Wilderness Therapy
Offered In-Person in the Denver/Boulder Area
What is Wilderness Therapy?
Have you ever experienced a sense of deep peace beneath a flaming sunset?
A sense of awe, expansiveness and timelessness while gazing up at the night sky?
A sense of awe, expansiveness and timelessness while gazing up at the night sky?
A sense of kinship
with a wild animal?
Stunned into presence
by the beauty of a wildflower?
Stunned into presence
by the beauty of a wildflower?
Even if such experiences have been relatively rare for you in the recent past, most of us can recall how natural these experiences were to us as children.
Even when we find ourselves feeling impossibly stuck in painful states of mind or body, living a life devoid of deep nourishment or meaning, or caught up in habits that we know aren’t good for us or our loved ones, some part of us knows that there is something more.
Wilderness Therapy offers a portal into an ancient wisdom that resides in our heart, our gut, our senses and our bones. It guides us onto a timeless path to…
…heal the wounds we have sustained in this life
…release the wounds passed down to us from our ancestors
…step out of the isolation we’ve all experienced to various degrees, being members of a society whose relationship with the natural world has been deeply ruptured
It provides the means to rediscover…
…our true wholeness that has always lain beneath feelings of ‘brokenness’
…a sense of real purpose and direction that can give our life the rich meaning that we all long for
…a deeply nourishing sense of love and connection that naturally emerges when we reclaim our place within the broad community of life on this extraordinary planet.
Wilderness Therapy refers to a broad field of therapy approaches that utilize immersion into wild or semi-wild spaces to facilitate healing, whole-ing, personal growth & development, and/or the acquisition of guidance for important life decisions. These include fields such as Ecotherapy, Ecopsychology, Deep Ecology and Adventure Therapy, and more specific approaches such as Vision Questing/Fasting, Rites of Passage, Nature-Based Counseling/Psychotherapy, and Focused Ecotherapy Intensives (such as Trauma Work, Shadow Work or Parts Work). These in turn may be held one-on-one with a single guide, or within an intimate group setting facilitated by one or more guides.
I provide a unique approach to Wilderness Therapy, drawing from my many years of experience incorporating somatic (body-based) and mindfulness-based psychotherapy methods. The weaving together of these methods offers an extraordinarily powerful form of therapy, and additionally provides the means to work with especially challenging issues such as longstanding or complex trauma, deep grief or spiritual/existential crisis.
You can learn more about the specific therapy methods I am trained in and my overarching philosophy of therapy here.
The Structure of Wilderness Therapy
The basic structure of any Wilderness Therapy session follows three essential steps, whether it’s a simple Mini-Quest lasting only a couple of hours or a comprehensive residential Wilderness Quest lasting many days:
1) Preparation (establishing ‘base camp’)
- Gather whatever resources may be necessary for your journey
- Bring present-centered attention to your multiple wisdom domains (mind, intuition, imagination, emotions, internal and external senses)
- This can be supported in different ways
- Declare an intention for this quest
2) The Quest (venturing into the wilderness – metaphorically and literally!)
- Establish and cross the threshold
- Make a fully conscious and present-centered transition from ordinary consciousness into the deep relational field that emerges when you bring your own internal wisdom centers into relationship with the wisdom of the living beings and living systems of the natural world
- Follow what organically emerges from this relationship
This is where the real magic happens!
3) Integration (back to ‘base camp’)
- Bring the healing, wisdom and transformation that occurred during the quest into ordinary consciousness and ultimately into your day-to-day life
- This can be facilitated via myriad methods, including having your experiences reflected by your guide(s), utilizing various forms of expressive arts, movement, poetry, journaling or other methods appropriate for your particular process.
You don’t need to be particularly fit or even consider yourself an ‘outdoorsy’ person to reap the fruits of this work! We are able to tailor of our offerings to suit most special needs and limitations.
Specific Wilderness Therapy Offerings
One-on-One Offerings
The following are conducted one-on-one with me, and the booking process and fees are treated similarly to traditional psychotherapy sessions. You can find more information about my fees and schedule a session on my Bookings page
Initial Consultation: This is a prerequisite for all One-on-One Guided Mini-Quests (see below). We will meet for about 50 minutes, where we discuss your needs and aspirations, and arrive together at the best approach to support you with these moving forward. Depending on what you’re bringing, including the amount of preparatory resourcing and/or formal self-connection work that you may require, this stage may take one or several sessions. Wilderness Therapy has the potential to be very powerful, and it’s important that we both feel that you are ready for this before proceeding further.
One-on-One Guided Mini-Quest: We will need to meet for at least one Initial Consultation session (see above) prior to embarking upon a guided mini-quest. This is typically a 90-minute journey taking place at a designated outdoors location, though there is room to shorten or lengthen this to some degree (typically ranging from 1 1/2 to 3 hours), depending on what your particular needs are. It includes all three stages discussed above – Preparation, Quest, Integration. I will be beside you as your guide for the duration of this journey
If you are bringing relatively complex or challenging issues such as longstanding trauma, major life transitions, etc., you may find that going on multiple quests carried out in relatively frequent succession (such as once weekly or fortnightly for some time) may be particularly beneficial.
The cost for these is generally $175 per hour (prorated accordingly). I do use a sliding fee scale in an attempt to accommodate everyone’s needs, which we can discuss during our initial consultation.
Group Offerings
All of the following are typically carried out in a group format with one or more guides. To see which of these offerings are currently being offered, visit our Integrative Psychology Academy
Group-based Day Quests: This involves gathering with a small group to share in the wilderness questing experience. These typically involve most of a day (6-8 hours), where we have some spaciousness to go through the three steps discussed above (Preparation, Quest, and Integration). You and your fellow Quest-ers will be well-held by the guide(s) throughout the entire process.
Rather than receiving one-on-one guidance during the Quest stage (as would be the case in the One-on-One Mini-Quest discussed above), you will head out into the wilderness during this stage for a Solo. Various methods will be utilized to support your Preparation and Integration, including receiving personalized guidance by the guide(s) for how best to carry out your solo, personalized reflections by the guide(s) upon your return, and other methods such as journaling and expressive arts.
Multi-day Residential Wilderness Quests: We sometimes offer longer quests, which allow for a particularly deep dive. These typically involve up to several days each of the 3 steps of Preparation, The Quest, and Integration.
Certification and Upskilling Trainings for Health Professionals: We occasionally offer certification programs for health professionals. These include comprehensive Wilderness Therapy Certification Programs, as well as more focused trainings in incorporating trauma therapy, parts work and resourcing methods in wilderness and other natural settings.
Focused Retreats: We occasionally offer residential retreats focused on more specific themes, such as Working with our Parts, Exploring Shadow, Deep Ecology, and other similar themes.
My Services
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My Workshops
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My Philosophy
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Book a Session
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