Abram's phenomenology of the more-than-human world

1. Introduction

Version followed: David Abram's own account in The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-than-Human World (twentieth-anniversary edition with a new afterword, Vintage, 2017; Vintage paperback 1997) and Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology (Pantheon 2010; Vintage paperback 2011), his 1988 paper "Merleau-Ponty and the Voice of the Earth" (Environmental Ethics 10(2), 101-120), and his published conversations (Emergence Magazine 2020; Dark Mountain, reprinted by Resilience.org 2023). All clinical procedures below are derived applications [synthesis]. [source: Penguin Random House book pages; library catalogue record; PhilPapers record; Alliance for Wild Ethics]

Abram's work is a philosophy, not a psychotherapy. He describes himself through the Alliance for Wild Ethics (AWE), of which he is Creative Director and co-founder, as a cultural ecologist and geophilosopher drawing on the phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and on fieldwork with Indigenous peoples in Southeast Asia and North America; his publisher says The Spell of the Sensuous helped catalyse ecopsychology. Abram publishes no treatment protocol, training, certification or session format. [source: wildethics.org/abram; Penguin Random House]

Core idea, as Abram holds it (attributed, not stated as fact): perception is a creative, participatory activity, "a sort of conversation" between the living body and its surroundings carried on beneath spoken language, and language itself is born of the body's participation with a world experienced as alive (the Earth). He argues that "sensory perception is participatory", that our senses "left to their own devices, are inherently animistic", and that describing the world as inert objects makes awareness "withdraw from our skin". In his account, alphabetic literacy turned attention toward exclusively human meaning, and the remedy is renewed rapport and reciprocity with the "more-than-human world" of other animals, plants, air and land. [source: PhilPapers abstract of Abram 1988; Emergence Magazine 2020 interview; Resilience.org 2023]

How change might happen in therapy, derived from this [synthesis]: by slowing down and attending through the senses to a particular place, and by noticing and changing how one speaks about other beings, a client may experience themselves as embedded in a living world rather than as a detached observer. This can reduce isolation, open grief about ecological loss, and give the body a felt sense of belonging. These are clinical hypotheses, not claims Abram makes about therapy.

Evidence status (one line): no published evaluation of Abram-derived practices as a therapy is known [uncertain: not verified]; for green care generally, Natural England's 2016 review (NECR204) is summarised by its government press release as showing reduced depression, anxiety and stress in care-farming, conservation and therapeutic-horticulture projects, with methods and effect sizes not given in that summary. [source: Natural England NECR204 page; gov.uk press release 2016]

Critique to keep in view: the philosopher Ted Toadvine (2005) praises Abram's use of Merleau-Ponty but argues that his descriptions dismiss reflection and lean too heavily on perceptual reciprocity while underplaying the symbolic dimension of human relationships. The practical implication for therapy is to keep reflection and talk alongside sensing (see principle 9). [source: Toadvine 2005, Penn State Pure record]

Related guides: 015 green social prescribing; 022 blue care, wild and open-water swimming (with cross-reference to Domain X 196, cold-water immersion); other ecopsychology entries in this family.

2. Framework

Abram offers an argument, not stages of treatment. The structure of The Spell of the Sensuous (2017 edition) is: a personal introduction ("The ecology of magic"); a technical introduction to Merleau-Ponty ("Philosophy on the way to ecology"); "The flesh of language"; "Animism and the alphabet"; "In the landscape of language"; "Time, space, and the eclipse of the earth"; "The forgetting and remembering of the air"; a coda ("Turning inside out"); and the twentieth-anniversary afterword. Becoming Animal extends the themes to shadows, depth, air (his coinage "Eairth" for an Earth that includes its atmosphere), weather, other animals and language. [source: library catalogue record of the 2017 edition; Harding 2011 review in Resurgence & Ecologist]

The phased clinical format below is a derived structure for a therapist integrating Abram's ideas into existing therapy [synthesis]. No source gives a session count or session length; none is stated here.

