What is Nature-Connected Coaching?

Nature-Connected Coaching is a unique professional coaching methodology in which the coach actively collaborates with Nature. It combines evidence-informed coaching skills with intentional interactions with the environment that are co-created with the client based on their goals and the transformation they seek.

Think of a Nature-Connected Coach as someone who co-guides with Nature to help clients build awareness, encourage new behaviors, and shift the beliefs that hold them back. This approach to personal development, growth and healing is distinct from simply coaching outdoors, forest bathing, and therapeutic experiences in nature. Nature-Connected Coaching offers a highly client-centered yet repeatable framework that turns the client’s relationship with nature into lasting change in that person's life.

If you feel most like yourself outdoors, and know that you're meant to help people transform their lives through nature, Nature-Connected Coaching provides a pathway to turn your calling into a skilled, ethical, and credible professional career.

The simple version: collaborating with nature

First, it is important to understand the premise of professional coaching: Clients already have the answers inside themselves. The coach’s role is to partner with the client to help them get clear on what they want, what’s in the way, and take concrete steps toward change in their life.

Nature-Connected Coaches help people unearth those answers through their relationship with Nature. They partner not just with the client, but with Nature as well.

As one coaching student put it, “Nature-Connected Coaches co-create learning with their clients and with the environment. Every bird call, track, or breeze becomes part of the dialogue.”

Nature is not just a backdrop, but a partner in the work. You’re coaching in collaboration with the natural world, where nature takes an active role in helping the person move toward the change they seek.

It is more than coaching outdoors

Anyone can sit under a tree and run a coaching session, but there is a big difference between coaching outside, and coaching in collaboration with Nature.

Nature-Connected Coaching is about collaborating with nature, letting the living world take part in the client’s transformation. This isn’t just Nature serving as nice scenery for a coaching session!

At it’s core, Nature-Connected Coaching honors that humans are not separate from Nature. Nature is everywhere, including inside each of us.  That is why this work is so impactful for people whether they are deep in a forest or sitting beside a single window.

Another core belief that NCC is built on that differentiates it from coaching outdoors is the understanding that a person’s sense of wellbeing is rooted in connection to the natural world, to each other and, ultimately, to ourselves.

Helping people create lasting change in their life through their relationship with the natural world and their true self is what distinguishes Nature-Connected Coaching from other modalities like coaching outdoors, therapy that takes place outside, and forest bathing.

And it is more than a walk in the woods

If you’re reading this, you probably already agree that time in the natural world can be healing on its own. There are many types of therapeutic experiences in nature that are all valuable in their own way!

Nature-Connected Coaching focuses on taking the growth and insight that comes from being in relationship with nature, and helps a person carry it into their actual life in a way that creates sustained change. You’re helping someone turn a powerful experience outdoors into a new level of confidence at work, a new boundary set with kids at home, and the choices they make on an ordinary Tuesday.

A more technical definition

We define a Nature-Connected Coach as, “a Professional Coach who strives to guide their client to greater self-awareness, empowerment and connection to purpose. An NCC also has a strong personal connection, respect and trust in the natural world, natural cycles and natural processes. An NCC considers Nature to be an active collaborator in the work with a client.”

Alongside how to co-guide with Nature, Nature-Connected Coaches are also trained in being grief and trauma-informed practitioners, the application of Gestalt psychology and parts work in a coaching setting, and the neuroscience of change. The intentional encounters with the environment that you guide your client through are not scripted ahead of time, but they are anchored in evidence-informed coaching techniques, deep nature connection, and a clear coaching methodology designed to help clients reach their full potential.

How it works

A good coaching session gets clear on the goal, helps the person see what is in the way of them reaching their goal, and sends them off with a next step. 

The hard part comes in between sessions, where old habits pull people back into their typical patterns. This is where nature shines.

Once you and your client are clear on their true goal, and on the new way of being they are trying to grow into, you invite in an experience with the environment that lets them practice that new way of being directly. Instead of only talking about the change, you’re helping them get out of their head and have a felt experience. In other words, you’re helping them embody the change in the moment. 

Then, you help them turn that experience into concrete steps they can live out in their day-to-day, and come back to your next session with real progress.

There is something else that happens when you’re out on the land: the person starts to see the landscape differently as they engage with it through the lens of their goal. The sounds, the movement, the animals, weather, even the light all begin to reflect wisdom, teachings, and perspective related to their inner work. Nature teaches in ways you could never script. 

What it looks like: an example

Let me walk you through an example. I was working with a client, I'll call him Dave, who came to coaching because he wanted to become a better communicator both at work and in his marriage. He had received that feedback more than once, and he could feel it himself: the conversations that mattered most kept going sideways.

In one of our sessions out on the land, Dave began to notice the birds calling around him. As I helped him make meaning from what he was noticing, a core belief surfaced: that his voice was insignificant, that it did not matter. He recognized it the moment it came up, and he agreed that if that belief changed, so would everything else.

We did not go digging into where the belief came from. As a coach, I was not guiding Dave to unpack his past; I was helping him move forward. So, we worked on the opposite of his old belief: a felt sense that his voice does matter, and what it would look like to live and communicate from that place.

At Earth-Based Institute we call this the deeper need. Once Dave could feel that new possibility, he had a new way of being to grow into.

I then invited him to “try on” this new way of being, right there in nature, out loud and in a safe place. I was inviting him to speak as the person whose voice matters to one of the trees around him. It sounds simple, but it went deep. With nobody to perform for, he got a felt experience of standing in that truth for the first time, and he learned a lot about what opened up from there.

