23V RECON

23V Recon starts with a week-long outdoor wellness journey. Veterans from a local area begin with a flight to a distant state where we spend 6+ days backpacking, rock climbing, canoeing, or kayaking. We partner with leading outdoor wellness organizations with a focus in leadership and camaraderie within the military and veteran community; During this outdoor adventure, our team of veterans build tight bonds and learn to trust each other as they did in the military.

Once returning from the outdoor wellness adventure, the same veterans continue the journey for another 13 weeks. With this trusting team of veterans, we meet 3x per week at a local gym where a coach leads a 60-minute workout. 23V Recon is not a fitness program, but we utilize fitness to boost our learning. During this workout, our brain releases a protein called BDNF that aids in our memory. We follow each workout with a unique 30-minute positive psychology session, sitting on the floor with the 23V Recon Playbook as a guide to the discussions. This session is designed to access more chemicals in our brain that give us a feeling of joy, and build healthy habits so we can continue to feel this happiness throughout our lives. These sessions also target mindfulness, anger and aggression, service, and communicating with non-military.

With our new trusting team, we experience common negative triggers from the military, but in a positive environment. Doing so allows our brain to re-associate old negative triggers to new positive and trusting memories. The result is often removing common triggers so they no longer cause anxiety and panic. These trigger associations community experience events held on a semi-weekly basis. Program graduates have gone from never enjoying leaving their home, to having fun with their families at local events, restaurants, malls, and having fun with their children trick-or-treating.