Mission Objectives

Balanced Veterans Network Mission

BVN has a mission to help educate, support, and provide resources to veterans so that they can find balance and stability in life after military service. 

Approach

There are multiple modalities that help serve this purpose that include mental wellness, movement, and plant medicine. Transitioning from military service to civilian life often requires a profound shift in how a person processes their experiences. By engaging in “stillness” activities such as mindfulness, meditation, and talk therapy, veterans can create the mental space necessary to navigate this change. These practices allow individuals to move past the immediate noise of the transition to find deep-seated purpose and meaning. Through consistent reflection, the complexities of post-military life begin to transform into a clear, manageable path forward. Ultimately, embracing these quiet moments of healing helps veterans build a fulfilling and understood future outside of uniform.

Veterans can also find healing through movement, like yoga, weight lifting, BJJ, and more.  Simply getting outdoors and moving in nature is more healing than simply staying indoors.  The natural physical instinct to trauma many times tends to be fight, flight, or freeze. Once a veteran returns from a traumatic experience, there is nothing to fight so many will fight with others.  There is also flight, where many veterans struggle to stay in a sometimes safe situation because instinctively it goes against everything we were taught that makes an easy target.  The final response, to freeze, is where many veterans find themselves.  Not knowing where to turn or getting the outcomes that make veterans feel better they hole up and struggle knowing who to trust after losing the camaraderie we once had.

Challenging these natural instincts can be made even easier with the use of plant medicine when used in the right context to help a veteran begin to find life after service.  Cannabis is an excellent natural modality that can help make daily life more tolerable so that a veteran can find a community that can also help them navigate the many groups and VA healthcare system designed to provide support.  Additionally, many veterans have reported anecdotal stories of finding a renewed sense of purpose through the appropriate use of entheogenic modalities.  Once considered taboo, plant medicine is giving veterans a chance to recharge their will.  While plant medicine is not the only answer, integration is an important element of using plant medicine, and it is the key to breaking the cycle.  Even without integration, plant medicine can simply make a veteran feel just good enough to stay alive.  That’s a feat worth noticing, and something that the VA wishes their pills can do.  However, integration gives us the ability to find pleasure and enjoyment outside of the noise that keeps many of us from making decisions, taking risks, or challenging our deeply ingrained beliefs. 

We encourage you to sign up and plug in to the BVN community to learn more and connect with other veterans who have used different modalities to overcome some of the challenges veterans face once a military career has ended.  Please reach out to our team and let us know if you have questions and we will do our best to help point you in the right direction to begin your path to healing.