Skip to content 
Venturous Counselling offers forest therapy and nature-based therapy in Vancouver, Port Moody, Coquitlam, and Burnaby for youth, adults, and relationships. Forest therapy at Venturous is clinical counselling held outdoors in forested and natural environments, led by registered clinical counsellors. It differs from forest bathing or guided nature walks by centering the therapeutic relationship, emotional processing, and nervous system regulation within the natural setting. Venturous supports people navigating anxiety, burnout, grief, trauma, chronic stress, identity exploration, and nervous system overwhelm through anti-oppressive, justice-oriented mental health care.
In This Post
- What Is Forest Therapy, and How Is It Different from a Walk in the Woods?
- Forest Therapy and the Nervous System: What Happens Under the Canopy
- What Forest Therapy Looks Like in Vancouver and Burnaby
- Who Forest Therapy Tends to Reach
- Forest Therapy for Anxiety, Grief, and Burnout
- What Forest Therapy Won’t Do
- Next Steps: Finding Your Fit at Venturous
There’s a particular kind of tired that doesn’t respond to rest. The kind where you’ve done all the things you were supposed to do, the sleep hygiene, the boundaries, the deep breaths, and your body still feels like it’s bracing for something. Still scanning. Still holding the shape of a threat that may have passed months ago, or may not have passed at all.
Forest therapy begins where that bracing lives.
Not by explaining it away. Not by teaching you a technique. But by placing you inside an environment your nervous system recognizes as older, slower, and more patient than anything you’ve been asked to perform inside of.
At Venturous Counselling in Vancouver and Port Moody, forest therapy is part of our nature-based therapy offerings for youth, adults, and relationships. Our registered clinical counsellors offer forest therapy sessions across Vancouver, Burnaby, and Coquitlam, grounding therapeutic work in the forests, trails, and green spaces of this region.
This post is about what forest therapy actually is when a counsellor is involved, how it differs from a hike or a forest bathing experience, and what the forests here offer that an office, no matter how thoughtfully designed, can’t replicate.
What Is Forest Therapy, and How Is It Different from a Walk in the Woods?
Forest therapy is therapeutic counselling that takes place in a forested or natural outdoor environment, facilitated by a trained and registered clinical counsellor.
That’s the clinical framing. And it’s true. But it’s a bit like describing a conversation as “two people exchanging words.” It tells you the shape without telling you what it feels like to be inside it.
The term “forest therapy” has been stretched wide enough to include guided wellness walks, corporate team-building retreats, sensory meditation experiences, and content about touching trees with your eyes closed. Some of those offerings are meaningful. None of them are therapy.
At Venturous, forest therapy means the same therapeutic depth you’d find in an office session, the same relational attention, the same tracking of patterns and nervous system states, the same commitment to going at your pace, held inside a living ecosystem instead of between four walls.
The forest doesn’t replace the counsellor. The counsellor doesn’t replace the forest. They work together. The canopy holds what the conversation opens. The trail gives the body somewhere to go when the feelings arrive. The seasons offer metaphors that nobody has to manufacture, because the world has been composting its own wisdom for longer than any of us have been trying to articulate ours.
A walk in the woods can be restorative. Forest therapy is relational. There’s a person with you who’s paying attention to what surfaces, what shifts, what tightens, what softens. That’s the difference between a nice afternoon and a therapeutic encounter.
Forest Therapy and the Nervous System: What Happens Under the Canopy
Forests do something to the human body that science is only recently naming, though the body has never needed the language to feel it.
Phytoncides, the organic compounds released by trees, have been shown to reduce cortisol, lower blood pressure, and increase natural killer cell activity, the body’s frontline immune response. The Japanese practice of Shinrin-yoku, or forest bathing, has decades of research behind it documenting these physiological effects.
But forest therapy as practiced at Venturous goes further. It layers the biological benefits of being among trees with the relational, emotional, and somatic work of counselling.
Under a canopy, the quality of light changes. Dappled. Filtered. Soft. The visual system relaxes because it’s no longer processing the flat, artificial brightness of screens and overhead fluorescents. The auditory environment shifts too: birdsong, wind threading through leaves, water finding its way over rock. These sounds activate the parasympathetic nervous system, the branch responsible for rest, digestion, and repair.
The body begins to down-regulate. Not because you told it to. Because the environment is doing what living environments do when they haven’t been engineered for productivity.
This is where forest therapy diverges from forest bathing. Forest bathing invites you to be present in a forest. Forest therapy invites you to be present in a forest with someone who’s tracking what your presence reveals. Your counsellor notices when your breath changes. When your pace slows. When a sentence lands differently because you said it while looking up through branches instead of across a room.
The forest provides the conditions. The therapeutic relationship provides the witness.
What Forest Therapy Looks Like in Vancouver and Burnaby
We’re fortunate to practice in a part of the world where forest and city don’t stay neatly separated. Vancouver’s parks hold stands of cedar and hemlock that have been growing since before the streets around them were paved. Burnaby’s mountain trails, lake edges, and dense green corridors offer the kind of immersion that feels hours away from anything urban, even when it’s a fifteen-minute drive. Coquitlam’s river trails and forested parks extend that reach further east.
