Living With Intention: Lessons From Nature

An Interview with Melissa Cacialli, MA, LPCI

The alarm goes off, and another day begins. You hop out of bed, get ready for work or school, fulfill your daily responsibilities, eat dinner, complete your nightly ritual, and go to bed. But were you really consciously aware of yourself, your surroundings, or your experience of life? Did you once stop to listen to your breathing, to truly hear what another person was saying, or to take in the scenery?

Because of our hectic schedules and the strain of daily life, it has become human nature to live unconsciously – and we are raising future generations to do the same. Take Martha, for example. Martha is a busy mother of two teenage boys who lives in an upscale neighborhood in New England. In order to save for their children’s college educations, Martha and her husband work full-time jobs, and frequently bring work home on evenings and weekends. The boys entertain themselves after school, usually with video games, MySpace, or television.

But lately, their youngest son, John, started skipping school, coming home late, and smelling of alcohol. He had hoped his parents wouldn’t notice – and they didn’t, until they began receiving calls from the principal’s office. By the time Martha and her husband realized how deep John had fallen into a dangerous crowd at school, his drug and alcohol problem was beyond their control. They enrolled their son in a wilderness program deep in the forest in Texas.

Martha’s story is not an unfamiliar one. Thousands of families send their children to wilderness camp each year to heal painful pasts, address behavioral issues, and steer back on course. Why wilderness? In part because nature reminds teens what it means to truly be alive – not to simply exist and get through the daily grind, numbing themselves with distractions, but to actually observe and appreciate the lessons that surround them each day.

“Living unconsciously has become our culture’s way of functioning,” explains Melissa Cacialli, MA, LPCI, a wilderness therapist at Lone Star Expeditions, a therapeutic wilderness program located near Houston, Texas. “We get into patterns, families are isolated from one another, and things build up as the days go on until we reach a tipping point where we become totally overwhelmed and can’t function anymore. Wilderness therapy slows everything down so that teens can monitor the stressors in their lives and choose healthy ways to respond.”

The Power of Intention

At the most effective wilderness camps, teens do not simply meander mindlessly through the mountains, hike for miles solely as a means of reaching the next campsite, or think about how they can’t wait to hang out with friends at home. Instead, field guides ask questions, point out interesting scenery, and teach life lessons through observations in nature.

At Lone Star Expeditions, for example, the entire staff strives to be conscious and mindful of their interventions and interactions with campers at all times. “A hike isn’t just another hike. It’s a fresh experience that will provide something new and different in the campers’ day,” says Cacialli. “All too often teens are allowed to go through the motions, without being mindful of the many lessons around them. And it’s unfortunate, because they’re missing out on what can be one of the most life-changing aspects of wilderness therapy.”

Cacialli describes an experience with one Lone Star student who was exploding with anger, but continually repressed her emotions. One day, they were sitting by a tree in the middle of the woods, where they noticed a pool of water full of decaying debris. Rather than walking around it and carrying on with their agenda, Cacialli stopped to discuss the metaphor of how the pool was like the camper – filling up with debris, rotting on the inside, until she could cleanse herself by expressing the pain beneath her anger.

“Sometimes using metaphor and being mindful of the environment is more productive than talking about a problem head-on,” says Cacialli. “When students are exposed to metaphor, they are given an opportunity to see their lives and their choices reflected in the environment around them. This, in turn, allows them to create a unique relationship with the wilderness. As we all know, relationships are everything to teenagers. This positive relationship with the wilderness becomes what therapists call a ‘corrective emotional experience.’ The wilderness does what our very best person-to-person relationships do – it holds up a mirror and asks us to face ourselves.”

By observing and participating in the natural world through hiking, camping, and exploring, teens develop a sense of gratitude for the beauty and intelligence of nature. Teens move away from their narrow perspective on their own experience and expand their awareness of how all the pieces in nature are interdependent. Even for teens who live in cities, far away from mountains, streams, and wide open spaces, nature provides a model for living that applies anywhere.

