Meet Your Guide: Kat Houghton

 
ROPC Guide Kat Haughton photo collage of travels and TEDX talk
 
 
 

Introducing Kat Houghton PhD

Kat came to wilderness rites of passage guiding after a dark night of the soul initiated by the sudden death of her partner. Finding herself in a broken culture that offered little guidance on how to deal with death and grief she gravitated to the natural world for solace.

Becoming involved with Rites of Passage Council and participating in a Vision Quest was a turning point in Kat’s journey with grief. She learned how to more deeply connect to the more-than-human world; to feel like she belonged here on this land. She also leaned into connection with her ancestors and learned how to draw on their wisdom for guidance in her life.

The natural word has always been a great teacher for Kat. She grew up on a farm in Scotland and has always lived close to the land. The Rites of Passage work has given her new channels of communication with the unseen aspects of our world.

Kat is trained professionally as a psychologist, eco-therapist and a transformational coach. She weaves that modern, Western perspective on human change with wisdom and ritual from her ancestral lineage while guiding.

Since participating in the water protection movement at Standing Rock in 2016 Kat has been involved in climate activism. Her focus is on community rights to local self-governance and the Rights of Nature – giving legal standing to ecosystems. She co-founded an Asheville based non-profit – Community Roots -  in 2017 to tackle these issues locally which she continues to work on.

She delivered a TedX talk on the Rights of Nature which you can watch here: https://www.ted.com/talks/kat_houghton_the_rights_of_nature

Kat lives on a forest farm in the Southern Appalachian Mountains where she nurtures mushrooms and woodland medicinals and offers transformational forest bathing, soul-tending retreats and coaching.

We interviewed her recently for a deeper dive into who she is and why she does this work. Here’s how it went…

 
 
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ROPC: What's your favorite part about working with ROPC?

KAT: It’s all about the transformation. I’m a psychologist committed to facilitating personal and cultural change. I’m always hungry for ways to help with the alchemy - turning those dark times, the shadows that haunt us into superpowers, our own unique medicine we bring to the world. 

ROPC: Tell us a little bit about your background.

KAT: I’m a psychologist, an activist and farmer. I spent 15 years working with children with autism and their families. I taught professionals all over the world and worked with over 900 families. That’s how I got my PhD - designing, implementing and testing parent-mediated, play-based interventions for kids on the autism spectrum. I loved it! Then I got burned out and needed a change. 

In 2009 I co-founded a software company, ilumivu, that is fundamentally changing the way we deliver healthcare. We provide software to help researchers and clinicians deliver personalized, precision, predictive treatments to patients who otherwise wouldn’t have access. Our focus has always been mental health and bringing the importance of mental health into the medical world. 

After Tyler's death in 2018 I leaned more deeply back into psychology and especially ecopsychology. I’ve completed certificates in Transformational Ecotherapy, Wilderness Rites of Passage guiding a professional life coaching. Now I live on and co-run a forest farm in the Southern Appalachian Mountains where we provide medicine for both body and soul. 

 
 

ROPC: Tell us about one of your rites of passage experiences.

KAT: My first wilderness fast was in 2016 on Diné land at the bottom of Canyon de Chelly in northern Arizona. I was really scared! I’d never slept outside alone, let alone without a tent and there had been a mountain lion sighting close to basecamp recently. 

At that point in my life, I was feeling very stuck in the digital health business I’d be running for 7 years. I knew it was work that was not feeding my soul and I couldn’t see a way out. Ironically, and typically of how these ceremonies seem to go, I found myself at the end of a box canyon surrounded on three sides by 40 foot of red rock! I had come to the desert for a sense of endless possibilities and freedom and found myself stuck in a self-made jail. 

I resisted hard! My mind was full of blame and judgments of why I was here, and who’d chosen this site and why I’d paid so much money to sit in a dead end, on and on the mind torrent went. I was alone out there. I didn’t even have the daily ritual of eating to distract myself with. I had to sit with all the parts of myself that were activated.  

Eventually I wore down. I became still, quiet. I started to notice where I was. I watched how the rocks changed colors as the sun went overhead each day and how little lizards made patterns as they scuttled through the sand. I heard the flap of raven’s wings as they flew high overhead and eventually the sound of my own heart beating. I became filled with fascination for this new home and all the wonders it held. 

I watched and listened and felt. I got to know how the lizards and ravens moved. I began to see the routine of the sun and light. I knew where to go to get warm first thing in the morning and where to keep my water bottles so they stayed cool. 

I became absorbed in the place rather than my thoughts about the place.   

Everything changed after that in ways that are hard to describe. 

Two months later I found myself at the water protectors camp in Standing Rock - a choice I know I would not have made before that wilderness fast. From that point on everything changed. I met Tyler, we co-founded a nonprofit and became engaged in climate activism and the rights of nature movement. Deeply soul feeding work

Eighteen months later when Tyler was killed in a motorcycle accident I found myself in a place of extreme resistance “NO, it can’t be”. I knew this place. I knew it very well. And I knew that if I leaned into it - even though it hurt like nothing I’d ever experienced - that on the other side of it there was wonder. 

It took longer than four days that time. But I did find wonder and immense gratitude buried deep in the darkness of my grief. Sleeping on the ground, under the stars and spending many hours wandering in the woods and by the creeks of these ancient mountains was a crucial part of that discovery. 

Pushing past my thoughts about what’s happening and leaning into the experience of it has become a practice. One that brings me frustration at times but mostly brings me a sense of rootedness, of belonging in the world. A gift for which I am truly grateful. 

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ROPC: Who is the perfect fit for the Road Ahead?

KAT: Those who are feeling the pull of a more authentic life but haven’t yet found how to align their life with it. You have an inner knowing about how to live more fully and deeply but find yourself entangled in the trap of modern life wondering why your life doesn’t look and feel the way you want it to. 

You’ve been aware of this disconnect in varying degrees over your life but have come to a point of ENOUGH. You are ready to make a fundamental change in how you are living this wild and precious life. 

ROPC: What do you see as the role of a program facilitator?

KAT: My role is to help you find your answers. I don’t have your answers only you know what medicine you carry and how to bring that forth into the world. And I know from my own experience that it can be hard to see the gifts you are carrying or to even believe you are carrying gifts at all. The guides in my life helped me to find that place inside myself that knows, that trusts, that allows me to feel rooted in my being and in the earth so I can reach out for that which I yearn for. 

ROPC: Did any aspect of your childhood influence you to this role?

KAT: Definitely! In a way my childhood embodied the split we humans have created with the more-than-human world. I split my time for many years between a Scottish hill farm where I ran free and wild and an English boarding school where every moment was scheduled and the only place I got to run was on a track. 

I became very adept at shapeshifting. At changing myself to fit in with the expectations of those around me. And I have the luxury - for which I will be forever grateful - of knowing that I was doing that. I could go back to the farm and be me, just pure, unbridled me, knee deep in mud, hair a tangle, trying to get lost out on the edges of the farm. That saved me from getting lost in the idea that I was just one person, of identifying myself with the way society told me I should be. 

It gave me a front row seat of the inner alchemy, how we change ourselves to adapt to what is being called for; I watched myself learn how to do it. It gave me a unique foundation in learning how to guide others through the process.

 
 
 
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