Reciprocity Rx™
THE PROBLEM: At the root of illness, burnout, and despair is something deeper: disconnection.
FROM OUR BODIES
Chronic stress, fatigue, and illness are signals of our disconnection. When we stop listening to our bodies, we lose our first language of connection.
FROM EACH OTHER
We are surrounded by people yet starved for belonging — more connected than ever while loneliness and burnout have become epidemics.
FROM THE EARTH
We treat nature as a resource to use, rather than a relationship to tend. Our well-being is inseparable from the planet’s.
We are living in a time of profound disconnection — from our bodies, each other, and the living systems that sustain us.
The World Health Organization now calls social isolation a global public health concern. Rates of anxiety, depression, and chronic disease are rising alongside ecosystem collapse. In medicine, providers often treat disconnection as a symptom: stress, insomnia, hypertension, burnout. But what if disconnection itself is the diagnosis?
Reciprocity Rx™ begins here — with remembering relationship as the foundation of well-being. When we re-enter conversation with the land, with our communities, and with ourselves, we move from survival to connection, from extraction to reciprocity.
NATURE HEALS. Here’s the data:
RELIEF
20-30 mins in nature =
lower cortisol, improved mood
According to a 2019 study by Hunter et al., just 20 to 30 minutes of sitting or walking in a place that feels connected to nature can significantly reduce cortisol levels — the body’s primary stress hormone. That’s one of the most accessible interventions we have for nervous system regulation.
RESILIENCE
120+ min/week = tipping point for health & well-being
White et al. (2019) analyzed data from nearly 20,000 people in the UK and found that people who spent at least 120 minutes per week in nature reported significantly higher levels of health and well-being than those who didn’t.
RELATIONSHIP
repeated exposure = deeper
meaning & behavior change
In Japan, Li et al. (2007–2010) led a series of studies on forest bathing — or shinrin-yoku. Their research showed that extended time in forest environments increases natural killer (NK) cell activity and elevates anticancer proteins. These immune benefits lasted for more than 7 days post-visit.
A QUESTION: What if healing becomes harmful?
Across the globe, physicians are beginning to prescribe time outdoors as part of treatment plans. In Sweden, they built an entire tourism campaign around “prescribing” a visit to the country to visit its healing landscapes. Here in the U.S., nature prescriptions and social prescribing are gaining traction. Physicians and public health leaders are advocating for nature to become the seventh pillar of Lifestyle Medicine — a formal, scalable tool for long-term health.
And we love to see it.
But what happens when we prescribe nature at scale, without building reciprocity into what we’re prescribing?
The pandemic gave us a preview. With concerts and sports events canceled, gyms closed, and indoor spaces unsafe, people turned to the outdoors in record numbers. And the data shows the impact:
Outdoor recreation participation reached an all-time high in 2023, with 175.8 million people heading outside — a 4.1% increase from the year before.
National Parks experienced record-breaking visitation: 28 units hit all-time highs in 2024 alone.
Trails were overrun. Campsites were overbooked. Ranger teams were reallocated from conservation to crowd control.
And many communities — especially those already marginalized — saw decreased access, not more.
This surge showed us that nature is essential infrastructure, not a luxury. But it also revealed the risk of extractive healing — when we treat nature as a resource to consume rather than a relationship to nurture.
Healing in Nature → Healing with Nature
When relief becomes relationship, healing comes full circle.
Since time immemorial, humans have lived in harmony with the land. In modern society, we’ve turned to nature for refuge, restoration, and relief from the hyper-connected world we’re living in. But what if healing isn’t just something we get from nature — what if it’s something we practice with it?
Reciprocity Rx™ invites care providers to move beyond extraction-based wellness models and into a relationship-centered paradigm where our healing is interconnected with the Earth’s. This is not about escaping to nature for a reset. It’s about remembering we’re part of it, and that restoring our well-being goes hand-in-hand with restoring the planet.
