Weeklong retreat in Montana ranch aims to heal IDF vets from war traumas

There are no phones, no televisions and no internet at the isolated K BAR L ranch in Montana — and for a group of 15 former soldiers in the IDF Paratroopers Brigade’s 890th Battalion who had been fighting in Gaza, that was a welcome escape.

Held in a wilderness far off the grid, about 120 miles (almost 200 kilometers) from the Canadian border, the seven-day retreat aimed to help the combat soldiers to learn tools to cope with mental health challenges, including post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The retreat was run by Healing in Nature (HIN), a nonprofit that collaborates with scientific teams from Cambridge and Tel Aviv universities who gather physical and emotional data about the soldiers to research new techniques to help heal unseen battle scars.

Omri Barkin, a former IDF soldier, began the nonprofit Healing in Nature after October 7 to aid soldiers, “his brothers in arms,” he told The Times of Israel.

Following his army service in Operation Protective Edge in 2014, Barkin had flown to the ranch in Montana owned by Emily and Adam Wallis, who are family friends. The remote wilderness “really healed my soul,” Barkin said, and he dreamed of sharing this experience with other veterans.

Barkin first reached out to an old friend, Nimrod Hertz, who is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Cambridge, UK, where he studies evidence-based interventions for PTSD. The two friends then expanded their network, building the HIN research team. Barkin established an nonprofit organization and raises money for the program through private donors.

Soldiers as patients — and guinea pigs

At the retreat, researchers such as Dr. Roi Sar-el, a psychiatrist from Tel Aviv University who is now a research fellow at Harvard University, used biofeedback measurements to track the soldiers’ eye movements, sleep patterns, heart rate, and stress levels before the ranch trip, during their stay there, and upon their return to Israel.

The team aims to study how combat experiences affect soldiers’ levels of stress, depression, hypervigilance, and overall well-being, Sar-El told The Times of Israel. The researchers also use the data to examine how the experience at the ranch can help the former fighters.

“We have already obtained promising results and plan to publish our findings in peer-reviewed academic journals,” he said.

Adi, who asked that his last name not be used, said that his wife was initially skeptical about the retreat and asked if he “really needed to go all the way to Montana.”

Adi said that after the trip, he realized the answer was, “to some extent, yes.”

The soldiers, who all knew one another from their army unit, began their day with dips in the “icy river,” Adi said, followed by twice-daily group sessions along with one-one-one counseling.

In addition, there was fishing, horseback riding, and a visit to a nearby thermal springs aptly named Medicine Springs.

Increased awareness of a growing problem

According to research, between 8 and 15% of soldiers develop PTSD, said Dr. Danny Brom, founding director of Metiv, The Israel Psychotrauma Center, who has no connection to HIN.

At its extreme, PTSD can lead to suicide, as in the case of soldier Eliran Mizrahi who was called into the reserves shortly after Hamas’s October 7 attack, when he was assigned to help clear the bodies of those murdered by Palestinian terrorists at the Supernova music festival. He was then sent into Gaza, where he served as a combat engineer until he was injured in April.

Despite being recognized as a disabled veteran and being diagnosed with PTSD, Mizrahi received an order to report back for duty in Rafah in early June, and took his life two days later.

Mizrahi’s death sparked Prof. Yair Bar-Haim, head of the Clinic of the National Center for Post Trauma & Resilience at Tel Aviv University (TAU) to urge the army to exempt reservists from additional military service until their treatment for PTSD has been completed.

An IDF spokesperson said that if soldiers are diagnosed with PTSD by an army medical professional, they are exempted from combat duty.

The majority of soldiers do not develop PTSD, Brom said, but they are “distressed” because they’ve seen “the most horrific things” in Gaza.

“It’s very beneficial for them to speak about these things and process them,” Brom explained to The Times of Israel.

“For many years in Israel, after soldiers came out of a war, they’d go home, and that was it,” he said.

Now, he said, the IDF and the Defense Minister “are aware that it’s important to help people with their re-entry into society, to help them process their experiences.”

“It’s difficult enough just dealing with the distress and everything that comes along after being in a war, even if it doesn’t develop into PTSD,” Brom said.

Finding new safe places

Soldiers might be anxious after being in battle, Sar-el said. “They have trouble sleeping, and feel that the world is a less safe place for them, and they have to be on guard all the time.”

At the ranch, however, ranch owner Adam Wallis sensed that the soldiers “felt so safe because it is so remote, you don’t see other people, don’t get to hear about the news. You get to forget about what day of the week it is.”

His family hosts guests from June to November, taking people out to hunt, fish, or hike. For the past three years, they donated one week of the ranch to active US military personnel. When Wallis heard of Barkin’s initiative,  “we jumped right in to help.”

The family plans to host three more groups of Israeli soldiers next year.

Most of the soldiers had never seen a counselor, Sar-el said, and it was a “challenge to introduce them to the world of therapy, group sessions, and group dynamics.”

He and the rest of the HIN team wanted the soldiers to feel “encircled by people who want your good,” Sar-el said.

“Soldiers have a reputation of roughness, tough Israelis, and yet they were very open,” Adi said. “Everyone said how much they were aggravated at home,” with “very simple tasks with their kids.”

“We tried to give them the message, be resilient. Go back to your life. Go back to your family, your career aspirations, all the while, trying to process complex events they went through and integrate that into their lives, which is a really tough job,” Sar-el said.

Sar-el said that he was aware that one week would not “put it all right,” but he could see that the soldiers were trying to integrate what they learned into their lives.

He said that one soldier learned that when he was angry, he could stop one minute and try to be mindful of his body, of what was going on.

He could ask himself, “Am I angry at my child, at my wife, at my boss, or is it something that, you know is within me, and I can kind of communicate with them and take one more minute before I, you know, lash out?”

Adi said the soldiers formed a community, with an active WhatsApp group, a network of alumni, who “are there for each other.” Sar-el said that the participants are more aware if they need to be treated by psychologists or psychiatrists.

“We only had a week to do whatever we did there, and we still need to follow up with them and support them in everything that they need,” Barkin said.

Other initiatives to bring peace of mind

Metiv offers nine-month programs for veteran soldiers, Peace of Mind, which is co-funded by the Defense Ministry, Brom said.

As part of the program, the soldiers fly to Jewish communities in England, the United States, and Canada for one-week retreats, during which there will be approximately 40 to 50 hours of group sessions with trained facilitators.

“The sessions bring up the most difficult experiences,” Brom said. “Most of the participants find it tremendously helpful. They even talk a lot about it and say that it was life-changing.”

Programs like these are very needed for soldiers, Brom said, “and we need to scale up. There are certainly things that can be done.”