Retreating to nature : rethinking 'therapeutic landscapes'

There is a long history of removing oneself from ‘society’ in order to recuperate or repair. This paper considers a yoga and massage retreat in Southern Spain, and what opportunities this retreat experience might offer for recuperation and the creation of healthy bodies. The paper positions ‘nature’ as an active participant, and as ‘enrolled’ in the experiences of the retreat as a ‘therapeutic landscape’, and questions how and what particular aspects of yoga practice (in intimate relation with place) give rise to therapeutic experiences

The therapeutic landscapes concept as a mobilizing tool for liberation

In this reflection, I argue for using the therapeutic landscapes concept as a tool for mobilizing positive change in the world. I first lay out three major research areas in therapeutic landscapes inquiry, and provide a review of similarities in this area of inquiry in both health geography and medical anthropology. Next, I argue for the application of the therapeutic landscapes concept in liberating, if even in a small way, the growing population of the most vulnerable in our society, countries, and globe. I note two anthropological contributions that illustrate how the concept of therapeutic landscapes can be employed in liberating vulnerability, before discussing a work in progress, specific to an intentional ashram community with a mandate dedicated to world peace. I conclude by setting out the importance of this new direction for the future application of the therapeutic landscape concept as a tool for liberation

The New Urban Spiritual? Tentative Framings for a Debate and a Project

AHRC-funded project 'The Urban Spiritual: Placing Spiritual Practices in Context' (AH/H009108/1), Working Paper #1

From therapeutic landscapes to healthy spaces, places and practices: a scoping review

The term 'therapeutic landscapes' was first coined by health geographer, Wilbert Gesler, in 1992 to explore why certain environments seem to contribute to a healing sense of place. Since then, the concept and its applications have evolved and expanded as researchers have examined the dynamic material, affective and socio-cultural roots and routes to experiences of health and wellbeing in specific places. Drawing on a scoping review of studies of these wider therapeutic landscapes published between 2007 and 2016, this paper explores how, where, and to what benefit the 'therapeutic landscapes' concept has been applied to date, and how such applications have contributed to its critical evolution as a relevant and useful concept in health geography. Building on themes included in two earlier (1999, 2007) edited volumes on Therapeutic Landscapes, we summarise the key themes identified in the review, broadly in keeping with the core material, social, spiritual and symbolic dimensions of the concept initially posited by Gesler. Through this process, we identify strengths and limitations of the concept and its applications, as well as knowledge gaps and promising future directions for work in this field, reflecting critically on its value within health geography and its potential contribution to wider interdisciplinary discussions and debates around 'healthy' spaces, places, and related practices. [Abstract copyright: Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Constructing landscapes

The concept of therapeutic landscapes has been adopted from geography by anthropologists with a similar commitment to addressing the intersections between the construction of place and the multifaceted and symbolic dimensions of health. Drawing from health geography and medical anthropology, we take up the challenge from these fields to approach health broadly in order to understand how health decision making is connected to intersecting political, economic, social, and cultural processes that shape what options are available to people. This article presents findings from an ongoing study of the political ecology of health in northeastern South Africa. We consider how therapeutic landscapes are produced by physical infrastructure, social dynamics, and the use of natural resources for livelihoods and health management. While each of these dimensions is critical in shaping human health, we argue that it is through their interaction that therapeutic landscapes are produced. Landscapes of care are thus complicated and shifting, with rural households making strategic decisions to leverage government support, social support, and resources for health management. We conclude by emphasizing the need for further integration of anthropological and geographic frameworks in studying human health

Review Essay: Emplacement and everyday use of medications in domestic dwellings

To extend knowledge of relationships between people and domestic settings in the context of medication use, we conducted fieldwork in twenty households in New Zealand. These households contained a range of ‘medicative’ forms, including prescription drugs, traditional remedies, dietary supplements and enhanced foods. The location and use of these substances within domestic dwellings speaks to processes of emplacement and identity in the creation of spaces for care. Our analysis contributes to current understandings of the ways in which objects from ‘outside’ the home come to be woven into relationships, identities and meanings ‘inside’ the home. We demonstrate that, as well as being pharmacological objects, medications are complex, socially embedded objects with histories and memories that are ingrained within contemporary relationships of care and home-making practices

Heritage, health and place:The legacies of local community-based heritage conservation on social wellbeing

Geographies of health challenge researchers to attend to the positive effects of occupying, creating and using all kinds of spaces, including 'green space' and more recently 'blue space'. Attention to the spaces of community-based heritage conservation has largely gone unexplored within the health geography literature. This paper examines the personal motivations and impacts associated with people's growing interest in local heritage groups. It draws on questionnaires and interviews from a recent study with such groups and a conceptual mapping of their routes and flows. The findings reveal a rich array of positive benefits on the participants' social wellbeing with/in the community. These include personal enrichment, social learning, satisfaction from sharing the heritage products with others, and less anxiety about the present. These positive effects were tempered by needing to face and overcome challenging effects associated with running the projects thus opening up an extension to health-enabling spaces debates

The Role of Therapeutic Landscape in Improving Mental Health of People with PTSD

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as a complex disorder, with serious consequences, affects the quality of life of the individual, the family, as well as the community. Therefore, the subject of this chapter is to study how to reduce stress and improve the quality of life of these people and consequently the community. This chapter is based on documentary studies including the foundations of the theory, the study of the results of experiments in the world, and case studies in this field, which shows that the interaction of individuals with PTSD and therapeutic landscapes can act as a therapeutic mechanism. In the following, features from therapeutic landscapes that help to optimize mental health levels are reviewed in people with PTSD, briefly

Just add water:prisons, therapeutic landscapes and healthy blue space

‘Healthy prisons’ is a well-established concept in criminology and prison studies. As a guiding principle to prisoners’ quality of life, it goes back to the 18th century when prison reformer John Howard regarded the improvement of ventilation and hygiene as being essential in the quest for religious penitence and moral reform. In more recent, times, the notion of the ‘healthy prison’ has been more commonly associated with that which is ‘just’ and ‘decent’, rather than what is healthy in a medical or therapeutic sense. This article interrogates the ‘healthy prison’ more literally. Drawing on data gathered from a UK prison located on a seashore, our aim is to explore prisoners’ rational and visceral responses to water in a setting where the very nature of enforced residence can have negative effects on mental health. In expanding the possibilities for the theorization of the health benefits that waterscapes may generate, and moving the discussion from healthy ‘green space’ to healthy ‘blue space’, the article reveals some of the less well-known and under-researched interconnections between therapeutic and carceral geographies, and criminological studies of imprisonment