We’re at a threshold moment: burnout, chronic illness, climate grief, and disconnection are converging. The opportunity — and responsibility — is to co-create a new model of care. One rooted in reciprocity. One where providers learn to receive from the land with reverence, reflect with intention, return through stewardship, and reconnect with themselves, their patients, and the Earth.
Reciprocity is a practice. And in a world that’s asking us to do more with less, this program offers a way to ground in enoughness, to lead with care, and to walk the path of healing with nature, not just in it.
This shift — from patient to planet, from extraction to reciprocity — isn’t just theoretical. It’s lived. These are the stories that shaped our shifts:
ROOTED IN RESILIENCE: Barry Williams
From traction to the trailhead, Barry’s journey is a story of defiance, devotion, and deep connection to the natural world.
When Barry was a kid, doctors told him he’d be walking with a cane by his twenties. Diagnosed with Legg-Calvé-Perthes disease, he spent six months in traction and several years in leg braces, learning early what it meant to live inside a body that demanded patience.
But Barry had other plans. He became a tri-state all-around gymnastics champion, team captain for golf and lacrosse, and competed in downhill ski racing — a walking contradiction to every prognosis he’d ever been given.
His early career took him from the world of technology into the sky, where he became a professional skydiver and mentor to others learning to face fear and trust themselves in freefall. By his thirties, after a hip resurfacing, two shoulder surgeries, a neck fusion, and an elbow repair (his doctor literally said he must have come from “the bargain bin”), Barry turned again to the one practice that had always helped him heal: hiking.
In the White Mountains of New Hampshire, his rehabilitation wasn’t in a gym or clinic — it was on the trail. Each step strengthened not only his body, but also his faith in what nature could restore. That’s where he found peace, purpose, and the clarity to share that healing with others.
Together, Barry and Sydney built a life around that belief. His love of the outdoors created the space for Sydney to listen, heal, and thrive — and from that soil, Hiking My Feelings, Wellness in the Wilderness Consulting, and Reciprocity Rx™ all took root.
Barry embodies the spirit of this work: grounded, capable, endlessly patient, and rooted in relationship — with the land, with himself, and with every person he welcomes onto the trail.
FROM PATIENT TO PLANET: Sydney Williams
In 2017, Sydney Williams was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. Her body was calling for help, but she didn’t yet know how to listen.
In the years leading up to her diagnosis, she’d battled panic attacks, burnout, and the kind of silent grief that accumulates after loss — twenty-three friends gone in four years during her time as a competitive skydiver. She was running on adrenaline and empty promises of “I’m fine.”
So she started walking. At first, those walks were about blood sugar and stress management. But step by step, the outdoors became her refuge. Birdsong replaced the echoes of her inner critic. Light through the leaves softened her edges. The trail offered space for her body to remember what safety felt like. Nature became a member of her care team.
In 2018, after completing the Trans-Catalina Trail, Sydney’s first instinct wasn’t to text friends or family — it was to reach out to the Catalina Island Conservancy. That trail had changed her life twice, and she wanted to protect the land that had helped her heal. “How can I help?” she asked. That question became the heartbeat of her work.
She began to wonder if this experience could be recreated. Could she build spaces where others might feel what she felt on those trails — where healing wasn’t transactional, but relational? Could she create a judgment-free environment the way Barry had for her, weave in practices for self-reflection and connection, and give back to the land in real time?
Together, Sydney and Barry have done just that with thousands of people since launching Hiking My Feelings. What began as one woman’s journey from patient to planet has grown into Wellness in the Wilderness Consulting and now Reciprocity Rx™: a movement reminding people that the medicine we most need isn’t something we take — it’s something we tend, together.
THE SCIENCE OF CONNECTION: Dr. Melissa Sundermann
For Dr. Melissa Sundermann — known affectionately as Doctor Outdoors — the trail has always been both classroom and clinic.
