North Country Counseling & Retreat  offers a range of services, all designed to help individuals and families transform problems into opportunities for growth.  The Chinese ideogram for crisis includes both disaster and opportunity.  With that in mind, we approach each problem or crisis with hope and commitment to the process of intentional change.  We are dedicated to cultivating wellness in ourselves and in others, utilizing the best therapeutic tools available for the issue at hand.  The desire to share materials that we find valuable is how trainings and workshops come into being.

We are so pleased to be able to offer equine-facilitated psychotherapy (EFP), experiential learning (EFEL), and human development (EFHD).  Working with the horses can help you develop your emotional fitness, mentor you in improving your relationships, reconnect to the wisdom of embodied awareness, and assist in evolving your consciousness. 

Bari J. Bannister, MS is the founder and Director of North Country Counseling & Retreat in Corinth, NY and member of the Union Center in Schenectady, NY; New York State Licensed Mental Health Counselor (LMHC),  New York State Credentialed Alcohol and Substance Abuse Counselor (CASAC), Board Certified Expert in Traumatic Stress (BCETS) through the American Association of Experts in Traumatic Stress, Approved Consultant and Certified Therapist in EMDR and former Teacher of Seemorg Matrix Work /Advanced Integrative Therapy (AIT), Grief Recovery Specialist, and Epona Approved Instructor.  She has developed and presented workshops and retreats on a range of topics.  Bari has owned horses since 1980, studying hunt seat, dressage and carriage driving. Regular trail riding developed her confidence in the partnership between human and horse.  Now she is blending her lifelong passion for horses with her psychotherapeutic and teaching skills in Windhorse Wisdom®. 

Cliff Green, MS,  MA  is  Director of the Program for Men--a private psychotherapy practice, the Dual Recovery Coordinator for Warren-Washington County Association for Mental Health, and Adjunct Professor of Psychology at Adirondack Community College (ACC). He is a New York State Licensed Mental Health Counselor (LMHC), New York State Credentialled Alcoholism and Substance Abuse Counselor (CASAC), and is trained in EMDR® ,  Advanced Integrative Therapy (AIT)/formerly Seemorg Matrix Work®,  and  Thought Field Therapy (TFT).  He regularly presents on the topic of integrated treatment for individuals with co-occurring disorders and frequently co-facilitates workshops and retreats with Bari. Although not a horseman, Cliff is a first-time horse owner whose background growing up farming, earning a masters degree in Ecology from Cornell, and working in the woods for twenty years as a logger/excavator has given him a unique perspective of the natural world and what it has to teach us. Of the many hats he wears, he will tell you that his role in Windhorse Wisdom® gatherings as Head Honorable Horse Handler (HHHH) is one of his favorites.