No Barriers Podcast Episode 195: Katelyn McKinney: Approaches to Wilderness Therapy

Podcast Ep194 Katelyn McKinney

Didrik Johnck: There's much to be said about the effect of wild places on the human psyche. Therapeutic, healing, transformative, a place to experience mindfulness. Even scary for some. However, our guest Katelyn McKinney simply sums it up like this, When our bodies are in a wild space, we are simply more at ease. She's been busy testing that idea by bringing groups of people into wild settings, creating supportive environments, and encouraging shifts in mindsets.
Veterans of the military dealing with post service challenges like trauma are a focus for her. She is one herself. In this episode, Katelyn shares her journey helping people navigate difficult life experiences, including complexities of identity, particularly for veterans transitioning to civilian life.

We also get into the scientific and indigenous wisdom behind connecting with nature and the overall philosophy of turning personal challenges into sources of strength and purpose. That's what we like to call alchemy.

Two final notes before we get into it. While Katelyn is a contracted guide for the No Barriers Warriors program, we want to be clear that the opinions and ideas she expresses in this interview are hers. Lastly, this episode contains content that may be alarming to some listeners including mentions of sexual assault.

Let's jump into the studio with Katelyn and our host Erik Weihenmayer. I'm producer Didrik Johnck, and this is the No Barriers Podcast.

Erik Weihenmayer: It's easy to talk about the successes, but what doesn't get talked about enough is the struggle. My name is Erik Weihenmayer. I've gotten the chance to ascend Mount Everest, to climb the tallest mountain in every continent, to kayak the Grand Canyon, and I happen to be blind. It's been a struggle to live what I call a no barriers life.
To define it, to push the parameters of what it means. And part of the equation is diving into the learning process and trying to illuminate the universal elements that exist along the way. And that unexplored terrain between those dark places we find ourselves in the summit, exists a map. That map, that way forward, is what we call No Barriers.

Hey everyone, this is Erik Weihenmayer. Welcome to another podcast, No Barriers podcast. I have my friend, Katelyn McKinney on this morning and, we're going to introduce her in a minute, but I just want to frame out like the reason for this podcast, and that is, that No Barriers has been the last 20 years working on changing people's mindsets, helping people who are affected by disability, by trauma, by challenge. To help them build a new mindset. And that's all about what we're going to talk about today. My origin story of no barriers. A lot of people have heard this before, but it was meeting Mark Wellman, who is a paraplegic and was the first paraplegic to climb El Capitan. He did 3000 feet of climbing. They said he did 7, 000 pull ups in eight days.
Mark invited me on a climb, of this cool tower in Moab, Utah. And he said, I have a, another guy who's going to climb with us. Hugh Herr. Hugh Herr is a double leg amputee. He had an accident in the mountains. He lost his legs and he had to build these prosthetic legs that helped him climb at a really high level.

So I got to know these guys and climb with them. And, I was just so intrigued by how, people get shattered and then how they rebuild, how they come back into the world and live a life that's fulfilling and adventuresome. And of course, there's an external part of that process. what are the innovations and techniques and technologies that people implement?
But also there's an internal piece, which is all about how to shift from one Kind of life to another, not to get stuck in the darkness.how to shift our mind, our mindset so that we can embrace this new life, not necessarily in the way that we did it before the injury or before the disability.
And so that's why I have Katelyn on today because Katelyn is this amazing, leader in our wilderness therapy. She's done dozens and dozens of,of, programs for no barriers. And so today we're going to talk about like some of the nuts and bolts of how this mindset thing works and, uh, and Katelyn, hey, how you doing?
So I rambled a lot there, but how are you doing?
Katelyn McKinney: Good morning, Erik. Hey, I love a good ramble.
Erik Weihenmayer: Yeah, it was a good ramble. But yeah, I wanted to set it up because look, you're a, you're a leader for us. You're a therapist. You're not like, and again, I'm going to be a little blunt here. You're not like a bullshit therapist who's like online, like preaching or saying mode, you know, therapy quotes, you are actually out in the field living this thing and bleeding it and trying to figure out how do you actually change lives? what works? What doesn't? You've had, years and years of trying to evolve what works and what doesn't. And so it's really cool to have you on today because I consider you literally like the best facilitator, the best leader that I've ever seen.
Well, I shouldn't say seen, heard. Maybe I should say heard. Yeah.
Did I stun you into silence?
Katelyn McKinney: So much fun. Yeah, you totally did. also I want to, like a quick linguistic, consideration as our program is it's therapeutic in nature, but it's actually not technically wilderness therapy. And same for me. I'm actually not a therapist.
I'm a social worker. But I do walk in the ways that you spoke about and, uh, yeah, I love this work. It's just, yeah, it's just the, it's the coolest confluence of, how I want to be able to participate in this whole, like, sticky, ookie, gushy, disillusioning, exciting, expanding, living thing we're all doing.
Erik Weihenmayer: That should be our new mission of No Barriers. Gooey, gooey, gooey. What were all the adjectives? I don't know.
Katelyn McKinney: I got a PhD. I'm not paying attention either. I don't know.
Erik Weihenmayer: Yeah. Cool.okay. So yes, we're going to get to that idea of the difference between a No Barriers program and therapy and all that kind of stuff.
At first, tell us a little bit about your background, because as I said, I think you're the real deal. And so you have, all kinds of experiences that have converged and come together in terms of your background and your training. So just walk us through a little bit of that.
Katelyn McKinney: Yeah. My, uh, you know, born and raised in, in Brooklyn, New York. I have an amazing mom who is so in touch with her joy.
she's just this person that can find play and fun in, in traffic. Like she's just stellar. Everywhere
Erik Weihenmayer: she goes.
Katelyn McKinney: Yeah. Yeah.
Erik Weihenmayer: So you inherited your joyfulness.
Katelyn McKinney: Yeah. Oh, for sure. I learned it from her. Yeah, I was, I, yeah, I was born into that. My, my friends have, multiple friends have been adopted by my mom.
they've, yeah, she's stellar. yeah, I lived,all over the world at different times. I've spent some time doing, social work as a rape crisis counselor in the emergency room, for adults and children. I spent some time, uh, specializing in anti human trafficking, doing some kind of intense stuff on, Kashmiri border and, in Nepal.
and,after a bit, I kind of needed some time for myself, which the work caught up and it was really nice because it was in like gig stints. So you'd sprint and you'd have downtime. And in the downtime I would just like wander around outside, ill prepared. I would just go out in Nepal and hop on one of these treks in my like fake North Face gear, and rely on the fact that most of the folks that I would run into would watch their soap operas in Hindi. And because I could speak Hindi, like I had a slightly safer, more behind the curtain experience as a foreigner. And they would just like bring me in and show me the cool path to go on.
And yeah, I got to have this experience where I would trust fall into humanity. Just to remember that there were parts of it that were really, worthy of that trust and really beautiful and that most people are trying their best and are good and kind. Yeah. So I kept coming to that as my, how do I come back into alignment with myself?
Like, how do I build that muscle of coming back to my, Connection to the ultimate goodness and that
Erik Weihenmayer: makes sense because you're doing social work, right? You're getting an education on being a social worker. You're working in that field. And then on your in your time off, you're just trying to dive into life to, experiment and see if these things you're learning are real and work, right?
Katelyn McKinney: Yeah, and it was kind of funny too, because I was doing a lot of stuff that you would think would be how you would go about getting trafficked. Like I, I got a gig once, working with this guy who, I did have a friend look into him before I showed up. Jeff Blum was this, investigator who, I think he was a chief of police in Chicago, but he was doing an undercover brothel investigation in Pokhara. And I was living in Mumbai at the time.
Erik Weihenmayer: And Pokhara is a city in Nepal.