Phase A: Assessment, fit and contracting. Goal: decide whether sensory, place-based work suits this client now; screen physical, psychological and environmental risks; agree where sessions happen (room, window, garden, park, wilder places) and contract for outdoor confidentiality, weather and emergencies (BACP outdoor-therapy guidance). Move on when the client consents, risks are managed and the client can describe what they want from the work. [source: BACP outdoor therapy page; otherwise synthesis]
Phase B: Indoor or near-indoor sensory grounding. Goal: build the client's capacity to notice breath, air, light and sound without overwhelm, and to talk about what they sense. Move on when the client can attend to sensations, stay within their window of tolerance and report back. [synthesis, drawing on Abram's breath and listening themes]
Phase C: Attending to a particular place. Goal: repeated, slow attention to one local place (birdsong, bark, clouds, shadows, weather, weeds in pavement), Abram's "apprentice ourselves" to one's locale. Move on when the client has a felt relationship with at least one place and can bring observations into sessions. [source: Emergence 2020; Resilience 2023; synthesis for clinical use]
Phase D: Language, grief and reciprocity. Goal: examine how the client speaks about other beings; make room for ecological grief (Abram: grief as a "gate"); let the client design, if they wish, their own gesture of reciprocity toward a place. Move on when grief can be felt without collapse and the client has a sustainable relationship to place and to wider concerns. [source: Resilience 2023; synthesis]
Phase E: Integration and ending. Goal: link what was sensed to the client's goals, relationships and values through reflection; plan how the client keeps the practice up without the therapist; refer onward where useful (climate café, outdoor or nature-based programmes, green social prescribing). [synthesis]

Phases are not strictly sequential: a client in acute eco-distress may need Phase D's grief work early, held with Phase B grounding. [synthesis]

3. Guiding principles

Perception is participation (Abram's thesis, attributed). Practical meaning: treat what the client senses as a relationship to explore, not data to report correctly. [source: Abram 1988 abstract; Emergence 2020]
Hold the concepts lightly and attributed. Practical meaning: present "animate world", "more-than-human world" and "Eairth" as Abram's ways of speaking that the client may try on, accept or reject; never insist that a tree or river "is" a person, and never mock a client who experiences them that way. [synthesis; Domain XV concepts rule]
The client is the authority on their experience. Practical meaning: ask what they noticed and what it meant to them; do not tell them what they should feel in nature. [synthesis]
Slow down rather than speed up. Practical meaning: pace sessions and assignments so attention can settle; resist turning sensing into another productivity task. Abram speaks of "taking the time to slow down" rather than speeding up to meet urgency. [source: Resilience 2023]
Begin locally. Practical meaning: the nearest available nature (a pavement weed, a window, a houseplant, the air) is enough; wilderness is not required. [source: Resilience 2023 (weeds in pavement, birds on buildings); Emergence 2020]
Language shapes perception. Practical meaning: notice and gently explore objectifying or human-only language, including the therapist's own. [source: Emergence 2020; Resilience 2023]
Grief is part of the work. Practical meaning: expect sorrow about ecological loss and treat it as meaningful, not as a symptom to remove; Abram frames grief as a threshold. [source: Resilience 2023]
Neither control nor despair. Practical meaning: help clients step out of the either-or of fixing everything or giving up, which Abram calls "a false choice". [source: Resilience 2023]
Keep reflection. Practical meaning: always pair sensory practice with talking it through and linking it to the client's life, which also answers Toadvine's critique that Abram underplays reflection and the symbolic. [source: Toadvine 2005; synthesis]
Safety, consent and competence first. Practical meaning: risk-assess routes and settings, contract for outdoor work, and offer only what you are trained for; BACP states that only a competent therapist should offer outdoor therapy and that mountain settings require appropriate training. [source: BACP outdoor therapy]
Confidentiality outdoors. Practical meaning: choose places where you will not be overheard or likely to meet people the client knows, and agree in advance what to do if you do. [source: BACP outdoor therapy]
Accessibility. Practical meaning: assess routes for wheelchair users, limited mobility and sensory-processing needs; offer indoor and window-based versions of every practice. [source: BACP outdoor therapy; synthesis]
Cultural humility and no appropriation. Practical meaning: Abram draws on Indigenous and other traditions; do not import or imitate any community's ceremonies; let reciprocity gestures be the client's own. [synthesis; Domain XV restricted-content rule]
Touch, if any, is with the land, not the therapist. Practical meaning: therapist-client touch is not part of this work; contact with bark, soil or water is the client's choice and can stop at any time. [synthesis]
Boundaries and dual roles. Practical meaning: if you also guide nature walks or run community groups, consider multiple relationships under APA Ethics Code Standard 3.05 (https://www.apa.org/ethics/code) and your own code; keep therapy and other roles distinct. [synthesis]

