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Peripatetic Psychology: Therapy That Heals As You Walk
Psychology
The psychologist Nacho Coller combines online therapy with walks with his patients enjoying nature while they talk about their emotions
Can you imagine that instead of going to the consultation or communicating through a video call your psychologist would meet you in a park to take a walk together? For several months the psychologist Nacho Coller, author of the work ‘Vivir never fails’, has combined online therapy with face-to-face sessions under the claim “we take a walk in the open air”. A “useful, effective, different and fun” method that has been for him “a late discovery as a result of the pandemic” that has no turning back in his professional life. So much so that today he wonders how he has been able to spend so many years doing therapy in a closed office.
The idea of the “Peripatetic psychology”, as Coller calls it, is inspired by nothing more and nothing less than the peripatetic school (in Greek peripatêín means to go around and peripatêtiko is translated as’ those who walk or ‘the itinerants’) of the philosopher Aristotle, who around the year 335 a. C. reflected in the company of his disciples on life, death and the universe while walking around gardens and rivers.
According to the expert, nature and movement together with psychological therapy help both patients and psychologists to take perspective and distance from problems and also to be more creative in the plan of action and in the search for solutions. “Walking while speaking, while structuring, while processing and while thinking is a good formula to find good answers or even solutions to specific problems,” he reveals. But in addition, the act of walking is already a beneficial activity in itself (“mens sana in corpore sana”) because, according to Coller, it improves the immune system, makes us secrete endorphins, contributes to improving our social relationships, and improves our ability to manage and face the Stress and the anxiety and it is a shield of protection against depression. In fact, this type of therapy allows to obtain very satisfactory results in mild or moderate depressive disorders, anxiety, phobias and also in cases where personal improvement is desired. On the latter he makes a note that, as he explains, reflects the essence of psychology: «You don’t have to be bad to want to go to the psychologist, what you need is to want to be better. I do not believe in radical changes but in the small contributions of psychology to provide tools that help improve life.
Advantages of doing walking therapy
Walking through nature while talking about emotions makes both the psychologist and the patient elaborate ideas, hypotheses and solutions in a more creative way than if the meeting were carried out seated face to face in a face-to-face consultation in a closed room. «Ideas flow differently and when we try to interpret microsignals or nonverbal communication We can also do it with this formula because we are not walking all the time, but we take breaks, we sit on a bench, we often maintain eye contact or we change the rhythm, “reveals Coller. Precisely the changes in the patient’s rhythm (sometimes it accelerates, sometimes it slows down or even sometimes it stops abruptly …) are one more informative element of their state or of their emotions.
As it happens in consultation, it is usual for the patient to also lower his guard in these face-to-face sessions by walking through nature. But he does it, as Coller reveals, in a different way, for emotions are expressed in a more measured, more controlled, or more regulated way. “It could be said that they cry or the emotional component is given in a more controlled and also more positive way because that helps them to see that they are capable of controlling and regulating themselves emotionally,” he says.
Finally, he recognizes that for the psychologist it is also a formula that is a challenge since it implies leaving his comfort zone, his office or the place where he has everything under control. «Often other colleagues in the profession ask me how I write down what they are saying to me, how I record it, how I develop hypotheses and action plans and how I make evaluations. But what I’m telling you is that psychology is exciting and not so rigid and that what I do is adapt. I forget about the clock because I know that the times I need to get more information are longer and I make the record or the notes after the session. I have been practicing this method for a few months and I have not found anyone who did not like it, “he says.