Katelyn McKinney: Yeah. Yeah. and so I got on a plane and showed up in the middle of the night and hopped on the back of his motorcycle and disappeared into the mountains. So I could go help with human trafficking resistance. And, there's a lot of, there's a lot of ways in which, some of the medicine what, could look like the poison, but it was a really incredible time.
And, yeah, I, every time I took a risk in, on people and on terrain, I was able to mitigate it in ways where I could really access the good. And it just, it felt like such medicine. And I came to this place where I was like, all right, I, this is my medicine now. Like, how do I start selling what I'm buying?
Like, how do I get into this like wilderness therapy work? what is that? What does that whole field even look like?
Erik Weihenmayer: But in those early days, you're talking about girls who have been trafficked, into sex workers and to like slaves in a way. So what did what was your experience there working with the, mostly girls, right?
Katelyn McKinney: girls and boys as well. Yeah.
Erik Weihenmayer: Yeah.
Katelyn McKinney: Um, it, it so happens that I was working as a rape crisis counselor and then ended up in sex trafficking work specifically, anti trafficking work specifically. I, I would be, doing the world a disservice to not point out that's actually like the smaller portion of the kind of trafficking that happens in the world.
So what I was doing was really supporting the people who were local, who had the capacity to understand, the nuance and really reverse engineer for me, some of the really problematic, dispositions people can bring into trafficking.
Like I worked with Jeff because his model was consensual. And they didn't take people out of trafficking, even children, if they didn't want to be taken. And that can kind of blow people's minds, because you would think that anything that is not trafficking is better. But actually, with time on the ground, you learn that there are a lot of worse options.
And that's often where kids go when they've been taken from trafficking and, the foreigners feel like they've completed their gig and there isn't enough support system for them to make that really jarring change back into just like being a kid in normal society.
Erik Weihenmayer: All right. So I love what you're talking about here because it is an example of this point that I'm making, which is, Like you've been out there in the field learning like some counterintuitive things like, Hey, you know what? If a person doesn't want to be rescued, Like maybe their situation is tolerable, right? That's counterintuitive stuff that you would only learn through experience, right?
Katelyn McKinney: Yeah. And it's a controversial conclusion. not everybody who's in this work feels this way, but I think that when I left the field, Amnesty International was aligned to this model.
That was also like a long time ago. but I really feel like you're right. Like fundamentally the concept of moving in consent, and making sure that, people are trusted to know for themselves, what is their medicine in that moment, and to give them space to opt in and opt out of what's available without me being attached to needing there to be a certain outcome or a certain type of engagement.
Just like trusting that people can move in ways that work for wherever they are for right now.
Erik Weihenmayer: And how did that lead you into your work with No Barriers?
Katelyn McKinney: I was in Thailand and I saw, I started like looking up like wilderness therapy type work. And I saw, that Sierra Club Outdoors had a job posting for someone who would be the director of a veterans program, a veterans outdoor program. And I wrote that person who had that job listing and was like, Hey, I'm not qualified, but I would love to replace the person that you hired now.
So can you give me some time to reverse engineer, like, how do I get to that spot? Because I don't want to waste my time getting like a wilderness therapy master's degree if that's not actually what I need to function in the way that I would like to in this work. And Stacey Bare. emailed me back and I was so stoked because I had this chick who was emailing me all of this awesome information and she signed her email, stoked Stacey, and I was like, oh hell yeah, I'm signing my email like that from now on.
And then I get on the call with Stacey, she's going to talk me through this whole thing and she is such a dude. She's not a woman at all.
Erik Weihenmayer: Stacey's a man.
Katelyn McKinney: Stacey is a big man. Stacey is, he's a veteran. Yeah. He's been, he's a Bare of a man.
Erik Weihenmayer: He's been big in the outdoor veteran space.
Katelyn McKinney: Stacey Bare then proceeded to not only coach me through what it could look like to come into this work, but he really tenderly and like non assertively offered things that he was finding helpful and things that he found avoidable in the field and just had this incredibly, yeah, consensual way of moving through sharing information that I had not really experienced that much in the outdoor world or in working with veterans. there was just such a tenderness for such a big burly dude And that, that mentorship has totally continued, in the last, I don't know what, maybe it's been like nine years or something, ten years, I have turned to him and been like, hey buddy, I'm thinking about making this big Denali expedition, what do you think?
. So yeah, I'd say that my, my entry into this world, like maybe it would have happened some other way, some other how, but like Stacey Bare was just such an essential part of that for me.
And I have such deep gratitude and appreciation for that human and the work that he does.
Erik Weihenmayer: So that led you to know, Barriers then after that, after the Sierra Club veteran program?
Katelyn McKinney: No. I worked for a different, veterans organization as their first female guide, and that went a little sideways. And then, I was, had somebody reach out to me and ask me if I would be interested in working for No Barriers because they were, really hungry for some guides.
And I got on that interview pretty disinterested in the gig.
To be honest, I really, I interrogated them because I had such a difficult experience in the last org, I really, I grilled them on how, what are your systems for when things go wrong? What does that look like? Like, how do you protect your people and your program?
You have humans helping humans where vulnerability and strength and weakness meet. Like when that goes awry, what does that look like? What can you tell me how you've navigated that historically?
Erik Weihenmayer: Hey everyone, this is Erik, and I just want to remind you that No Barriers is not just a podcast.
It's also a movement and an organization. Our mission is to empower people with challenges, to break through barriers, to discover purpose, and to find ways of elevating their lives and their communities. If you want to support our work, go to NoBarriersUSA. org slash donate.
So what I'm hearing is, what I'm hearing is the idea that like, let's take veterans as an example.
You, a lot of the veterans that come to the No Barriers program, they're kind of like broken in some way. All of us are broken a bit, right? But they're sometimes a little bit lost. Sometimes they're on the fringe. Sometimes they're in these dark places, these stagnant places. And, and, and when you bring fragile people together into,this program, this community, and you're asking them to, to work on themselves, right?
Things can go wrong, I imagine.not I imagine, I've seen them go wrong. I've seen a lot of things go wrong and it's just fraught with things that could go wrong like every step of the way.And I've known this, intuitively that like when I formed my first team and we went off and did Ama Dablam, like we are really good climbers, but I knew that we weren't a team yet.
And I knew that like teams aren't just, they don't just happen, they don't just, you don't just, sometimes you might get lucky, but they're carefully methodically built. And so you do that very well out in the field at No Barriers. How do you build that safe, you call it a container, you could call it a culture or community or anything, but how do you build it so it is safe for people?
It's funny as you spoke the word, broken didn't quite land for me. And I was trying to think of what word I would want to use instead. I feel like there are people who are walking with injuries. I like that a little bit better, because then it doesn't feel like an identity. It doesn't feel like a designation of value, loss, or, capacity to function. Cause we can,
Yeah, that makes sense. If you say you are broken, that's not a, you know, that is,
Katelyn McKinney: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Erik Weihenmayer: Yeah, I get it.
Katelyn McKinney: The stuff that's the most juicy for me right now is all of this really cool stuff that I keep unraveling and unfolding and finding in meditation and learning from these amazing teachers.
One of them is being really careful about narrative. Being really careful about like how tightly we hold on to certain terms or certain identity designations. Um, anyway, so, uh, about tending to safety in the container, and there's a, the linguistic difference there is very intentional, tending to safety instead of the assumption of safety.
Because as long as I'm gathering humans, I can't promise safety. As long as the world exists in a way in which some people are prioritized and some people live in greater danger. I can't promise safety., What I can guarantee is my highest intention is to serve that safety And that I will be in service of that safety before I will be in service of my own comfort.
And that's part of how I introduce, this experience. You have a bunch of people who have gone through Phase 1 of No Barriers, which is a month of the digital interface. They get little,snippets. of the online Kool Aid that they sip from home. and then they show up like a total trust fall into, wherever it is that we're operating that trip and they get to meet the guide team in the
Erik Weihenmayer: wilderness somewhere or at our camp or something. So why is safety important though? Like, why is, yeah, what are you doing and why is, why do you use this word tending towards safety or this phrase tending towards safety?
