Building a toolkit for more joy and less anxiety on the river. 

Date & Time: Friday, August 1, 2025 at 6:30 PM

Location: 221 Pinedale Street, Maryville TN 

Join Haley Mckee, a kayak instructor from The Nantahala Outdoor Center and Pucon Kayak Retreat for an evening discussion about fear, joy, stress and flow state on the river. 

Topics include stress management, anxiety, performance under pressure, developing calm before rapids, resilience after swims, and more. We look at how the brain and body are wired to respond to stress and situations we perceive as dangerous. We’ve all heard about the fight/flight/freeze response and understand we are having a stress response when our hands shake above a rapid and our fears take over our brain. Learn techniques to tamp that response down and paddle at your best when it counts. Practicing these techniques can help us slip more often into a flow state while paddling. 

This toolkit is not a magic bullet to fix your headspace instantly, rather a compilation of exercises based in mindfulness that can be a bridge to healthier inner conversations and more joy on the river. 

Haley first started managing stress as a professional classical bassist. She then spent two decades traveling solo, working and playing her way around the globe. Her travels taught her to think on her feet and problem solve on adventures like hiking in the Everest region, biking through Laos and Morocco, working at the South Pole in Antarctica, and living in remote villages in East Africa. In 2013 she began kayaking on the Ottawa in Canada and the White Nile in Uganda and hasn’t looked back. In addition to now teaching kayaking full time, she is also an owner/operator of The Resusci-Taters CPR & First Aid Instruction company with her business partner Mita Coker, Kayak instructor at Endless River Adventures.

Bring a chair; we will be indoors and a light dinner will be provided. RSVP by signing up.

Registration Tip: 

1. Ensure your $20 annual membership is current, or formally join Chota Canoe Club by paying your first annual dues. Join or renew Chota Canoe Club membership
2. Then, return to this registration page to complete registration.

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