ABOUT US
What led to the founding of Nature’s Gate LLC?
From the founder, Barbara Huning MA LP
Throughout my life, nature experiences and mindfulness have been key to my own personal growth and emotional healing work, and I have dreamed of opening a nature-centered therapy practice for many years.
I have often been surprised by the power of experiences in nature to quickly restore balance, generate useful insights, and shift perspective in my own life. My personal practice of natural health has been such a protection and source of well-being for me. And several years of study in Applied Ecopsychology deepened my appreciation of nature as an emotional recovery resource and indeed as a basic need for psychological and social health that is largely unmet for many of us. We need to be connected to nature and to our natural, inborn healing ways.
Since 2012, in my work with Dialectical Behavior Therapy, I gravitated to expanding the use of mindfulness training because it is so powerful in steadying the mind, regulating emotions and helping clients take charge of their behavior and break free from impulsive reactions. I began to use somatic mindfulness to help clients get in touch with their feelings and sort out their needs and priorities.
Training in Ketamine Assisted Therapy showed me that when we are able to get outside our habitual way of seeing things, our natural healing intelligence activates, bringing wise insights and creative solutions to mind and heart. My ongoing work with clients suffering from treatment-resistant depression and anxiety led me to include somatic interventions from Stephen Porges’ Polyvagal Theory and modalities such as Somatic Experiencing and Sensorimotor Psychotherapy.
A big shift came in the fall of 2022. I discovered the Traditional Chinese Medicine healing movement practice called Qigong when I was looking for natural health resources for neuropathy that had developed after removal of a spinal tumor the year before. In a stroke of good fortune, the Qigong coach I found was running a program in Qigong for Trauma. After several months of daily practice in that method, I experienced personal transformation with a surprising burst of improvements in my personal wellness, focus and clarity, and connection with my priorities, values, hopes and dreams. It was then that I became inspired to open this practice.
It became clear to me that I was missing a huge opportunity to help my DBT clients- and all of my trauma clients- to truly connect with Wise Mind- and to work with the trauma in their bodies, to discharge stored traumatic stress and learn how to regulate their whole system: body, mind and heart. I began encouraging my clients to begin a daily practice, helping them overcome the challenges of starting a new habit- with wonderful results. I then decided to train intensively in Qigong with a focus on integrating this method into my work to empower my clients’ recovery and personal mastery. I am currently an apprentice with Qigong mentor David Beaudry, founder of the Noble Movement Academy.
Nature’s Gate is founded to help people understand how our body, brain and emotional systems respond to stress and trauma, how our natural recovery systems work, and how to work with our natural system to help ourselves recover. The resources of our human nature, and of nature all around us, are free and readily available to us all. In a world of oppression and inequity in which forms of security continue to degrade, we need to know how to access the resources that nature offers us at every turn, in every moment. It is my belief that we all deserve access to the natural healing intelligence that lives within us as human beings, and by which nature has evolved in balance and health over eons.
What does the name “Nature’s Gate” mean?
The daily practice of mindfulness, mindful movement and connection with nature opens a gate to clarity, insight, and connection with purpose that directs effective action.
A Golden Thread appears- a thread of purpose, meaning, and wisdom that guides through the heart and directs the mind.
Mindfulness is Nature’s Gate to healing, wholeness and vitality. It helps us see and follow our Golden Thread.
Nature offers a gateway to restoration of capabilities that have been lost in the disconnection from nature’s flow. We all experience this disconnection as members of industrial society, as survivors of generational trauma, and of various forms of slavery, genocide and entrapment in our industrial culture. Nature-centered mindfulness offers grounding, emotional stability and mental clarity that can help us navigate into deeper connection, belonging, healing and wholeness.
The path forward with the development of Nature’s Gate will be created as we go, led by your needs and wishes, by opportunities to be of service, and by the natural attractions that arise. I may invite other therapist to join me, or stay a solo practice. I may add other natural health services: nutrition therapy for autoimmune disorders, acupuncture, massage, Chinese or Ayurvedic Medicine…we shall see where nature leads us.
With excitement, warm wishes and bright blessings to you on your journey,
MISSION
Our mission is to use evidence-based treatments, wellness education and restorative activities to help people reconnect with and use their natural healing intelligence to recover from trauma, improve their health and create a life they truly love.
VISION
A community of people reconnected with the wisdom of nature within and all around us, together rebuilding our collective health, harmony and vitality to grow a world that we all love to live in.
VALUES
Compassionate Community
We come to this work with loving kindness, with great respect and compassion for our clients, for our teammates, and for the communities in which we live our lives. We know that together we can build great and beautiful things, solve our problems, and rest in the joy of belonging. We know that everyone matters, and that each form that we take has value simply because it exists. We strive to show up for each other in times of need, to share our gifts, privileges and wealth, and to protect each other’s rights, dignity, and vital interests. We know that we will sometimes fail and are ready to try again, to do better.
Integrity in Clinical Practice
As healers, educators, and service providers, we are devoted to practicing with skill and providing a service and meets or exceeds our client’s needs and expectations. We operate with honesty and integrity, protecting our clients’ confidentiality, keeping their rights and their needs as priorities in our work together. When we realize a client needs more than we know how to do, we either learn how to do it well, or help them to someone who has the needed skills. We explore new developments in our areas of expertise and share them with each other. We put our heads and hearts together to help each teammate provide excellent service to their clients.
Social and Natural Justice
We partner with our clients from an understanding that we live in a culture that is damaged and destructive in ways that are baked-in to our systems, our beliefs, our ways of living. We live with gross imbalances of power and inequity, some of us with privileges and others denied them. These inequities and issues affect all of us- all humans and all members of the web of life on Earth. We radically accept that these are our conditions and that it is therefore our task to heal them in whatever ways we possibly can. As we provide services, we address these issues, validate the trauma caused, and get creative with solutions. We support people and projects that help to restore balance, bring access to those without, bridge gaps and provide resources. We lift up the voices of those whose interests are systematically ignored and lend power where we can. We do this for humans and nonhumans, for our rivers and our atmosphere and the soil in which we grow our food. We know that when we work together, we can help each other.
Nature’s Wisdom
We understand that good health and wellness is founded in self-care habits that enable our bodies, hearts and minds to function well. Our internal natural systems need healthy foods, water, rest, safety, productive, meaningful activity, loving connections and mutual support, recreation and laughter, creativity, and time in nature to receive it’s restorative benefits. In order to help clients restore their health, we provide education, support, coaching, and natural treatments. We work to resolve access barriers to healthy natural resources. We teach clients how to listen to their healthy natural inclinations and create opportunities for enjoying the benefits of nature for good health in all dimensions of life. We provide clients with a foundation of understanding how their body responds to stress and how the natural emotional recovery process works so that they can more actively and effectively facilitate their own healing and growth. We look to nature for inspiration, restoration, support and insight.