At Venturous, forest therapy sessions take place in parks, trails, and green spaces across all three areas. Your counsellor will work with you to choose a location that fits your body, your mobility, your comfort with varying terrain, and your access to transportation.
Some clients walk slowly through the trees. Some sit beneath a particular cedar for the entire session. Some move between sitting and walking as the conversation shifts. The pace belongs to you. The forest isn’t watching the clock.
A session might begin with a few minutes of arriving. Noticing the temperature on your skin. The smell of wet earth or resin. The sound of a creek or a crow. The body’s already responding to this sensory information before the mind catches up, already beginning to recalibrate based on cues the forest has been offering since before you got there.
Then the therapeutic conversation unfolds. Sometimes your counsellor will notice the environment offering something relevant: a fallen branch, a clearing, a shift in light. Sometimes these become part of the conversation naturally. Sometimes they don’t. The forest isn’t a prop. It’s the room. And like any good room, it holds what needs holding without insisting on being noticed.
Sessions run the same length as office sessions. Your counsellor brings the same training, the same ethical commitments, the same anti-oppressive, justice-oriented lens to the outdoor work as to any other modality.
Who Forest Therapy Tends to Reach
Forest therapy tends to find the people who’ve been doing the work for a while and still feel like something’s missing. Not missing from their effort. Missing from the container.
People who’ve done talk therapy and found it useful but incomplete. People whose bodies hold what their words keep circling. People who’ve been told to “sit with” difficult feelings and found that sitting, literally sitting in a chair, in a room, under fluorescent light, is the part that makes it harder.
It also reaches people who are entirely new to therapy and feel less intimidated by the idea of being among trees with someone than sitting in an office answering questions about their childhood.
And it reaches people whose relationship to nature has been complicated by access, by displacement, by who gets to be “outdoorsy” and who’s been excluded from those spaces. Forest therapy at Venturous doesn’t assume a particular relationship to the land. It invites you to discover or rediscover your own, at whatever pace that takes, with whatever complexity that holds.
If you’re navigating identity questions, the forest offers something particular: a space where you aren’t being watched, categorized, or asked to perform coherence. The trees don’t need you to be legible. You can be multiple things at once under a canopy, and nothing about the forest will ask you to choose.
Forest Therapy for Anxiety, Grief, and Burnout
These three experiences show up most often in our forest therapy work, and the forest meets each of them in its own way.
Anxiety lives in the future. It rehearses. It scans. It plans for the worst while pretending it’s being responsible. The forest lives in the present tense. This root. This light. This sound. Forest therapy doesn’t instruct you to “be present.” It places you inside a sensory environment where presence becomes the path of least resistance, where your nervous system starts to follow the forest’s tempo before your mind has time to argue with it.
Grief lives in layers. It doesn’t resolve; it composites. The forest understands this without being asked. Forests are built on what came before: the fallen tree feeds the soil that feeds the sapling. Nothing’s wasted. Nothing’s erased. For people carrying grief that the world doesn’t recognize or give adequate time for, the forest offers a place where the timeline is measured in rings, not in how long it “should” take to feel better.
Burnout lives in the body’s refusal to keep going at a pace it was never meant to sustain. The forest doesn’t move at the pace of capitalism. It grows slowly. It rests seasonally. It doesn’t apologize for dormancy. For people navigating burnout who’ve been told the answer is better self-care, the forest offers a counter-narrative without saying a word: maybe the pace was never yours to keep. Maybe the system that exhausted you is the thing that needs correcting, not your capacity to endure it.
The forest doesn’t teach these things. The body recognizes them, the way it recognizes a rhythm it was built to keep but has been overridden for so long it forgot it was still there.
What Forest Therapy Won’t Do
Forest therapy won’t cure your anxiety in one session. It won’t fix systemic harm. It won’t replace medication, community, or the particular kinds of therapeutic work that call for EMDR, somatic processing, or art-based approaches.
It won’t romanticize nature as an escape from real life, either. The forest isn’t a retreat from the world. It’s a part of the world, one with its own violences and losses and survivals. Bringing your pain into a forest doesn’t make the pain pastoral. It makes the container bigger.
And forest therapy, like all outdoor modalities, doesn’t arrive in every body the same way. Weather, terrain, mobility, sensory processing, chronic pain, transportation: these shape what forest therapy looks like on any given day. At Venturous, your counsellor will talk through all of this before your first outdoor session. The work adapts to meet you. You don’t have to adapt to meet the work.
Forest therapy is one modality among many at Venturous, and it works well in combination with walk and talk therapy, office-based sessions, and other approaches. Your counsellor will help you find the rhythm that fits, and that rhythm is allowed to change as you do.
Next Steps: Finding Your Fit at Venturous
If something here resonated, if you read about the canopy and your shoulders dropped half an inch, here are three ways to move toward it:
Take our 3-minute matching quiz to find the counsellor at Venturous who fits your needs, your style, and your life. The quiz considers what you’re navigating, how you prefer to process, and what kind of therapeutic relationship you’re looking for.
