Katie Asmus, MA, LPC, BMP teams up with affiliate practitioners and guides to provide the following wilderness therapy trainings:

12-Day Wilderness Leadership Course
This course is designed for those individuals who are seeking exposure to a wide variety of wilderness leadership skills and training. The remote wilderness is a wonderful place to connect with nature, be challenged, and discover your own unique leadership style. Through experience, lecture, and discussion we will address trip preparation, safety, survival, guiding, basic mountaineering, and outdoor teaching. You will learn how to read a topographical map and compass, how to navigate safely through remote mountain terrain, how to facilitate a group, and work with group dynamics. We will also explore the metaphorical, spiritual, and therapeutic elements of the wilderness experience. In a nutshell, this course will expose you to the necessary skills for guiding individuals and groups into the wilderness.

Therapeutic Wilderness and Nature-Based Skills
This course is designed for individuals who are working in the fields of psychotherapy and experiential education. The goal of this course is to learn methods and techniques for incorporating the natural world into therapeutic and educational programming. We will cover theory and application of: wilderness therapy, ecopsychology, wilderness adventure, transpersonal nature awareness, nature-based expressive arts, contemplative practices in the natural world, and ceremony/ritual. You will have plenty of opportunity to connect with nature for your own personal growth and reflection as you experientially engage in the learning process. You will leave inspired and empowered to create therapeutic nature-based experiences that meet the needs of your clients and students and are informed by your own personal connection with the natural world. In collaboration with the Earth-Based Institute.

Wilderness Therapy Training Institute:
Trainings in Trauma for Field Staff and Clinicians
While virtually every outdoor or wilderness program requires its staff to be trained to respond to situations of physical injury or illness (i.e. 1st Aid and CPR skills), little, if any, skills training is offered related to psycho-emotional trauma response. Most clinicians and staff will encounter trauma in the field at one time or another, but may find themselves lacking the clinical skills necessary to provide adequate assessment and intervention. Trauma is often found to be at the root of a participant’s presenting problems, so it is important that professionals are able to:

By simultaneously treating the symptoms and the underlying cause, healing is more sustainable and long-term.

Understand the bio-physical dynamics of trauma
Trauma is the result of the Body-mind’s natural protective mechanism and response to danger gone awry. When there is any sort of threat or perceived threat, all animals including humans enter into a physiological state of fight or flight. If neither of these actions is successfully accomplished, we go into the freeze state, which is simultaneously numbing and activated. By understanding this response and its natural course of resolution, staff can support individuals in beginning to more toward more long-term healing.

Provide short and long-term interventions for supporting trauma resolution
This training will provide staff with the conceptual framework of on-the-spot vs. long-term trauma intervention and resolution strategies. In addition, participants will learn the following Body-Centered skills and interventions:

In collaboration with the Wilderness Therapy Training Institute

Wilderness as Co-Therapist:
Therapeutic Collaboration with the Natural World                                                    Are the full benefits of wilderness being maximized as a therapeutic tool in your program? Wilderness therapy provides a unique opportunity to draw on the inherent healing elements of the natural world to support individual treatment goals. When therapists are trained to effectively access the range of creative elements available, the wilderness becomes much more that an outdoor office; skilled collaboration with the wilderness creates unparalleled opportunities for therapeutic growth. This training will empower wilderness therapists to maximize the therapeutic aspects of the wilderness experience by:

• Using experiential methods and philosophies to optimize therapeutic outcomes by using the wilderness as a co-therapist
• Enhancing understanding of traditional clinical theory and methods that are embedded in the process; helping therapists communicate about wilderness therapy using recognizable clinical models and paradigms
• Drawing on the inherent healing properties of the natural world
• Learning to actively work with trauma-related symptoms in the wilderness setting to address clinical issues
• Developing a repertoire of wilderness therapy interventions and tools including: primitive skills, ritual & ceremony, mindfulness exercises, initiatives and other experiential activities

Drawing from the collective experiences of over 45 years of wilderness and adventure-based work in the field, our faculty will incorporate a variety of interventions drawing from a vast array of experiential modalities. Therapists will learn how to create specific, meaningful, nature-based interventions to support client self-awareness, expression, action, and change. A wide variety of experiential exercises and metaphorical applications will be explored theoretically as well as experientially. Practitioners will be empowered to create their own interventions based on their personal relationship with the natural world.
A wide variety of therapeutic wilderness modalities will engage participants both experientially and theoretically. Primary modalities will include:

• Metaphorical applications of the natural world
• Contemplative practices in nature
• Ceremony and Ritual
• Adventure-based metaphor development
• Creative arts therapies
• Primitive skills 

Participants will be engaged in an experiential process in the wilderness for three days, followed by two days in a retreat setting. The program is designed to appeal to those who love the rigors and challenges of the field as well as those who may occasionally find spending time in the field to be somewhat daunting. Given that, the goal of the field immersion component of the course is to allow participants to develop a more in-depth understanding of the change process at the core of the wilderness experience; intended to be challenging but not physically overwhelming. After 3 days in the field, we will retreat to a more comfortable setting where we will continue to process our field experience while also discussing the more theoretical aspects of wilderness therapy and experiential applications of our clinical knowledge.

http://www.peakexperiencetraining.com/wildernesstraining.htm

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