I first encountered the outdoor world as a kid playing in the cinder alley that ran behind the suburban home in south London. Pushing out of the ash and dirt were nettles, blackberries and rough grass. Makeshift camps and chasing the evening sun til it was time to go home first fuelled my connection with the outdoors. In adolescence it was wild camping, mountaineering and long distance cycling that took me beyond the cityscape and out into the wider world.
With a background in teaching, I also qualified as a Mountain Leader and led groups into the hills both in the UK and abroad. I specialised in working with young people at risk of custody and school exclusion during which time I began to recognise the influence of the more-than-human on informing internal experience.
In my 30s I became interested in Transactional Analysis, eventually qualified as a Teaching & Supervision Transactional Analyst in the field of education.
Much of my practice for the past 20 years has involved working with groups outdoors, curating an ecological pedagogy along the way.
By my 40s my family had left London and settled in east Suffolk where we set out to establish a smallholding and here we are now, at Mill House, Earl Soham.
It has been over the past twenty years that my journey took me to the Right Livelihood Programme at Schumacher College, Devon that involved an educational study in Bhutan.
This was an initiatory experience breaking open the world of story and myth, shamanism and the power of the upper, lower and middle worlds, the to and fro of soul and psyche and the sing-song of landscape.
I write a bit – various papers on various educational themes, transactional analysis and ecological practice. As well as post-graduate degrees in English literature, special educational needs and school leadership, I also completed a doctorate study: Soil, Soul & Society in the Educational Encounter.
I am involved in other educational work including a major project, Living Equalities, with Anisha Pandya based in the north west. I also offer other programmes here at Mill House details of which can be found at: https://gilesbarrow.com.
My relationship with the natural world has a long reach, extending way back into my infancy when I lived on a farm in rural Buckinghamshire. From being very small I was often outside either with my father or the many animal companions I had around me at that time. Although sometimes wonderful, those early days were also full of trouble – inevitably of the human variety. As a consequence, I went out roaming the fields and lanes, lost to the human realm yet saved by nature. My outdoor world offered me a lifeline as both refuge and a source of aliveness.
As a result, the more-than-human have always formed a significant part of how I identify in life. I am not just embedded within the natural world it is in me - I experience myself as profoundly rooted in the broader network of the living world. Inevitably, these early experiences from the bedrock of how I work ecologically today.
My professional ecological journey began in my mid-forties. By then, I had been practicing as Transactional Analysis psychotherapist for 12 years and decided I couldn’t possibly stay sitting in my chair in a room any longer! I began looking for a different path. A life changing trip for me was a wilderness immersion journey up on Skye in 2007. The trip involved working live with the psychological process emerging from undertaking a physical journey by sea and land In this inspiring experience I found what I had been looking for - a way to incorporate the living process of the outdoors into a psychological one. This was the beginning of my ecological practice. I knew then that this was how I was going to work, and I have never looked back.
In concert with moving my practice outdoors I developed a keen interest in embodied and creative approaches to ecopsychotherapy, supervision and training. I view these ways of working as essential for bringing deeply held personal material alive in ecological practice – for promoting human wholeness and consequentially ecological maturity.
I have undertaken a wide variety of additional training in trauma body work, and ecological movement. This has involved extensive training with Danish body psychotherapist Merete Holm Brantbjerg in her Relational Trauma Therapy approach. Alongside this I have also developed an Amerta (Indonesian, non-stylised) movement practice through working with teachers Sandra Reeve and Helen Poynor.
In terms of developing my creative style and methods, I have trained with Anna Chesner at the London School of Psychodrama gaining a Creative Approaches to Supervision Diploma. I weave all of these influences into how I train others to work ecologically, specifically in supporting others to regain a centre of knowing from within their own moving body.
On a personal level I maintain (what I name as) a regular Move-Write practice (see Key and Tudor in Writing section), to support my connection to the more than human domain. This practice keeps me embedded in the lands around me, helps me to listen well, and informs my training and creative work. It also honours what I view as my calling to work closely with land and to bring the wisdom from there to others.
Therefore, it is important to say that the lands of Derbyshire and more latterly Suffolk, have been crucial to my ecological work. The earth, plants and trees, rock, water, and creatures of the moors, woods and shore flow though my thinking and methodology. With their atmosphere, topography, shape, colour, and swell, they have indeed been great teachers and guides. I am full gratitude for their ongoing presence.
My personal journey has always included regular personal therapy but in the past 5 years I have reached new depths – beginning to deal somatically with the trauma of those early times I mentioned. This precipitated a spiritual descent, essentially a personal crisis - a cracking open to encounter deep trauma - along with a corresponding ‘calling’ to open to a new way of being in the wider world. So, this work has included an important spiritual awakening, which with my earth centric focus, has inevitably led me into the realms of contemporary shamanism.
I have found support and teachings from various guides and teachers, significantly from the Dreaming Awake network and Northern Drum.
These contemporary shamanic practices are now also flowing into my work and certainly underpin much of the work on ritual in our training
I am also a conference speaker and writer on ecological practice. I have written several book chapters and journal articles on clinical outdoor practice. These include some more poetic writing (see Ecotherapy – A Field Guide. Key & Tudor 2023).
Giles and I launched a new sensibility in TA practice – Eco-TA – in the UK in 2020, after which we were co-editors for the Transactional Analysis Journal special issue on Eco-TA in January 2023
As well as co facilitating the Becoming ecological program I offer a variety of training courses and professional development groups for psychological practitioners wishing to develop eco-psychotherapy practices at my training centre – The Centre for Natural Reflection – based in the Peak District.
Whether you’re curious about our ecological training programmes, interested in booking a workshop, or simply want to know more about our community and approach, you are very welcome to reach out.
You can contact us directly by phone at +447540303536 or by using the form alongside. We’ll be happy to provide directions to Mill House in Suffolk, details about travel and accommodation, or answer any questions about upcoming workshops. Whichever way you choose, we look forward to connecting with you.