Recreation Therapy at Provo Canyon School

Provo Canyon School has one of the finest Recreational Therapy (R.T.) programs for an adolescent residential treatment center in the United States of America. Fully licensed, trained, and skilled recreation therapists work directly with teams of youth and direct-care staff to provide powerful experiential treatment. Recreation therapists do work with individuals, with groups of teams, and with families when they visit Provo Canyon School. Recreation therapy includes a vast array of recreational and fun activities that are therapeutic in purpose. In other words, they aren’t just done to entertain or have diversionary fun, but to establish insights to emotional and behavioral problems, and to empower positive growth. Such activities at Provo Canyon School include high task on the ropes course, low tasks, games, primitive skills, rock climbing, rappelling, hiking, skiing, rafting, and camping. Some last for one hour, others can last for several days.

Many Provo Canyon School programs do recreation therapy as a stand-alone experience, instead of an integrated therapeutic tool. However, at Provo Canyon School, R.T. is viewed as part of a team concept, and actively integrates therapists, coaches, and students who are part of a team. Significant empowerment comes from these activities. Youth that come for care to Provo Canyon School are, by nature, active and aggressive, and being outside doing something adventurous or active usually brings a deeper involvement and greater insights. Some of the most powerful therapy is done on the trail or in camp or while participating in a stimulating or challenging experience. This article addresses experiences that often come from R.T. at Provo Canyon School.
While studying about geology at Provo Canyon School, a recreational therapist, a school teacher, and a therapist join together in taking a class of students on a hike in the Utah desert where they find geodes. Geodes (Greek geoides, "earthlike") are geological rock formations which occur in sedimentary and certain volcanic rocks. Geodes are essentially rock cavities or vugs with internal crystal formations or concentric banding. The exterior of the most common geodes is generally limestone or a related rock, while the interior contains quartz crystals and/or chalcedony deposits. Other geodes are completely filled with crystal, being solid all the way through. These types of geodes are called nodules.
The group finds a geode that is plain colored and quite ugly on the outside, but the inside is filled with beautiful purple Amethyst crystals. The Provo Canyon School therapists bring the boys together in a process group and ask them to describe how the geode is like themselves. The discussion carries that they can often feel or appear unattractive on the outside, but the inside, where they keep their deepest feelings hidden, can be quite beautiful. They learn to judge the inside of a person, instead of the outside. They learn how drug abuse, misbehavior, discouragement, depression, and other problems can make them appear dangerous or ugly on the outside, and cover the beautiful or attractive attributes that lie inside. Individual youth can begin to identify the things that are inwardly good and even great about them, and why they seem to try to keep those attributes hidden. Members of the Provo Canyon School group share the inner nice qualities that they see in each other, and this builds individual self-esteem, as well as team unity and trust. This opens up all kinds of discussions in individual and family therapy.
The Provo Canyon School group also finds desert marbles. These are dark, rust-colored, round stone-like objects that are actually formed out of desert sand. Sand contains the mineral “iron”, which gives it a reddish color. When water and iron mix, they form a compound called “iron oxide” that is hard and metal-like. Yet, inside the hard shell, they find softer sandstone that they can scrap out with a stick or even their fingernail. Again, the R.T. member of the Provo Canyon School group leads the boys in a discussion about life and hidden pain. They begin to see how, like the desert marble, they have begun to build up a hard, resistive shell around their softer inner feelings. The boys begin to see that just as the red iron mineral in the soft sand bled out and combined with oxygen and water to form a hard, protective shell, so have their painful experiences in life caused their need for love, acceptance, guidance, and achievement to bleed and combine with other things to form dangerous and self-destructive behaviors. This discussion brings insights to some of the events in their lives that have caused pain, discouragement, and hopelessness. For those boys who are recovering from drug abuse or another addiction, they can begin to see how the addiction has built a shell around them. Again, this opens the boys up to sharing some of their challenges, and helps them see that they still have a soft inner part that is good. This has the potential to restore hope and vision. It also helps them bond together as a team when they are back at Provo Canyon School.
Last of all, the Provo Canyon School group finds a piece of petrified wood. The teacher explains the process of petrification to the boys while they pass the piece of rock around and look closely at its molecular structure. The Provo Canyon School teacher explains that the wood was covered by volcanic ash some thousands of years ago. So covered, the wood underwent the influences of pressure and heat and water action. Water seeped down into the wood over time and slowly replaced each wood molecule with mineral (rock) molecules. The transfer was so precise that the image of the wood was completely preserved, right down to its bark, texture, grain, and growth rings. The Provo Canyon School teacher explains that over time, with heat, pressure, and water, a soft, pliable, usable piece of wood was turned into stone. The Provo Canyon School therapist asks the boys to think about if there is such a thing as human petrification. He asks them to identify the forces in their lives that have caused heat, pressure, and stress, and perhaps began to harden them. This may include drugs, lying, abuse, dishonesty, hopelessness, discouragement, and other things. They begin to see that if they continue this process over time, they may become like rocks, having only the image of a human being. They begin to identify those attributes that real men and women have that make them soft and useful to others around them.
These and other experiences like them can be powerful influences for insight and change in youth. They far outstrip the traditional couch therapy and normal classroom instruction to which they are necessarily subjected while back at Provo Canyon School. These types of experiences should be written down in a growth or change journal, and discussed in individual and family therapy sessions. It is crucial that the Provo Canyon School primary therapist, recreation therapists, and other direct care staff, including coaches and teachers (when it is appropriate) participate with the boys and girls in this type of experiential therapy, so that they can experience and process with the youth these precious growth moments.
Recreation therapy plays a specific and important role at Provo Canyon School. It is not just something Provo Canyon School staff use to entertain youthful clients and their parents. It is a significant part of the integrated plan of care that empowers a youth to make true growth in recognizing, committing, and actually making needed changes in his or her life.