The Joy of Nature | Olivia in the ARTE Documentary "Unhappy" (26 min)
- Olivia Köhler
- Nov 6
- 4 min read
What truly makes us happy? Money, status, security? Or is it something much more primordial – something we have long forgotten?
In the ARTE documentary series Unhappy, Ronja von Rönne goes in search of answers. In the episode “On Happiness in Nature”, she speaks with philosophers, psychologists – and with me. I get to take her into the forest. To a place where happiness is not made, but felt.
Happiness begins when we no longer have to achieve anything
“In nature, we have the feeling that we don’t first have to achieve something in order to be allowed to be there.”
– Christoph Quarch, philosopher
This sentence runs like a thread through my work as a systemic nature therapist. So many of the people I accompany are under pressure: to function well, to be visible, to prove themselves.
In nature we can let go of all that. No one is being evaluated here.
No one is too much or too little. Here, it is enough to simply be.
How nature reminds us who we are
In the documentary, I accompany Ronja along sandy paths, through pine forests, past water places. We are silent. We listen. We are.
It is a space without screens, without mirrors, without external expectations – and therefore unfamiliar. Many people who are outdoors consciously for the first time feel an ancient longing: for simplicity, for meaning, for connection.
“When we enter into relationship with nature, we enter into relationship with ourselves.”
– Olivia Köhler
Happiness in nature is not a product. It is a remembering.
Nature Therapy is more than a trend
Forest bathing, mindfulness, retreats – all of this is booming.
But my work with Kailo Nature Therapy goes deeper. I work with the natural environment as an active counterpart. I trust that the surroundings and the more-than-human world themselves provide impulses – for healing, for insight, for change. Nature becomes a co-therapist.
We sit by the fire. We build sleeping places. We move through different landscapes and enter into contact. In such moments, something opens: the mind becomes quiet, the body and the soul speak.
Many people experience real inner movement in these moments.
Tears. Laughter. Memories. And again and again: relief. Because no one has to do anything “right.”
Science has known this for a long time
Judith Mangelsdorf, professor of Positive Psychology, puts it clearly in the documentary:
“We are not made to be permanently happy. But we are made for real, meaningful connection – with others and with nature.”
Studies show: just 20 minutes in nature lowers cortisol. Those who are regularly outdoors are more resilient, healthier, and more satisfied. Contact with trees, water, sky has measurable effects on our nervous system.
But it requires more than a walk. It requires inner willingness. And sometimes someone who opens the space for it.
My path into Nature Therapy
I originally come from the corporate world: business studies, years in consulting, in a start-up, and later in a Berlin agency.
With the pandemic, puzzle pieces rearranged – quietly, not as a rupture: I became self-employed and turned toward nature.
Maybe the first conscious building block of this path: a wild-yoga retreat. Without big expectations, with a backpack that was way too heavy, and five nights sleeping only on a yoga mat under the stars.
Hard, honest, formative. Much of that process I only understood in retrospect.
I often observe myself wanting to have (supposed) control over things – especially in everyday life.
Outdoors, and through my retreats in other cultures such as Egypt, I repeatedly learn – and am almost forced – to let go of control.
Elemental activities that change something within us
In my therapeutic nature work, it is often precisely the simple activities you also see in the documentary: We walk a bit, we look for a good spot, we gather wood, we make a fire, we cook and set up a sleeping place. It seems unspectacular – and precisely for that reason, it changes so much. It is the opposite of concrete “tools.”
But it is concrete. Sensory. Immediate.
These actions bring us into contact with what is directly present: the environment, the body, our own pace. The processes are simple – but they shift the inner state. While we are doing something, something inside begins to align. While we work with our hands, the mind becomes quieter. Attention shifts from thinking to sensing.
“You are in the doing – and at the same time in a very natural form of slowness.”
I experience again and again, in my retreats and in individual work, that people find a form of calm in these simple processes that cannot be created by thinking. No special technique is needed.
No special posture. Only time and the willingness to be touched by the environment.
“When we are outside and focus on the essential, archaic things, attention gathers. It takes some time – but then comes this inner quiet.”
In such moments, a feeling of belonging often arises. Not as a concept or wish, but as an experience felt in the body. As a remembering that we are not separate.
This experience is not an ideal or a return to the wilderness.
It can happen just as well in Brandenburg as in the Egyptian desert, on a forest clearing or by the riverbank on the outskirts of Berlin.
It is less about where we are. And more about how we are there. We are in relationship: with the environment, with ourselves, with the moment.
An invitation outward. An invitation inward.
If you are wondering what is missing.
If your thoughts keep circling and you long for a place that holds you.
If you want to feel that you are enough – without doing anything.
Then go outside.
Feel the wind.
Sit by the fire.
Let the outdoors show you what happiness truly means.
And if you want to go deeper, you can find more about my workshops and retreats, team offsites and team building in nature, and 1:1 guidance here.
You are warmly welcome!