4. Intervention inventory

Abram describes ways of attending and speaking, not clinical techniques. Interventions 4.4-4.15 are adapted from practices he describes in his books' themes and conversations, with the clinical steps marked [synthesis]; 4.1-4.3 and 4.16-4.21 are therapist-side procedures that are wholly [synthesis] unless a source is given. Twenty-one interventions are listed.

4.1 Assessment of fit, risk and meaning [synthesis]

Purpose / when: before any sensory or outdoor work; again if the setting changes (e.g. moving from a park to wilder terrain).
Steps:
1. Ask what draws the client to nature-based or place-based work and what they hope will change.
2. Screen physical factors qualitatively: mobility, heart or respiratory conditions, allergies (pollen, insect stings), sensitivity to heat or cold, pregnancy, medications affecting balance or temperature regulation, epilepsy. Where any affects outdoor activity, ask the client to check with their physician; do not advise on medicines.
3. Screen psychological factors: trauma linked to outdoor places, darkness, animals, being alone or getting lost; dissociation; sensory-processing differences; current psychotic symptoms or unusual perceptual experiences; suicidal thinking (including climate-related despair).
4. Ask about the client's cultural, religious and family relationship to land, animals and spirits (see 4.3).
5. Agree a starting setting: room, window, garden, park, or a route the therapist has risk-assessed.
Example language (illustrative): "Before we take any of this outside, I'd like to understand your body, your history with outdoor places, and anything that might make a walk or a quiet sit difficult for you."
Watch for: reluctance that is really fear (e.g. of being seen or of a past assault outdoors); over-enthusiasm that masks avoidance of talking. It is working when you and the client can name a setting and a first practice that feel safe enough.

4.2 Contracting for outdoor sessions [source: BACP outdoor therapy; details synthesis]

Purpose / when: before the first session outside the room.
Steps:
1. Explain how outdoor sessions differ from indoor ones and invite questions about route and session length (BACP).
2. Agree confidentiality limits: choose places where you are unlikely to be overheard or meet people the client knows; agree what you will both do if you meet someone (e.g. a neutral greeting, no explanation of the relationship) (BACP).
3. Agree a cancellation and weather policy, with a remote or indoor alternative (BACP).
4. Complete a route risk assessment: terrain, clothing and footwear, hydration, ticks and stinging plants, phone signal, emergency procedures and nearest access point (BACP lists route, clothing, footwear and emergency procedures).
5. Agree that there is no therapist-client touch, and that the client can stop any practice or return indoors at any time.
6. Check your professional indemnity insurance covers outdoor work [synthesis; not covered on the BACP page].
7. If water is nearby, keep sessions on land; for any swimming or immersion route the client to RNLI, Outdoor Swimming Society or Swim England guidance and to guide 022 (blue care) and Domain X 196; cold-water shock, hypothermia and drowning are real risks and need medical screening [synthesis].
Example language (illustrative): "If we bump into someone you know, you can decide how to greet them; I'll follow your lead and won't say who I am."
Watch for: the client agreeing quickly to please you. Working when the client can restate the plan in their own words.

