In 2002, Peter Freeth met Clay Lowe. Peter had recently set up a personal development business upon leaving the telecoms industry, Clay was a trainer in a financial services company.

Clay had returned from an adventure race in Borneo where he saw the effect that a natural environment had on people and their view on life. People with good careers, nice houses, new cars, sat round a camp fire with no TV and followed in the footsteps of their ancestors - sharing a hand cooked meal and telling stories. The experience transformed people's lives; many couldn't face going back to a job that didn't fulfil them and left to travel or pursue a more rewarding career.

At the time, Clay saw the transformational power of this environment and process, and wondered if there was a way to bring about this transformation purposefully and in a more controlled, predictable way, so that the individual could be in control of the result.

At the same time, Peter saw a style of coaching that involved using horses as a feedback mechanism. For this to work, the client would think about a goal to work on and use the horse to represent someone related to that goal. The client would then play out all of their unconscious fears towards the real goal in working with the horse. Peter wondered if this method of using something physical as a metaphor for a goal or issue could be adapted to environments that were more accessible and varied.

When Peter and Clay shared these experiences, the answer was obvious. The natural environment, in particular the mountain, was a perfect metaphor for a goal. The only question was, would it work?

Ascent was born in April 2004 when Peter and Clay first checked out the original location, Mount Snowdon in North Wales. Whilst the geography of Snowdon lent itself particularly well to the vision for Ascent, it quickly became obvious that any new environment could bring about the change in focus and perspective necessary to catalyse personal change. The important factor was taking people out of the 'ordinary world'.

One final piece of the puzzle was Joseph Campbell's research in the 1950s into the mythology of the hero's journey; the path or process that underpins every hero's transformational journey from modern film to literature going back many thousands of years. As a journey of personal transformation, Ascent enables us all to contact and become the hero within.

Being an everyday hero doesn't involve slaying real dragons, yet we all have our own personal demons that we must face if we are to cross the threshold to adventure and explore our lives to our full potential. On returning from Ascent, people are thrown back into an ordinary world that no longer seems the same; it seems to be a world full of possibilities and success where before it held only doubt and uncertainty. The journey that we make in our lives every day is the path that we walk, and we can choose to walk that path in fear, wondering what is around each corner, or we can walk it proudly, ready to face each new challenge.

So this is the threefold genesis of Ascent; environment, focus and path. Ascent works on mind, body and spirit in equal harmony. We call our time on the mountain 'moving meditation', and certainly the physical nature of Ascent does bring something very tangible to the transformational process.

Ascent is about alignment of mind, body and spirit so that you can focus your energy on achieving your true potential, that which lies beyond even the most ambitious goals that you set for yourself.

As the Ascent journey continues, we continue to rise to new challenges with each experience we run. We have adapted the underlying principles to many different formats successfully, and Ascent continues to evolve as does our understanding of the hero's journey that we can all walk, if we are only brave enough to answer the call to adventure.