Katelyn McKinney: Tending to safety. Like you tend to a garden. I find that, we don't know how guarded we are until we have an opportunity to put it down. And at the end of every expedition, and sometimes throughout the expedition, I have veterans that will come up and express just this like deep, juicy gratitude that they had no idea that it could be so good.
They had no idea they could feel so seen and held and safe. Because the assumption that just because you have fellow veterans together that they're all going to feel safe and cohesive and camaraderie. That's a totally inaccurate assumption and many veterans come with injuries that are from their fellow veterans or from the institution of the military or from the way that their identity authentically doesn't fit within the very narrow and rigid expectation of what it is to be a soldier, an airman, or a sailor.
Erik Weihenmayer: And that's sometimes the reason why people are coming there, right? Because they're like, the ways they're interacting in the world, it's not working, right? So they want a new, they want a space where they can experiment, right?
And in a safe way, with a new identity or just like little changes that they might want to make. And as the leader, you promote the environment where they can do that, right?
Katelyn McKinney: Yeah. Yeah. It's incredible. Some people are just coming for a dope backpacking trip and then they get. Right. And then they get to have way more. And I don't fault them for that. if I didn't have access to a dope backpacking trip and suddenly it was like for free out there, yeah, sure. I'll do your hugsy feelsy online crap and then show up and get my really cool Colorado trip. And I totally know that those folks show up and you know what?
We win them over. they get. And even if like at first it's just like secondhand vulnerability or secondhand, pliability of identity or play, like even if like for them, they're still in their like guarded spot, by day five, there's just this kind of melting that happens. And yeah, so folks come into that space and if you can set the container, I think the most important thing that I do, Erik, is setting the expectations.
I first introduced my why, my absolute, highest intention is this, like, fallible creature in the world,which is I want to be part of witnessing people. I want to be part of propagating sovereignty.
I want people to be in their own power and to see like how much they can exist with autonomy in this world and what they can create with it. And that means showing up in some of the shittiest storms that life can offer. And I will help them hold the rod to gather that electricity for however they want to power their house next,
and sometimes it's really subtle. Sometimes it's. just the subtle binding of life that got closer and more claustrophobic and relationships that were built with a roof where you weren't really allowed to expand or And you just quietly can't take a deeper breath. And that can be a lot harder to see, and that can hide in very successful lives and people who outwardly seem very well.
And so like in this space, you create this container where you've got all of the kinds of people. Working with the Warriors program of No Barriers is by far the most diverse groups that I get the privilege of being a part of, and that's awesome because they do a really, No Barriers does a great job of really looking at the applicants and trying to create groups that are as diverse as the military experiences, which is one of, I think it's the most diverse employee base is the military.
I might be making that up, but I've heard that.
Erik Weihenmayer: Yeah, no, I think so.
Katelyn McKinney: And so when you. When you think about that, I have to be able to create a container that can hold all of these people, where they are, with flexibility for the fact that, their emotional regulators might not be calibrated, or they might be working in really, isolated lives and this is going to really test their capacity.
And how do I get them all to like buy into losing autonomy? Cause my request of them is to say, Hey, as part of our expectations for this space, like we're not going to make fun of each other's identities in any way.
Erik Weihenmayer: I remember that in your intro, by the way, I just want to jump in and say, I was part of your, program, your expedition this summer.
I got to tag along for this, for the virtual stuff in the beginning, the phase one, and then the backpacking trip through Colorado, through Northern Colorado, and then some of the phase three stuff that we'll get into. But so I listened to you create that safe container and talk about, what you just said there.
And I thought it was really powerful to set those expectations. So yeah, run us through those, like that humor thing that you, you mentioned.
Katelyn McKinney: Yeah. I actually have my, notes right here just so I, as you can tell, I really care about this stuff. And so I can get lost in the sauce a little, so I'm going to keep myself on track a little.
so I start with the expectation chat with explaining, our intention as a guide team and just like verify, like we are stoked to be here. Yeah. And, speak to the fact that we practice self aware leadership and self regulation and that if we're in a circumstance where we feel like we're emotionally, like feeling emotion build up, we will pause and tell people like, Hey, I'm feeling like some tension in my chest.
I'm going to take five and then come back to this so that we can respect the moment and wield our authority appropriatelY. And, just ask that they. Collaborate with us in tending to this space, yeah,
Erik Weihenmayer: and let me set the picture for everyone. You're a five foot three,
Katelyn McKinney: I'm five foot. I'm actually a five foot woman
Erik Weihenmayer: who's talking to these big, burly soldiers. Right. And so we'll get into that too, man. That must be a little bit intimidating at first, but yeah, keep going. Sorry.
Katelyn McKinney: Uh,I think the other thing is, when we introduce ourselves, is saying, hey, this is what you can expect of us.
You can expect that, we are trained professionals in navigating the physical terrain of this environment. We are highly experienced in working with a wide variety of people, specifically veterans, specifically folks that are carrying trauma and divergent in various ways. We don't shy away from difficult conversations.
We are going to set up a set of expectations for this container that we are going to be in for five days, and it is going to be a big ask. It's going to be asking you to discontinue behaviors that are normal and totally okay in other spaces. just so we can create something that is very different from the typical day to day, which is part of how you leave here with a different experience than the typical day to day.
And we know that's not a natural setting, and so there will be times that we will call you back in, and we'll do that with respect. We're not, we don't expect you to start on the mark, but it can be incredible to arrive there. And I guarantee you that even the most gritty bro, like I had this one guy off from Boston who is a dear friend now, who we asked them not to swear a ton, but you can swear.
I definitely swear, but just not a ton and not to make fun of each other and their humor and stuff and he just stood up and he was like I don't fucking know why you even invited me here this was a bad fucking idea and it was just like Dave sit down buddy. Come on. Come here. We love you get in here and he ended up being the biggest teddy bear of them all and was the one who like tended to his fellow veterans with such care and vulnerability and just, is amazing. He's just a great guy.
Erik Weihenmayer: I love that example. And my brain at least goes to like, I want to know the practical piece of this, right? So like, the humor part is really interesting because a lot of military folks,I'm a civilian. So a vet, you can come over and punch me if you want. But, what I have observed is when military folks get together, they're like busting on, you know, you're a meathead, you're a jarhead, you're from the Air Force, so you're like an egghead and, you're a grunt and they're busting balls constantly, right?
And, and I totally get that because I'm on all the expeditions I've been on, there's tons of ball busting, right? But you ask people not to do that. Humor can be elevated. It can be different, right? So yeah. Tell me just a tiny bit about that. Cause that's cool.
Katelyn McKinney: Yeah. It's a challenge, right? Like we all have our baseline jokes, especially for the military community.
Everybody's eating crayons, everybody's dumb noners and like whatever. I don't often hear a military joke that actually makes me laugh because they're all the same and they're just not that interesting and funny. And so I just challenged the group, Hey, leave that off the table.
And here's why. The why is that people are here with injuries of othering. There are people here who maybe didn't see combat and they feel like they didn't serve enough or they did see combat, but they're not the one that got shot at and they feel like they didn't serve enough or, they wanted a different job and couldn't get it because their ASVAB score was not high enough.
So they do feel like intellectually and an intellectual inferiority of some variety and so like in an opportunity to like really come together humor about people is so othering and it's really ingrained in how we related to each other in the military and what's really cool about this experience in No Barriers is while we do bring veterans together this is about the after.
You can't actively be something you once were. The title of veteran is past tense. Yeah, you can hold it as like part of your experience and it can inform the way you walk through the world, but you can't really live it as a verb. And so to be, to only use the ways of relating to the world that really worked in the military is really an isolating experience after service.