Book a free 15-minute consultation with a counsellor directly. Ask about forest therapy. Ask about what locations feel right. Ask about what the work looks like for someone with your particular body and your particular story.
Learn more about nature-based therapy at Venturous to see the full scope of our outdoor therapeutic offerings in Vancouver, Port Moody, Coquitlam, and Burnaby.
You might also want to explore what walk and talk therapy sessions involve, read about what forest therapy means beyond wellness trends, or start with our complete guide to nature based healing.
And if the forest has been calling you for a while now, maybe the next step isn’t to understand why. Maybe it’s to go.
Julianna Lei, MCP, RCC is a walk and talk, nature-based therapy practitioner and registered clinical counsellor at Venturous Counselling in Vancouver and Port Moody. Julianna works slowly and thoughtfully with people navigating complex inner worlds, identity tension, and experiences of harm. Her approach centres consent, pacing, and helping clients reconnect with parts of themselves that’ve been overridden or doubted. She draws on art therapy, narrative practice, and nature-based modalities, and she especially welcomes people who make sense of their lives through stories, patterns, and the kind of self-reflection that peels back one layer at a time.
Frequently Asked Questions About Forest Therapy in Vancouver and Burnaby
What is forest therapy?
Forest therapy is therapeutic counselling that takes place in a forested or natural outdoor environment, facilitated by a trained and registered clinical counsellor. It differs from forest bathing or guided nature walks by centering the therapeutic relationship, emotional processing, and nervous system regulation within the forest setting.
How is forest therapy different from forest bathing?
Forest bathing (Shinrin-yoku) is a guided practice of sensory immersion focused on mindfulness and relaxation. Forest therapy at Venturous is clinical counselling held in a forest with a registered counsellor who’s tracking your nervous system, emotional patterns, and therapeutic process. Forest bathing invites you to be present in a forest. Forest therapy invites you to be present in a forest with someone who’s paying attention to what your presence reveals.
What does a forest therapy session look like?
You meet your counsellor at a predetermined outdoor location in Vancouver, Burnaby, or Coquitlam. The session begins with arriving and noticing your sensory environment: the temperature on your skin, the smell of wet earth or resin, the sound of a creek or a crow. Then the therapeutic conversation unfolds while walking slowly, sitting beneath a tree, or moving between the two. Sessions are the same length and same rates as office sessions.
What conditions does forest therapy help with?
Forest therapy at Venturous is especially effective for anxiety, grief, and burnout. It also supports people navigating trauma, chronic stress and fatigue, identity exploration, and nervous system overwhelm.
What are the benefits of forest therapy for the nervous system?
Phytoncides (organic compounds released by trees) reduce cortisol, lower blood pressure, and increase natural killer cell activity. Dappled light under a canopy relaxes the visual system. Birdsong, wind, and water sounds activate the parasympathetic nervous system. The body begins to down-regulate not because you told it to, but because the environment provides cues of safety the body can’t learn from words alone.
Where does forest therapy take place in Vancouver and Burnaby?
Sessions take place in parks, trails, and green spaces across Vancouver, Burnaby, and Coquitlam. Vancouver’s parks hold stands of cedar and hemlock. Burnaby’s mountain trails, lake edges, and green corridors offer deep immersion. Coquitlam’s river trails extend the reach further east. Your counsellor works with you to choose a location that fits your body and access needs.
Who is forest therapy best for?
Forest therapy tends to reach people who’ve done talk therapy and feel something’s missing from the container, people whose bodies hold what their words keep circling, people who find that sitting still in a room makes processing harder, people new to therapy who feel less intimidated by being among trees, and people navigating identity questions who need a space that doesn’t demand coherence.
Is forest therapy accessible for people with mobility challenges?
Yes. Forest therapy at Venturous adapts to meet your body. Sessions can take place on paved, accessible paths, involve more sitting than walking, or shift locations based on what your body needs that day. Your counsellor discusses mobility, terrain comfort, sensory needs, and transportation before your first session.
Can forest therapy be combined with other types of therapy?
Yes. Forest therapy works well alongside walk and talk therapy, office-based sessions, art therapy, somatic therapy, and EMDR. Many clients find a rhythm that alternates between indoor and outdoor sessions.
How much does forest therapy cost in Vancouver?
Forest therapy rates at Venturous range from $160-$240 per session. Direct billing is available through most extended health plans including Pacific Blue Cross, GreenShield, Canada Life, and Sun Life. Funding through CVAP, ICBC, WorkBC, FNHA, and Autism Funding is also accepted.
What should I wear to a forest therapy session?
Comfortable layers appropriate for the weather and shoes you can walk in on varying terrain. Bring water. Your counsellor will provide guidance on what to expect at each specific location and season.
Does forest therapy at Venturous honour Indigenous knowledge?
At Venturous, all proceeds from nature-based therapy sessions are redistributed to Indigenous organizing efforts. We practice on the stolen territories of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and other Indigenous nations, and we acknowledge that land-based healing is a return to knowledge Indigenous peoples have been protecting for centuries, not a clinical discovery.
