The Ground Beneath Our Work: Nature-Informed Therapy and Care for a World in Need (Nature-Informed Practice Series)

A groundbreaking guide for therapists, educators, healthcare workers, and helpers who want to bring nature into their practice — ethically, practically, and with heart.

What if the most powerful tool in your therapeutic toolkit isn't a technique — but the living world outside your door?

The Ground Beneath Our Work introduces Nature-Informed Therapy (NIT) and Nature-Informed Care (NIC), a flexible, evidence-informed framework for weaving nature into clinical practice, education, healthcare, faith communities, and everyday helping roles.

At the heart of the book is the ROOTED™ model — six practical mechanisms for integrating nature into professional care:

• Regulate Attention
• Open the Senses
• Optimize Dosage
• Tend Relationships
• Enact Reciprocity & Meaning
• Design the Setting

Dr. Heidi Schreiber-Pan draws on over 20 years of clinical experience, her own research, and the ancient wisdom of Indigenous and land-based traditions to offer:

• A 30-day implementation plan with session tools and trackers
• Clinical case stories showing NIT in action
• Practices for diverse settings — from therapy offices to schools, hospitals, parks, and nursing homes
• Guidance on ethics, safety, equity, and outdoor group facilitation
• Tools for addressing eco-grief, climate anxiety, and nature-deficit

With a foreword by Robert J. Wicks, Psy.D., author of It's Good to Be Lost Once in a While (Oxford University Press), this book is both a practical manual and a quiet invitation to remember: we have never not been in relationship with nature.

For licensed clinicians, counselors, social workers, psychologists, educators, chaplains, park rangers, coaches, and anyone whose work involves caring for others.

"I cannot recommend this book highly enough." — Mark A. Salvatore, MD, MS, Harvard Medical School

"A deeply human and clinically usable resource." — Dr. Christine Lynn Norton, Professor of Social Work, Texas State University

"This book has forever changed how I sit in my own backyard." — Thomas R. Medema, Former National Park Service Associate Director