HAPPY GRIZZLY ADVENTURES

Deeper Connection. Greater Joy.

WE'RE GLAD YOU'RE HERE.

We look forward to curating an incredible experience for you that combines adventure and mental health.

Happy Grizzly Adventures is all about having a lot of fun, as well as finding and developing a deeper sense of connection to yourself and the world around you.

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Folks tell us all the time that after Happy Grizzly Adventures they feel more connected, more joyful, and more optimistic about what they’re doing in their personal and professional lives today and into the future.

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We know Happy Grizzly Adventures has something for everyone regardless if they are brand new to the outdoors or a professional outdoor athlete.

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How We Do It:

Adventure, Intention Setting, Integration

Adventure

Outstanding outdoor experiences are at the center of what we do.

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We partner up with world class outfitters in awe inspiring places and engage in activities that evoke the oft elusive feelings of stoke.

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Intention Setting

Before you even get to the trail head or campsite, we’ve already spent some time with you individually and likely with the rest of the group to establish what your intentions are for the experience. Our professionally trained staff work with you to gain a deeper insight into what you feel might be motivating or limiting you in life.

During the trip, we adventure alongside you as we find ourselves exploring our inner landscapes through the outdoor adventure. We provide light facilitation throughout the adventure. We do group check-ins each day, often around a fire. During these chats we want you to know your voice, as well as your silence, is always welcome. We’re also available to check in one on one as much or as little as you need throughout the journey.

Integration

After the adventure, we continue together to help integrate what you felt, learned, and saw on the trip into your daily life. We’re told by our adventurers that this is what helps make Happy Grizzly Adventures more than a great memory. This is what helps make the transformative power of adventure a reality.

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Who is Happy Grizzly for?

All people benefit from time outside and all people are welcome to Happy Grizzly!

We find most of the people who are drawn to our work, either as individuals, couples, or organizations are high performers that find themselves at an inflection ​point in life where they may be trying to answer a question:

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What comes next in life? How can I live with more joy? How can I feel better or if I’m already feeling good, feel even better, about my day to day? What’s holding me back? Or even trying to figure out what questions to ask.

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Three Kinds of Adventure:

Open Call, Focused/Themed, or Custom

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1. Open Call. These trips are open to just about anyone who signs up! Individuals, couples, and small groups of friends, or organizational teams sign up. These are a great opportunity to meet lots of new people and realize the incredible breadth, depth, and at times, similarity of human experience regardless of circumstances.

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2. Focused or Themed. These trips are designed around a specific community or experience. For 2022 we have programs focused on couples, activists, men’s groups, and substance abuse recovery.

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3. Custom. These trips are tailored to the needs of a client or group of clients. We’ve worked with different organizations and groups of people who are seeking everything from a deep shared experience to businesses and institution seeking a different way to run executive and corporate retreats for leadership and personal development, as well as trying to find answers to sticky questions.

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Note: We provide a variety of different experiences to suit different physical or emotional needs. We have worked with professional outdoor athletes to those who are just getting outside for the first or second times in their life-often on the same trip!

All of our trips strive to be fully adaptive.

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The measurable result of our trips over time are:

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Connection. We’ve found in our own lives and the lives of the people we get to adventure with, that we’ve been missing out on deep, meaningful connection to ourselves, our families, our communities, and our world. Adventure has been the anecdote. The stronger our connections, the greater understanding we have in the direction of life we want to be heading, and the more confident we are in our location both now and in the future. This translates into greater emotional resiliency.

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More Joy. Our adventures are a ton of fun and will help a greater sense of joy and gratitude emerge in your daily life. This translates into greater curiosity about the world around you, increased problem-solving abilities, and fundamentally, less stress.

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Less Looking Back. Our adventurers tell us that during and after the trip they were able to let go of past decisions, regrets, anger, and shame that in many cases they didn't even know they were holding onto until they released it into the past. This translates into less rumination or feelings of getting stuck in life or on an idea or memory.

WHO WE ARE

The Experience Happy Grizzly Brings to Adventure

Happy Grizzly Adventures was founded by Stacy Bare and Koorosh Rassekh in 2021, after two years of experimenting with the program model that is now the foundation of Happy Grizzly.

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Stacy Bare is a National Geographic Adventurer of the Year, US Army Veteran, and former Explosive Ordnance Disposal Technician. He has been leading transformational expeditions in the outdoors since 2010.

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It was rock climbing, two years after his exit from the United States Army and a year in Baghdad that helped Stacy move through his own multi-year struggle with suicidal ideation and substance abuse. This put him  on a path to connect first more veterans, and then all people, to the outdoors as a means to engage and resolve trauma. Through the outdoors he found himself, his passion, and a renewed excitement for life.

He  founded the Great Outdoors Lab in partnership with Dr. Dacher Keltner at the Greater Good Science Center at UC-Berkeley to put scientific data behind the idea that time outdoors is good for you.

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Stacy is also working his way through Adventure Not War, a personal project taking him back to all the places he served, was supposed to serve, or cleaned up after war as an adventurer. He partnered up with Alex Honnold to climb in Angola; led a team of fellow veterans to be the first recorded team to ski up and down the highest mountain fully in Iraq, and lead ski expeditions to Afghanistan and Kyrgyzstan. Bosnia and Abkhazia remain.

Stacy’s work has been covered in multiple publications. He has also written book chapters and numerous magazine articles, is a popular guest on podcasts and an award-winning film producer.

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You can learn more about Stacy here.

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Koorosh Rassekh, MMFT (Masters of Marriage and Family Therapy) is a pioneer in the field of mental health. He brings over 10 years of experience in therapy, with a focus on both addiction treatment and mindfulness. In his work, he has served a wide range of individuals, couples, and families, helping them to identify the riddles or traumas of their past, stories of the future yet to happen, and ultimately support being in the present and flow of possibilities. Core to his approach is the value that clients already possess the inherent ability to respond effectively to the difficulties they face.

Koorosh's approach to mental health has included taking people outside and engaging in a variety of activities including, skiing, hiking, surfing, slacklining, cycling, mountain biking and a variety of mindfulness and breathwork practice.

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Koorosh is a sought after instructor and trainer in his field. He has been an adjunct professor at the University of Southern California where he also earned his Masters in Marriage and Family Therapy and a Bachelor of Science in Public Policy and Management from USC. He has completed extensive advanced training in multiple therapeutic approaches, including: Assertive Community Reinforcement Approach (ACRA), Community Reinforcement Approach (CRA), Community Reinforcement and Family Training (CRAFT), Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), Mindfulness-Based Relapse Prevention (MBRP), Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), Motivational Interviewing, and numerous meditation and mindfulness techniques.

You can learn more about Koorosh here.