About the Warming Hut

The Warming Hut is a metaphor. Think of a ski resort with a warm potbelly stove to thaw cold and numb skiers. I recall such a hut when I learned to ski in Alaska at the bottom of a freezing rope tow hill. Similar huts exist in hut-to-hut cross-country skiing, snowshoeing trails, or in mountain cabins or condos.

Likewise, I create an interpersonal experience so my clients can feel emotional warmth in our work. Whether I am in the role of therapist or chaplain, the work involves the reciprocal sharing of emotions. It can feel like adding logs to a fire or a woodstove. Relationships are thawed. Emotional reactivity is lowered and insights come up. In this way, the Warming Hut is not necessarily a place, but an experience involving people taking risks to be real and working towards change.

This is the concept I have envisioned for my clients here in Colorado—a Warming Hut in storms of life.