4.3 Cultural and spiritual formulation of animate experience [synthesis; source for code below]

Purpose / when: when a client experiences places, animals, weather or the dead as alive, communicative or sacred, or is distressed by a loss of such a relationship.
Steps:
1. Use the DSM-5-TR Cultural Formulation Interview, including its supplementary module on spirituality, religion and moral traditions, to learn how the client and their community understand these experiences.
2. Distinguish, with care and over time, a culturally or philosophically framed sense of animacy (which Abram describes as the ordinary tendency of the senses) from perceptual experiences that are distressing, intrusive, uncontrollable or accompanied by other signs of psychosis; seek psychiatric assessment for the latter.
3. Where the main problem is spiritual or religious (e.g. a crisis of meaning about the natural world, conflict with family faith), "Religious or Spiritual Problem" may be recorded with code Z65.8, which ICD-10-CM lists under "Other specified problems related to psychosocial circumstances" (ICD-10-CM Z65.8 (Unbound Medicine)); DSM-5-TR wording [uncertain: not verified].
4. If the client belongs to a community with its own land-based traditions, ask whether they want you to collaborate with a community or religious leader; never perform or imitate that community's ceremonies.
Example language (illustrative): "When you say the river spoke to you, help me understand what that means in your family and for you. Is it comforting, frightening, or something else?"
Watch for: pathologising culturally normal experience, or the reverse, missing emerging psychosis because it is phrased in Abram's vocabulary. Working when the client feels understood and the risk picture is clear.

4.4 Letting something call the attention [adapted from Emergence 2020; steps synthesis]

Purpose / when: first sensory practice; for clients whose attention is driven, scattered or self-critical. Abram describes a fallen leaf that "calls my attention", attention being solicited by things rather than only directed at them.
Steps:
1. In the room, at a window or outdoors, invite the client to let their gaze wander without searching.
2. Ask them to notice when something seems to draw them (a colour, movement, sound, texture) and to let their attention rest there.
3. Invite them to stay with it a little longer than is comfortable, noticing detail.
4. Talk it through: what drew them, what they felt in their body, what changed in their mood.
Example language (illustrative): "You don't have to choose anything. Just notice if something seems to ask for your attention, and let yourself go to it."
Watch for: performance anxiety ("I'm doing it wrong"); hypervigilant scanning in trauma survivors (keep eyes-open, orient to exits if needed). Working when the client reports a moment of absorption or curiosity.

4.5 Breath and air awareness [adapted from Emergence 2020 and Becoming Animal; steps synthesis]

Purpose / when: grounding; introducing Abram's theme of air as part of the Earth ("Eairth") and of breath as shared with plants. Abram notes that we speak only on the out-breath and that the oxygen we breathe comes from surrounding plants; he traces "spirit" to a word meaning breath or wind.
Steps:
1. Invite natural breathing, without changing it. Do not give breath-holding or breath-control instructions.
2. Ask the client to notice air on the skin, its movement, temperature and smell.
3. Offer, as Abram's idea, that the air they breathe out is taken up by plants and the air they breathe in comes from them; ask what that idea evokes.
4. Notice speaking on the out-breath: invite the client to say one sentence slowly and feel the breath carry it.
5. Reflect together.
Example language (illustrative): "David Abram points out that every word we say rides on an out-breath. Try saying one thing you've been carrying today, slowly, and notice the breath under it."
Watch for: breath focus triggering panic in some clients with anxiety or trauma; switch to external senses (sound, sight) if so. Working when the client feels steadier or more connected.

4.6 Listening to the field of voices [adapted from Emergence 2020; Resilience 2023; steps synthesis]

Purpose / when: widening attention; reducing rumination. Abram describes hearing many voices in wind, waves, cricket rhythms and birdsong, and listening to other animals with "our own animal ears".
Steps:
1. With eyes open or closed (client's choice), ask the client to notice the nearest sound, then the furthest.
2. Invite them to notice non-human sounds: wind, rain, birds, insects, water, traffic as background.
3. Ask them to listen to one sound as if it were communicating, without deciding what it says.
4. Talk through what it was like to be among other sounds, rather than at the centre.
Example language (illustrative): "See if you can hear the birds not as background but as voices going about their own business."
Watch for: distress for clients who hear voices; keep attention on external, shared sounds and stop if unsettling. Working when the client describes a less self-focused, more spacious state.

