There is great value in stepping out of our familiar environment, and into a room with a therapist who meets us as we are. Safe, in that confidential space, clients often share things they’ve never spoken of before, explore themes they’ve felt too risky to address, and can feel, sometimes for the first time in their lives, seen for who they truly are.
Whilst the safe container of the therapy room can feel like the most sacred space they have ever visited, it is not the beautifully appointed therapy room nor a deeply present and well informed therapist that guarantee effectivity of the therapeutic work, it is the symbiotic relationship of the client and therapist, their authentic and transparent relationship through which the grace and space can enable meaningful and effective therapeutic work to take place – the client and therapist working together in equivalence.
As this equivalence in relationship is at the foundation of my therapeutic approach, it makes sense that I find effective therapy can be successfully experienced in a variety of settings, whether that be online, in a therapy room or outside in walk and talk therapy sessions. Each environment contributes something different to the experience of therapy, each has its unique value that appeals to and supports clients in different ways.
Taking therapy outdoors, on a walk, is an opportunity to speak about the experience of living and interacting from a felt sense, appreciating how awareness of our body’s communication can be greatly settling.
The development of a conscious relationship with ourselves and the quality of who we are becomes the anchor within, holding us steady in rocky times, helping us to stay connected and present to what’s going on around us. Herein lies the invaluable resource that counters the reactive movements of anxiety and withdrawal that can fuel self doubt and lack of self worth, for example, states that can only occur when we are no longer consciously present with ourselves, embracing the quality of what we are – our essence, our innermost quality.
The undeniable role of the body in our experience of the world is brought to the fore when we walk, reminding us we are not just this thinking machine. If we take the perspective that we meet the world first through registering energy and embodied feeling, it is our heart that registers what is around us first, before the brain interprets it. Yet modern psychotherapy is still weighted more towards words, analysis and the interaction of two minds in a room, often with little attention given to the body that feels, remembers, and communicates.
Although therapy has evolved over the last 200 years, and more therapists include body awareness in their work, remedies for mental health difficulties emphasise treatment of the mind. This imbalance reinforces the mistaken belief that the mind and body are separate, when we know by lived experience that they are inseparable aspects of human experience.
I am often heard remarking that we are not heads on sticks.
We cannot achieve sustainable healing of mental health disharmony, mild or complex, if we do not place awareness of the body, let alone the energy that it is constantly registering, responding or reacting to, at the heart of our therapeutic work.This is a central tenet of my therapeutic work in the therapy room, and the reason why I embrace taking therapy outside, to walk and talk, as an additional option for clients to explore and expand on their application of therapeutic work.
The research is clear that movement itself impacts us neurologically, increasing cerebral blood flow, widening our perspective and inviting flexibility of body and mind, a valuable support for effective therapy. Participants in research studies on walk and talk therapy also report heightened self awareness and improvement in mood and self esteem. In addition, natural surroundings have been shown to reduce negative emotion and amplify positive affect more powerfully than indoor walking.
Clients of walk and talk therapy describe feeling a greater sense of freedom expressing themselves when walking alongside the therapist. I have found this with my clients, observing some clients prefer to walk the entire time alongside me, our eyes rarely meeting, others like to mix it up with occasional moments sitting beside each other on a park bench as we continue talking, or allow themselves to sit in silence. And when some clients meet a point of emphasis or questioning in the talking, they stop and address me face to face, as if to mark something meaningful that needs to be witnessed.
Silence also has its place. When that moment occurs when there is nothing to say, or when the client struggles to put words to feelings, I find clients show increased ease with allowing silence when they are walking alongside me, instead of feeling the pressure to speak because we are facing each other. When nothing else is happening, they can feel they must say something, fill the space, perceiving that if they don’t, then they are not doing the work.
Silent moments fall naturally in our everyday life, and as therapy focussed on relational depth is its at best when it aims to be as authentic as possible in modelling how interactions in everyday life can be enriched with our greater presence and responsibility, it’s important we develop a relationship with silence in therapy too. Increasing an ease with silence, not as a tool of reaction and protection, but rather as a space for reflection and vulnerability, encourages connection with stillness within oneself, strengthening our ability to be steady and less reactive when our expectations are not met.
Walking and talking sessions give space to receive inspiration.
With their body in gentle movement, the person becomes more present with the union between body, mind and their innermost quality, experienced tangibly in their bodily movement, enabling even the most overwhelming of feelings to be experienced and resolved with less intensity.
What I love about walking in city parks is that we can hear the movements of people and traffic around us, and still connect and discover what it is to be still and settled inside. Like being settled in the storm of an incident, a significant life event or another’s emotional outburst, and not having to withdraw or lash out in protection of ourselves. My walks tend to begin and end with at least a short walk on some streets to get to our park of choice. I do this deliberately to practice remaining connected whilst the world and its chaos, unpredictability, constant motion and imposition carries on around us. For this is the city my clients leave my sessions to walk int, some of whom live in it, and others will travel through. This is life.