A lifelong athlete and adventurer, she has found her greatest lessons not in lecture halls but in the quiet wisdom of the natural world. Whether running through mist-covered forests or paddling across a still lake at sunrise, Melissa has long believed what research now confirms: nature itself is the best physician.
A double board-certified physician in Internal and Lifestyle Medicine, Melissa has spent more than twenty-five years helping patients address the root causes of chronic disease through nutrition, movement, sleep, stress management, and community. What she’s discovered — through science and lived experience alike — is that nature enhances every one of those pillars in ways modern medicine cannot replicate. Time outdoors lowers cortisol, reduces inflammation, strengthens immunity, and awakens a sense of purpose that no prescription can match.
As the Founding Chair of the Nature as Medicine Subcommittee for the American College of Lifestyle Medicine (ACLM), Melissa works to bridge evidence-based research with accessible, everyday practices that reconnect people to the world outside. Her mission is simple and profound: to remind us that nature is not a luxury or leisure activity — it is essential to our well-being.
Through her work with Reciprocity Rx™, Melissa brings the science of nature-based healing into direct partnership with the soul of this work. Her approach grounds the data in lived humanity, showing that the same force that heals our bodies can also heal our relationship with the Earth itself.
Our Solution: Reciprocity Rx™
🌱 From Patient to Planet, Relief to Relationship.
Reciprocity Rx™ is a certification program designed for care providers who are ready to move from healing in nature to healing with nature — for themselves, their community, and the land.
Through an innovative blend of curriculum, immersive retreats, integration support, and a practical toolkit, Reciprocity Rx™ helps care providers reconnect to purpose, build resilience through relationship with the natural world, and model this healing for others. Participants in the certification program will learn how to:
Prescribe and model nature-based care in clinical, coaching, or community settings
Facilitate acts of reciprocity that nourish people and planet
Incorporate nature-informed practices into everyday care
Lead or support community events and stewardship experiences rooted in healing
Join a growing network of like-hearted practitioners working at the intersection of public health and public lands
If you’ve ever wondered how to bridge the gap between burnout and balance, medicine and meaning, patient care and planetary care — you’re in the right place.
READY TO LEARN MORE?
Join Sydney Williams, author of Hiking Your Feelings and founder of Hiking My Feelings + Wellness in the Wilderness, and Melissa Sundermann, DO (aka Doctor Outdoors) — a double board-certified physician in Internal Medicine and Lifestyle Medicine — for an introduction to the Reciprocity Rx™ certification program and its potential to transform the way we think about healing with nature.
OPEN HOUSE
Wednesday, November 12, 2025
4 pm PT, 5 pm MT, 6 pm CT, 7 pm ET
February-September 2026
Reciprocity Rx™ is an eight-month certification program for healthcare providers facilitated by Sydney + Barry Williams of WITW Consulting and Melissa Sundermann, DO (aka Doctor Outdoors) to help providers restore their own wellbeing, reconnect with the land, and bring nature-based reciprocity into the way they care for patients, communities, and themselves. Program participants have an option to join an immersive certification retreat at the North Cascades Institute, the official educational partner of North Cascades National Park, June 24-28, 2026.
📍We acknowledge that our programs with North Cascades Institute take place in the ancestral homelands of Tribes, Bands, and First Nations, including most notably the Upper Skagit Indian Tribe, Sauk-Suiattle Indian Tribe, Swinomish Indian Tribal Community, Samish Indian Nation, Nooksack Tribe, Lummi Nation, Stó:lō Nation, Nlaka’pamux Nation, Colville Confederated Tribes, Syilx/Okanagan Nation. Curious about the history of the land where you work, live, and play? Native Land is a great starting point for additional research.