And it can do things like increase your likelihood for suicidality in the extreme end, but in the more nuanced end, it can make you really rigid and really hard to be partnered to, or to be parented by, or to be a neighbor of. And those really amazing systems for making someone a great soldier can, be really hard to unlearn and look at critically. So as a group, when we bring people together, if we, for me and my perspective, that I think is really unique about No Barriers, we could just let everybody bro down super hard and relive the old days. and that would be fine. There would still be value in that. There would still be camaraderie in that. For me, what I find more interesting is the like, what happens in this space when we clear the air of that? Like
Erik Weihenmayer: when you say, Hey, we're not going to do those old patterns. We're going to try fresh, new patterns and see if that, improves your life in the world. Right.
Katelyn McKinney: Yeah. And like how you relate to each other. So when we do our introductions, we ask people not to do their branch and their rank and because it kind of creates conversational hierarchy and you're like triangulating based on your old title and nobody in your neighborhood of civilians is going to care that you were a major.
And you're gonna need to use these other components of this expansive creature that you are to relate to them. So what's, what excites you? What do you nerd out hard on? What do you get pulled towards? Let's find ways to relate to each other.
Erik Weihenmayer: What you're asking is so hard, though. It's so fascinating because you're saying like, Okay, don't, let's not judge ourselves, by our rank, our military experience. it's all part of our lives, and it's wonderful. But,and we're not going to identify ourselves in terms of our political viewpoints and our religious viewpoints.
Right? Those are all perfectly wonderful, but like you're asking people to try to identify at a human level. Which is really hard.
Katelyn McKinney: It's really hard.
Erik Weihenmayer: But to take all those conventions away, right?
Katelyn McKinney: But it works. I've been doing this, I can't remember if it's eight or nine years with No Barriers, but, I've been, for the last six years, I feel like the, since coming into a senior role, and doing a ton of research. I'm a mega nerd on, on all, like, all things neuroplasticity, all things, brain body, mind body connection. And what's been so cool about working with No Barriers is every year I come back with a new data point that kind of dissembles something we were doing and offers something new.
And every year I get to try it out in the field and see how it works. So we've really calibrated, into this thing. So, yeah, so set the expectations, and We ask people to protect and tend to themselves. So if they need rest, if they need food, if they need help grounding, if they need a sounding board,they can have access to all of that.
Um, if, you know, we don't need people to come in as super busy. Super extroverts, or like outdoor experts, you know, if they need to like have time away from the group, I will feel so joyous for them if they step up and just walk away from the group for a moment and take what they need. And they're like moving in honor of how they feel and what they've got going on.
The other things we ask them to do is be mindful of negativity. we're not Pollyannish. We don't need you to be like, Oh, I fucking love wet sneakers. No, what sucks is allowed to suck. But also be aware of how often you offer a negative observation as the way that you relate to other people.
And maybe if you take that off the table, you don't know what to say. Just leave that. Leave that space open and see who offers something because somebody might be teetering on the fence of having a good time or wanting to quit and you could offer that negativity and tip them or you could just walk with them.
Erik Weihenmayer: Dive into this idea.
Katelyn McKinney: A couple of other things we ask folks is to be mindful of, flooding in storytelling.
And it's really important to normalize why flooding happens, when you ask people not to do it. Because, if you're living in a space where you don't get to cop to your deeper feelings and you don't get to cop to what you're struggling with. When you're finally in a spot where you can speak to it, the gushing forward of all of the stuff, can be a really natural response to that because it's either like on or off.
But we have a group of, 15 folks that are like, need a little space to be able to speak. And also we really want to, avoid traumatizing people with your story because we can cause secondary trauma. there are ways in which you can get people together and create an, an environment of vulnerability and do a bunch of harm.
Erik Weihenmayer: So this is another one of those counterintuitive things that like, like you were talking about earlier, right? Cause you think okay, this is a chance for people to come together and really dive into their trauma. And fully talk about it, right? Every detail, every gory bit of it, and it backfires, right?
It actually throws people into a hole. It re triggers them, right? And so that, that's probably something, that's probably a mistake that, that a lot of people make, right? And you, and I think you have the funniest, It's really quite funny your phrase that you say, this is not the trauma Olympics. I love that phrase.
I think it's very blunt, but it's so telling. So yeah, talk about that.
Katelyn McKinney: Yeah. and again, like not trying to give anybody a hard time. This was a hundred percent the way we did it at No Barriers when I first started with this company. Erik, we had a, I remember a three hour past ceremony where it was detail trauma after detail trauma and people were totally activated and dissociated and feeling in like emotional distress.
And then we're like, okay, go to bed. Does anybody like, we just didn't have the tools.
Erik Weihenmayer: And you're diving into the idea that this is, that's the reason it's not therapy. Like you are not a counselor bringing somebody through a therapy session, right? This is present focused and future focused in terms of,
Katelyn McKinney: Yeah, and that's what we've come to, right?
And I'm really proud of the fact that we, as an organization, when I've brought like, Hey, I don't know that this is our best method. can we try shifting this way? Like we've done some really amazing shifts. . So yeah, so you offer the normalizing flooding and then you'd let them know, Hey, if that does happen. Yeah. I will interrupt you.
Erik Weihenmayer: Yeah, you need a moment. I'll open the guides quicker through the process,
Katelyn McKinney: We will pause you and give you a moment to like, just catch your breath. And that way you know that if you like your storytelling and you're like wondering if you've gone too far, you can check in with us visually and we'll give you the like wrap it up or like you're okay.
Um, and also for the group, nobody's gonna be held hostage to a story that is uncomfortable or taking up too much of the limited airspace that we have.
Erik Weihenmayer: It could re traumatize them as well by just like sitting there and having to listen to all that.
Katelyn McKinney: Yeah, and then if you get into the brain science of it all, memory is actually kind of bullshit, right?
Like, people were interviewed on what happened to them during 9 11 and their stories were like 20 percent accurate and they took polygraph tests that showed that they really thought they were 100 percent on the money. And, and so, like, we, we have these little snippets, right? And then we store them, and then when we recall them, we add all of these extra details to flesh it out so that the story is cohesive.
But a lot of that is actually creation. If you tell a story in, like, first person shooter, detail, you're actually kind of like expanding that memory and then you're bringing it into your prefrontal cortex, which determines how safe you feel right here and right now.
Erik Weihenmayer: And it solidifies that memory. So now you're even more entrenched in that kind of identity, right?
Katelyn McKinney: Yeah, it's a bigger footprint and also it feeds the loop of this is how I relate to people on the deepest level is only by trauma bonding, by sharing this thing that actually doesn't have to do with who I am as a human and what drives me and how I want to be in the world.
It's something that happened to me that I survived. Yeah. Which is a part of that, but it's not all of that. So yeah, so we ask people to pull back from that. We ask them not to give, advice giving. That, unsolicited advice. we ask conversations to be consensual.
Erik Weihenmayer: Or as we say, mansplaining.
Katelyn McKinney: Yeah. Well, there's also womansplaining. Womansplaining. And peoplesplaining, and yeah. There's all that. We ask, yeah, the jokes to be off of each other's identities. And then I explicitly say what I mean by that so that folks really know, what we're talking about, not mocking each other really at all.
Things that are racist, sexist, homophobic, fat phobic, ableist, or sanest. And I like to see how many people like their eyebrows kind of like twitch. That's a lot. and then I like bring up like, our society prefers people who are able to very easily fit into a sequence of reality that we've all said is the reality.
And if you have a differing perception of the world, and if you are diagnosed with something that is a differing, processing of some variety, right? Then you get deprioritized as less valuable. And, I like the ability to be wielding leadership in a way that allows for people to cop to having these different, obstacles and, and, neurodivergence and, whatever their thing is, allowing for that to not be something that impedes their worth.
Erik Weihenmayer: I just love that. that's the part that Just got me so excited about this world class program. And again, this isn't an advertisement for no barriers. This could be for anyone, but the fact that you do create that container and,and if you are asking people to be vulnerable and, this is an environment where you can change and you can grow and you can try new behaviors and identities out well, then you better feel safe while you're doing it.
