Gass, Michael A. "Chapter 3.

" Adventure Therapy: Therapeutic Applications

of Adventure Programming. Dubuque, IA: Kendall/Hunt, 1993. 43-56. Print.
Michael A. Gass Ph. D. is the author of Adventure Therapy: Therapeutic
Application of Adventure Programming. He is the chair of the
Department of Kinesiology and Co-coordinator of the Outdoor
Education Program at the University of New Hampshire. His work with
the use of adventure therapy began in 1979. It has enabled him to
write for the past 10 years on the prescriptive use of adventure
experience to produce lasting functional change.
This is a Book Source: I focused mainly on the third chapter of this
book. This chapter overviews seven main concepts: wilderness as a
healing place, how the wilderness contributes to health, psychological
benefits of wilderness, how wilderness enhances self-worth, wilderness
and the ability to learn, wilderness as a metaphor for life, and
wilderness and physical fitness. Each subsection of the chapter goes
into detail about its main idea.
This book relates to my topic, because it explains the different aspects
of life that adventure therapy modify and inspire in a positive way. For
example I learned how the challenges posed by the wilderness can
enhance their idea of self-image and confidence. This source helped
further my knowledge of the positive changes that adventure therapy
can actually have in a persons life.
REFLECTION: One of the subsections of chapter 3 is How does
wilderness contribute to health? This section was very informative,
because it helped explain the meaning of healing, which is the
ultimate goal of adventure therapy. It states Healing involves an
improvement of the condition of our mind/body. We need healing when
we suffer pain and a reduction of our ability to live well. When we
speak of healing here, we are not referring to its usual meaning as
applied to our physical selves but to a process involving physical,
emotional, and even spiritual dimensions. This assisted me in
understanding why people actually use adventure therapy. This
chapter also refers back to one of the trials mentioned in one of my
source by two psychologists (Kaplan and Talbot). This section puts
emphasis on the fact that there is not a lot of hard evidence that wild
place contribute to healing, but there is some out there. In the
experiment conducted by Kaplan and Talbot they found that
participants had a growing sense of enjoyment, as well has an increase
in self-confidence and a feeling of tranquility. In the wilderness people
experience increasing effortlessness in attending to their surroundings,

which can be an antidote to the stress that comes with attention

overload in everyday life.