Reorienteering is a concept I created based on various parts of my professional life. I’m a Clinical Social Worker and Recreational Therapist so I put them together and created a nivut/orienteering activity that uses the best of neuroscience, animal wisdom, recreational therapy and trauma-informed treatment all with a body-oriented and actually fun framework. It’s an exploratory look into the process of orienting – while orienteering.

Life offers us many stresses and challenges and how our nervous systems respond determines if experiences are left in our bodies as traumas or released naturally. This cycle in part relies on the orienting response. So, I’ve taken this critical piece, paired it with the sport of orienteering, and created a practice to tone this skill. We’ll go out on the trail, with a groovy orienteering map and find our way through the contours and caves using the images on the map and your sense of where you are in relation to the natural space around you.

Most anyone can do it. It can be replicated and adapted to a wide variety of groups. It’s possible to do it anywhere. This is the essence of Recreational Therapy – and you can orienteer your way through any space. I can adapt the activity all along the spectrum from fun to educational to psychoeducational and to deeply therapeutic.

My hope is to bring awareness to an everyday skill that can bring relief from trauma and the everyday stresses that rattle the nervous system.

I believe deeply that we can learn to navigate our way through our personal nervous system and the greater ecosystem.