By Dr Gert-Jan Pepping, Dr Eric Brymer and Dr Peter Le Rossignol
Trek2Health Research Team
There is now a substantial body of evidence demonstrating that engaging with natural environments can support and enhance human health and wellbeing. Activities such as walking in nature, immersive experiences in natural settings, and sustained engagement with outdoor environments have been consistently linked to improvements in mental health, mental wellbeing, and overall quality of life (Brymer et al., 2020).
According to the World Health Organisation, mental health reflects an individual’s capacity to cope with stress, regulate responses, function effectively, and contribute meaningfully to their community. Mental health, therefore, is best understood as the capacity for adaptive action: to perform, regulate, and contribute under changing and often demanding conditions, particularly on the frontline.
Traditional approaches to health and wellbeing treat nature as something separate from the individual—as a resource, setting, or even a “treatment” that can be prescribed to produce health outcomes. Programs informed by these approaches often treat brain, body, and behaviour separately rather than recognising health as arising from the dynamic relationship between individuals and the environments in which they live. This perspective overlooks the fundamentally relational nature of the person–environment system and may help explain why many health interventions struggle to achieve sustained engagement and lasting change. Too often, health is approached through reflection, education, or treatment in isolation from the meaningful activities and environments through which wellbeing is lived and developed.
These limitations are particularly relevant for frontline personnel, whose wellbeing is shaped not only by individual psychological factors but also by their opportunities for meaningful engagement, social connection, and progressive exposure to manageable challenges that support the development of adaptive capacity. An ecological approach to wellbeing provides an integrated understanding of these processes by viewing health and behaviour as properties of the person–environment relationship rather than as products of internal psychological states or external influences considered in isolation. From this perspective, individuals are always embedded within physical, social, and cultural environments, and their actions emerge through ongoing engagement with the opportunities for action, that is, the affordances that those environments provide.
Health and wellbeing are therefore understood not as outcomes of isolated interventions or individual traits, but as emergent properties of meaningful engagement with environments that afford exploration, connection, competence, contribution, and growth. When environments fail to provide such affordances, adaptive capacity may diminish. Conversely, environments that support progressive engagement with meaningful challenges can strengthen resilience, confidence, social connectedness, and wellbeing. Note that resilience, in this view, is not something fixed within a person, but something that emerges when people are supported by environments that offer real possibilities for connection, purpose, and agency.
The ecological approach has several defining characteristics that are particularly relevant in the context of Trek2Health.
- Person–environment mutuality: Behaviour and health outcomes arise from the relationship between individuals and their environments, rather than from internal processes alone or external influences acting independently.
- Embedded and embodied processes: Individuals are understood as embodied systems (brain, body, physiology) embedded within specific environments. Neural, physiological, and behavioural changes occur together as part of ongoing engagement with the world.
- Action as the driver of change: Change occurs through what people do. Engagement in meaningful activity, such as walking and trekking, drives adaptation across brain, body, and behaviour.
- Affordances for wellbeing: Natural environments provide a rich landscape of affordances that invite diverse and adaptive behaviours. In doing so, these environments are particularly powerful for supporting health and wellbeing because they encourage exploration, variation, and engagement.
- Health and behaviour emerge through ongoing engagement, rather than through simple linear cause–effect processes.
From this perspective, behaviour and health do not arise from individual, community, and political levels acting upon an individual, but from a dynamically organised system in which brain, body, and environment are mutually constitutive.
Trek2Health’s Approach
Applying an ecological approach to Trek2Health shifts the focus from “changing behaviour” through education or motivation, to designing environments and experiences that support adaptive engagement.
Rather than treating nature as a setting or intervention tool, Trek2Health can be understood as a landscape of affordances that invites participants to:
- explore their capabilities
- regulate effort and stress
- engage socially and physically
- adapt to varying environmental demands
Through this process, improvements in physical health, mental wellbeing, and behavioural engagement emerge as properties of the person–environment system in action.
Trek2Health incorporates nature-based Social Prescription for Frontline Wellbeing. It offers an alternative to traditional pathways, with guided treks and training twice per week over six weeks to improve wellbeing through engagement with nature, movement, and community. The program helps participants reconnect with meaningful affordances found in natural environments and supportive communities. T2H fosters resilience not simply as a trait, but as an emergent capacity supported by nature, community, and purpose.
Trek2Health is a structured affordance landscape in which change occurs across multiple levels simultaneously:
- brain: neural adaptation, neuroplasticity
- body: fitness, physiology
- person: skills, confidence, action capabilities
- environment: natural and social settings
At T2H, brain and genetic characteristics are continuously shaped by what a person does in the natural environment. This means:
- Neural change, such as neuroplasticity, is driven by activity and experience
- Genetic characteristics are modulated by environment and behaviour
- Stress physiology is regulated through real-world engagement, not just cognition
Trek2Health enables frontline workers to reconnect with meaningful opportunities for wellbeing through nature, community, purposeful challenge, and knowledge pillars.
We have a coupled system in which the environment provides affordances, a person engages with these affordances, and brain and body adapt as part of this engagement.
From an ecological perspective, resilience is the capacity to maintain, restore, or expand meaningful engagement with one’s environment in the face of challenge, uncertainty, or change.
Trek2Health builds resilience through:
- Purposeful challenge: graded treks that build confidence, mastery, and resilience.