Katelyn McKinney: And naming that, we can't guarantee safety, right? that we're going into a space that has risk and it has terrain risk, which is like the super obvious stuff that we've predicted for in our,our planning ahead of time.
And we've talked about every single risk that is essential to the expedition and how we mitigate it or how we accept it and what the expected probability is of that risk and then the expected catastrophe of that risk at its worst and yada, yada, yada. But there is risk.
Erik Weihenmayer: There is risk because you're taking people into the mountains, right? So why the wilderness piece, Katelyn? Like why not do this in a nice, safe conference room?
Katelyn McKinney: Okay, so I'm going to pause for one second because I do have just a couple more things on the expectations talk. Okay, got it. My, one of my highest intentions in this talk, Erik, is my hope is that there are other people who are doing work like this who can borrow pieces of this that really work or who can like later and say, I heard you say this, can I say, I don't agree at all?
Or can I say I've tried this instead and it really works. I want this to be a cross pollination opportunity.
Erik Weihenmayer: and again, Don't feel like pressure because this is only a taste, right? You know what I mean? We can't, in an hour, we can't give everyone everything, but just we're giving them tastes into these different topics.
yeah.
Katelyn McKinney: I've only got a couple more things on this list. we're just not going to talk politics. Usually if you offer like, hey guys, do you want to just not have to talk about politics for five days? I don't see anybody ever fighting me on that. Um, and, and the thing is have a chance to build emotional equity with each other.
And then later you can spend some of that equity when you wander into territory where you don't agree in spaces that are like highly polarized. And then you can it can actually really humanize others for you because you're like, wait a second, I agree with this person wholeheartedly on the, their basic whys of being alive.
But we came to these really different conclusions and that's a pretty cool thing to explore later once you already like each other.
Erik Weihenmayer: I was thinking in the trip that I did with you all this summer, like if we had started at a different point, Hey, let's all talk about our religious backgrounds in our politics.
Some of those people in that team, I probably wouldn't have liked, but because we were able to interact in a new way, I loved them all. Like we all just got to know each other as human beings. It was really super powerful.
Katelyn McKinney: Totally. I have one of them that's on, from your expedition, that's on my Facebook that, disagrees. vehemently, with some of the things that I post, and it's nice to have so much love for that person, to back up the patience that it requires to bridge the gap,
and I'm so glad to have them in my orbit, because I find them to be a marvelous human.practice self regulation if you, struggle with self regulation, if you feel yourself like really getting activated and you actually don't have a way of working on that, you can ask one of us guides to co regulate with you.
And that can be as simple as just like breathing together. It can also be a practice of, of R.A.I.N., which is like recognizing the emotion. Allowing it to be there. Investigating why it's there and then Nurturing the fact that it's okay to exist and it's not like who you are. You are not mad.
You're experiencing anger.and then just two more things left. And I think this is, these are the two greatest things. So our last two things is, if people are curious about each other's identities,It can be really awesome to learn about other people's cultures and their lives and the way they're different from yours.
If you have a question that directly relates to somebody's identity and you're not sure if you know how to ask it in a way that would land well, I offer myself as somebody who they could test that out with, and maybe we workshop it for a second. And if you have a question that's directly about somebody's identity, you've got to ask it in a way where they're allowed to say they don't want to answer it.
You really have to be okay with a no. And lastly, this is the most important thing, Erik. This is my absolute favorite thing that if anybody just only wants to tune in to one tidbit, it is the pineapple. The pineapple is how we help people experience this space in and come into behaviors that are brand new to them. without feeling like they're a terrible person for when they biff it, And so the pineapple is offered to the entire group to use their, and it's multidirectional. the pineapple knows no rank. I can be pineappled. And I sometimes do get pineappled because I'm also a human that has hard time with filters sometimes,
but the pineapple is the word that you can just say that stops the conversation.
So if you're in a conversation and it. It feels like it's being pulled either like too negatively or the humor is becoming like hyper sexualized or really demeaning or, or the storytelling is getting to be that like too detailed trauma dive, any, anything that feels like it's one of those pulls.
Erik Weihenmayer: I remember we did it to, not to pick on anyone in particular, but I think somebody was starting to tell like a joke. joke about a trans person and we're like, ah, pineapple. I don't really want to hear that. That's not what we're here to do.
Katelyn McKinney: Yeah. Yeah. that was absolutely one of the examples. and, it's an incredible way to bring everyone in as a, as an active bystander. And you just say, if somebody says pineapple, it's not up for debate.
and then you don't have to be someone who has to think of, what do I say to stop this conversation from looking like a sensitive punk? and you can pineapple on behalf of the group. So it doesn't just have to be that you are sensitive. It's that you are actually protecting this space. And when you use the verbiage of protection, people get really excited to participate because they really truly do want to be in service of the space and the opportunity.
yeah.
Erik Weihenmayer: That is a great list, Katelyn. That is so awesome. I love the list. Okay. I have a couple of follow up questions to that. One is you talked about the military and look, I, this is why we're working with veterans.
my dad is a Marine. he had 119 missions over Vietnam in his A 4 Skyhawk., I'm not dissing the military culture at all because you train people to fight, to be warriors. And that is incredibly helpful for our country when, there's a threat.People are constantly talking about how difficult it is for veterans to transition into becoming civilians, right?
And it almost becomes a cliche where you're like, we just accept that, but you've explained that really well, that maybe the thing makes you a really good soldier,makes it hard to be a good civilian. Like you explain it better because I'm going to botch it.
Katelyn McKinney: I think One of, I think that, I think part of it is that as a society, we thought that there was a really big difference between capital T trauma and lowercase T trauma. So like the trauma of combat is incredibly different than the trauma of a miscarriage or the trauma of being othered because of your race or your identity of some other variety. And actually, it turns out that in the neuroplastic brain research world, those lowercase T traumas affect the brain very similarly to the way the big T's affect us. And I've actually found that in working with as many veterans as we have in these, this like chunk of time, I've found that folks are not usuallythe, if they have combat trauma or like very military based trauma, there's, usually something else that seems to be a bigger driver of their like tenderness of having had food insecurity as a child or an abusive parent or having been the recipient or perpetrator of sexual violence and all these different ways in which we can hold, injuries of like hurt and then injuries of shame for how we hurt others. And, All of that gets folded into identity and it becomes really hard to have self compassion and compassion for others. Because we have to like other the world and for veterans specifically, we have told them that nobody else gets it except veterans.Which is, I think it's a pretty big disservice, because it, it relies on a couple of falsehoods or things that we now know are false.
A, two people can go through the exact same, humvee explosion and have very different responses to it, and very different experiences of it. And the other part is that what we're trying to convey in that is that it matters. what happened, the details of what happened matters more than how it impacted you.
And I find the how it impacted you to be the juiciest part because it's about the human that's here right now. And humans on this planet, I don't think you get to get through a life without feeling scared, without feeling othered, without feeling like you're not going to belong, without feeling like, you've got something to be ashamed of or something that hurts your worth.
Or, these injuries of, of betrayal to self, which seemed to be like the deepest. Like those things are part of the human experience, whether you put on a uniform or not. And if you can allow yourself permission to let that be true for you, then you have 99 percent of the American population open to you as people who can walk with you.
And that's an, I think that's an incredible thing to allow people permission for.
Erik Weihenmayer: It's one of the fundamental things that I think about at No Barriers is this idea of challenge is challenge. And if we can come together as a community, it's really powerful to sit at a table, like at a summit, one of our No Barriers summits, and see a kid who's blind, who's, never been off the sidewalk.
He's never been on a trail, and he's like kind of scared and he's had his own sense of alienation, like along with, a mom who's a single parent who's just been trying to struggle to raise their family in the right way and a veteran who's had trauma. Like, I find that at a macro level, all those things are relatable and connectable.
and could actually be great healing for us all, and I think that's what I'm hearing you say, right?
