Come Back for the 10^th Year Anniversary!

This year’s topic is:

Bringing Nature to the Play Therapy Room and the Play Room to Nature!

October 25-27, 2025

It is time to commit to stop, reflect, and restore with Peers!

2025 is a special year as we will celebrate our 10th anniversary of study, sharing interventions, case presentations, and experiential learning – not to mention the yearly thematically relevant tye dye creations that connect us to our weekend topic and one another. The Tye Dye Community is unique, and we will be doing a retrospect of our humble beginnings leading up to our current topic year. Tye Dye has always been held in Canmore Alberta, but now, Rocky Mountain Play Therapy Institute lives in the Mountains! We will meet again at the new training room.

Welcome back old friends and colleagues and those coming for the first time! This is the 10th Annual Tye Dye International Play Therapy Study Group! This year our special topic is Bringing Nature to the Play Therapy Room and the Play Room to Nature. You will have the opportunity to explore and develop your relationship with nature and play. This is a time for connection and reflection. How will your practice change as result of your time at Tye Dye?  Scroll down to register.

Special Pre-Tye Dye Workshop

Rocky Mountain Play Therapy Institute is Honored to Host Internationally Renowned Trainer
Maggie Fearn (BAPT Registered Play Therapist™- Clinical Supervisor ECIP; BAPT) from Wales, UK
Friday, October 24, 2025

An Exploration of Belonging: nature connection and culture in Play Therapy

what does it mean to be connected
to grow from the earth as our home
to know the ancestors are watching over our children
sharing our joy and grieving our loss
and when the time comes
welcoming our return

This is a call to all therapists who want to purposefully incorporate nature and cultural sensitivity into their play therapy practice. The course will appeal to those working with children, youth, and adults. You are invited to Canmore, Alberta in October 2025 to experience the profoundly therapeutic powers of play in and with nature. We will be exploring what it feels like to reconnect with Earth as home, and, drawing from your current cultural practices, you will have the opportunity to contribute your own sense of what it means to belong.

Increase your knowledge, confidence and skills to purposefully incorporate nature and cultural sensitivity into your practice with individuals, small nurture groups and families. The workshop is designed for experiential learning and reflection, encouraging embodied environmental and cultural awareness to enhance therapeutic use of self in nature-based play therapy practice. Bring your “cultural self” to a day of exploration and engagement with nature.

Learning Objectives:

At the end of this one-day CE workshop participants will be able to:

1. Apply 5 key concepts of nature-based play therapy that support incorporating culture and nature into their play therapy practice with individuals, small nurture groups and families.
2. Facilitate a range of playful activities in and with nature that support the development of a trusting relationship that encourages self-regulation and strengthens the sense of self.
3. Apply the power of symbol and metaphor using natural materials to facilitate creative self-expression in a safe, trauma-informed environment.
4. Utilize nature connection and the therapeutic powers of play to address isolation, loneliness and fear, and to foster a sense of belonging.
5. Conduct a risk/benefit analysis that assesses the suitability of nature-based play therapy for their particular client group.
6. Demonstrate awareness of professional issues including scope of practice, ethical considerations, safeguarding, and health & safety considerations for incorporating nature and cultural sensitivity into their play therapy practice

Maggie Fearn,
Child Psychotherapist ECIP; BAPT Registered Play Therapist^TM Clinical Supervisor ECIP; BAPT

Maggie is a child and adolescent psychotherapist, play therapist, filial therapist, clinical supervisor and author from Wales, UK. She retired as Senior Lecturer MSc Play Therapy at University of South Wales in 2022 and continues her academic work with the Children’s Therapy Centre, Ireland. Her clinical practice for The Windfall Centre is based in West Wales, UK. She was a play practitioner for 30 years, a Forest School practitioner for 18 years, and she is a practitioner of Body and Earth: Experiential Anatomy, Somatics and Authentic Movement. She focuses on developmental and trauma informed psychotherapy and play therapy with children, young people and their families. Her clinic extends into a beautiful woodland therapy garden, and she has a particular interest in exploring the evidence base for nature-based play therapy interventions, contributing chapters and articles to several publications since 2010.

Some feedback from Nature Based Play Therapy training participants (2022 & 2023)

“… wonderfully enlightening, comprehensive and inspiring.”

“I felt the training presented relevant theory skilfully woven through with delicious invitations that invoked curiosity to experience and embody NBPT for myself firstly and then for my clients.”

“It was a really enjoyable course and just confirmed the power of play in nature and how as Creative Therapists we can expand and connect nature in any setup we are currently working in.”

“Maggie herself is inspirational, and an excellent role model of a nature based play therapist.”