Afterward, we debriefed the experience and turned it into a few meaningful, manageable experiments he could practice through the week until our next session. Experiments like these strengthen the new sense of self and build his awareness of the moments when the old pattern tries to resurface. As Dave's experience of himself changed, so did his ability to authentically communicate his needs. Nature had given him a head start in a way that talking it through in a room never quite had.

The heart of it

Underneath the client's surface goal that they first bring into coaching, there is usually something deeper. People seek out coaching when something in their life feels out of alignment and they want to feel confident that they’re moving in a direction that fits who they truly are.

Nature has a way of reflecting us back to ourselves and helping us find that alignment. If you’re drawn to this work, you’ve most likely experienced this firsthand. We have seen how our own internal harmony and disharmony is reflected in our relationship with the land and community. Nature is a doorway and a powerful co-guide that leads us back into harmony with Soul.

We strive to help others feel an internal sense of harmony and associate that harmony with a powerful respect for the Earth. Coaching somebody is about bringing them into who they are, believing that they have a Vision and they have the answers within them that they are seeking. Nature helps them to find those answers.

And it does not stop with them. As someone starts living closer to the truth of who they are, it ripples outward into their relationships, their choices, and the world around them.

Their relationship with nature tends to deepen too, from something transactional into something relational, until caring for the land and caring for themselves begin to feel like the same act. We have a saying for it: all roads lead to home. Every surface goal has something deeper underneath, it’s just a matter of asking good questions, listening for the wisdom already in the person, and letting nature draw it out.

Does it have to be outdoors?

No. Because at the core, Nature-Connected Coaching is about engaging with the environment the person is in, and nature is everywhere. Even you are nature! So the work can happen deep in the wilderness or over a video call, as long as the person can engage with their environment in a new way.

While being out on the land offers uniquely powerful experiences, plenty of Nature-Connected Coaching happens online. Some coaches simply have the person take the call outside so the land can be part of the session.

Is this you?

If your relationship with Nature has changed you, and you feel called to help others grow, heal, and transform their lives through their own relationship with Nature, Nature-Connected Coaching provides the structure, skills, and legitimacy to turn that calling into credible professional work.

As a coach, it’s important to stay anchored in your deeper motivation. To keep coming back to what you most hope the people you work with will feel. For most Nature-Connected Coaches, the answer to that question often has to do with coming into greater connection with their own hearts and soul, with nature, and with their communities.

How you get someone there, and who you serve, will be yours alone. And you do not need it all figured out to begin! You simply need the calling, and a willingness to learn the craft.

FAQ

Is nature-connected coaching the same as ecotherapy?

Nature-Connected Coaching fits under the broad ecotherapy umbrella, but it is one specific, coaching-based modality rather than generalized ecotherapy. The term “Ecotherapy” covers a wide range of nature-based approaches to wellbeing, from therapeutic gardening to forest bathing to walk and talk therapy.

Nature-Connected Coaching pairs professional coaching (goal-oriented, client-centered, and credentialed through the ICF) with intentional experiences in nature that help the client create lasting growth and change in their life.

Is nature-connected coaching psychotherapy?

No. Psychotherapy is clinical treatment for mental health, provided by licensed professionals. Nature-Connected Coaching is a professional coaching methodology that partners with a person who wants support in moving toward a transformational goal in their life. Coaches do not diagnose or treat mental illness. 

Nature-Connected Coaches are trained on how to recognize when a client needs therapy or brings up a topic outside of their scope of practice, and can partner with the client to find a therapist match. You can read more about how coaching and therapy differ in our article on coaching, therapy, and what actually qualifies a coach.

Do sessions have to be outdoors?

No. It is about engaging with the environment you are in, and nature is everywhere, so it works in the wilderness or over a video call. Being out on the land is uniquely powerful, and it is not required.

Is it a credible profession?

Yes. The Nature-Connected Coaching certification is a Level-2 ICF-accredited program. Graduates are positioned to earn ACC and PCC credentials from the International Coaching Federation, which is the same professional standard as any serious coach.

What does a nature-connected coach do?

Nature-Connected Coaches help people get clear on their goal, dig into what is holding them back, help them find solutions inside themselves, and take actionable steps toward creating change in their life. They do this through an intentional, evidence-informed framework of questions and reflections, and through the co-creation of intentional encounters with the environment that help the person practice the change directly so they are set up for success in being accountable to the change in their daily life.

How is it different from regular life coaching?

There are two main ways that Nature-Connected Coaching differs from conventional life coaching.

First, regular coaching is method-neutral about setting, whereas Nature-Connected Coaching makes the natural world an active partner in the work. This changes how you coach, who the service attracts and serves, and how the change takes hold in their life.

Secondly, regular coaching typically stays pretty cerebral, meaning the coach and client are talking about the change and creating an actionable plan. Nature-Connected Coaching is experiential and somatic, and helps clients begin to create the new neural pathways needed to create sustained change through embodiment practices in Nature.

Can you do it over Zoom?

Yes! Because NCC is all about engaging with the environment the person is in, it can work online as well as on the land. Some coaches have the person take the call outdoors so nature is part of the session.

How do I become a nature-connected coach?

You can become a Nature-Connected Coach through our ICF Level 2 accredited  Nature-Connected Coaching certification and business development program. 

A next step

Whether you’ve been looking for a nature-based alternative to a counseling degree, researching a career change into coaching, wanting to support people beyond what arises during forest bathing or ecotherapy programming, or you feel a calling to help people transform their lives through the healing power of nature in a professional way, your next step is to explore the Nature-Connected Coaching certification.