Bey­ond The Sto­ries We Tell Our­sel­ves: Im­pli­cit Theo­ry and Ex­plo­ring Em­bo­di­ed and Re­la­tio­nal Mi­cro­pro­ces­ses in Out­door The­ra­pies

We of­ten rely on our per­so­nal ex­pe­ri­en­ces and the sto­ries we tell our­sel­ves about how out­door the­ra­py works. We also draw on re­se­arch and evi­dence from re­la­ted fields to make claims for our own work. While out­co­mes re­se­arch is ad­van­cing, we lag be­hind in pro­cess and theo­ry-ge­ne­ra­ting re­se­arch. This pa­per cen­ters on po­ten­ti­al ex­plo­ra­ti­ons of im­pli­cit theo­ries in out­door the­ra­pies. Im­pli­cit ele­ments of our prac­ti­ce are dif­fi­cult to iden­ti­fy and de­scri­be, due to their na­tu­re as ta­cit know­ledge (i.e. felt, em­bo­di­ed, and lar­ge­ly in­tui­ti­ve) ari­sing amidst the at­tu­n­e­ment to our­sel­ves, other peo­p­le, and na­tu­re. We pro­po­se a re­se­arch agen­da into im­pli­cit land­scapes ba­sed on th­ree pa­thways. The first pa­thway in­cludes a prac­ti­tio­ner sur­vey to iden­ti­fy their gui­ding theo­ries. The se­cond pa­thway is con­text-sen­si­ti­ve case stu­dies that also em­brace com­ple­xi­ty, whilst the third pa­thway in­qui­ries into mi­cro­pro­ces­ses of ch­an­ge, per­haps not yet ar­ti­cu­la­ted in out­door the­ra­pies re­se­arch.