Restorative Nature Retreat for Wellness & Healing Professionals

One-Day Nature Immersion to Replenish the Well

Step away from your daily responsibilities and helping roles, and step into a nourishing “forest bath,” immersing your body, mind, and spirit in the renewing wonders and delights of the natural world.

The retreat will offer a relaxed rhythm that balances quiet nature meditations, rest, and introspection with awakening movement, play, meaningful dialogues, and an expressive, creative activity. Mindfulness-based self-care practices will be incorporated to enhance and help integrate the unending restorative, inspiring gifts from the natural world. Participants will be able to choose among quiet nature connection practices that best suit their needs and interests, such as walking meditation, sit spots, and savasana sky-gazing.

“One has to be alone, under the sky, before everything falls into place and one finds his or her own place in the midst of it all. We have to have the humility to realize ourselves as part of nature.”Thomas Merton

We will create and share an intentional, safe, and supportive space in the beauty of the forest and brook for bearing witness to one another’s experiences.

Together, we will be cultivating the presence, flexibility, and compassion to be with and work with the weather, as it is, both internally and externally. Participants will enjoy embodied experiences of nature as a resource they can rely on, learn from, and bring into their healing and wellness work.

This retreat offers a chance to renew and deepen sustaining connections with nature, yourself, and your community of support. Created by and for healing professionals, the program will provide therapeutic nature-based experiences that bolster individual and community resilience and counteract the themes of depletion, isolation, and cumulative stress that often emerge for those in helping professions.

“If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?” Hillel the Elder

Meet the Restorative Nature Retreat for Wellness & Healing Professionals staff:

Meredith Johnson, MS MHC-LP

Meredith Johnson works as a wellness counselor and educator to help strengthen resilience, with a specialized focus on reducing the negative impact of trauma, cumulative stress, and chronic illness. She received her MS in Mental Health Counseling from SUNY New Paltz and her BA in Liberal Arts from Sarah Lawrence College with a focus in Community Outreach Theater.

Meredith brings 20 years of experience and training in mindfulness practices into nature-based and wellness programs to help facilitate restorative, empowering, and therapeutic experiences. She has completed professional training in Somatic Experiencing, Simplicity Parenting, MBSR, and Compassion Fatigue Resilience. During her career in disaster mental health, Meredith taught, consulted, and published about best practices for preventing burnout and maximizing therapists’ and responders’ well-being.

Meredith grew up spending more time in trees than houses, and she’s excited to now be bringing her counseling work outdoors into nature. Her appreciation for the healing power of mindful nature connection has deepened over the years, and she’s inspired about combining her body-centered approaches to healing with ecotherapy principles and practices.

Doree Lipson, LCSW-R

Doree Lipson is the founder and director of Wellness Embodied, a center for psychotherapy and healing. She is a licensed clinical social worker with a masters degree in social work from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Doree graduated with a focus on adolescents and families in 2003 and has been working with adults, adolescents, families and couples since that time, both in Michigan and New York states. Doree received her undergraduate degree in English literature from State University of New York College at Fredonia. Doree is also in process of completing a certificate program in Somatic Experiencing with the intention of becoming a certified Somatic Experiencing Practitioner (SEP).

In addition to her clinical training, Doree has been a student of Soto Zen Buddhist teachings and practice since 1996. Doree is lay-ordained in the lineage of Shunryu Suzuki Roshi. She has taught meditation in both college and private settings. Mindfulness is one central component to the clinical work she does with her patients.

Doree has long considered the natural world as a deep source of comfort and spiritual access, from her early days as a YMCA camper in the thousand islands to many solo backpacking journeys from Nepal’s Annapurna range to the Los Padres National Wilderness in northern California.

Simon Abramson, BS

Simon Abramson is the Associate Director of Wild Earth. Over the past ten years, he has led and overseen nature connection and coming-of-age programming for thousands of youth and adults. Simon has a B.S. in Environmental Studies from the University of Vermont where he focused on ecopsychology, exploring the relationship between a healthy human psyche and a vibrant natural world. He has since staffed and studied with various wilderness schools throughout the Northeast including the Institute for Natural Learning, White Pine Programs, the Vermont Wilderness School and of course, Wild Earth.

As a student of deep ecology, Simon has delved deeply into Joanna Macy’s Work That Reconnects, studying with Joanna on multiple occasions including a 30-day “Seeds for the Future” retreat in Western Australia. During his two-year residency at the Elat Chayyim Jewish Spiritual Retreat Center he was exploring the human experience through extended silent meditation and innovative spiritual retreats. When he’s not in the woods, he’s been a student and facilitator with the ManKind Project’s men’s initiations and men’s support groups.