4.7 Learning the local: birdsong, bark, clouds [adapted from Emergence 2020; steps synthesis]

Purpose / when: building ongoing relationship with place between sessions. Abram suggests learning common birdsongs, memorising the patterns in the bark of different trees and recognising local cloud shapes.
Steps:
1. Agree one small learning project the client chooses (one bird call, one tree's bark, the clouds seen from a window).
2. Agree how the client will note what they find (drawing, a few words, a photo), without turning it into a test.
3. Review in session: what they learned and what changed in how they feel about the place.
Example language (illustrative): "Pick one tree you pass every day. Between now and next time, just get to know its bark the way you'd get to know a face."
Watch for: perfectionism or using apps instead of senses; gently redirect to direct perception. Working when the client mentions the place with warmth or curiosity unprompted.

4.8 Returning to one place over time [adapted from Resilience 2023 and Emergence 2020; steps synthesis]

Purpose / when: deepening belonging; for clients who feel rootless or isolated. Abram speaks of apprenticing ourselves to our particular locale and of watching elk over many years until their calls become meaningful.
Steps:
1. Help the client choose a safe, accessible place they can visit regularly (a bench, garden corner, stretch of path).
2. Each visit, they notice what has changed (light, plants, birds, weather) and how they feel arriving and leaving.
3. Review changes across weeks in session and link them to the client's own changes.
4. Plan safety: tell someone where they are, carry a phone, avoid isolated places after dark.
Example language (illustrative): "What did the place show you this week that it didn't last week?"
Watch for: rigid ritualising, or avoidance of people. Working when the place becomes a resource the client uses on their own.

4.9 Attending to shadows and dusk [adapted from Becoming Animal as described by Harding 2011; steps synthesis]

Purpose / when: for clients afraid of darkness or endings, or interested in Abram's imagery. Harding reports Abram treating shadows as belonging to the things they cling to, and nightfall as entering the Earth's own shadow.
Steps:
1. Choose a safe vantage point, ideally indoors at a window or in a familiar garden.
2. Invite the client to watch shadows lengthen and soften as light fades, noticing how they change the look of familiar things.
3. Offer Abram's image (attributed) of night as the Earth's shadow; ask what it evokes.
4. Explore associations with endings, rest and fear.
Example language (illustrative): "Abram writes about shadows as if they belong to the things that cast them. Watching them now, what do you notice?"
Watch for: fear of the dark linked to trauma; never ask a client to be outside alone after dark. Working when the client can stay with dusk with curiosity rather than dread.

4.10 Reading the sky's mood [adapted from Resilience 2023 and Harding 2011; steps synthesis]

Purpose / when: building interoceptive and emotional vocabulary through weather. Abram says he cannot read a winter sky's changing mood unless he allows that it has moods.
Steps:
1. Invite the client to look at the sky and describe its "mood" in their own words.
2. Ask how their own mood is today and whether it meets, mirrors or contrasts with the sky's.
3. Explore what it is like to have weather that is not theirs to control.
Example language (illustrative): "If today's sky had a mood, what would it be? And how does that sit next to yours?"
Watch for: clients who feel controlled by weather (e.g. seasonal low mood); assess and treat depression in the usual way. Working when the client can name feelings more easily.

4.11 Walking with the senses in known terrain [adapted from Emergence 2020 and Harding 2011; steps synthesis]

Purpose / when: for clients who live "in their heads" or on screens. Abram regrets that GPS removes the possibility of being lost and dulls the senses; Harding describes Abram's experience of landscape moving past him in wild terrain.
Steps:
1. Use a route you have risk-assessed (4.2), with a map and phone carried. Never ask a client to get lost deliberately.
2. Walk slowly side by side; invite the client to orient by senses (sun, slope, wind, sounds) and say where they think they are.
3. Invite them to notice whether they feel they move through the land or the land moves past them.
4. Pause to talk; confirm the route together.
Example language (illustrative): "Without checking your phone, which way do you think the river is? What tells you?"
Watch for: anxiety about disorientation, fatigue, weather change, ticks after the walk (advise the client to check), and confidentiality when passing others. Working when the client reports feeling more present in their body.

