Our approach combines mindfulness practices, adventure experiences, and acts of service to help our students in their journey toward healing. Each of these facets provides students with the opportunity to learn new things about themselves. We believe that the mindfulness foundation provides long term skills that students can use to help them overcome challenges in their daily lives and promotes their overall wellbeing.
MEDITATION AND MINDFULNESS
Meditation, the practice of quietly noticing our thoughts and feelings, helps us be open to the present moment. Mindfulness is the ability to do so while engaged in activity or interacting with others. Developing a regular meditation and mindfulness practice has been proven to help ease the stress and anxiety brought on by ever-changing life circumstances.
EMOTIONAL REGULATION
It is Red Moutain Sedona’s philosophy that emotional regulation is the key that unlocks the door to therapeutic progress. The first step in this process is to help students recognize signs that they are heading toward emotional overwhelm. This recognition is built through engaging in mindfulness practices (with proper instruction from Red Mountain meditation instructors), participating in daily check-ins, and therapy. By recognizing early signs of overwhelm, students are able to interrupt old patterns of non-working behavior by engaging in healthy coping strategies. Students obtain these strategies through having individual and group therapy, engaging in physical activity, and attending community-based programming. Upon developing these strategies, students then have the opportunity to practice behavior that is conducive to keeping their nervous system in a state of regulation. At Red Mountain Sedona, students learn to do this through all of the previously mentioned programming, as well as life-skills coaching, executive functioning coaching, academic coaching, and nutritional support.
BUILDING REAL SKILLS AND REAL INDEPENDENCE.
Learn about how our approach helps young adults
ADVENTURE AND RECREATION
Adventure and Recreation helps support students in their journey to learning more about themselves as they grow throughout the program. These activities encourage individuals to develop a sense of identity and become mentally and physically engaged through fun, action-based activities.
We encourage students to try new things through adventure activities. This also provides a chance to practice the mindfulness skills they’ve worked on in these real-life experiences. Some students find new interests or hobbies that help support their long term growth and provide a healthy outlet for their mental health challenges.
COMMUNITY SERVICE
At Red Mountain Sedona (RMS), we have found that service work helps our students to get a bigger picture perspective on their lives and problems. Service work helps individuals realize the interconnectedness of all people, cultivates gratitude, creates selflessness, combats narcissism, and brings you more fully into the moment.
Helping others through volunteerism and community service diminishes egocentrism and selfishness, two character traits that contribute to behavioral issues, depression, and poor choices. Studies have shown that when two people forge a relationship based on overcoming challenges, both of them grow stronger. So the one serving is therefore also served by the act of service.
Our engagement in community service is just another way in which the RMS model goes beyond traditional treatment modalities, treats the whole person, and sets our students up for future success
DAILY CHECK-IN
Every weekday morning after group meditation, our students break into small groups for daily accountability and well-being checks. Students identify the emotions they’re feeling, share gratitude, comment on what they noticed during the meditation, and then set their intentions for the day.
Daily check-ins at Red Mountain Sedona help our students learn to focus on what’s going well, and what’s in their control, rather than habitually and reflexively focusing on what’s “wrong” and outside of their purview.
Such habits are building blocks in leading an honest and responsible life. Daily check-in provides an opportunity to address issues before they blossom into huge problems, at the same time ensuring that our students don’t attempt to avoid problems that need resolution.
The daily check-in is a simple process in and of itself, but it represents one more way in which RMS goes above and beyond traditional programs in the quest to help people lead healthy happy lives.
