🌲🎙️Episode # 13

How Claiming Heritage and Healing Through Adventure Shapes a Wild Life

The Go Wildly Podcast is what happens when two childhood friends & dirtbag adventure junkies decide to bring a mic into the wilderness. We’re Emily & Heather...equal parts heart and chaos...pulling stories out of people like snacks from the bottom of a backpack. We hike. We float. We talk. And somehow, in between all the laughs and mosquito bites, something real always surfaces.

We take outdoor enthusiasts of all kinds into the woods & find out the common thread that led them to make the outdoors more than just a hobby, but a calling.We're goofy. We’re deep. We’re a little unhinged. And we somehow bring that out in our guests too. Think campfire vibes meets podcast energy...with just enough weird to keep things interesting.Together let’s GO WILDLY!

Today's Guest: Paris Iha

Paris Iha is a mental health counselor, coach, and clinical herbalist with training in adventure-based counseling. Inspired by place-based and more-than-human relationships, as well as her Indigenous Ryukyuan heritage, Paris' passion is to co-facilitate healing that centers our sense of belonging to nature. She integrates somatic, nature-based, canine-assisted, and neurobiology-informed approaches into her work.

In this episode of the Go Wildly Podcast, we dive deep with Paris Iha into the wild world of adventure therapy — what it looks like, how it heals, and the role her dog Cap Joe plays as a four-legged co-therapist. 🌲🐕✨

We explore Paris’s journey of reclaiming her Ryukyuan/Japanese heritage, navigating intergenerational trauma, and connecting with ancestral practices that have shaped her healing work. From conversations about blood quantum and cultural identity to stories of her and her sister rediscovering ancestral traditions, this episode is as raw as it is inspiring.

Paris also shares powerful, vulnerable stories from her time in nature — encounters that cracked her wide open, moments where carrying protection gave her confidence outdoors, and a breathtaking experience in Alaska where a single flower made her feel at home miles away from her roots. 🌸

We just skimmed the surface of her work in herbalism (definitely a part two coming), but even the glimpse we got showed how plants and the natural world can become allies in belonging and healing.

This episode is about adventure, ancestry, resilience, and the medicine of the wild.

Connect with Paris

• Instagram: @paris.rae.iha

Email: hellotherapistparis@gmail.com

Filmed on Location: Rafting- Rogue River; Indian Mary to Ennis

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