backcountry trips as healing portals
what is a portal?
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A portal is an experience that shifts your state of being.
Something that opens a doorway between how you’ve known yourself and
what else might be possible.Â
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In the backcountry, a portal isn’t just a place; it’s a threshold. It’s the moment when your senses wake up, when you meet discomfort and move through it, when something ancient in you remembers how to belong to the natural world.
These trips become portals because they invite us out of the noise and speed of everyday life and into a deeper rhythm – one where your body leads, your intuition sharpens, and your nervous system re-learns safety through connection with the earth. With intention and attention, once on the other side, people often return changed: more grounded, more alive, more in touch with their bodies and who they really are.
backcountry trips as healing portalsÂ
can help you meet a version of yourself you may not have met before.Â
This is a course about making the space to practice, coregulating with nature + nurturing your nervous system with the sense of safety time spent outside can cultivate.
Practicing the somatic skills needed to navigate front-country life while you're deep in nature is the ideal practice ground. Less stimulus + fewer distractions lends more capacity to receive coregulation + safety so your nervous system feels safe enough that it's open to forging new neural pathways as you practice somatic skills.Â
Shifting away from what has worked in the past for what could work even better in the future.
It's a beautiful alchemy.Â
Are you ready to step into the portal?
We begin practicing in:Â
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What I Didn't Know Was Possible
I’ve been reaping the benefits of backcountry travel for a long time—since childhood, really. But things shifted in a big way during my twenties, when I started doing the Wilderness Classics. These were physically and emotionally intense trips, and they cracked something open in me.
I didn’t go into those events feeling confident. Honestly, I wasn’t even sure I’d finish one. I saw them as the domain of ultra-athletic mountaineering guys—people I didn’t see myself reflected in. But finishing one, and then eventually finishing first in my second year, alongside the very people I had looked up to, totally changed my sense of who I was and what I was capable of.
It was like I’d broken through glass ceilings I didn’t even realize I had. Those experiences expanded my sense of what was possible for myself. They were a huge part of what inspired me to launch my business—to help other people access that same kind of shift, and to create a culture where more folks feel welcome to step into their power through time outdoors.
And over the years, those trips have evolved. As I’ve deepened my own nervous system skills, I’ve started to experience these backcountry adventures in a new way—less about pushing through, and more about attuning. Now I notice that I come out of these trips in an altered state. My senses are sharper, my perception wider. I start picking up on things I’d miss in the rush of everyday life. It feels like being in conversation with the mountains—not just enduring them.
This is part of my why for offering this work – I want to share this transformative body of work with you!
so, what's the plan?
We'll spend our time together learning about and practicing the essential pieces that make up somatic nervous system regulation so next time you're in the backcountry, you'll be ready to put these skills into action:Â
- Orientation & Resourcing – learning and practicing what it means to root into the present.Â
- Coregulation – expanding the container by learning and practicing what it means to coregulate with nature.Â
- Activation – riding waves, remember, a regulated nervous system doesn't mean it's always calm! We'll learn how to work with the healthy fight we need to find to be able to hike the ridge, paddle the rapid, or make it down the slippery slope of scree
- Settling – learning how to settle – or ride down the backside of the activation wave – is just as important as leaerning how to access your fight. Celebration and rest are crucial components here.Â
This course will be comprised of a combination of live (online) meetings where we will meet to learn and practice, pre-recorded meditations + coregulation sessions, and journal prompts.
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essential logistics
These are the need-to-know logistics that you'll want to take into consideration before signing up:
- Live Meetings: Dates/Times
- Resource page: You will have a dedicated resource page where videos, downloads, and writing prompts will be posted for the duration of this course. Once the course ends, updates will cease, but your access will remind in perpetuity.Â
- Recorded Meetings: all live group meetings will be recorded and posted to your resource page within 48 hours. Live attendance is always encouraged but if you can't make a meeting it doesn't mean you can't still participate.Â
- Cost:Â
do you see yourself here?
This work may be a good fit for you if you see yourself reflected in these statements or they stir an excitement or longing in you.
You might have already experienced this: a moment on a hike, during outdoor meditation, or deep in the backcountry when something clicked. When you felt more whole, more clear, more alive.
With skill, strategy, and support, it’s possible to deepen that connection—to turn those moments into lasting transformation. This isn’t new or trendy; many cultures have practiced this kind of earth-based, body-centered healing for generations. You may even carry threads of it in your own lineage—whether you’ve been aware of them or not. For me, my body and nervous system recognized the truth of these practices before my conscious mind did.
