Nomadic Therapeutic Wilderness Programs Offer a Deep Immersion in the Healing Embrace of Nature

“ It is not so much for its beauty that the forest makes a claim upon men’s hearts, as for that subtle something, that quality of air, that emanation from old trees, that so wonderfully changes and renews a weary spirit ”—Robert Louis Stevenson 

The majority of teenagers that come to wilderness therapy enter the woods in a state of almost chronic stress and exhaustion. They are over-aroused and over-stressed. Many are carrying a laundry list of diagnoses, specifically anxiety-related disorders, that are treated through a complex diet of psychotropic medications. When you hear their stories and get a sense of their lifestyle choices, you realize that many kids are constantly stimulated and stressed: by electronics, caffeine, drugs, social media, academic pressures, parental demands and the ever-mystifying challenge of growing up into adulthood. On a physiological level, these stressors trigger their sympathetic nervous systems, which governs fight-or-flight behaviors. And triggers it, and triggers it.

When we are relaxed and at ease in our environment, our parasympathetic system—sometimes called the rest-and-digest branch—kicks in, unleashing a cascade of healing and restorative forces within the body. This is the principle that has led scientists and medical researchers to focus on how nature can benefit human health. 

Over a 12-year span, Japanese researchers studied more than 600 college age Japanese youth while they took leisurely strolls on the dedicated forest therapy trails outside of Tokyo. These students were outfitted with spectrometers attached to their foreheads, which measured the amount of blood flow in their prefrontal cortex. They found that leisurely forest walks, compared with urban walks, yielded an 18.4% decrease in the stress hormone cortisol, a 17% decrease in sympathetic nerve activity, a 3.4% in blood pressure and a 5.8% decrease in heart rate. These participants, many of whom were college-age, also reported better moods and lowered anxiety during these forest walks.

In another, widely replicated experiment the smell of a pine tree immediately dropped a subjects blood pressure 20 points and triggered the body to produce killer-t, anti-cancer cells. It has long been suspected, but now proven, that the aromatic, oil-like compounds that pine trees release into the air, called pinenes, have strong healing benefits.

Therapeutic wilderness programs are widely effective in creating greater self-awareness, personal responsibility, resilience and the movement towards an adult maturity. But the deep immersion in the healing embrace of nature that nomadic wilderness programs like Blue Ridge therapeutic employ, might be the most important of all.

Source : http://info.blueridgewilderness.com/blog