The Nature of TraumaPlay®: Incorporating Nature into the 7 Key Components

The 6th chapter in Nature-based Play & Expressive Therapies is authored by Paris Goodyear-Brown and is titled The Nature of TraumaPlay®: Incorporating Nature into the 7 Key Components. This chapter explores each of the seven key components of TraumaPlay®, a flexibly sequential play therapy model for treating trauma and methods for how each component can be implemented therapeutically in natural environments. The neurobiology of trauma, the neurobiology of play, and the therapeutic benefits of play in nature are examined in this chapter. Play-based interventions that can be experienced in nature are presented in ways that enhance safety and security, augment adaptive coping, soothe the physiology, enhance attachments, increase emotional literacy, provide an opportunity for play-based gradual exposure, and help make positive meaning of the post-trauma self.

Paris Goodyear-Brown says, "I am delighted to contribute this chapter as it offers ways to enlist the power of nature-based work into each of the key components of TraumaPlay® model. TraumaPlay® mitigates the approach to hard things in ways that build attachment bonds, soothe the physiology, and enhance the neuroception of safety…nature encourages all three and so much more!"

Paris Goodyear-Brown, LCSW, RPT-S is founder and director of Nurture House and Director of the TraumaPlay Institute. She is an Adjunct Instructor at Vanderbilt University and the author of several books including, Tackling Touchy Subjects, the Handbook of Child Sexual Abuse, and Treatment, Play Therapy with Traumatized Children: A Prescriptive Approach and The Worry Wars: An Anxiety Workbook for Kids and their Helpful Adults. Learn more about all of Paris Goodyear-Brown's work at her website RIGHT HERE.

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