Nature Rx
The growing Nature Rx movement is captivating the medical and therapeutic communities. For over 40 years, we have used the power of nature to transform, heal and instruct us. We are deep ecologists and nature guides in our DNA.
“Nature — the sublime, the harsh, and the beautiful-offers something that the street or gated community or computer game cannot. Nature presents the young with something so much greater than they are; it offers an environment where they can easily contemplate infinity and eternity.”
~ Richard Louv, Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder
Sensory Processing Skills
Critical to strengthening our sense of self and capacity for self-regulation are sensory experiences that activate body-based senses. Trauma and deeply rooted stress are held in the body. Your issues are in your tissues. We heal and thrive by regulating and balancing our Central Nervous System (CNS).
The Default Mode Network in the brain activates our judgment, tolerance, reality testing, and our sense of self. It is strengthened in vestibular, proprioceptive, sensory-motor, and mindfulness activities.
We utilize this emerging science and these principles in nearly everything we do. Our innovation is combining sensory processing skills movement with nature. The synergistic effects are extraordinarily effective.
Unstructured Outdoor Play
Rolling down hills, tumbling, hanging upside down, climbing trees, walking on logs or talus; getting dizzy, activate these systems. This is how kids played 30 or 40 years ago. A minimum of three hours of unstructured outdoor play per day is recommended. Today, the average kid plays outdoors 4 -7 minutes per day and spends an average of 9 hours a day sitting down.
Mindfulness definitions we use:
"Mindfulness is about being fully awake in our lives. It's about perceiving the exquisite vividness of each moment. We gain immediate access to our own powerful inner resources for insight, healing, and transformation."
~ Jon Kabat Zinn
"The personal and the Universal are inextricably connected. The Universal Truths of life can only come alive in each particular and personal circumstance."
~ Jack Kornfield
“Equanimity is the balance of the spacious, non-reactive, mind and heart ~ grounded in wisdom, which supports a deep caring, and an appropriate response.”
~ Heather Sundberg
Relational Mindfulness is a natural fit for our peer model of embodied, authentic guides and mentors. Using a trauma-informed lens, this frame focuses on enhancing the therapeutic relationship. We use practices for genuine caring, empathy, curiosity, acceptance, self and relational attunement, and co-regulation for grounding and immersion into the present moment.
In a relational model, we also normalize reactivity, when it’s happening. It's ok. We all get reactive from time to time. We get to be human. We can learn how to struggle better and to recover better. We learn how to support each other, and that small moments of well-being add up.
“The more healthy relationships a child has, the more likely they will recover from trauma and thrive. Relationships are the agents of change and the most powerful therapy is human love.”
~ Dr. Bruce D. Perry