DIFFERENT LANDSCAPES
DIFFERENT MEDICINES
EXPLORE: Reciprocity Rx™ Curriculum
Program Formats
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Online Certification Program
FEBRUARY - SEPTEMBER 2026
Build your foundation in nature-based care. The Reciprocity Rx™ Foundations program combines evidence-informed curriculum, community dialogue, and guided reflection to help you reconnect with your purpose and bring reciprocity into your professional practice from anywhere in the world. -
Immersive Certification Experience
JUNE 24-28, 2026 // North Cascades Institute - Washington
The Immersive Certification Experience includes the Reciprocity Rx™ Foundations Program and expands it through a five-day retreat in North Cascades National Park where providers receive the restorative benefits of spending time in the wilderness, practice stewardship, and leave with renewed clarity for patient and community care.
What’s Included?
$2,500
Online Certification
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Three live sessions each month — one for evidence-informed curriculum, one for community connection, and one focused on safety, wilderness preparedness, and confidence outdoors. These gatherings balance professional learning with personal renewal.
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Every module includes a recording of the live teaching session plus a companion workbook filled with reflection prompts, rituals, and recommended readings to help you integrate reciprocity into your own life and patient care.
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Receive a signed copy of Hiking Your Feelings by Sydney Williams, Doctor Outdoor's Guide to Nature and Lifestyle Medicine by Dr. Melissa Sundermann, a Reciprocity Rx Trail Journal, and hand-selected supplies to support your journey.
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Access a secure online space for discussion, reflection, and collaboration with fellow providers — a place to exchange insights, share resources, and grow together.
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Gain access to a curated collection of peer-reviewed research, reflective essays, and practical tools for integrating nature-based care and stewardship into your professional setting.
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Join periodic guest sessions with leaders in lifestyle medicine, environmental health, and conservation to broaden your understanding of reciprocity in practice.
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Start and end the journey in community. Orientation helps participants set intentions and get comfortable with the platform; the closing circle invites shared reflection and integration.
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Download ritual cards, seasonal check-in templates, and printable prompts to help you weave these teachings into your daily and professional rhythms.
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Upon completion, earn your Reciprocity Rx Certificate and gain access to advanced facilitator training, continuing professional development, and our Alumni Circle — a growing network of care providers leading with reciprocity.
$5,000
Immersive Certification
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This is where theory becomes lived experience. The Reciprocity Rx Immersive Certification includes the full eight-month online curriculum and a five-day, four-night retreat at North Cascades National Park. You’ll meet your cohort in advance, deepen your connections through monthly sessions, and arrive already fluent in the language of reciprocity. By the time we gather in person, we’ve built trust, shared insights, and filled our toolbelts with practices that help us receive, reflect, return, and reconnect. Then, on the trail and in community, we get to experience those teachings in real time — breathing them in, living them out, and carrying them home to our patients and communities.
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Your registration includes a shuttle from Seattle-Tacoma airport to North Cascades Institute, transportation within the park during the event, and a shuttle from North Cascades Institute to a central drop point in Seattle and a stop at Seattle-Tacoma airport. Please plan on the following for travel times:
Flights should arrive no later than 2pm PT on June 24th
Flights should depart no earlier than 2pm PT on June 28th
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Your retreat registration includes five days, four nights at the North Cascades Institute (NCI) inside North Cascades National Park.
Participant Accommodations: North Cascades Institute offers double-occupancy hostel-style rooms with 2 sets of bunkbeds (four beds total), bedside lights, desks, room to store your personal items, and electrical outlets. In the lodge, there are two bathroom facilities each with two hot showers and two toilets, as well as a shared living space. Linens, blankets, pillows, and towels are provided.
