TROLS

 Hey everyone! That was a longer break than anticipated. Life got crazy real fast. And it just keeps moving. I hope you all had a good holiday season, and welcome to the new year! I'm excited to see where things go this year. As a sort of reflection, I wanted to share my top 5 activities that have led to extremely therapeutic discussions and personal breakthroughs. Cami's Top 5 Therapeutic Activities 1. Skiing I already shared one of my best experiences with skiing in my previous blog post , so I probably won't share much about this activity. However, I have found that most of the best therapeutic work that I have been part of has taken place over the course of months to years. Having consistent, regular meetings with patients/clients creates a better therapeutic environment because you establish rapport, and you don't have to reintroduce yourself to anyone. You can build on what was established in previous sessions. And, as you repeat the skills that you are trying to ...

I'm not a big fan of the cold, but I do love to ski. Skiing has been one of my favorite activities for recreation therapy because the clients that I have worked with have learned so much. They learn a new recreation skill. They learn resiliency skills. They learn how to set small goals for themselves. They learn how to read mountain maps. Just lots of skills learned. I learned how to ski for my Therapeutic Recreation internship at the end of my undergraduate degree. I literally learned in just one day of training that all staff had to complete to be signed off by the company as able to ski while staffing the boys.  Cami and Brother on Ski Lift I was interning at an all boys Residential Treatment Center (RTC) for adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). My internship included skiing and teaching boys how to ski. We had separated the boys into three groups, which later became four groups: never skied (later separated into two beginner groups), beginner/intermediate, and exper...

Throughout my undergraduate degree, when people asked what I was studying and I replied "Therapeutic Recreation," the comments such as "Oh I need to go relax on the beach" or "I could sure use a vacation" were plenteous. Sadly, this is not necessarily what Therapeutic Recreation, or Recreation Therapy fully is. I don't go to the beach with clients all the time. In fact, I never have. Here is one picture I did take from the beach this year though. Wellington, NZ 2024 Simply put, Recreation Therapy (RT) is the purposeful use of any healthy leisure/recreation activity to improve quality of life, whether socially, emotionally, intellectually, physically, or spiritually. This may seem like, yes, this is going to the beach. However, there is more to it than that. This post will include more but will again only be some of what is the job of a Recreation Therapist. There will be more posts about what it looks like to be a Recreation Therapist. In my personal e...

Card games are a great way to recreate when there is not much space or when you need to adapt an activity from a few to many participants. I grew up playing a game called "Oh Heck!" It is a trick-taking game . Many people call these tricks, hands, or books. For the purposes of this post, I will just refer to them as tricks. For other trick-taking games, I have a list at the bottom of the post with a few links to specific decks. Oh Heck! Materials Card Deck (Just regular face cards) Pencil/Pen Paper Play Dealer shuffles and deals out cards to all players. Deal out as many cards as possible to each player, so each player has the same number of cards with a few cards left over. No player should have more cards than another player.  Place the non-dealt cards in a pile face down next to the dealer. The dealer then turns over the top card of the leftover pile and places it face up back onto the pile. The suit of this card is the trump suit for the first round. The trump suit will ...

 Hi all! My name is Cami. I am a Recreation Therapist, practicing since 2017. Recreation Therapy (RT) is the purposeful use of any healthy leisure/recreation activity to improve quality of life, whether socially, emotionally, intellectually, physically, or spiritually. RT is provided by educated and certified Recreation Therapists. The most common way to become a Recreation Therapist is to do a 4-year Bachelor Degree in Therapeutic Recreation and then take the National Certification exam to become a CTRS . That is also the route that I took. There are also Master and Doctorate programs for Therapeutic Recreation. (My Master degree is just Parks and Recreation Management.) Cami in Antelope Canyon Recreation Therapy can be used for all kinds of people in several settings. I have worked with children, adolescents, and adults. These clients have had a wide range of needs. They have had mental health and developmental disorders, physical disabilities, traumatic brain injuries, Alzheimer...