How did you know?

I had some interesting experiences while attending the 7th Wilderness Therapy Symposium in Boulder Colorado during September...

This was the first time I have worked with Americas in the US, nearly all the people who attended my workshop had a connection to addiction and while I had planned for about four games over the six hours I actually ended up playing two, the main one being Meet a Tree which as always was very powerful.

What was interesting, that while watching one member of the group finding their tree I mention to their partner that this person was displaying the behaviour of an addict, something I had observed many times before. When we processed this, the person concerned then declared that they were indeed an addict and wanted to know how I knew.

Rather than explain how I knew, I invited this person to return to their place of work and seek to find the answer to their question by observing themselves in others while playing the game.

I know that I have observed my own behavior that I was previously unaware of, through watching others play the games and I have learnt a great deal about myself from addicts and for that I am very grateful. Why? Because I have grown as a result of my relationship with them.

What amazing people they are, they have a great gift, what we need to do is see the lesson they are teaching us, and in return try to help them see who they truly are.

What a great exchange that is.

How did I know? Because we are connected.

Mentoring

"Mentoring is about drawing the light out from others while the mentor remains invisible"

Jon Young: Oct 2009

Tracking as an Intervention...

When I teach tracking there is an exercise I use which I got from one of Tom Brown's books and since using it I have been able to expand on it beyond its original form to work with people in tracking the energy of those they are looking for.

There are many facets to the art of tracking and energy tracking is one of them. Tracking is not just about finding tracks on the ground, important as that is. I have used this exercise to help get people to see that you can pick up on peoples energy.

Now I am looking at using it as a means of getting addicts to become aware of their behavior in relation to their intentions of using.

This exercise really does take you out of the box and is a very powerful tool.

Tracking with Asperger’s and ADHD

I would like to share with you some tracking experiences I had while working with young men who presented with ADHD and Aspergers and my hope to be able to use tracking as a therapeutic intervention.

My first experience with Aspergers was I went tracking one day up to the sand dunes near to where I live with some young men and several adults, the idea for the day was to see how these young men would get on with tracking.

I asked one of my colleagues to go and hide anywhere in the dunes without us knowing where he went. After taking the boys through some basics off tracking, we set to have fun in locating my colleague who was hiding. And being as we were tracking in sand it would prove a not to difficult medium to work with for the boys, who presented with Aspergers and or ADHD.

I asked my colleague to set up some critical points along the way, these where places were he would stop for a while to make a decision as to which direction to go in, he was instructed to move around a bit looking for the best way to go and I would use these points to ask the boys questions, like "what happened here"?

As we followed the trail we came across an area of fouled tracks, I could see his boot tracks in and out; however one of the boys could actually see the tracks in amongst all the other tracks. I could not see a thing a short while after leaving the foul tracks behind the same boy then said that we were no longer following the same boot print.

So we took a closer look at it, we measured it as we had already taken measurements from the first track with our tracking stick and sure enough and to my surprise, we were following a different person with the same tread on their boot as my colleagues and there was only a small difference in size. How random is that.

Another time I was with a group of boys who were following the trail laid for them until they lost it. I encouraged them to spend time trying to work out what had happened and to see if they could pick up the trail again.

What happened next for me was wonderful, theses boys find it hard to stay still let alone focus on one thing and here they were, all three of them sat by a footprint for twenty minutes discussing what might have happened, working together by asking members of their group to go off and check mole hills etc for tracks that look the same as the track they were following.

They were in fact on the wrong track, but the value of letting them problem solve and work together far out weighted the task of tracking, which we were able to pick up latter anyway.

That, for me was one of those magic moments in life.

Picture: San Bushmen Tracking.