Hello, I’m Sam. I’m a qualified counsellor and mental health social worker.

For more than a decade, I’ve supported couples and individuals to connect more deeply with each other and themselves. But it was a part-time job as a hiking guide that transformed the way I practise and led me to create The Outdoors Clinic.

Chasing adventure in 2015, I signed up for a part-time job taking women on hiking holidays all over the world. I thought it would be a fun way to balance my therapeutic work, get outside, and do more of the things I loved.

But it became so much more than that. When we were out hiking, I didn’t just see women having adventures, I saw them transformed. I saw how nature nurtured and challenged them. How it connected them to something bigger.

Over each and every trip, I saw personal growth so profound that it changed the way I worked as a counsellor. I started taking my clients out of the office and into the world. We walked, talked, and discovered. I taught them about nature and nature taught them about themselves.

That’s how The Outdoors Clinic was born.

And although my work is still rooted in traditional counselling techniques such as cognitive behavioural therapy, parts work, somatic therapy, psychodynamics and attachment theory, it’s bigger than that now. 

It incorporates nature-based stress reduction, ecotherapy prinicples,  nature connection practices and Indigenous knoweldge frameworks. As I have been mentored  from industry leaders such as Kate Rydge and Sam Robertson from Nature Philosophy, Psychologist Bill Plontkin, Clinical Ecopsychologist Thomas Doherty and Dr Mary Graham (UQ). My journey of exploration has uncovered connection to ancestral skills like carving, weaving, fricton fire, and other naturalist pursuits. These practices also find there way into my work with individuals. 

It’s built on the foundation of knowing that we are all whole – and that with support, simple tools and a connection to the natural world – we can come home to ourselves and create lives we love.

If this resonates with you, I’d love to chat. 

You can book a free discovery call or send me an enquiry here.