Benefits of Outdoor Adventure For Addiction Recovery
Outdoor adventure and outdoor activity will be highly encouraged to all tenants of Crow’s Nest Ranch - Sober Living here in Truckee, California. With being located in the Tahoe National Forest, our community will have the ability to combine the interest of being outdoors and the added benefits of having fun and risk-taking activities that appeal to those of us with substance use and mental health disorders. Being in nature also provides an optimal therapeutic background, creating settings that are calm, provide physical activity, and plenty of opportunities for one to learn comfort in our current presence.
Think about it. When was the last time you went outside and didn’t have fun? And shoveling your driveway doesn’t count because, with the right podcast or playlist in your ears, even that has its therapeutic moments. Even in an endless winter like the one we just had! All jokes aside, being outside and interacting with nature helps relieve stress, provides a mentally calming effect, and can help us addicts connect with nature and even our spirituality.
Types of outdoor adventure will include rock climbing, white water rafting, snow camping (or just camping), kayaking, skiing, snowboarding, snowshoeing, mountain biking, backpacking, surfing, and more. Being outdoors and taking risks allows us to learn problem-solving skills, gain self-awareness, develop trust and cooperation, improve our resilience, and increase mental and physical strength while also gaining the basic benefits of being outdoors.
In fact, studies suggest that adventure therapy’s positive effects may best be sustained by continuing to practice mindful adventure as relapse prevention.
From a therapeutic standpoint, outdoor adventure offers increased efficacy in the areas of self-confidence, emotional resilience, trust-building, social skills, interpersonal communication, life skills, stress reduction, and more. Benefits are longer lasting as skills are developed in real-life settings and therapeutic opportunities are created organically. We as addicts are empowered by the challenges that nature provides us and often progress more quickly and powerfully than in traditional settings. Outdoor adventure expands our world.
We do recover!
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