Mindfulness on Land and Water with Sea Kayaking
Presented by: Dr. Brenda Butterfield, EdD, MSW, LMHC
When: Friday, May 15th, 2026 | 11:00 AM – 7:30 PM, Pacific Time
Where: Live in person at the ONE Center (7400 Gallagher Cove Road NW, Olympia, WA 98502)
Lodging Information: If you’d like to come the night before or stay over on Friday night after the workshop, you can explore the lodging options provided by the ONE Center here. For questions about lodging, please email the ONE Center at [email protected]
Continuing Education Credit Hours: 6 CEs | $229.00
This workshop is for colleagues ready to experience new ways of learning and growing in real time by bringing the practice of mindfulness outdoors, on land, and on water. You’re invited to come to ONE, a nature-based retreat center for health care professionals on the beautiful South Salish Sea outside Olympia, WA.
During this professional development workshop, we will learn about mindfulness through experiential exercises. The first part of the day is in a lovely flower-filled Courtyard Garden and focused on learning what mindfulness is, how it’s different from meditation, and reviewing research supporting this practice. We’ll discuss how stress plays a key role in illness and disease (physical and mental) and how to prevent and reduce illness for yourself and clients, too.
We’ll share simple, evidence-based practices to increase awareness and empower you to recognize and reduce stress in daily life. You’ll learn breathwork to effectively pull the rip cord on your parasympathetic nervous system parachute to bring yourself back to center whenever and wherever stress shows up. We’ll help you develop the language of mindfulness and explore ways of integrating these practices into your work with clients.
After lunch, participants will head to beautiful Gallagher Cove for sea kayaking 101 skills training. You’ll learn about mindful kayaking, an invitation to practice non-striving on the water. “There is no place to go, and no place be. This is it, right here, right now.” On the water, we’ll field-test our mindful skills for stress/anxiety management and practice responding in ways that regulate our mind, emotions, body, and behavior. By paying attention in a particular way, on purpose, in the present moment, we’ll learn how to navigate the stress and anxiety of “unpleasant” emotions, body sensations, and distorted thinking by choosing new ways of being through the practice of mindfulness. This will be guided in a spirit of play to cultivate mindfulness by noticing the awe and wonder of beauty all around us in nature, in community with colleagues. Ultimately, noticing the pleasant is a mindful practice that serves us very well.
Whether you’re an avid paddler or have no experience but feel called by the South Salish Sea, join us in this learning and beauty. Gallagher Cove at The ONE Center is a shallow, protected, remarkably beautiful place for brand new paddlers. We’ll provide thorough safety instruction and all the equipment needed (sea kayak, paddle, and PDF). You’re invited to arrive Thursday evening and/or stay over Friday night to camp on the land or stay in one of our cozy cabins to really drop in and enjoy mindfulness on land and water.If you’d like to come the night before or stay over on Friday night after the workshop, you can explore the lodging options provided by the ONE Center here. For questions about lodging, please email the ONE Center at [email protected].
Workshop Objectives:
In this workshop, you will:
- Understand the research-based benefits of integrating Mindfulness-Based Interventions (MBI) in clinical practice.
- Learn what mindfulness is and how to practice it for yourself so you can teach your clients.
- Explore the language, concepts, and phenomena of mindfulness.
- Learn about the mind/body relationship between chronic stress (CBT Thinking Errors) and health (depression/anxiety/panic attacks), enabling you to explain the Autonomic, Sympathetic, and Parasympathetic Nervous System to clients.
- Learn simple, accessible practices to recognize stress responses and activate the parasympathetic nervous system.
- Learn emotional regulation skills through mindfulness practice.