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Since everyone has different needs when in the field, you are encouraged to bring your own snacks. We’ll take care of breakfast, lunch, and dinner on-site:
WEDNESDAY: Dinner
THURSDAY: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner
FRIDAY: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner
SATURDAY: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner
SUNDAY: Breakfast + Lunch
Breakfast and Dinner are served buffet style. The menu for any given meal is decided by the NCI cook team. The kitchen will accommodate vegetarian, vegan, pescatarian, dairy-free, egg-free, and gluten-free diets. Guests with more than two dietary restrictions, severe and/or life-threatening food allergies are encouraged to bring their own food as we cannot guarantee no cross-contamination. NCI provides mini fridges, storage bins and a microwave in each lodge for those who bring their own snacks or additional food items. -
Led by Dr. Melissa Sundermann (“Doctor Outdoors”), these workshops weave clinical science with lived experience. With over 25 years in internal and lifestyle medicine — and as the Founding Chair of the American College of Lifestyle Medicine (ACLM) Nature as Medicine Subcommittee — Dr. Sundermann brings an evidence-based, heart-centered perspective to the healing power of nature. You’ll explore how lifestyle, purpose, movement, nourishment, and human connection form the foundation of whole-person health.
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Movement becomes meditation in motion. Learn techniques to transform any outdoor activity — hiking, walking, even breathing by a river — into a mindful experience that calms the nervous system and restores balance.
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Facilitated by Sydney Williams, these sessions blend reflection, storytelling, and nature connection. Step away from the demands of daily life and into a container where you can listen deeply, reconnect with your body, and remember your belonging — to yourself, to each other, and to the land.
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Healing happens in relationship. Together we create a supportive environment rooted in shared humanity, where stories, struggles, and strengths are held with care. Through guided discussion and group reflection, you’ll experience the medicine of community — remembering that you’ve never walked this path alone.
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Reciprocity means giving back to the land that holds us. We’ll provide all the tools and materials for our stewardship project — an opportunity to contribute to the wellbeing of the park and embody reciprocity in action.
EXPERIENCE:
Immersive Certification Program Pillars
Environmental Stewardship
We include environmental stewardship projects in our programs to foster a deeper connection to nature, empower participants to give back to the landscapes we visit, and cultivate a sense of purpose and responsibility for preserving these spaces for future generations.
Mindful Movement
We center mindful movement in our wilderness wellness retreats to help participants reconnect with their bodies, enhance their presence in the moment, and deepen their experience of nature as a source of healing and restoration. We move at the pace of presence and no hiker is left behind!
Self-Discovery
Each day has a theme to help you connect the dots between the wilderness within and the wild areas we are exploring and conserving. We draw inspiration from our surroundings in North Cascades National Park and take the wisdom of the wilderness home with us.
North Cascades Institute
The North Cascades Institute (NCI) is on a mission to inspire environmental stewardship through transformative learning experiences in nature. Hosting our program with NCI is reciprocity in action, and directly supports this mission!
Program Facilitators
We’re here for you.
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ABOUT SYDNEY
When former collegiate athlete and competitive skydiver, Sydney Williams, unexpectedly found herself on the receiving end of a Type 2 diabetes diagnosis, while grappling with unresolved trauma from a decades-old sexual assault, she set out on a mission: turn her pain into purpose. Two hikes across Catalina Island and 80 miles later, she founded Hiking My Feelings® to help others tap into the mind-body connection and healing power of nature that helped kick her self-limiting beliefs and disease into remission.Having more than 15 years of communications experience with Fortune 500 companies and emerging brands, Sydney serves up her “truth juice” style of storytelling to break wide open tough conversations with practical, powerful programs and experiences. Over the years, she’s been featured on the SXSW stage, as well as in BBC, Health Magazine, Diabetic Living Magazine, San Diego Union-Tribune, Huffington Post, Psychology Today, US News & World Report, and numerous other publications.
Today, she is the founder of Reciprocity Rx, author of Hiking My Feelings: Stepping Into to the Healing Power of Nature (2019) and Hiking Your Feelings: Blazing a Trail to Self-Love (2024), and she travels across the country empowering others to summit their personal mountains on their way to becoming Well Beings.Sydney is a certified Wilderness First Responder, an instructor at various institutes across the National Park Service.
