The ocean as therapeutic landscape

Keywords: therapeutic landscapes, landscape, cultural geography, creative methods, feminist geographies, oceanic thinking, sea, ocean, well-being, mental health
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Friday
Session Start / End Time: 2/25/2022 09:40 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/25/2022 11:00 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 30

Abstract

The oceanic turn must take into account the potential for liminal spaces to produce therapeutic landscapes. Therapeutic landscapes is a concept that has been developed in health geographies since the 1990’s. It seeks to understand the relationships between body, health and place. Much of the literature has focused on ‘green’ spaces as therapeutic sites for exercise and gardening. A handful of studies have attended to ‘blue’ spaces, acknowledging the well-being benefits of activities such as wild swimming. However, there is a need for cultural geography to understand the cultural meaning of water and the processes in which this landscape can affect our minds and bodies. Through an affective lens we can explore assemblages between our bodies, materialities and more-than-human encounters in aquatic space and the potential for therapeutic outcomes. To explore this we must turn to feminist scholars creative methods within cultural geography. In this paper, I reflect on personal experiences in the industrial liminal landscape of Port Talbot in Wales. I use creative methods to understand the different post-phenomenological experiences of bodies interacting with the ocean, as a therapeutic process of becoming (or not). I experiment with methods such as drawing, poetry and painting, to explore the complex histories, cultures and everyday experiences of the sea in this potentially toxic liminal landscape. This paper grapples with the difficulties of expressing ‘fleshy’ and sensory oceanic experiences, attending to the so far ignored industrial ‘therapeutic’ coastal landscapes, using creative methods to grapple with everyday personal experiences of the ocean.