- Social environment: enhances adherence, emotional regulation, and motivation through group movement and shared challenge, social support and accountability, and collective meaning for the group.
- Natural environment: stimulates sensory systems, regulates stress responses, and invites adaptive movement. As participants engage, neuroplasticity and physiological and genetic characteristics change.
- Knowledge pillars: short evidence-based sessions that help participants recognise relevant affordances for action that increase resilience.
- Motivational interviewing: Baseline measures in VO₂max, weight, waist girth, DASS, PAI, self-efficacy and wellbeing are assessed and participants learn to appreciate changes that occur after six weeks of training. These are grouped as physical capacity, body composition, confidence, mental wellbeing and behavioural changes.
- Neuroplasticity: improved regulation of attention and emotion, changes in stress pathways, such as cortisol regulation, and enhanced brain–body processes.
- Physiological characteristics: improved aerobic capacity, metabolic health, and recovery processes.
- Genetic characteristics: Physical activity and environment influence gene expression related to inflammation, ageing, and mental health. These are not targeted directly—they emerge from engagement.
We interpret these as expressions of deeper system change through improved regulation of stress systems, enhanced neural adaptability, and increased capacity to act in the world. This positions Trek2Health as not just improving health metrics, but changing how the organism functions as a whole. For GPs and health systems, this framing is powerful; it aligns with interests in brain health, ageing, and chronic disease prevention. It avoids over-reliance on medication and purely cognitive or educational interventions. Instead, Trek2Health offers a practical, scalable way to drive neural, physiological, and behavioural change through structured real-world engagement.
T2H Module Program
Participants engage with the environment, and changes in action, brain, body, and behaviour occur together.
Knowledge pillar talks have been developed to progressively support frontline workers as they engage in action within supportive environments to develop wellbeing.
Foundation Engagement
Re-engagement with movement, initial regulation of stress and attention, early neural and physiological responsiveness.
Modules 1–2 Behaviour Change and Adaptation
Improved health and wellbeing, increased tolerance for challenge, and improvements in brain–body regulation.
Modules 3–4 Sustained Adaptation and Immersion
Sustained behavioural and physiological adaptation, transfer of capability to new scenarios.
Knowledge Pillars: Action and Adaptation
| Modules | Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 3 | Week 4 | Week 5 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Foundation Engagement with natural environment |
Health & wellbeing Wellbeing emerging from natural environment engagement |
Reducing stress Connecting with natural environment |
Stress & cortisol Mindfulness in natural environment as neurological change |
Energy & nutrition Nutrition practices in real-world Mediterranean & CSIRO principles in practice |
Nutrition & fat Nutrition, energy balance & waist health; adaptive changes to weight and fat |
| M1 Action and behaviour change |
Wellbeing From action & behaviour change |
Chronic stress adaptation Effects of walking in natural environment, self-time and device-free time lead to neuroplasticity |
Behaviour change Goal setting through action; building sustainable engagement practices as adaptation |
Healthy nutrition Comparing diets; fuelling sustained walking in natural environment |
Empathy Supportive group engagement through active listening skills |
| M2 Action and adaptation |
Mental wellbeing Through adaptation to action |
Anxiety Managing anxiety through PA in a natural environment |
Overcoming barriers Altering your individual PA environment |
Gut–brain connection Gut flora affecting mood and wellbeing during PA |
Gratitude Social connection and group functioning |
| M3 Sustained adaptation and resilience |
Sustained wellbeing Global wellbeing strategies |
Brain health Strategies for adaptation and wellbeing from PA in a natural environment |
Social prescribing Effects on mental health from PA in nature |
Gut–brain–body Nutrition principles for gut health and wellbeing |
Moral judgement Institutional ethics & strategies for moral injury |
| M4 K’gari Immersion |
Reflection & consolidation Understanding personal change across brain, body, & behaviour |
Action and adaptation In resilience, health & wellbeing |
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| M5 Ecological wellness: Action to adaptation for facilitators |
Ecological foundations Understanding the Trek2Health mission and ecological foundations in practice |
Facilitator development Transition from participant to Trek2Health facilitator and practice mentor |
Reflection and consolidation Reflection and consolidation of the facilitator role |
M5: Training Facilitators and Community Practice
Note: M5 is included as a future development pathway within the Trek2Health ecological wellness framework. Its timing, facilitator process, and delivery details will be developed further before being included as a scheduled program module.
M5 extends the Trek2Health framework from personal adaptation toward facilitating adaptive engagement in others. Unlike earlier modules, the emphasis is not on delivering theoretical content in isolation, but on learning through embedded participation within real trekking environments. Facilitation is developed in situ through shared movement, environmental engagement, and progressively supported leadership experiences.
The module provides a potential foundation for the future development of Trek2Health facilitators who can explain the T2H ecological wellness framework and motivate organisations to adopt this approach to improve resilience in society. Over time, this may enable Trek2Health to establish structured facilitator pathways that recognise participant progression from engagement and personal adaptation through to leadership, and community facilitation roles.
Target Participants
This module positions future facilitators as mentors and guides who learn to shape supportive affordances for wellbeing that enable others to engage, adapt, and grow. In doing so, participants transition from individual engagement toward sustaining Trek2Health community practice and culture.
The ongoing challenge for all of us at Trek2Health is to learn more about evidence-based affordances that support our individual journey for improved wellbeing and resilience as well as the development of global resilience in our communities.