A bunch of things!
It clears time and energy for what we most want to grow here! Our young people overwhelmingly report feeling safe and free here very quickly – so we get to play, build deep friendships, explore our gifts, build skills and build our sense of purpose and meaning. Focusing more on the inner world, in accordance with Jewish values, is a much more fruitful path to healthy growth, and it just makes for more interesting conversations. Our inter-generational community prizes pursuit of wisdom. Camp is an immersion in sound principles of self-worth.
It takes off the table a major source of subtle bullying, social cruelty, and inflated importance of appearance.
The temporary respite from all the body commentary, together with our sessions and informal conversations on body image, helps create a space that naturally fosters breakthrough sharing and insight – about how one feels about one’s own body or the pressure one might feel to look a certain way, and where those messages come from, and tools for going home and being a lighthouse in a world that’s usually really different from camp. Campers come away with a powerful awareness of media influence and social pressures and how all that has impacted them, and agency to engage intentionally with all that. In a society where eating disorders are increasing at alarming rates and consumerism is damaging our environment, the guideline helps campers sort out external “noise” from their own inner guidance.
