Human Nature Healing

Human Nature Healing

Trauma-informed · Nature-based somatic healing · Land & water practices

Healing trauma by restoring the relationship with your body, the people around you, and the living world. A gentle, body-based path walked in the company of other women.

Start your healing journey

Dr. Sarah Ohayon — Scientist. Somatic guide. Conservation leader.

A path grounded in trauma science, ecology, and lived experience. Guided by Sarah Ohayon, PhD, marine & freshwater ecologist, who walked it herself.

Read my story

If this is you

Childhood is our genesis

Childhood experiences shape the foundations of who we become. Childhood trauma can leave a lifetime imprint, deeply affecting your well-being in three main domains. If you recognise yourself here, you are in the right place to start your journey.

You struggle with relationships

“Closeness is hard. My relationships keep hurting, and I don't always know why.”

You struggle with shame or self-worth

“A quiet voice says I'm not enough, that something in me is wrong.”

You struggle to regulate big emotions

“Strong feelings hijack me, I'm flooded, or I go numb, and I can't think my way out.”

A tree's branches spreading like a nervous system against a glowing sky

Nothing is wrong with you.
Something happened to you.

Like any mammal facing danger, your body does something wise and automatic: it protects you. Fear, fight, flight, freeze, fawn: these are ancient survival instincts, not flaws. But painful early experiences can leave that alarm switched on, long after the danger has passed. And the parts of the brain that hold the fear respond faster than the parts that think and speak. That is why understanding your story, and talking about it, can only take you so far. The body learned it. The body has to be part of how it heals.

Understand PTSD & Complex PTSD →

A dragonfly resting on a reed

Why nature heals, and why water is a gate

The nervous system can remember how to settle. Nature is one of its oldest teachers.

For millions of years, our brains evolved in real jungles, by rivers, along coastlines, in the ocean, not in cities of concrete and glass. Your body is tuned to regulate in the natural world. Returning to it isn't an escape; it's coming back to the conditions you were built for.

And water most of all. Cold water on the face triggers a built-in calming reflex within seconds. Being held by the sea, its buoyancy, its rhythm, the sense of being carried, offers the body a rare experience of safety. After a life spent in and under the water, I have felt this again and again: the ocean is not a backdrop to the healing. It is part of it.

The nature of healing, the evidence →

The four layers

The four layers of healing

Four layers hold everything here, and each one grew straight out of my own path home.

01

Understand the roots

Make sense of what really happened, not “what's wrong with you,” but what happened, and how it shaped your brain and body. Here a scientist's training serves you: the real science of trauma, made clear.

Understanding trauma →
02

Move it through the body, in nature

Understanding isn't enough. Healing has to move, from the mind into the body, through breath, movement, nature, and above all, water.

The nature of healing →
03

Heal in relationship

The wound happened with others; the healing happens with others too. As mammals, we were never meant to heal alone. We do this held by a circle.

Healing together →
04

Walk it with someone who has

Not guided by theory alone, but companioned by someone who has walked this path herself, not as a therapist, but as an experienced guide who can point at what helped.

My story →
Dr. Sarah Ohayon

Your guide

Dr. Sarah Ohayon

A PhD ecologist who spent her entire life in and under the water, and healed her own complex trauma through the body, nature, and water. Not a therapist: a scientist who lived it, and an experienced guide who can point at what helped.

She now walks this path with other women, through a method she calls The Body of Water, grounded in peer-reviewed trauma science and in a life spent protecting the ocean.

Read my full story →

Begin your journey

Let's walk together

There is no single route through complex trauma. I invite you to experience how integrating Human & Nature healing restores the relationships that trauma breaks: with yourself through your body, with the people around you, and with the living world. Find the way that fits you the most.

Begin here

The Body of Water

Water healing workshop · a circle of 8–10 women

Understand what childhood trauma did to you, and leave with a handful of body-based tools to steady your day. Somatic practice on land and in the sea, water always optional.

Mediterranean · October 2026
Learn more →
In the wild

Forest & Earth

Grounding, land-based healing

The same path, on solid ground, for the days, and the women, who feel safest held by the forest and the earth. Taking shape now.

Coming
Learn more →
Go deeper

The 12-Week Program, Coming Home

Small online cohort · land & water

A season of guided practice and gentle teaching. Where a workshop opens a door, this walks you through the whole house, regulation, reconnection, and belonging, week by week.

Cohorts forming
Learn more →
The flagship

The Retreat, Palmiet River

Multi-day immersion in wild nature

Days of healing where the water, the wild, and a circle of women hold you completely. The embodied capstone of the work.

South Africa · coming
Learn more →

And running alongside all of them: the community, because we were never meant to heal alone.

My journey

I spent my life healing nature,
while quietly struggling to heal myself.

I'm Sarah, a marine and freshwater ecologist. From the outside, my life in the water looked like a success. Inside, I carried the anger, shame, and low self-worth of childhood trauma that no achievement could touch, until I found the path that finally worked: through the body, the ocean, and somatic practice, slowly coming home to myself.

That path, understood as a scientist, and lived as a woman, is what I now walk with other women.

Read my full journey →

Coming up

Join my upcoming lecture

An introduction to healing childhood trauma through the body, nature, and water, the science, the story, and where to begin. Warm, clear, and practical.

Save your spot →
Sarah sitting in a circle of women

Together, not alone

We were never meant to heal alone.

When the people who should have been safe were the danger, closeness itself can feel frightening. That is exactly why we heal in a circle, a nervous system settles most easily in the company of safe others. The community is not an add-on to this work. It is the ground it stands on.

01

With yourself

Through the body, coming home to your own signals, needs, and worth.

02

With your people

Learning, slowly, that others can be a source of calm, not threat.

03

With the living world

Belonging again to the water, the wild, and something larger than the pain.

Healing together →