Taylor Bourassa
Ottawa, ON

Nature’s Way is a regular column by Envisage writer Taylor Bourassa, exploring eco-art therapy techniques to incorporate into therapeutic practices, and invites us to practice ways of interacting with, befriending, and enhancing our relationship with the earth.

Taylor Bourassa is a Registered Psychotherapist (Qualifying) and art therapist with a private practice, Wellness Grove Therapy. She incorporates the environment into her practice through the use of natural materials, meditative practices that centre the earth, inviting the natural environment into sessions as a co-facilitator, and sharing the primordial knowledge the earth provides.

It’s a calm, slow day. You’re enjoying the peaceful quietude, but you can feel a sense of urgency creeping up in the back of your mind. All of a sudden you feel overcome with anxiety and stress and you can’t seem to shake it or get back to your calm. Your mind starts racing and thoughts start pouring in: I’m lazy, I should be doing something productive, why can’t I move and get started on something, I have so many things to do. You start to connect with the emotion as a core piece of yourself, rather than as a state or experience to feel and process.

We experience so many emotions throughout the day; sometimes very intensely and other times so softly they’re barely perceptible. The lifespan of an emotion is typically short lived, but there are some emotions that show up and just kind of...stick around. We keep breathing new life into them and they take up permanent residence in our minds and hearts. Now we identify as that emotion: I’m just an angry person, I’m frustrating, I’m such an annoying friend. We are not our emotions, but when they stake a claim in our identity, we feel attached to them and find it hard to separate our self from the feeling.     

The true nature of emotions is that they’re playful little communicators. So naturally, I think of the faeries. Those fair folk who live in the trees and underground, in mounds and hills, under the ocean and in the reeds. The trickster who comes out to play tricks on our minds when it’s late at night because they’re bored; the magic creature who can take your dreams and help you realize them or dash them asunder before they even see the light of day. Notice the nuance in my language. I’m not just talking about faeries, these qualities are all present in our emotions too. But the faerie is a helpful little creature, ever present in nature and can even help us with our emotions.   

What I’m thinking of here is how to hold, acknowledge and process our emotions without letting them overtake the whole real estate of our self. You build them a home. A physical home wherein they have place to roam, feel, express and comfort or soothe themselves. Obviously emotions are not sentient, but they are alive in a sense. And they can be played with through role-play, embodiment or externalization.

The invitation here is to build a simple home out of natural materials – sticks, stones, moss. Create rooms and compartments. Think about the needs and wants of your emotion and how to provide that for it. Once you have your home built, invite your emotion inside. How do they like it? Does it need a renovation anywhere? Why, and how can you grant this wish? Explore the different rooms and their uses, where does the emotion feel, process, express, and soothe themselves? Do all these things happen in the same room, same way, all at once? And how are each of these things done? Let your emotion camp out overnight, under a fairy tree (you’ll be able to recognize a fairy tree by the way it looks: Blackthorn, Hawthorn and Rowan trees. Otherwise, a tree with a bump, crater or hole carved out at the base, in the trunk or near the roots). Come back in the morning and re-explore the emotions needs and experience of camping out in their new little home. What insights were gained?

This exercise is one of familiarizing yourself with the nature, presentation and life of your emotion without getting too attached to its presence. Asking it questions in its own space or home, allows you to become curious about how to feel and express, process and soothe your emotion when it shows up next.

Why plant the home at the base of a faerie tree? The lore behind faeries is varied and vast, ranging from trickster to helpful agent. I see the faeries as generally helpful, with a focus on reciprocity and respect. By placing the home at the faerie tree, you are asking for help (co-regulation) and recognizing that sometimes, emotions are too big to handle on your own.

Since the home is built out of natural materials, you can leave it with the faeries. Or maybe you’d rather your emotions be a little closer to home. If that’s the case, you can gather their home and place it on your bedside table or dresser. Continue the practice of externalization and detachment as your emotion re-appears. We are not our emotions, but they are important, playful communicators who should be given their own space to express and soothe themselves. Sometimes we just need a little help regulating them.