Research Corner
A research-backed approach.
AFL’s sanctuary model is built around something simple: healing often works best when it feels human, grounded, and sustainable. Our approach brings together animals, nature, movement, quiet reflection, practical work, and long-term support — all areas with meaningful research behind them.
We support emotional, physical, social, and practical recovery rather than treating wellness as only one thing.
The research behind AFL is not only about the individual — it also points to benefits for connection, relationships, and family well-being.
Nature, movement, mindfulness, and community are all part of the broader direction already recognized in VA Whole Health.
What Supports the Model
Why AFL’s Sanctuary Approach Makes Sense
The sanctuary is designed around practices that research consistently links with better well-being, lower stress, stronger coping, and better psychosocial functioning.
Animals Can Help More Than One Person at a Time
Research on animal-assisted interventions in military families suggests benefits can extend beyond the veteran to other family members as well. That matters for AFL because healing rarely happens in isolation.
Service-dog research also shows meaningful reductions in PTSD, anxiety, and depression, along with improved psychosocial functioning — the kind of changes that can ripple outward into relationships, daily life, and social reintegration.
At AFL, animals are not an extra feature. They are part of a family-centered healing environment built around trust, connection, comfort, and presence.
The Library and Study Hall
Healing also happens in silence. Reading, journaling, or simply sitting in peace can help interrupt mental overload and create space for reflection.
Research syntheses on journaling support its use as a mental-health tool, and self-reflective writing studies suggest gains in resilience and coping-related confidence. AFL’s library is meant to be that calm refuge — a place to breathe, learn, write, and reset.
Sometimes progress looks like movement. Sometimes it looks like stillness. Both matter.
Fresh Air, Sunlight, and Space to Exhale
Time in nature and outdoor activity are both linked with better psychological outcomes. Studies of outdoor physical activity in natural environments report benefits for outcomes like anxiety, fatigue, positive affect, and vigor.
That is part of why AFL includes trails, fishing areas, open land, and outdoor gathering spaces. The point is not to force “therapy” into every moment. It is to make calm, movement, and nature easier to access.
A walk, a pond, a quiet trail, and open sky can sometimes do what crowded, clinical spaces cannot.
The Gym as a Recovery Space
Consistent physical activity is associated with lower anxiety and depression, better sleep, and improved overall well-being. VA Whole Health also frames movement as a core part of health, not just fitness.
AFL’s gym is not about competition or appearance. It is about giving guests a structured, healthy outlet to rebuild strength, regulate stress, and reconnect with their bodies in a supportive setting.
Recovery often needs routine. Movement can help provide it.
Working the Land Supports Mental Health
Horticultural therapy and gardening research is especially relevant to AFL. Meta-analyses and umbrella reviews report positive effects on mental health, well-being, and quality of life, including reductions in depression and anxiety in many settings.
Veteran-focused work also points in this direction. The VA FARMS pilot program supports veterans through agriculture-related training and mental-health resources, showing that agriculture can be more than a pastime — it can be part of recovery and reintegration.
Gardening, tending animals, caring for bees, and working with the land are not side activities at AFL. They are part of the healing model itself.
Healing Should Not End at Checkout
AFL’s model includes benefits education, VA claims support, and cancer-support connections because the need for guidance does not disappear after a retreat ends.
This fits with the broader Whole Health mindset inside VA, which emphasizes a larger picture of well-being that includes relationships, movement, mindfulness, purpose, and support systems alongside clinical care.
Real healing is not just what happens on the property. It is what keeps helping after people go home.
What This Means for AFL
A Sanctuary Model Grounded in Evidence and Human Experience
AFL’s approach is not built on one single intervention. It is built on a layered environment: animals, agriculture, quiet space, movement, family connection, and ongoing support. That combination mirrors the way real recovery often works — gradually, relationally, and through multiple paths at once.
The research does not say every person heals the same way. It does suggest that environments combining social connection, purpose, nature, movement, reflection, and practical support can make a meaningful difference. That is the foundation AFL is building on.
Research Notes
Examples of the Evidence Behind This Page
Animal-Assisted and Family Research
Systematic review of animal-assisted interventions for military families; large 156-participant psychiatric service-dog trial in veterans with PTSD; family-relationship and psychosocial findings from the military-family AAI review.
Nature, Journaling, Movement, and Agriculture
Evidence includes a journaling evidence synthesis, self-reflective writing research, meta-analyses on outdoor activity in natural settings, horticultural-therapy meta-analyses and umbrella reviews, the VA FARMS pilot, and VA Whole Health guidance on yoga, mindfulness, and movement.
Add formal citations below this section or on a separate references page if you want a more academic presentation.
Research Matters — But So Does the Way Healing Feels
AFL’s sanctuary approach is grounded in both evidence and lived reality: people heal better when they have room to breathe, meaningful work to do, support that lasts, and a community that understands what they carry.