Grounding in the Green: A Walk and Talk for Therapists

Escape the office walls, ditch the screens, and join your fellow clinicians for a morning of fresh air, connection, and mindful restoration.

This gathering is equal parts casual hangout, meet-and-greet, and gentle mindfulness experience. Whether you want to expand your professional network, process your week, or just sit on a bench and quietly sip coffee in nature, this space is for you. No clinical notes, no agendas—just community.

What to Expect

• Fuel & Fellowship: Start the morning with fresh coffee and local pastries while meeting new and familiar faces.

• Mindful Strolling: A gentle, low-impact walk through the park to practice somatic grounding and soak in the greenery.

• Connection Boosters: Optional, lighthearted games and conversation prompts scattered throughout the path to get us talking and laughing.

• Lo-Fi Vibes: A background playlist of relaxing acoustic or lo-fi tunes to help our nervous systems settle.

What to Bring

• Comfortable walking shoes or sneakers.

• A reusable mug if you want to keep your coffee extra warm.

• Layers or a light jacket depending on the morning breeze.

Location: Osage Park Bentonville, AR

Mental health professionals routinely work within environments characterized by high emotional demands, complex clinical decision-making, administrative responsibilities, and sustained interpersonal engagement. Over time, these demands can affect clinicians' emotional capacity, professional functioning, therapeutic presence, boundaries, and effectiveness.

This three-hour interactive training examines professional sustainability through the lens of counselor capacity, occupational stress, clinical functioning, and career longevity. Rather than positioning individual “self-care” as the primary response to occupational strain, participants will examine the interaction between individual, clinical, interpersonal, and systemic factors that influence a counselor's ability to remain engaged and effective in the work.

Participants will learn to identify early indicators of professional depletion, examine patterns that contribute to unsustainable clinical practice, and apply evidence-informed strategies related to workload design, professional boundaries, recovery, regulation, consultation, and connection.

Through didactic instruction, guided reflection, case examples, and practical exercises, participants will develop an individualized professional sustainability plan designed to support ethical, effective, and sustainable clinical practice.