Nature Journaling and Expressive Writing: Shinrin Yoku, Experiential Learning, and Practical Application

Nature Journaling and Expressive Writing in Professional Practice

Nature experiences and personal writing can support health while opening pathways to greater awareness of thoughts and feelings and to new perspectives on ourselves and our surroundings. In therapy, counseling, education, and health promotion, this creates valuable opportunities: experiences can be noticed more consciously, reflected on, and understood in a personal context.

Working in this way calls for sensitivity and respect for the individual. What matters is a professionally sound framework that supports openness, voluntary participation, and genuine choice while remaining responsive to individual needs and reactions.

This is where our intensive workshop begins: You explore your own responses to nature, perception, and personal writing. Building on that experience, we work together to consider how these insights can inform thoughtful and responsible professional practice.

IM-WALD-SEIN® Academy: Experience-Based Knowledge for Responsible Practice

Nature Journaling and Expressive Writing: Firsthand Experience and Professional Reflection

Professionals who work with people often encounter methods primarily from the facilitator’s perspective. In this workshop, you deliberately step into the participant’s role and experience for yourself how nature perception and personal writing can shape your own experience. This direct experience brings into focus questions no methods manual can fully answer: What helps? When does openness emerge? When is more structure useful, and when is more space needed? How differently can people respond to the same invitation?

Our teaching approach brings direct experience and professional reflection together to create experience-based knowledge – a foundation for the responsible use of Nature Journaling and personal writing in practice.

The workshop is designed for qualified practitioners across a range of professional and disciplinary backgrounds – from therapy, counseling, and education to coaching, health promotion, and nature-based practice.

The IM-WALD-SEIN® Method: Psychologically Grounded and Rooted in Professional Practice

Our Expertise in Nature Experience, Writing, and Reflection

Nature experience, personal reflection and health have shaped our work for many years. IM-WALD-SEIN® DIY grew out of this work as our own approach to self-guided nature experiences and personal health promotion, drawing on insights from Shinrin Yoku, forest medicine and forest therapy.

This includes the IM-WALD-SEIN® Experience Journal, developed in 2018. Intentionally open in design, it provides “a platform and a basic structure, with respect for the individual.” This openness has made the journal a reliable companion – for personal reflection as well as in our therapeutic work.

Sabine Oberg and Dr. Melanie H. Adamek bring together psychological and therapeutic expertise with many years of experience in Shinrin Yoku, forest therapy and nature-based health promotion.

What Makes This Workshop Special?

The distinctive quality of this workshop comes from the interplay of intensive firsthand experience, psychologically grounded reflection and shared learning.

• Intensive small-group format: Two days and a deliberately small group create time for personal experience, exchange, deeper exploration and individual questions.

• Firsthand experience as a foundation: You experience for yourself how nature perception and personal writing can support well-being, self-reflection and personal growth.

• Exchange and shared learning: Different experiences and perspectives broaden your view and show how differently people can respond to nature experiences and writing.

• Psychologically grounded reflection: Together, we place the experience in a professional context and explore what sensitive, responsible guidance of clients, patients and participants requires.

• Application to your own practice: Drawing on firsthand experience and shared reflection, you identify practical ways to apply what you have learned in therapy, counseling, education, coaching, health promotion, and nature-based practice.

Experience two intensive days that continue to resonate – personally and professionally.