Many cultures across time and generations have engaged in these kinds of practices. In fact, they’re traditional in many earth-based communities. You may even have roots in them yourself, whether you’re aware of that lineage or have lost track of it.
They weren’t explicitly taught to me, but my body and nervous system deeply resonate with them. That resonance suggests a connection, an ancestral thread, that remembers this way of being supported by the earth and calling on that support to increase our own capacity.Â
In this work, you’ll be supported in meeting those parts with care, co-regulation, and companionship. From within. From others. From the earth itself. We’ll explore ways to embody the qualities of nature – like steadiness from the mountains, adaptability from the wind, or softness from the flowers – as tools for your own regulation and growth.
All of this leads to a deeper sense of embodied safety. More presence. Greater ability to show up how you want to—in your relationships, in your work, in your life.
reconnect, re-meet yourself, and expand your capacityÂ
Sign me upÂ
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what kind of outcomes can I expect from committing to this kind of work?
The outcomes of this work can be vast and profound. And, like any real nervous system change, they take time. This is a layered, iterative process that unfolds through practice, care, and support—not a quick fix. And still, we’ve seen moments of rapid transformation happen too. So we hold space for both: the slow, steady rewiring, and the occasional lightning strike of insight or change.
an increased sense of safety means an increased ability to be present
By practicing how to find safety for your nervous system in the backcountry, you're giving yourself a leg up on being able to translate those skills to your front country life. It takes safety + space for your nervous system to feel safe enough that it responds to threat in a different way and begins to carve new neural pathways that will become second nature over time.Â
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an ability to coregulate helps you expand your container so you can hold more
Not in the sense that you have to shoulder more, but so that you can be with more of what is actually happening in your life – so you don't need to suppress it compartmentalize it. Instead you can be with it, help it (whatever it is) move through your body and complete inside of your experience.Â
meet + get in touch with the part of yourself that shows up when things are challenging
 Come into contact with the part of yourself that is capable, powerful, creative, and able to rise to the challenge – whether that’s a tough day in the mountains or a complicated work/home project/problem that requires you to show up as your fullest, most resourced self.
learn to celebrate the slow down and rest when something is overÂ
This piece is about being able to enjoy the space between activation waves – to feel safe resting and allowing the in-between times – including during injury, illness, or times when priorities must shift elsewhere – even if that’s not where you had hoped they would go.
What does this really look like?
Here's an example of a way this work has come through for me.
On a 2020 backcountry trip in the Arctic Refuge, I woke early one morning while the rest of the group was still asleep. I stayed curled up in my tent and listened to an earth-breathing meditation—one where you sync your breath with the rhythm of the earth. Lying directly on the tundra, in this vast, quiet place, the experience hit different. I felt completely held. My nervous system dropped into a deep state of safety and connection—it wasn’t just me holding myself anymore. The earth was holding me, too.
And in that safety, something opened. I had a sudden and vivid realization about my childhood—about old patterns I’d been carrying since I was eight years old. I could see them showing up even on this trip. It was like time-traveling through my own life. As we started walking for the day, that inner child part of me stayed close. She had things to say. Fears. Defenses. And I stayed with her. I listened. I talked with her, reparented her, while we moved across the landscape together.
That day became one of the most powerful inner healing moments I’ve ever had. The combination of nature, movement, and nervous system tools created a space where something old could shift—and something new could begin.
This is one example of the outcomes I hope we can all work towards!
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hello, i'm sarah!
(she/they) — MSW, SEP, CPT
I’m a lifelong Alaskan, somatic psychotherapist, and mental health-informed adventure fitness trainer. I founded Mind & Mountain because the confidence I built through outdoor recreation changed my life – and I want the same for you.
In my work, I blend Somatic Experiencing, Internal Family Systems, aspects of EMDR, and nature connection to help people understand and shift their nervous system patterns. As a nervous system educator, I integrate these tools with movement and outdoor experiences to support people in building capacity, resilience, and joy, especially in stressful times.
Outside time is awesome, but it's not always easy. Often it requires us to dig deep, confront our fears, and rise to the challenge. Our experience of that challenge is influenced by our identities, privileges, and the state of our nervous system — and while that can be hard (to say the least), we can also learn to work skillfully with (and change!) these realities. We’re here to help you get strong, take really good care of yourself, and have more fun outside — all while creating an outdoor culture where everyone is truly welcome.
Learn more about me