4.12 Speech that lets things have their own life [adapted from Emergence 2020 and Resilience 2023; steps synthesis]

Purpose / when: when a client's language about land, animals or their own body is detached, instrumental or contemptuous. Abram recommends ways of speaking that give everything its own life, and suggests dropping the "re-" in "resource" to recover "sources" as living wellsprings.
Steps:
1. Notice with the client how they describe a place, animal or their body (e.g. "it's just a park", "my stupid body").
2. Invite an experiment: describe the same thing as if it had its own life and purposes.
3. Explore what shifts in feeling and in sense of relationship.
4. Link to how the client speaks about people and about themselves.
Example language (illustrative): "You called the hedge 'just there'. Try describing it as if it were busy with its own life. What happens?"
Watch for: the client feeling corrected or silly; frame it as play. Working when language softens and the client notices it themselves.

4.13 Grief as a gate [adapted from Resilience 2023; steps synthesis]

Purpose / when: ecological grief, eco-anxiety, or grief for a place lost through migration, development or illness. Abram says "the grief is a gate, and our tears a kind of key", and notes that many people retreat to screens to avoid grief.
Steps:
1. Name what has been lost (species, a childhood landscape, a future imagined).
2. Ground first (4.5 or 4.6), then invite the feelings without rushing to solutions.
3. Ask what the grief says about what the client loves.
4. Explore what, after the grief, the client feels drawn toward (relationships, local care, action).
5. Screen for depression, hopelessness and suicidal thinking; if present, follow standard risk assessment and safety planning, with crisis resources (988 in the US; Samaritans 116 123 in the UK and Ireland).
Example language (illustrative): "It sounds as though the grief is about how much you love this. Can we let it be here for a while before we decide what to do with it?"
Watch for: overwhelm (return to grounding), complicated grief from human bereavement tied to places, and despair that becomes hopelessness. Working when grief moves rather than freezes.

4.14 Out of the control-or-despair trap; round time [adapted from Resilience 2023; steps synthesis]

Purpose / when: clients caught between frantic activism and collapse. Abram calls the choice between control and despair "a false choice" and contrasts deadline-driven linear time with the "roundness of time" other animals live by.
Steps:
1. Map the client's swings between "I must fix it" and "nothing matters".
2. Introduce seasonal, cyclical markers in the client's place (4.8) and their own week.
3. Identify actions that are sustainable and relational rather than all-or-nothing, using behavioural-activation framing where mood is low.
Example language (illustrative): "What would it look like to care about this at the pace of a season rather than the pace of a deadline?"
Watch for: the frame being heard as "stop caring"; validate the concern. Working when the client keeps engagement without burnout.

4.15 Taking pleasure in otherness [adapted from Emergence 2020; steps synthesis]

Purpose / when: for fear of difference, scapegoating or interpersonal intolerance. Abram urges "taking deep, new pleasure in otherness and strangeness".
Steps:
1. Invite close attention to a non-human being whose life is strange to the client (an insect, a fungus, a crow).
2. Ask what is surprising, puzzling or delightful about it.
3. Bridge, if apt, to people the client finds strange or threatening, exploring curiosity alongside fear.
Example language (illustrative): "What's the strangest thing about how that beetle is going about its day? Can you enjoy the strangeness for a moment?"
Watch for: phobias (do not expose without consent and a proper exposure plan); forcing the bridge to people. Working when curiosity appears where there was contempt or fear.

4.16 A client-authored gesture of reciprocity [synthesis; context from Emergence 2020]

Purpose / when: when a client wants to give something back to a place. Abram reports that traditional healers he met used prayers and offerings to keep the human community from taking more from the land than it returned; he reports this rather than prescribing it.
Steps:
1. Ask whether the client wants a way to express gratitude or care toward a place.
2. Let the client design it from their own values and traditions (e.g. picking up litter, a spoken thank-you, tending a plant); do not supply rituals from other cultures.
3. Check that it is safe, legal and respectful of the land and others.
4. Explore its meaning afterwards.
Example language (illustrative): "If you wanted to give something back to that wood, what would feel right to you, from your own life and background?"
Watch for: borrowing Indigenous ceremonies; compulsive or scrupulous ritualising. Working when the gesture feels meaningful and freely chosen.

