Wilderness Quests
Craving Time to Pause, Reflect, and Reconnect to What has Meaning to You?
Or are you dealing with a major loss or life transition and longing for more support?
Or perhaps you want to celebrate and honor a completion or a joyous new beginning in your life?
If you’d like to spend time in nature to reconnect with what has meaning and purpose, grieve a loss, celebrate a success, or contemplate what is next for you in this life, we invite you to join the Somatic Nature Therapy Institute for a nature quest.
Spending time in nature for multiple hours or days, away from the distractions of everyday life, can help you slow to the pace of life, connect with your inner wisdom, and move forward with clarity and intention. Whether you’re feeling overwhelmed or stuck in a rut, celebrating a success, or working through grief, loss, trauma, or other major life transitions, a wilderness quest can offer support in many ways.
We offer guided ceremonial quest retreats for individuals and groups and will work with you to create a deeply personal experience that is meaningful, supportive, and inspiring.
Inner Quest Women’s* Retreat
SoulFire Wilderness Quest
What is a Wilderness Quest?
A wilderness quest is a ceremonial rite of passage that supports and honors what has deep meaning in your life. We go out to quest not only for ourselves, but also to offer our gifts more abundantly with the world.
A quest begins by exploring and identifying an intention for your ceremonial time on the land. After a period of guided preparation, you’ll go out for solo time in nature to reflect, reconnect to your heart and soul, and enact ceremony to honor what has meaning in your life. The ultimate goal is to honor change and commit to living a fuller and more authentic life moving forward, in accordance with your values.
For generations, cultures from around the world have gone out into nature and the unknown to reflect, pray, ask important life questions, listen deeply, and discover inspiration. Today, research supports what people have known for centuries: that nature-based therapy and ceremonial practices help us feel more embodied, alive, and connected to what is meaningful in our lives.
What is the Process for Going on a Wilderness Quest Retreat?
A wilderness quest is a time to nourish your body and soul and move through seasons of change with more clarity, purpose, and intentionality.
To do that, we guide you through three primary stages: preparation, questing (with solo time), and integration.
Part 1: Preparation
Once you commit to the quest, the ceremony begins. You will meet with your wilderness quest guide to begin identifying and clarifying your intention for the quest. For example, are you hoping to let go of what no longer serves you, be more at peace with a loss, make sense of a recent change, or contemplate questions that may change the direction of your life?
If you are part of a group quest, you’ll attend pre-quest group gatherings to cultivate connection to community and further deepen your intention for the ceremonial time. This is also a time to prepare yourself physically, emotionally, and spiritually for your wilderness quest out on the land.
If you are on an individual quest, we will guide you in creating an experience that accommodates your life circumstances, intentions, time constraints, financial means, and physical abilities (read: you don’t have to be a consummate outdoors person to go on a wilderness quest).
Part 2: The Quest
Once you are on the land, there will be time for connecting with nature, reflecting on your intention, and, if you are in community, creating support among the other wilderness quest members. You will consider what personally meaningful ceremonies and rituals you might engage during your solo time in support of your intention.
Depending on your chosen ceremonial structure, you can be alone (away from community and your wilderness quest guides) for anywhere from three hours to three days. Within your solo time, you’ll listen to your inner and outer guidance and have the opportunity to enact any planned or spontaneous ceremony in support of the intention you are going out for.
Your ceremony could center around letting go of old ways of being or thinking, celebrating or honoring an accomplishment, creating a commitment ceremony to yourself, or anything else that supports your intention for the quest. Your ceremony or rituals may include poetry, movement, music, prayer, and other forms of expression.
Part 3: Integration
When your solo time is done, your wilderness quest guide will welcome you back. They’ll invite you to share your experience while bearing witness to your time on the land, your intention, and the change you are experiencing. This type of community reflection and storytelling can evoke universal themes of identity and transformation and allow for ongoing support and connection when the quest is done.
On your final quest day, you will consider how to incorporate the gifts and insights from the quest into your daily life. Integration can continue once you leave the land and return home through coaching or counseling sessions with your quest guide and connection with your quest community.
If you would like to do a wilderness quest in community, we currently offer two group experiences: Inner Quest Women’s Retreat, which takes place over four days and three nights, and SoulFire Women’s Wilderness Quest, a seven-day, six-night journey. Both take place in the mountains near Boulder, Colorado.
Wilderness Quest Guides at the Somatic Nature Therapy Institute
Our wilderness quest guides have decades of experience with nature-based therapy and ceremony and rites of passage support.
The quest model we practice is influenced by the teachings of the School of Lost Borders and the Animus Valley Institute. This model is inspired by universal cultural themes and practices throughout history around going out on the land to pray, fast, or find spiritual guidance in times of life transition.
Our director, Katie Asmus, has been facilitating individual wilderness quests and retreats since 1999. She and other Somatic Nature Therapy Institute quest guides incorporate present-moment awareness, mind-body-earth connection, and expressive arts into the experience. They believe strongly in the power of spending time in nature as a way to listen deeply to the inner and outer wisdom that guides us.
Take the Next Step with Purpose and Intention
Nature quests are all about slowing down to listen inward and cultivate a deeper connection to the natural world and the unseen worlds that guide us. Most importantly, quests are a time to intentionally acknowledge and honor all facets of ourselves, our lives, and all that goes with the experience of being human.
For more information about how we can support you, you can contact us .