Katelyn McKinney: Oh, absolutely. Erik, I think that, one of the things I'm looking forward to is, spaces in which we can have, everybody together, And I've had, I facilitated something with my company like two weeks ago and I had a gal tell me that she has only gone to like meditation spaces that were just with women because that was where she felt, she could access safety.
And, because we had men in this experience, and then we had an experience where people got to share their experience as in their lives. And, without going into too much detail, for her, that was one of the most valuable parts of the experience was being able to, see the vulnerability and the pain and the joy and the desire to protect.
And, the feelings, all of these things that were part of her human experience. That she thought was exclusive to her gender.
Erik Weihenmayer: Yes.
Katelyn McKinney: And all these little lines that we draw to, to understand ourselves, to orient, to how, our identities interact with the world and our narratives. it's not that, we're all just humans, man. that's not it because the world doesn't interact with us equally. There's something juicy about the connected to all-of-it-ness.
Erik Weihenmayer: It seems like, it's another one of these things that can backfire. Like that, that, we have people like wrapped up in their identity of being a veteran when really and maybe that's the starting point, right?
Like you have a veteran trip because you want to, you're just at a point in your life where you want to relate and connect and find your community again with other veterans, but at the same time, it can also like make you self absorbed or myopic in terms of your challenge, right? Like my challenges is so unique.
No other group could relate to it, right? When I'll being a little bit blunt here, it's no, we've been experiencing challenge from the beginning of human history and we're all connected. We're all part of the same club, right? That's the way I see it.
Katelyn McKinney: Yeah. Yeah. And there's some people that are going to have feathers ruffled by that and that's okay. those feathers are really easily ruffled. And that's part of this, the need for sovereignty. People can get so bound up in these stories and they're really rigid. And that also makes them easy to shatter.If you think there's only one right way to do something, then yeah, you are going to end up assaulting the guy that cuts you in line for the post office. Yeah, totally.
Like that, I completely understand how I would have that same response given that same rigid programming and that needing an opportunity to say okay, you can say that the world just pushes your buttons all of the time. But what are those buttons? Why are they there? How do we maybe put some of that down so that we can have better control of our own experience in this life?
Because your happiness and your okayness and your ability to access the best parts of this life, if it relies on the environment not triggering you versus your capacity to move through things that are hard, then that's a really narrow line that you can walk and still have access to as much joy as this human experience can have.
Erik Weihenmayer: So I want to ask you the hardest question, I think, because I just find this really hard to understand. What is the goal of a trip, of a program? Like, what do you hope and how do you articulate, like, how a person comes out on the other side, having changed in some way?
Like, how do you articulate, the thing that we're trying to do?
Katelyn McKinney: Oh, my God. It's so easy to be so grandiose.
Erik Weihenmayer: I know. That's why it's a hard question.
Katelyn McKinney: Go for it. You're on the hook. You gotta answer. Well, we change lives in five days.
Erik Weihenmayer: I mean, we are trying to change lives. We can't shy away from that.
Katelyn McKinney: Like, yeah, Erik. man,I know that they're like programs have to, you know, uh, explain why they're the most special. And that's part of how funding happens.
And that's part of how enrollment happens. And, part of why I guide trips that are only for veterans is because sponsors pay for them. if we can find sponsors that pay for trips for everybody and that we can have scholarships for veterans, I will be so excited to do that.
Erik Weihenmayer: It may sound crass, but this work takes money for any organization, all the great organizations out there.
It relies on funding, right? Cause we scholarship every human being that come to No Barriers.
Katelyn McKinney: Yeah. And I think that there are some people who would pay for something like this that we could let in too. But anyways, that's a whole different conversation. But, I, so I want to name the traps in this conversation that I have fallen into before.
so the traps in this conversation is exerting that it's me or this program..
Erik Weihenmayer: Yeah. You have a great team for sure. You have an, Maybe we'll talk about that if we have time. This amazing team of people that you have brought together as leaders. And they're all different kinds of leaders, which is really cool.
Katelyn McKinney: Oh, Erik, you guys are not sticking to your 50 minutes for this one. I hate to tell you this, but we're going to get to all the good shit.
Erik Weihenmayer: We're going to get sidetracked.
Katelyn McKinney: So I want to say the traps are exerting that it's like the guide or the guide team that like offers this life changing thing or that it, another trap is that it's our special sauce of no barriers.
That is this like life changing thing. I think that those are traps. I think that, we are a part of a cocktail of an ecosystem that is just a little less toxic than the average day. And there's intentional protected space away from technology, away from distraction, away from, numbing that allows people to be present. And being present is medicinal. Being in their moment, right here, right now. Practicing the mindfulness of coming to what really is here and the practice of mining for like, what gives me joy? What am I pulled towards? I don't want to be, Involved in the Vinnie Ferraro is this great meditation teacher calls it the subtle violence of self improvement where you hate yourself into being a better person, which like it can work for short term goals, but like for an entire lifetime, it's really corrosive.
Erik Weihenmayer: And so stop and pause on that because that's super fascinating. Maybe I'm like more unabashed in terms of at the end of the programs, I see people like taking on new commitments or pledges or shifts or whatever you want to call it. But, and and I know you have a lot to say on that. I want to hear it all, but just from a very external standpoint, like we've had people get off painkillers.
They're like better family members. They're better dads and moms. They've lost 50 pounds. They've committed to walking with their spouse every night, which saves their marriage. They've written books. They've run ultra marathons. They've started nonprofits, right? All that stuff seems healthy, but I understand what you're saying.
It's another weird back, potential backfire, right?
Katelyn McKinney: I'd also say Erik, for a blind guy, about 75 percent of your examples are pretty ableist.
Yeah, those were all physiologically based metrics of success and the capacity for people to do things.
Erik Weihenmayer: I'm a physical guy.
Katelyn McKinney: I know you are. You're a total bro. I've seen your gym at home. Like, you crush it. I'm not messing with those heavy ropes.
Erik Weihenmayer: But okay, so there are softer shifts too. I just want to live with more joy. Cause I want to be in the light. I want to be a better dad. I want to, I want to, I want to let go of some things, right? So it's very, it can be subtle internal stuff as well. Yeah, I get it.
Katelyn McKinney: And I think that, we are wild creatures. And, to answer a question you asked earlier, why wild spaces? Why not just do this in a conference room? We, I mean, there's so much data that could be referenced right now that, that you guys, I think you've all probably heard. but like when in a wild space, our bodies are are more at ease. And there are these trees, that are behind me, where I live here in Juneau and in,Áak'w Kwáan, territory. Um,they're, they've been around a lot longer. They've seen trauma. They can breathe in my exhale and I can breathe in their exhale. And there's something to that, that I don't want to get too wooshy and gushy, but there is more and more data that is, demonstrating, that do demonstrate what we already knew in Indigenous wisdom, that, we are in relationship with these wild spaces and that we were intended to be in close proximity and in our bodies and using our bodies and in community and that, interdependence, inter,that like respect for, the aliveness of other things and the like witnessing of the fact that like our landscapes experience trauma too. And it can be some of the most fertile places.
Erik Weihenmayer: And I get how wilderness is helps us have more peace, more balance, more connection. Sometimes I've even heard it like helps regulate our hormones and things like that.
So there are really beautiful things about, But there's also some suffering, Katelyn, right? Like you're, people have big ass packs and they are hurting, right? They are bleeding. They are like, Oh my God, can I make it the next hour up this hill into camp. so why?
Katelyn McKinney: I feel like I'm not bleeding, Erik, just so we're all clear, y'all. if you come on an No Barriers experience, you don't have to expect blood loss as part of it. I also want to say that I think that the community is the medicine. This is something that my favorite meditation teacher, Jeff Warren says a lot. he's a super ADHD guy who experiences bipolar and has a very honest way of moving through his practice as a and it's so beautiful.
