they complete the ICF requirements. The program exceeds the education requirements for an ICF PCC credential and includes two years of close, individualized business mentoring to help you launch your coaching business.

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Download the Nature-Connected Coaching brochure →

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Want to go further? Start with What is Nature Connected Coaching and At the Heart of Nature Connected Coaching.

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Michael Jospe, PCC, is the founder and lead instructor of Earth-Based Institute, an ICF Level 2 accredited Nature-Connected Coaching certification program based in Boulder, Colorado. He has been an ICF-credentialed coach for over two decades and has trained hundreds of professional coaches since 2008.