Activities & Recreation

The close proximity to Nashville offers a wide range of weekend activities, which in the past have included rodeo, county fairs, movies, shopping, concerts and more.

• Hiking through the beautiful rolling hills of The Ranch
• Fishing in the Piney River
• Canoeing – specially scheduled canoe trips as part of Adventure Therapy
• Native American Sweat Lodge Ceremonies – healing and purification
• Four Agreements Wisdom Group meetings
• Spirit Recovery Programs
• 12-Step Serenity Trail
• Volleyball
• Yoga
• 12-Step Meetings in Nashville
• Bonfire Meetings on Campus
• Labyrinth
• Medicine Wheel

Spirit Recovery Experiences

There are no words to describe the healing power of the land that serves as The Ranch’s home. Brilliant, fiery sunsets; misty, quiet mornings’ the lazy arc of geese returning with warm weather’ the ebb and flow of the winding Piney River and the sudden gusts of summer storms all touch our souls in profound and lasting ways.

In this magical place, “higher power” is not a concept learned from others through empty repetition; it is a living reality felt in the marrow of our bone.

Here at The Ranch, we have created ceremonies and spiritual landmarks drawn from the deepest traditions of human spiritual expression, to help our clients nurture their own experience of spiritual connection.

These landmarks include:

The Labyrinth Prayer Walk

Are you searching for something? Longing to quiet your mind? Seeking spiritual practice to strengthen yourself? Looking for a path of prayer, shared with others? Heeding a call to lend a more authentic life? Designing your “next step” in life? The Labyrinth is a wonderful experiential walking metaphor to spirituality. The Labyrinth has been used for millenniums by diverse cultures as a symbol for meditation, prayer, introspection, the mystical journey and “going within.nd create your own personal experience. The purpose of the pilgrimage is infinite : To give thanks – To achieve forgiveness – To hope and ask for a miracle-To express love of God – To draw near something sacred – To get outside the normal routine of life so something new can happen – To find peace -To prepare for surgery – To mourn a loss

The fundamental metaphor for the labyrinth is a walk ~ walking a spiritual path.
Walk your way into the Labyrinth, make your way to the center, and exit the center and the Labyrinth the same way you entered.

Entering (Purgation): A releasing, a letting go of the details of your life. This is an act of shedding thoughts and emotions. Purge your mind, thoughts and consciousness of all the daily details. It quiets and empties the mind.

Centering (Illumination): Open yourself up for an illuminating experience. Stay there as long as you like. It is a place of meditation and prayer. Receive what is there for you to receive. Stand, sit, lie down, get on your knees, dance, whatever feels right to you.

Exiting (Union): Acting in harmony with your deepest truth. . When you walk the labyrinth, you become more integrated and empowered to find and do the work you feel your soul reaching for. Ask yourself what actions, supports, and resources will help you live your deepest truth in your everyday life.

Guidelines for Walking: Clear your mind and become aware of your breath. Allow yourself to find the natural pace your body dictates. You may “pass” people or let others step around you; whichever is easiest at the turns. The path is two ways. Those going in will meet those coming out. Do whatever feels natural.

The Medicine Wheel

In many cultures throughout the ages, the circle of the principle symbol used for understanding life’s mysteries. Everywhere in the natural world, in the movement of the heavens, the dance of wind and water, the growth of living things, the movement of the year, and the cycles of life itself, human beings found circles. To remember, celebrate, and learn from these cycles, many peoples created great circles of stone and wood in places of natural power and beauty. One such circle used by the native peoples of this land is the medicine wheel.

The word “medicine” means more than a substance to restore health to a sick physical body. Medicine means “power”, a vital energy force that can be drawn upon and directed. Medicine also means knowledge. The Medicine Wheel is literally a “Circle of Knowledge” that restores wholeness and gives power over one’s life.

“Wheel” is a word that has no equivalent in any Amerindian tongue. The concept is of a spiral or vortex of energy in motion. Medicine Wheel means a circle or spiral of generated power at the control of Mind. It is a spiritual, mental and physical device that provides its users with both a map of the mind and a chart of life that enables self-discovery, finding balance, and harmony in the universe.

The center of the Wheel usually holds the buffalo skull to represent the wisdom of the Great Spirit. The four arms that come out from the center represent the four directions, or four Great Paths: Love and Trust, Knowledge and Wisdom, Introspection and Transformation, and Illumination and Clarity. The twelve moons that mark the yearly earth cycle are arranged around the Wheel. Each moon is named and carries a powerful animal totem as a guide for humans born during each moon cycle, as well as elemental clan membership and mineral and plant attachments.

The Wheel contains and connects the flow of human life, from infancy to old age, with the seasonal flow of the Earth Mother from the planting of a seed, its germination, growth, harvest, and finally dormancy of the land at rest, thus reminding us that life is in constant movement and change, and new wisdom enters our experiences as easily as the turning of a wheel.

Here at The Ranch, we have built a great medicine wheel on a high hilltop, looking out over the rolling woodlands. Many of our clients come to this place for private meditation and prayer, communal celebration, group therapy, and powerful ceremonies. Whatever our intention, the wheel connects us with our own institution and the spiritual wisdom, love, and strength of all creation.