And he says, The medicine is in the community is the medicine, and that I find is also really true. And what we do, as the container keepers, is help titrate the dose. Like, yeah, you're gonna have these like adverse experiences that are inherent in being in a wild space. They're inherent in being with 15 frickin randos.
and, having, the fear of, coming from a military world where your capacity to physically perform was, your value, and then having a body that's different, and fearing, that somehow that's going to make you less of a valued member of the team and all of that adversity that is part of the experience that is also part of the medicine.
And I think that what we do is create a space for people to have access to their own medicine that is part of a wild space. I think that No Barriers does a marvelous job of giving people, an on ramp that's a more accessible ramp into, an unknown and an environment that might be unknown to people where they can really show up for each other and with each other and be nudged back into that collaboration and that community without being othered.
And yeah, on the other side of that, Erik, such cool stuff has happened. I know one guy who, oh my gosh, Erik, he was the biggest pain I have ever guided. I adore him, but he required so much behavior modification. He was the most profane and the most like dirty humored creature that has ever come on one of our expeditions.
He had the best intention and he also had a severe TBI that like honest to goodness like really did interfere with his ability to remember the filter that he needed to use. but I had to like,
Oh my gosh, I had to camp in this guy's ass the whole expedition, Erik. I just pitched a tent there and just had to constantly be like, Bro, pine. How do I finish the word? And after his experience, he did have a physiologic change. He did engage, wildspace and the gym more, but the really cool juicy thing is that he ended up volunteering, to go into prisons and be with veterans who had been incarcerated and help them build their plan for when they got out.
And he was walking in honest witness with people, like going into their dark spots, going into their shame moments, going into the pockets of society that we have all given ourselves permission to disregardand reflecting back value and hope. And I am so proud of him. And I think that was always in him.
We just had an opportunity to create a space to help push the other stuff aside so that those little seedlings could just catch the right, sunray and catch the right amount of moisture to just do what they needed to do. And so that's what I think our value is. It doesn't work in like a, in a hashtag or like a mission statement, but I really think that it's, if we decenter ourselves in how we see our value, we, more closely honor the truth of people showing up able enough, ready enough, interested enough, curious enough, vulnerable enough to get whatever it is that they can out of this experience.
And that can be so many different things.
Erik Weihenmayer: And I'll get all lofty for a minute too, because I think you're modeling how you can interact in a healthy way in a community, in a small community, this contained community. And now you can take those ideas, the things you've learned and then learn to, deal and interact in a different way with your family, with the world. So I think there's like that ripple effect in terms of howit, it branches out, out of that community because you're modelinghow community can exist.
So you just talked about this amazing experience of this person who works in prisons and with other veterans. And, and I think our personal stories are always connected to our work, right? I'm in no barriers we call it alchemy, right? Like how do you take tough things and use them as fuel or purpose power, right? Flip the script as you hear on TV sometime.So your personal experience in the military obviously shaped you as one of our No Barriers leaders.
andif you feel comfortable talking about your, your military experience, I know you don't emphasize that when you're in front of a No Barriers group, like it might come up, but it's not first and foremost, but. But yeah, so you are a veteran. So how did your experience in the military shape some of your thinking or at least your direction?
Katelyn McKinney: You know, it's interesting. I,I don't have the fact that I was in the military in my bio for no barriers and I don't offer it, in working with the team. because it was a four year experience for me and I don't hugely relate to it now, 15 years later. I've been a civilian for a long time, dude.
Erik Weihenmayer: I was a teacher for six years and it's hard. I like look back and I go, how did I do that? Like I'm, I'm so far removed from that. 20 years later, So yeah, that's just my way of relating.
Katelyn McKinney: I have had a kind of a revelation in the last, six months that has really shifted my understanding of how my military service affected me. I had an experience of, sexual assault super early on that left me with a spinal injury and, I didn't report it. I just moved on. And, when I got out, I kind of did some, pendulum swings when I got out.
I either, you know, didn't talk about being in the military at all, or I hyper identified with my military experiences, specifically about having, been sexually assaulted. And I, I had a disability from that experience and a spinal injury from that experience. And I've at times took up this like sword and shield of wanting other people who had that experience to feel like there was a light at the end of the tunnel and like they didn't have to, be trapped in what to me felt like a victim state or bound in that identity. Which is interesting because I was also like totally taking on that identity as part of that work. and then I'd pendulate away from it. And then at times like it would come back into circle and, I would choose when it was relevant. And now, both having been someone who has experienced bisexual violence and someone who has been in the military.
And I actually had quite a few really positive experiences in the military and some of my best friends. are humans that I met like on deployment. Claudio Ortiz and Matt Barger are now No Barriers guides. And they're two of my favorite men in the world. And they are people who I got to meet, when I was deployed and got to see them in that space.
And now, 15 years later,they're moving as like men who are really tender and big hearted. And that experience is part of the medicine that they get to pour. so for me, I haven't really hyper identified, with being a veteran lately, and I thought it was just this like subtle little thing that was like off in the distance.
Um, but I had this experience where I was asked to support someone who was being kicked out of the military. And they said, I thought, and my friend thought, that it was because they were like this like super sweet guy and their unit was really shitty. And so we showed up to provide just like emotional support and it actually turns out that, he had committed some form of sexual or domestic violence crime and then had covered it up, and that was why he was being kicked out. And Erik, if you would have asked me, five minutes before this happened, what I would do in that circumstance, I would have bet my house that I would have used these, sweet Krav Maga skills to, just, like, lay out some justice.
You know, I would have thought for sure that I was still in this space of, there are people who don't get my compassion. And I'm not saying that everybody has to be where I am with this. I completely understand not being where I am with this because this shit is new. This is only like,a few months sinking in.
And before that, I had an entire lifetime of being like, I can love everybody, but those people. And that, part of that was like sunk into this identity of I'm the good guy, like I'm the one who was in the military that was like this sweet little strong chick who got, violently harmed by a bad guy.
And, therefore I am like this nice little underdog person. And I wasn't meditating on trying to expand my compassion. I wasn't thinking about wanting to be able to have a space of understanding for my offender or for offenders at large. I, it just eked its way. in through the cracks.
And I suddenly was in this moment where it was like, wow, this is a human who's really hurting, who feels really ashamed of what they've done and feels like it says that they're not worthy of love and that they're never going to heal. And society just nods and is like, yeah, dude, you suck. and there's no hope for you.
And I got to be a part of holding an honest space for him. Where, you know, we weren't gonna go down any of the tunnels of talking shit on everybody else. We're just gonna, hold that space of like, okay, you are in the natural consequences of the harm that you've caused and you're hurting.
What do you want to do with this moment? Do you want to double down and decide everybody else is full of it? Or do you, actually want to not be here again?And that,that person is like working with a professional now. And like, I don't, I'm not attached to the outcome of how any of that goes, but that was a new thing for me.
And then I went into a five day silent meditation, like literally the next day, and I was like, wow, what a mindfuck. And now I'm going into this five days of silence, like, oh no, what am I going to uncover? And what I ended up thinking about was the fact that, Erik, I joined the U. S. military post 9 11, during Operation Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom, and I didn't believe in those wars.
I didn't think that we were defending our nation, personally. I joined the military to pay for college.
Yeah, I joined the military so I could get a social work degree, Erik. I deployed and fought in a war that I didn't believe in and contributed to, for me, a great deal of harm in the world. Indirectly, indirectly.
And that was just so I had better financial mobility while helping other people with their feelings back at home. And the ickiness of that, I had never considered. And here I was in this spot, in silence. I couldn't talk to anybody, nobody could reassure me, and I'm just stuck. I just pulled this thread on my identity as the good guy.
