May is Mental Health Awareness Month, and traumatic experiences play a big role in mental wellness.

But when you think of trauma informed care, zip lines and archery may not be the first things to come to mind.

But at Life Adventure Center, those sorts of adventurous challenges are how trauma affected individuals are finding healing and community out in nature.

Our Mackenzie Spink has more.

Over 56 nonprofits, schools and other programs from across the state have partnered with Life Adventure Center for their uniquely tailored programs.

Children and adults alike come out to the 575 acre facility for what looks like summer camp, but every participant at Life Adventure Center has one thing in common experiences with trauma.

Yeah, it's our mission to really work with people that have been affected by trauma.

So a lot of those partnerships are other nonprofits.

A couple of those are amazing.

So those are all kids that have a parent incarcerated that are participating in a mentoring program.

We also partner with the Big Brothers Big Sisters.

We partner with Step by Step.

We partner with refuge for women.

So these are all women who have endured human trafficking.

We work with alternative high schools and have a lot of different unique partnerships.

We work with ages eight and up.

Adverse childhood experiences, or Aces, are traumatic events that happen in a person's childhood that can potentially harm them into adulthood.

Kentucky has a higher rate of adverse childhood experiences than the national percentage.

44% of Kentucky children have at least one ace versus 38% of children nationally, according to the National Survey of Children's Health.

Life Adventure Center uses adventurous challenges to create positive experiences, as well as teach new coping skills for those affected by trauma.

We do an icebreaker pre initiative, kind of some warm up activities, make sure everybody is feeling physically and emotionally safe in the environment, and then we'll introduce a bigger activity, which might be equine assisted learning or archery, or climbing and ziplining.

Maybe they've never canoed before.

Maybe they've never been around a horse before.

Perhaps they're a little hesitant around heights.

So we really try to normalize what a stress response feels like in our bodies, and then give them techniques and tools to use in order to get through that moment of fear or increased adrenaline.

It's not done there.

Like, we know there's a lot of power in pausing after that and really reflecting, like asking some questions like that was something you didn't think you could do.

You just did it.

Like, how did you pull that about inside yourself?

And what else are you telling yourself in your life that you can't do?

So we're giving kids and adults and opportunities to kind of rewire the way that they're thinking, create some new neural pathways, and then repeat those experiences so that they can call on those in times of stress.

Julie says that while rock climbing and canoeing are an important part of the program, the influence of being in nature and the power of community is a necessary part of the experience.

We often balance it out with those lower intensity activities.

The labyrinth walking.

You know, we do a lot of nature connection.

A lot of communities we work with don't have access to nature, that there's an imbalance there.

We work with a lot of people in central Kentucky that have never had the opportunity to be near a horse, you know, so leveraging our amazing facilities with the groups that most need us, that haven't had the opportunity, we can bring a whole community out here, give them a chance to exhale, give them a chance to try some new activities that are building communities up, that are increasing that connection between communities, and that is building resilience so that when the next bad thing happens, they're able to recover more quickly.

Every partnership is different at Life Adventure Center.

Some groups come out for a weekend.

Schools may bring their students out many times throughout the school year.

Now that summer is here, the center also offers weeklong summer camps for Kentucky Edition.

I'm Mackenzie Spink.

A life adventure center has a long history in Kentucky.

Before merging with Life Adventure Camp in Estill County, it was known as the Cleveland Home, an orphanage in Brussels that was established shortly after the Civil War.