I have had too many clients over the years have the most amazing experiences on retreat in far-flung destinations, only to find they were not prepared for the integration of what they had reconnected with on their return home, reverting rapidly to their old ways, and the associated stress wiping out most if not all gains from the retreat. I’m a great advocate of retreat with a complete change of environment, and having run them, I have found it is essential to ensure the work includes how what has been re-connected to in the retreat can be applied simply beyond it. This is central to my approach to therapy in general. The magic is in the application between the sessions, how you live the realisations from therapy in your everyday life.
For therapy to be effective, it is crucial that it models what can be replicated by the client outside of the session. The quality of interaction with the therapist, their commitment to setting the example by living their words, walking their talk and talking their walk, and offering authenticity in the environment in which therapy takes place, can all support this modelling.
With the use of Ai (artificial intelligence) spreading so rapidly, clients now walk into therapy more psycho-educated than ever before. Ai has entered spaces that were once exclusively held by human practitioners, and the therapist who relies predominantly on theory and acquired knowledge, applying it in a formulaic way, will find themselves on increasingly untenable and insecure ground.
What Ai does not equip clients with is what only a present, embodied human being can offer, the capacity to behold them, to hold a loving space to explore and experience authentic relationship.
To walk alongside in equivalence, reflecting the steadiness of connection and conscious presence, loving, non-reactive, real and transparent. To behold does not mean to control or contain, nor to carry, but to allow someone to return to themselves.
Walk and Talk Therapy isn’t intended to replace therapy room sessions, it is an offering of a different angle of exploration and application of the therapeutic process. There is no one way, no one size fits all in therapy, a reflection of life and the richness we all bring to it.
Find out more about Walk and Talk Therapy sessionsSara Williams writes with the understanding that knowledge is not owned; when its source is Ageless Wisdom, it is accessible to and known by all. These reflections are drawn from therapeutic work, themes that arise across many client sessions and life in general. All identifying details are removed, and confidentiality is always protected.
References and Further Reading
Cooley, S.J., Jones, C.R., Kurtz, A. and Robertson, N. (2020) ‘Into the wild: A meta-synthesis of talking therapy in natural outdoor spaces’, Clinical Psychology Review, 77, 101841.
Cooley, S.J., Jones, C.R., Kurtz, A. and Robertson, N. (2022) ‘Organizational perspectives on outdoor talking therapy: Towards a position of “environmental safe uncertainty”‘, British Journal of Clinical Psychology, 61(1), pp. 132–156.
Cooley, S.J. and Robertson, N. (2020) The use of talking therapy outdoors. Leicester: British Psychological Society.
Davies, S. (2026) ‘On the couch’, Healthcare Counselling and Psychotherapy Journal, 26(1), p. 23.
European Association for Body Psychotherapy (2021) The evidence base for body psychotherapy. Available at: https://eabp.org/research/the-evidence-base-for-body-psychotherapy/ (Accessed: 9 April 2026).
Hoban, J. (2019) ‘”Every step I have taken in my work has helped me in a way that sitting down with my clients never did”‘, Therapy Today, 30(4), p. 31.
Jordan, M. (2015) Nature and therapy: Understanding counselling and psychotherapy in outdoor spaces. London: Routledge.
Jordan, M. and Marshall, H. (2010) ‘Taking counselling and psychotherapy outside: Destruction or enrichment of the therapeutic frame?’, European Journal of Psychotherapy and Counselling, 12, pp. 345–359.
Khalsa, S.S., Adolphs, R., Cameron, O.G., Critchley, H.D., Davenport, P.W. and Feinstein, J.S. et al. (2018) ‘Interoception and mental health: a roadmap’, Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging, 3(6), pp. 501–513.
Price, C.J. and Hooven, C. (2018) ‘Interoceptive awareness skills for emotion regulation: Theory and approach of mindful awareness in body-oriented therapy (MABT)’, Frontiers in Psychology, 9, 798.
Prince, L.H. and McCarthy, P. (2025) ‘Walking and talking for well-being: Exploring the effectiveness of walk and talk therapy’, Counselling and Psychotherapy Research, 25(2), pp. 1–11.
Revell, S. and McLeod, J. (2016) ‘Experiences of therapists who integrate walk and talk into their professional practice’, Counselling and Psychotherapy Research, 16(1), pp. 35–43.
Revell, S. and McLeod, J. (2017) ‘Therapists’ experience of walk and talk therapy: A descriptive phenomenological study’, European Journal of Psychotherapy and Counselling, 19(3), pp. 267–289.
Rosendahl, S., Sattel, H. and Lahmann, C. (2021) ‘Effectiveness of body psychotherapy: A systematic review and meta-analysis’, Frontiers in Psychiatry, 12, 709798.
van den Berg, A.E. and Beute, F. (2021) ‘Walk it off! The effectiveness of walk and talk coaching in nature for individuals with burnout- and stress-related complaints’, Journal of Environmental Psychology, 76, 101641.
White, M.P., Alcock, I., Grellier, J., Wheeler, B.W., Hartig, T., Warber, S.L. et al. (2019) ‘Spending at least 120 minutes a week in nature is associated with good health and wellbeing’, Scientific Reports, 9, 7730.