And I thought like everything was going to fall apart. And instead that same compassion that I had no idea was there for this other guy suddenly showed up for me. And it was just this kind of like deep shift in identity. And I realized that like my experience with the military was this narrative thatit was like my badassery or my goodness. And I was so excited that I was a Krav Maga instructor and that I had, started as a linguist. And then even though I got assaulted and they changed my job into a shitty career field, I crushed it in that career field. And I got a bunch of ribbons and I got coined left and right.
And I was just this kick ass little peppy spit buck. And I had this whole little story about myself and like that served me at that time. But the opportunity to, like, hold that a little more gently, and with a little more distance, and see the shadow in it, and while also holding the light in it, allowed me to be more fleshed out as a person, and it allowed me to flesh out others in a way that just makes it easier to exist.
Erik Weihenmayer: So the social worker and the trip leader is learning things that apply to themselves. It is like a motivational speaker up on stage. You're preaching to the audience, but you're actually preaching to yourself equally.
Katelyn McKinney: Oh yeah, I can't tell you how many times I accidentally cheek the pill.like I'll go somewhere and somebody will be doing something super medicinal and I'm supposed to be like receiving that medicine and instead I'm like, Ooh, I like the way they said that.
And I like cheek the pill and I write down the notes so I can share that with the veterans. And I totally skip a step of like taking the medicine and really embodying it. It's like, you know, and so like getting very honest with ourselves about you can be in service and your ego can be all over it.
Erik Weihenmayer: Tell us about Mountains of Medicine. So that's your new company.
Katelyn McKinney: Yeah. Thanks for that question, Erik. Yeah, Mountains in Medicine is an educational retreat company. It's kinda new, but we came up with the idea in 2020 when my husband was in his second year of medical residency and I was the director of healthcare and social work for what ended up being the largest operating homeless shelter at the, uh, Start of the COVID 19 pandemic.
So it was kind of rowdy and we both got firsthand exposure to the fact that working in the healthcare profession can be pretty bad for your health. And Erik, I kid you not, they would mandate that my husband, James, go to these like education, workshops after work while he was utterly exhausted and sleep deprived to learn about the benefits of things like self care, time in the outdoors, and mindfulness while he was like sitting inside under fluorescent lighting.
It just felt like, man, we can do better than that. Like, we can have educational opportunities for people to learn about holistic and integrative health modalities. That are actually. medicinal in and of themselves. So, uh, yeah, we started out thinking that we were going to build this just for, for, uh, physicians.
And then we got so much interest from the community that we opened it up. And now about one third of the people who come on our trips are, uh, physicians and the other two thirds are, A really wide variety of professionals and, uh, retirees that are kind of just looking at what this next chapter of life can hold.
And yeah, it's been really exciting. Uh, our next, uh, retreat is going to be in Panama in this incredible preserve. And the theme is. Massage and mindfulness. So there'll be workshops on medical massage techniques, as well as what I'm calling recreational massage. Just, you know, being good at giving a great massage and getting a bunch of great massages, uh, as well as a really awesome sampler of all kinds of approaches to mindfulness, none of which require any kind of like a spiritual belief or, um, a capacity to sit still or really anything.
It's, it's very accessible to a really wide variety of, of people. And that, that's kind of the point is, uh, creating spaces where people can have access to things without needing to be really different than they are naturally. And it's really fun. It's, it's like one third education, one third, restorative, holistic healing, and then one third, just having a really good time.
Yeah. We end each retreat with like an ecstatic dance party, and it's a blast. And you don't have to be a dancer, but you probably will get ecstatic at some point in the night. But yeah, so that's Mountains in Medicine.
Erik Weihenmayer:. So you think that all the stuff we're talking about applies at some to doctors, obviously medical professionals, first responders, like, you know what I mean? In so many groups, right? It probably doesn't matter.
Katelyn McKinney: Yeah. and also humans. I'm excited to have these teeny little subspecialty spaces where like there are things about the physician experience specifically that it's so unique that speaking about it amongst people who don't have that gig can feel like they're harming people with their truth.
And so like having a pocket for them to be able to just like speak in and not feel like they're burdening anybody. But then also just like having a great time. Like we operate like a summer camp, like we have a fucking blast. And that's, that's part of it too, is like letting people have,have all of the notes in the chord. Yeah, that's Mountains and Medicine.
Thank you for asking me about that, Erik. I really appreciate it. Uh, it's a brand new company and self promotion is really hard. I, I hate it, but here we are. Um, speaking of promoting things, I want to call back to the invitation that you gave me earlier when you said that, uh, Well, we would get a chance to talk about my coworkers because, oh my God, do I want to talk about my coworkers?
Erik, No Barriers has done an amazing job hiring the most incredible people. Like I've gotten to work a lot with Jeff Berkey, who is this, you know, open minded, stoic, amazing person. Uh, Travis Lombardo, who is this tender hearted, super awesome rock climber guy who, uh, helped found the Be Rad Foundation. We've got Hippolito, who is one of the co founders of the Combat Hippies, which does like incredible performances, uh, really illuminating the experience of Puerto Rican veterans, which was something that like I had never really understood or considered.
Um, and I'm, yeah, I'm super grateful for that insight. And, uh, who else have we got? Gary Dunn. He's amazing. He's been with No Barriers forever and, uh, he's an incredible adaptive guide and has been a foundational member of Paradox Sports for a really long time. Dave Inbody. We've got Moe, Jess. I mean, there's just like the, the list goes on and on about the incredible people that we've, we have and have had work for this company.
The one last shout out that I want to give is to John Toth. Who's probably going to hate that I said his name on a podcast, but he's amazing and has done incredible work for this company. He hired me and it was just his blood, sweat, effort, all of it. The fibers of who he is lives in like every corner of what No Barriers is right now.
And his work has contributed to the kind of care and attention that we've been able to give in the field for thousands of people. And, um, while he is now in a different phase and turning towards time with his family, I just want to say that, uh, I have the deepest gratitude for him and I'm really grateful that I've gotten to, to work with him and call him a friend and yeah, No Barriers has gotten Pretty good at attracting some pretty rad human beings. Thanks. Thanks for this entire interview, Erik. It's been an absolute pleasure. I adore you and I so cherish our friendship and, uh, getting to come on here and, and gush about the things that I care a lot about has been really fantastic. Thank you.
Erik Weihenmayer: Sorry, I got off track. I was like way over to the left, like thinking as you were talking. So I left the camera for a while.
Katelyn McKinney: I thought it was like a subtle cue. Katelyn, stop talking. I'm just going to slowly.
Erik Weihenmayer: no. I just, I felt the computer and I went, Whoa, Erik, how did you get like three feet to the left of the computer screen? I don't know how that happened.
Katelyn McKinney: That's okay. Didrik showed back up to help like cue the, all right, now we are wrapping.
Erik Weihenmayer: I will wrap. Katelyn, thank you so much. I'm really, a big fan because,you've spent so much time thinking this stuff through and trying new things and experimenting and having some, probably, failures and disasters along the way.
And each time regrouping and coming back and learning. Also, your military experience, really played into that. It could have made you a dark, um, human and more disconnected, but instead, you're a total alchemist. You brought that experience to the table, helping to improve other people's lives and elevating your own life.
So it's really impressive work and, uh, good luck with mountains and medicine. Sounds really awesome. And thank you for being on the podcast.
Katelyn McKinney: Thank you, Erik. Thank you so much for having me.
Erik Weihenmayer: Awesome. No Barriers to everyone.
Didrik Johnck: The production team behind this podcast includes Producer Didrik Johnck. That's me and audio engineer Tyler Kottman. Special thanks to the Dan Ryan Band for our intro song guidance. And thanks to all of you for listening. If you enjoyed this show, please subscribe, share it, and hey, we'd be thrilled for a review.
Show notes can be found at nobarrierspodcast.com. There's also a link there to shoot me an email with any suggestions or guest ideas for the show. Thanks so much, and have a great day.