2021 Remote/Hybrid Forest Therapy Guide Training
Wild Tulip
Enrollment Open
When you begin your journey, you will take a core training course that lasts six months. Your cohort of up to 30 trainees will be people who live in the same or a nearby time zone. This geographic and time zone way of gathering as a group makes it convenient to connect with your trainers and each other via remote technologies like Zoom.
In this training, you will learn:
- The Standard Sequence of Guided Forest Therapy Walks
- Professional standards and competencies: what a Forest Therapy Guide should know and be able to do
- The pedagogy and fundamentals of nature connection
- Nature and forest therapy research and effects on health care and well-being
- Our framework for the Way of the Guide, wisdom on the inner aspects of the art gained through decades of experience
- The leadership skills and style of the Guide archetype
- Creating space for others to find their own authentic nature connection
- Accelerating connection to deep mindfulness and bodyfulness through simple sensory invitations
- What makes a good setting for forest therapy
- How to facilitate restorative human connection through storytelling and witnessing
- Our theoretical framework of deep nature connection through embodiment, liminality, reciprocity and relationship
- Sequencing forest therapy invitations for maximum impact and benefit
- Expressive arts activities for forest therapy
- Somatic techniques for embodied awareness
- Our aim is simple: to train competent guides. However, many participants report that this training profoundly affects many aspects of their lives.
You will be supported in live calls by some of the worlds most experienced forest therapy guides and trainers. The learning platform is very user-friendly with many types of content, including videos, reading, field assignments, live discussions, and more.
If you wish, you will also be added to the Forest Therapy Facebook Group, a private group for ANFT trained guides from throughout the world. This group is a remarkable and very active resource for exchanging information and supporting ongoing learning. ANFT certified guides can now be found in 55 countries. These local guides are a resource for trainees to experience being guided. You can harvest a lot of practical wisdom from them. They love to help new trainees!
You will also have access to a growing library of ANFT training materials such as videos. To further support your learning, you will be invited to join a “pod” of three to five others in your cohort. Many pods develop interesting and fun ways to deepen their learning process. Often lifetime friendships grow.To the extent possible, we will try to organize pods based on your proximity to each other; this will maximize your ability to meet in person and explore forest trails and forest therapy methods together.
When you complete the core six-month training you will be an ANFT-Certified Forest Therapy Guide. This certification is valid for two years, or until you complete a four-day immersion. This must be completed sometime within two years after you complete the six month core training course. This will move your certification from provisional to permanent status. Immersions are organized by local trainers. Dates and locations will be set as the time for the intensive draws near. We’ll be looking at the weather and other factors when we choose dates. It is quite likely that you will meet trainees from other cohorts at your immersion. This will help to give you a sense of the community of guides that has grown and is active throughout the world.
Schedule for Live Events
Live sessions and group discussions
Wednesday
10 am - 11:30 am Pacific Time
1 pm - 2:30 pm Eastern Time
6 pm - 7:30 pm Western European Time
7 pm - 8:30 pm Central European Time
8 pm - 9:30 pm Eastern European Time
For your local time check here
Tuition
The tuition for the six month core guide training program is $2995 USD.
The tuition for the four-day immersion is $495. Wait to pay until you are ready to register for a specific immersion. You will have two years from the completion of your core guide training to do the immersion. This price does not include lodging, meals nor transportation.
Other costs include payment for Wilderness First Aid training, which is required for Certification, and is provided by third parties. Prices range from $100 to $300.
Tuition figures are current as of January 1, 2021 and are subject to change.
Trainers
Entrenadores
Ben Page is a Forest Therapy Guide, global advocate for the practice and the author of the soon to be released Healing Trees: A Pocket Guide to Forest Bathing. He is the founder of Shinrin Yoku LA and Integral Forest Bathing and has been guiding Forest Therapy walks since 2015. During his tenure as a trainer and mentor of guides, Ben has trained hundreds of guides around the world. From 2017-2020, he also served as the Director of Training for the Association of Nature and Forest Therapy Guides and Programs, specializing in curriculum and pedagogical design and was the main designer of the ANFT Forest Therapy Guide Training on Thinkific. Since his practice began, Ben has been featured in such publications as Women’s Health, USA TODAY, Good Morning America, The Washington Post, and WebMD. Ben is also a co-founder of The Open School, Southern California’s only free democratic school. He holds a B.A. in religious studies from Carleton College and an M.A. in human development and social change from Pacific Oaks College.
Kat is an ANFT certified Forest Therapy Guide, Trainer and an artist, based in the Netherlands. Her element is to help people re-connect with nature, with themselves and others, while focusing on the aspects of reciprocity, respect for all beings, heart intelligence, body wisdom and the state of flow. With her passion for nature-inspired art, and a background in cross-cultural communication, Kat enjoys guiding people and teams from all cultures with her company Way Back Home, and attempts expressing the relatedness of all beings through Shinrin-yoku Art and practicing Flow Arts. She is trained in Forest Therapy, Cross-Cultural Communication and is currently training to be Mind-Body & Eating Psychology Coach. She has nearly two decades of experience in teaching adult students, both on-on-one, in groups and online, holds a Masters degree in Linguistics and Translation Studies and is fluent in Dutch, English, Czech and a passive bilingual speaker of German.