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ABOUT BARRY
Barry Williams went from high-rises to high altitudes — trading a tech career on Manhattan’s Upper East Side for a trailer in the backwoods of Maine after a single skydiving experience changed the trajectory of his life. Within 18 months of that first jump, he left the world of Fortune 100 clients behind to pursue instructor ratings in the skydiving industry, eventually building a 16-year career as a professional skydiver and mentor.Originally from New Hampshire, Barry grew up hiking and backpacking in the White Mountains, where he also earned his Wilderness EMT certification. Today, he brings that same sense of adventure, adaptability, and calm under pressure to his work as co-founder of Hiking My Feelings and Wellness in the Wilderness (WITW) Consulting.
Barry is the behind-the-scenes engine and on-the-ground support — co-leading hikes, facilitating retreats, documenting our programs and events with photos and pictures, and ensuring participants feel safe, seen, and supported in the outdoors. He also helps design and deliver custom wellness experiences for public lands agencies, corporate teams, and nonprofit partners, weaving stewardship, story, and movement into every offering.
Inspired by the teachings of Bruce Lee, Alan Watts, and Jiddu Krishnamurti, Barry lives by the mantra “be like water.” Whether he’s cooking a soulful meal, hiking at the pace of purpose, or capturing the perfect moments shared under the stars, Barry shows up with presence — and invites others to do the same.
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ABOUT MELISSA
Dr. Melissa Sundermann is a double board-certified physician in Internal Medicine and Lifestyle Medicine with over 25 years of experience in medical practice. She has advanced training in Integrative Medicine from the University of Michigan and has completed a Professional Training Program in Mind-Body Medicine through the Center for Mind-Body Medicine. Dr. Sundermann believes in a holistic, patient-centered approach, empowering individuals to heal through self-care and the pillars of Lifestyle Medicine.Widely recognized as “Doctor Outdoors,” she is a leading expert in Nature as Medicine and serves as the Founding Chair of the Nature as Medicine subcommittee for the American College of Lifestyle Medicine. She is also the Chair of the Global Wellness Institute’s Lifestyle Medicine Initiative, where she works to expand global awareness of evidence-based lifestyle interventions.
Currently, Dr. Sundermann is the Medical Director of Lifestyle Medicine for Corewell Health System. She also serves as an Advisor for Social Prescribing USA, Project Reconnect at UCLA, and InCaria — lending her expertise to initiatives at the forefront of community health, integrative healing, and innovative well-being solutions. Previously, she specialized in Longevity and Lifestyle Medicine with Lifespan Medicine and Canyon Ranch Wellness Resort. In addition to her clinical work, she is the co-founder of REVIVE! Lifestyle Medicine Well-Being Coaching and Retreats, and contributes educational content to several leading health and wellness organizations.
Her recently released book, Doctor Outdoors’ Guide to Nature and Lifestyle Medicine, offers readers a transformative blend of science, stories, and strategies to reclaim health through the healing power of the natural world.
A lifelong outdoor enthusiast, Dr. Sundermann finds inspiration and healing in running, biking, hiking, skiing, and immersing herself in nature. She is a 12-time Boston Marathon finisher, a 3-time Full Ironman Triathlon finisher, and is currently training for upcoming ultramarathons. She firmly believes that “age is not your cage” and is dedicated to helping others cultivate vitality, resilience, and joy at every stage of life.
PLUS guest experts in lifestyle medicine, change management, environmental health, wilderness wellness, and conservation!
Applications are open!
Thank you for your interest in joining the Reciprocity Rx™ Class of 2026! Registration is now open for the Online Certification Program and the Immersive Certification Experience in North Cascades National Park (limited to 12 providers). Due to high interest, we’re using a brief application process to ensure equitable access rather than first-come, first-served registration. Accepted first-round applicants will be notified by Friday, November 21, 2025.
Let's Connect -
Let's Connect -
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