Life Stages
EVOLVE AT EVERY STAGE
HEALTH | COMMUNITY | NATURE | ADVENTURE
Founder Zulma, or Z. Y., Terrones grew up in urban Chicago knowing Lake Michigan, city parks, and Midwest cornfields and plains as her nature. After receiving her undergraduate degree at the University of Chicago (AB’12), she worked for a couple years for local start-ups. During this time, she struggled with her own mental/behavioral health concerns and her own place in the world. On a leap of faith, Zulma decided to re-discover and re-set her life by embarking on what was intended to be a yearlong backpacking adventure. Ultimately, she had the unexpected privilege of traveling for almost 5 years across Europe, Latin America and Oceania. Throughout this time, Zulma witnessed a multitude of individuals from diverse backgrounds and lived experiences engage in novel, challenging outdoor activities, and be positively transformed. Transformations varied from an increased positive demeanor and refreshed mindset to improvements in daily functioning and decreased psychiatric symptoms. Witnessing the array of positive outcomes motivated Zulma to scientifically research this outdoor-based personal transformation phenomena. She decided to pursue a master’s degree in Psychology and Education at the University of Cambridge (PhM’18) with an emphasis in outdoor health.
While at Cambridge, Zulma partnered with a local outdoor therapeutic education organization working with adolescents experiencing developmental and/or behavioral disorders. She led a case-study investigating participant understanding and relation to therapeutic outdoor programming. Her research and graduate work provided her further insight to the power of outdoor challenges and motivated her to finetune her skills within clinical populations. She returned to the States in early 2019 to Portland, OR motivated by the city’s convenient access to diverse natural landscapes and strong community-based mental health services. For over two years, Zulma worked as a 24/5 crisis clinician for youth experiencing psychiatric symptoms and high-risk safety concerns. With the aid of experiential learning opportunities, she helped youth regain clinical stability and strengthen distress tolerance and adaptive coping skills to promote longer-term mind-body health. This period also encompassed the COVID-19 pandemic, which underscored the need for effective, evidence-based, and accessible hyper-personalized solutions for mind-body health, which inspired Zulma to officially found Life Stages in 2022. Zulma has synthesized years of rigorous peer-reviewed scientific research, trauma-informed clinical experience, and outdoor experiential learning to create Life Stages, an evidence-based model to help individuals improve their mind-body health at any stage in life. Zulma’s goal is to redefine and innovate the way the world thinks about overall health and well-being; outdoor adventure; and individual human potential by re-iteratively informing direct service, health research and, ultimately, global health policy.
While at Cambridge, Z partnered with a local outdoor therapeutic education organization working with adolescents experiencing neurotypical or behavioral disorders. She led a case-study investigating participant understanding and relation to therapeutic outdoor programming. Her research and graduate work provided her further insight to the power of outdoor challenges and motivated her to finetune her skills within clinical populations. She returned to the States in early 2019 to Portland, OR motivated by the city’s convenient access to diverse natural landscapes and strong community-based mental health services.For over two years, Z worked as a 24/5 crisis clinician for youth experiencing acute psychiatric symptoms and high-risk safety concerns. With the aid of experiential learning opportunities, she helped youth regain clinical stability and strengthen distress tolerance and adaptive coping skills to promote longer-term mind-body health. Z has synthesized years of rigorous peer-reviewed scientific research, trauma-informed clinical experience, and anecdotal outdoor adventure to create Life Stages, an evidence-based model to help individuals improve their mind-body health at any stage in life. Z’s goal is to redefine and innovate the way the world thinks about overall health and well-being; outdoor adventure; and individual human potential by re-iteratively informing direct service, health research and, ultimately, global health policy.
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