Health and Education

“ 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 behavio...