Therapeutic Sweat Lodge Ceremonies

One of the most powerful experiences offered at The Ranch is the Sweat Lodge Ceremony. Sweat Lodge ceremonies have been performed throughout human history for physical detoxification, emotional purification and spiritual connection. The ceremony involves building an open fire, heating stones in the fire, and pouring water on the heated stones in a small, dark structure made of willows and blankets, filling the space with hot steam.

During the ceremony, singing, praying, and sharing take place, and the door is opened four times to bring in fresh rocks and water, each time shifting the focus of the ceremony to a different perspective of recovery. The first “round” focuses on self-judgment and uncomfortable emotion. The second “round” focuses on forgiveness and resolution of family of origin issues. The third “round” invites participants to see their lives and their addictions from a new perspective, and the fourth “round” asks them to claim the changes they are making in their lives, and make commitments to specific actions that will support those changes.

The Sweat Lodge process provides several invaluable therapeutic opportunities, including the opportunity to recognize and overcome habitual responses to fear, discomfort, and self-judgment; mobilize new coping responses to these common relapse triggers; increased awareness of internal visceral and affective responses and their impact; recognition of personal defense mechanisms; movement from intellectualized and rationalized self-expression to more authentic, feeling-based expression; and supported opportunities for clients to ask for what they need.

Sweat Lodge Ceremonies are performed by therapeutic staff with extensive training in the Lakota Sweat Lodge Tradition.

Toltec Recovery Wisdom at The Ranch

It is extraordinary, when you stop for a moment, to realize that the recovery movement is less than a century old. It was not until the early twentieth century that addiction was recognized as a disease, and even now we are only beginning to understand the nature of that disease, and its treatment. While many of us are content -with existing models of recovery, many more of us are looking for other ways to strengthen and enrich our recovery. We cannot rest in our search for new ways to heal the disease of addiction, as long as millions of addicts are suffering. Just as the wheel became the basis for human transportation, twelve-step models offer a foundation for ongoing investigation, but we cannot stop with those models, any more that transportation stopped with the invention of the wheel. Our search continues.

In our search, we look both to the latest research on human behavior, and to the ancient wisdom traditions of the past. One of these traditions was the Toltec wisdom tradition. The earliest Toltecs, or “artists of the spirit,” lived in the Americas about four thousand years ago. A civilization eventually grew up around their teachings, which flourished until about a thousand years ago.

Many civilizations are built around race, culture, or religion. The Toltec civilization was created for one purpose: to support each person in embodying love in every decision, every thought, every action, every moment. These teachings are not a religion; they are a-sophisticated and ancient understanding of human psychology, the sickness of our minds, and how that sickness can be healed through the practice of love. Their practices included many beautiful ceremonies to help us become more aware of how we create suffering in our lives, to practice forgiveness and surrender, to express gratitude, and to celebrate life. These teachings were passed down in individual families and small communities for a thousand years, and just in the past few decades, have been shared with the rest of humanity.

People of all religious faiths have found them helpful in their spiritual lives, and a growing number of people in recovery from addictions have found them to be a powerful tool for staying sober and creating positive, meaningful lives. The Toltec teachings are completely compatible with twelve step approaches to recovery, and like twelve-step meetings, ask only that each person “take what is useful, and leave the rest.” As part of our commitment to offer our clients every possible tool for their own recovery, the Ranch encourages clients to investigate the Toltec teachings, integrates those teachings into adjunct therapy groups, and invites Toltec teachers to offer weekend seminars as part of our therapeutic programs.

12 Step Trail

Somewhere under the trees lies a wooded path created for the 12 Step pilgrim. The way to the 12 Step Walk is not easy, but an open heart and a deliberate eye allow the beauty of this rustic scene to refresh the mind and body.

At the grove, tall trees shadow the entrance to what looks like a cozy primitive campsite.

Step One welcomes us:

“We admitted we were powerless over our addiction; that our lives had become unmanageable” reads a painted wooden sign hanging on a tree. A circle of logs forms seats around a fire pit. Someone has hung an old jawbone from some long-dead cow. Powerless indeed! Life and death, the Great Mystery—you can feel it here.

At Step Two, another circle of log stumps provide a rest for the journeyer. “Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.” Somehow, reading the comforting words in this setting has a profound effect. The Power is everywhere here.

In the next natural circle of trees, the camp at Step Three invites the visitor to make a “decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood God.” An old horseshoe hangs from a nail in a tree. One feels cupped in the hands of the Divine, and listens again to the silence out here.

At each stop along this trail,visitors and past residents have hung wind chimes, feathers, personal talismans and symbols of their journey into healing and wholeness, making sacred altars to leave behind for inspiration. Each Step has its own campsite, for sitting, talking, meeting the Higher Power, and a fire pit for symbolically (or literally!) burning off the wreckage of the past.

In this incredibly beautiful spot, under the shade, surrounded by silence, visitors can read the familiar words of wisdom and release at each Step, feel serenity wash over them – and breathe deeply, with gratitude.