4.17 Contact with a tree [adapted from Rufo, Venti Journal, which draws on Abram and somatic methods; steps synthesis]

Purpose / when: for clients who want an embodied, tactile experience of reciprocity. Rufo cites Abram's claim that "Reciprocity is the very structure of perception" and describes approaching a tree on the breath and touching it with varying pressure. Rufo's practice as published includes unclothed contact and climbing; neither is suitable in therapy.
Steps:
1. Clothed, at ground level, choose a tree in a safe, private-enough spot; check for stinging insects, thorns and allergies.
2. Stand at a distance and observe the trunk while breathing naturally.
3. Approach only if and when the client wishes; touch the bark with the hands, noticing texture and the sense of touching and being touched.
4. Vary pressure gently; lean if comfortable; stop at any time.
5. Step back and talk it through.
Example language (illustrative): "Notice what it is like to press your palm on the bark, and what it is like to feel the bark pressing back."
Watch for: self-consciousness about being seen, trauma reactions to touch, dizziness. Working when the client reports feeling met or steadied.

4.18 Reading Abram with the client [synthesis]

Purpose / when: for clients who like ideas and want a framework for their experience.
Steps:
1. Suggest one chapter or passage relevant to their concern (e.g. on air, or on the alphabet and language).
2. Ask what resonated, what they disagreed with, and how it relates to their life.
3. Offer the critique (e.g. Toadvine) so the client can think critically, not adopt a worldview.
Example language (illustrative): "You don't have to agree with him. Where did he say something true for you, and where did he lose you?"
Watch for: intellectualising to avoid feeling; idealising the therapist's interests. Working when reading links to lived experience.

4.19 Debrief and integration after every sensory or outdoor practice [synthesis]

Purpose / when: after each practice; essential given Toadvine's point that Abram underplays reflection.
Steps:
1. Ask what they noticed, in body, feeling and thought.
2. Ask what it means for them and their current problem.
3. Link to goals, relationships and values.
4. Agree what, if anything, to practise before next time.
Example language (illustrative): "What did you notice, and what do you want to take from it into this week?"
Watch for: a pleasant experience with no link to the client's goals. Working when sensory moments inform choices and relationships.

4.20 Referral and collaboration [source: CPA-NA; BACP; synthesis]

Purpose / when: when the client needs more than individual therapy or more than you are trained to offer.
Steps:
1. For eco-anxiety or climate grief with a wish for community: suggest a climate café. Climate Psychology Alliance-North America describes it as a simple, reflective, empathetic space to share fears and uncertainty, modelled on death cafés, with no lectures, no focus on advice or action, and explicitly not therapy; it runs facilitator workshops.
2. For outdoor or wilder settings beyond your competence: refer to a trained outdoor therapist; BACP points to the Institute for Outdoor Learning's good practice guidance.
3. For structured community nature activity: see 015 green social prescribing; for water-based activity see 022 and Domain X 196.
4. With consent, share only what is needed and keep therapy notes separate.
Example language (illustrative): "There are groups where people simply share how the climate crisis feels, without being told what to do. Would that interest you alongside our work?"
Watch for: referral felt as rejection. Working when the client's support widens.

4.21 Ending and keeping the practice going [synthesis]

Purpose / when: final phase.
Steps:
1. Review which practices and places helped.
2. Agree a simple, flexible plan the client can keep without you (one place, one practice, one way of speaking).
3. Plan for setbacks (bad weather, moving house, illness): indoor and window versions.
Example language (illustrative): "Which place will you keep visiting, and what will you do on days when you can't get there?"
Watch for: the place or practice becoming a substitute for human relationships. Working when the client uses it independently and flexibly.

5. Handling problems

Abram's works do not address clinical problems; all guidance below is [synthesis] unless a source is named.

