Team Building and Personal Low Ropes Course Experiences
"To venture causes anxiety, but not to venture is to lose one's self. And to venture in the highest sense is precisely to become conscious of one's self."
~ Soren Kierkegaard
Adventure-based Counseling (Ropes Course) facilities have proliferated over the past thirty years. They may be found in a wide variety of settings from Boy Scout and church camps to upscale resorts. What also varies widely is the use made of them--anything from a fun day of clambering around and testing one’s nerve and physical abilities on an “obstacle course” to profound and lasting growth experiences.
Thanks to association with some highly skilled colleagues, I have learned to facilitate the whole range of potential experiences. Being outdoors in an active, challenging, supportive environment accelerates experience and brings out in hours what might have taken months or years in a different environment. One of the keys in my approach is not only to prepare you for the experience and debrief the experience afterwards as most facilitators do but to slow you down during and have you actually “experience your experience,” particularly your interior experience, whether individually or as part of a team.
“Years of experience have shown that awareness and growth are accelerated in an active, outdoor, challenging, supportive environment. Individuals who go beyond self-imposed boundaries grow in self-concept... Adventure experiences help make meaning, help us see with greater clarity. They are a place where the abstract and real life actions connect. People see with greater clarity the meaning of values, the power of connection and the meaning of their own life during an adventure experience.”
-Project Adventure
Some of the best days of my life have been spent as a participant or facilitator on a “ropes” or adventure based counseling course. I will try to convey, at least, some of the benefits since conveying the experience is like trying to describe the birth of a first child or falling in love for the first time. Some things just have to be experienced. I know my enthusiasm about adventure experiences is a “ten,” and I have never seen someone depressed on a ropes course. For value added, a ropes course is plain fun as well.
I think some of the magic of a ropes course is that it brings people totally into the moment. I have seen awkwardness, fears, trust issues among a group of strangers miraculously fall away as they get caught up in the intensity and immediacy of the present moment, what my colleagues call “extraordinary time.”
At first glance, a ropes course appears to be like an army obstacle course with various “elements” constructed of wood, wire and rope. Some are built right into the trees and the natural environment. Each element presents varying degrees of physical, mental, emotional or psychological challenge. Unlike an obstacle course, the focus is not on completing the task or mastering the obstacle but rather experiencing the response evoked in you. The elements are a powerful means of bringing significant issues to the surface quickly. The guiding principle is “challenge by choice.” You decide the degree and type of challenge you want to experience.
Many of us have learned that anxiety and discomfort are to be avoided or eliminated as quickly as possible. Some have heard limiting messages since early childhood, “Get down. You’ll fall and get hurt.” “Don’t ride your bike so fast. You’ll lose control.” “This is Jenny, our clumsy one, but you should see her sister play basketball.” We end up settling for what feels familiar and safe or conforms to the image created for us by others. In the process, we lose excitement, vitality and satisfaction. The ropes experience helps create a new relationship with anxiety and fear so that the excitement, creativity and growth potential in our anxiety can be tapped. At the end of the day, participants usually feel tired but exhilarated.
Team building experiences contain the above but have additional dimensions. They help a group look at how it plans, problem solves, makes decisions, communicates, trusts, values and uses its members’ abilities and more. People get to know each other and strengthen their bonds on a ropes course in a way that can enhance trust, communication and cooperation back in the work or other environments.
If you are interested in learning about the next ropes experience, contact me at my e-mail address.