Health and Education

What a valuable, purposeful and honorable position you are in! Whether you’re a parent, family member, teacher, therapist, or friend,  you have the opportunity to change a teen’s life!  Perhaps you’re raising a pre-teen that has a wild side. Maybe you’re a teacher who wants to impact the students that spend most of their time with you. You might be a caring relative or family friend who understands the influence of positive relationships.  You can change a teen’s fuature! What are the risky behaviors that teens engage in?  The most common are sexual activity, substance use, illegal behaviors and dangerous driving . You can view a more comprehensive and detailed list from the CDC  here , which includes things like suicide and abuse. If you’re concerned about your teen’s future, here are a handful of practical, applicable ways to prevent risky behaviors. Be relational. Adolescents who live with and get along well with their parents are less likely to ...

At Blue Ridge, we are dedicated to   Whole Family Support  and believe in Family Systems oriented treatment . Led by our seasoned and compassionate clinical and family support teams, Blue Ridge Therapeutic Wilderness provides the most effective and clinically integrated family experience, which contributes to foundational transformation in teens and their families. Transforming core dynamics for families occurs through the utilization of individualized clinical treatment, together with intensive family-focused support, and whole body health and wellness. As we continue to evolve, we adhere to our commitment to provide the most comprehensive, integrated family support by welcoming two Family Therapists to our treatment team. We are proud to announce the addition of  Kayla Davenport, MS  and  Elizabeth Newton, MS, MFT  to our Family Support Program. They have spent a great deal of time training with our clinical team and spending time in the field...

This post originally appeared in All Kinds of Therapy, written by Emily Miranda. You can find that post  here . Any seasoned wilderness therapy staff knows the importance of students remaining well-hydrated. Being that our bodies are comprised of so much water, drinking plenty of it every day helps keep students’ bodies functioning properly; it helps with regulation of body temperature, aids in removing toxins, helps acclimatize the body to new altitudes, prevents headaches and even irritability (both can be signs of dehydration) and helps the skin and hair maintain moisture and deliver essential nutrients to the cells. So, when I was working in a wilderness therapy program in Utah, and one of my students was refusing to drink water, suffice it to say I was concerned. As the staff and I were processing how to support this student being safely hydrated, while still meeting her need for a sense of choice, one of the staff mentioned, “well, she’s not drinking enough water, but...

I discovered this incredible work by chance while searching through a listing of outdoor jobs on an online database in the summer of 2011. As a recent college graduate, I was neck deep in the angst of entering the job force. I had never heard of Wilderness Therapy before, and honestly, I remember feeling unsure if I wanted to do it or not. I pictured a boot camp where students just cried all day and yelled at each other as field instructors ran around saying things like, “take accountability for your actions!” or, “let the tears flow!” Nonetheless, something about it captivated my imagination. So I applied for a job as a Field Instructor and read every book about it I could get my hands on. As I read  Shouting At The Sky , a book describing a writer’s personal wilderness therapy experience, I started to understand that this wasn’t like anything else I had ever heard of; it sounded compassionate, powerful, raw, even sacred. Two months later I was asked to join a training gro...

As the  Family Support Therapist at Blue Ridge , I work with the parents of our students in the field. My role is to offer space for families to experience their own process, which often parallels the student process but is distinctly different for obvious reasons. Teens are in the woods, with both the discomfort that it brings and the luxury of not having to attend to their “normal” lives.  They get to be completely present with their feelings, wrapped up in 24/7 support. On the flip side, parents are trying to manage day to day life, kids, finances, responsibilities, etc. AND participate in this incredibly intense emotional experience. Parents have often been in crisis mode with their kids for months or years leading up to the wilderness experience and are quite simply exhausted. This sets the stage for discussion of self-care…before we can do meaningful work on family dynamics, parents must restore some semblance of their own emotional balance and stability. This is ...

Now that you know the basics about  mindfulness , let’s dive in a little bit more… The benefits of mindfulness So why practice mindfulness?  As we take time to be present to our experiences, and practice focusing on the present, we actually rewire our brains by creating new neural networks.  What are neural networks, you ask? When we learn behavior (how to swim, how to write the alphabet, how to drive a car) we create a neural network in the brain--neural networks, essentially, are neurons collecting signals from others and this creates an electric activity that creates connective branches in the brain. The more we repeat this behavior, the stronger the neural network becomes, and we establish this network as an “expert”—meaning that it is fully learned behavior (we don’t have to relearn it).  Students hiking through the wilderness is a beautiful metaphor for this process.  Imagine a single-track trail in the woods.  The more this single-track is u...