Scepticism ("this is New Age"). Do not defend Abram's worldview. Present the practices as attention and language experiments that need no belief; offer Toadvine's critique to show the ideas are debated; keep to what the client finds useful. [synthesis; source: Toadvine 2005]
Stuck: "I don't feel anything out there." Shrink the practice (one sound, one texture), move closer to home (window, houseplant), and check for numbing from depression or dissociation that needs its own treatment. Avoid adding intensity or wilder settings to force an experience.
Overwhelm or panic. Stop the practice, orient to the present (name five things seen, feet on the ground, eyes open), move to a sheltered or indoor setting, and debrief. Afterwards, reduce dose and stay in familiar places. Breath focus can itself trigger panic; use external senses instead (4.5).
Trauma reactivated by place, darkness, animals or isolation. Agree stop signals in advance (4.2); never take a client to settings resembling a trauma scene without a planned, consented exposure approach in a trauma-focused treatment; keep the therapist positioned so the client has clear exits.
Unusual perceptions escalate. If animate experiences become intrusive, frightening, commanding or are accompanied by sleep loss or disorganisation, pause the practices, assess for psychosis or mania and refer to psychiatry; do not reinforce with Abram's vocabulary. Conversely, do not pathologise culturally framed animacy (4.3).
Eco-despair and suicide risk. Ask directly about suicidal thoughts; use standard risk assessment and safety planning; restrict access to means through storage and removal where relevant; give crisis resources (988 US; Samaritans 116 123 UK and Ireland). Pair grief work with grounding and connection (4.13, 4.20).
Non-adherence to between-session practice. Explore meaning (another task to fail? no safe green space? caring duties?); scale down to what fits daily routes; accept that window and indoor versions count.
Romanticising or appropriating Indigenous cultures. Abram's work draws on Balinese, Apache and other traditions [source: Penguin Random House description]. Gently challenge idealisation; refer the client to communities' own published voices; never improvise ceremonies; keep reciprocity gestures client-authored (4.16).
Therapist's own enthusiasm imposing a worldview. Notice if you are advocating Abram rather than following the client; take it to supervision; ask the client directly whether the approach still fits.
Rupture over being seen or over boundaries outdoors. If the client is embarrassed after meeting someone, or uneasy with walking side by side, name it, repair, and offer to return indoors. Revisit the contract (4.2). [source: BACP for meeting-others planning]
Weather, terrain and physical risk. Follow the weather policy and offer remote or indoor sessions (BACP); keep to assessed routes; plan for hydration, sun, cold and wet qualitatively; advise tick checks after vegetation; carry information on allergies agreed with the client. Do not lead clients into water; route swimming or immersion to 022, Domain X 196 and RNLI, Outdoor Swimming Society or Swim England guidance.
Disability, mobility and sensory-processing needs. Assess routes for accessibility (BACP); offer seated, window, garden or recorded-sound versions; ask what sensory load is tolerable; noise and crowding in parks can overwhelm some neurodivergent clients.
Urban clients with little green space. Abram's own examples include weeds in pavement and birds nesting on buildings [source: Resilience 2023]; use these, and the air and sky, which are always available.
Dual roles. If you also lead nature walks, workshops or climate cafés, avoid having current clients in those groups unless the multiple relationship is clearly not harmful and is discussed (APA Ethics Code Standard 3.05, https://www.apa.org/ethics/code); keep records and confidentiality distinct.
Competence and insurance. Offer only the settings you are trained for (BACP notes mountain settings require appropriate training); confirm insurance covers outdoor work; obtain supervision from someone experienced in outdoor or nature-based practice. [source: BACP; insurance synthesis]

Sources

Web sources:

Books and papers cited:

Abram, D. (1988). Merleau-Ponty and the voice of the earth. Environmental Ethics, 10(2), 101-120.
Abram, D. (1997 paperback; twentieth-anniversary edition 2017). The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-than-Human World. Vintage. (First publication date 1996 [uncertain: not verified].)
Abram, D. (2010; Vintage paperback 2011). Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology. Pantheon.
Toadvine, T. (2005). Limits of the flesh: the role of reflection in David Abram's ecophenomenology. Environmental Ethics, 27(2), 155-170.
American Psychiatric Association. DSM-5-TR Cultural Formulation Interview and supplementary module on spirituality, religion and moral traditions [uncertain: not verified].

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