Of course, not all wilderness programs are the same. Because different programs emphasize different therapeutic components, not all wilderness programs keep acting with intention in the forefront of daily life. In Cacialli’s opinion, if wilderness camp isn’t approached with conscious intention, the program isn’t using wilderness to its fullest extent. Instead, teens simply replace one stressful environment (home) with another (wilderness), and return home relatively unchanged.

“Even out in the field, it can be easy to get caught up in group drama and the daily grind of hiking, homework assignments, and chores,” Cacialli explains. “Without being mindful of the therapeutic intent of being in the wilderness, outdoor therapy can become just another treatment program. For maximal benefits, teens, field guides, and therapists must approach their environment with conscious intention.”

Practicing Mindfulness

Mindfulness is a critical component of living with intention. At Lone Star, the therapists engage campers in mindfulness exercises that help bring their focus to the here and now. Each teenager is asked to find something that interests him in nature, sit down with it, observe it, and write down in a journal what drew him to that particular object. One group of campers had been intrigued by a dried-up stream bed.

“The teens were lamenting the ‘death’ of the stream and the life forms dependent on it,” notes Cacialli. “But upon closer examination, the campers realized new plants and creatures were able to grow in the place of what had lived there before. Nature was actually recycling itself – the end of one thing created an opportunity for another.”

This was a huge change in perspective for many of the students, especially those recovering from drugs, according to Cacialli. Many of them were grieving the loss of drugs as a coping mechanism and their peer group, even though they knew the change was necessary. “They had a hard time seeing that the loss of their old lifestyle would surely provide new opportunities for a new and better life. That stream bed was a here-and-now, in-your-face, without-a-doubt representation of this possibility for them,” says Cacialli.

By paying attention – really paying attention – to the world around us, we become aware that everything is alive and has a purpose. Drawing metaphors and comparisons from nature, the campers could then understand how the dried-up stream might also resemble a break-up in an old relationship or the end of high school. Both scenarios were the end of one thing, but opened up the opportunity for a new relationship, a college education, and other new experiences.

“In wilderness therapy, nature is far more than a setting – it is a partner in the therapy process,” states Cacialli. “When campers become mindful of the present moment, they realize that at any given point, the environment and their bodies are telling them the right thing to do. They just have to quiet down and listen.”

Mindfulness exercises and body-centered therapy are particularly helpful for teens who have experienced trauma, who are easily agitated or angry, who are anxious or impulsive, or who engage in self-harm, says Cacialli. By becoming more aware of their minds and bodies, teens develop a greater capacity for self-direction and ability to influence the world around them in a positive way.

“Teens can’t grow when they feel unsafe or threatened by their environment,” Cacialli explains. “Once they realize they have everything they need within and around them, they feel empowered to change. If they listen to their bodies, they’ll know how to calm down and re-center themselves. A moment of silent, directed introspection can be far more powerful than anything you can say in a therapy session. Rather than forcing therapy to happen, change comes about as a natural reaction to being in the wilderness.”

Bring it Home

Campers leave Lone Star with an array of tools they can use to live with intention at home. During camp, teens rate their emotions on a 1-10 scale and become accustomed to monitoring their stress levels and knowing how to respond. For example, if a teen is feeling anxious at a level of three, she knows she needs to journal; if she’s at a five, she knows to ask for help; if she reaches seven, she needs to take an immediate timeout.

At Lone Star, teens also “circle up” to discuss important issues as they happen in the moment. Once at home, teens use this skill to turn off the television or take a break at dinner to address critical issues with their family, before the situation gets out of hand.

“Thinking and acting with intention is a way of approaching life, not a theory, practice, or type of therapy,” Cacialli advises. “The therapists at Lone Star use intention and mindfulness all day long, not just in therapy sessions. Following our lead, teens then learn to act with intention in their everyday lives, and not to take for granted the beauty that surrounds them in every breathing moment.”

Source: Lone Star Expeditions