Trigger warning: This story contains a graphic account of military sexual trauma.

Dana Liesegang’s first time Nordic skiing was the freest she ever felt, and nearly three decades later, she’s still at it.

“It’s just so peaceful and gives me the ability to move,” she said. “It just opens your heart.”

For someone who once felt trapped in her own body, the sensation of movement is restorative. Liesegang says adaptive sports, especially Nordic skiing, have been her reason to live and seek healing.

“It’s given me the courage to advance further than I ever thought I’d go,” she said.

Looking to get out on her own, Liesegang enlisted in the Navy when she was 18. College wasn’t for her, and she loved being around ships. Her father had been a sailor and worked at Northwest Marine Iron Works in Portland, Oregon. She remembers as a kid tagging along and running around the decks of ships in the yard.

But in 1990, her military career ended only a few months after it started. Liesegang was raped by another sailor, thrown off a 75-foot cliff in San Diego and left to die.

She woke up from an 18-day coma with most of the vertebrae in her neck broken. The spinal cord injury left her paralyzed from the neck down. Her doctors told her she’d never be able to breathe on her own again. As dire as her prognosis was, Liesegang was determined to have the final say and began doing what she could to get off a respirator.

“Had I not fought for my ability to breathe, I would probably still be on a respirator,” she said.

Breathing on her own meant Liesegang was able to leave the intensive care unit in San Diego and transfer to a Department of Veterans Affairs spinal cord injury unit in Seattle. There, doctors discovered that her injury was incomplete—meaning it was possible she could regain some motor function.

Liesegang’s physical therapist in Seattle introduced her to adaptive sports, and nine months after her injury, she was far from a hospital, playing rugby in her first National Veterans Wheelchair Games. That experience was the springboard to attending the National Disabled Veterans Winter Sports Clinic in 1993. The clinic is co-presented every year by DAV and the VA.

At the time, most of the participants were Vietnam veterans.

“It was a lot wilder back then,” Liesegang said. “But they taught me the ropes; they taught me everything I know. Without the Vietnam veteran [participants], we wouldn’t have any of what we have right now.”

Those veteran participants in the early years of the clinic were mentors to Liesegang, and through their encouragement, she started Nordic skiing in 1996. They were also early advocates of the benefits of the clinic, which has become a hub of innovative solutions for therapists and a center of treatment for thousands of severely disabled veterans over its 39-year history.

“Adaptive sports is something that is an underutilized tool in most rehabilitation,” said Justin Laferrier, a physical therapist and volunteer with the clinic’s seating and prosthetic team. “I’ve had a number of patients tell me in the past that this is the first time they’ve felt like themselves, even if they weren’t athletes before.”

Laferrier is the associate department chair of the physical therapy department at Johnson & Wales University in Providence, Rhode Island. He’s also a Marine and Army veteran, serving as a physical therapist in the latter. He’s led amputee rehabilitation programs at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., and the Center for the Intrepid at Brooke Army Medical Center at Fort Sam Houston in Texas.

He said there are strong links between adaptive sports and reductions in depression, increases in self-esteem, post-traumatic growth and overall physical benefits in veterans.

Nearly 400 participants, including Liesegang, went to Snowmass Village, Colorado, in early April for the 2025 winter sports clinic to experience these benefits. Veterans with disabilities, including blindness, paralysis, severe traumatic brain injury and limb loss, had the opportunity to participate in Alpine and Nordic skiing, scuba diving, sled hockey, curling, cycling, rock climbing and more.

Kendra Betz, the clinic’s seating and prosthetics team lead and a physical therapist with the Veterans Health Administration’s National Center for Patient Safety, said each activity is designed to expose veterans to movement despite their disability.

“If we can encourage people to get off the couch and out the door and doing stuff, then somehow everything falls into place,” Betz said. “[This clinic] really empowers people to make those adjustments for the rest of their life.”

For VA recreational, occupational and physical therapists, the clinic also serves as an annual think tank and proving ground for many adaptive scenarios, allowing clinical providers to come together to discuss, innovate and evaluate technologies and advancements in both adaptive sports and daily life for veterans with complex impairments.

Betz said they do this by looking at every step of a veteran’s experience, starting the moment they leave their house, learning where friction points are as they navigate the challenges of traveling by air, staying in a hotel, navigating unfamiliar places and participating in activities. Because there’s a large gathering of providers and veterans with a wide variety of limitations, therapists can quickly iterate and develop tailored solutions for improved quality of life.

“This clinic is leading the way with providing the types of devices that are out there that we can use to help them with those goals,” Betz said. “We want to get the perfect setup and teach you how to use that so that you can have baseline skills.”

As a participant, Liesegang has played a major role in one of the innovations that has come from the clinic. Wanting to find a way to participate in Nordic skiing standing up, she first tried bringing a walker fitted with cross-country skis to the course. She had bracing for her knees and ankles to help support her and was able to go 10 feet.

Then, she worked with long-time volunteer ski instructor Bobby Palm over the course of several clinics to adapt and test an adaptive downhill skiing device called a slider to work with cross-country skiing. A Nordic version of the slider is now a common device used at the course, opening the sport and sensation of standing up to people who previously couldn’t have that experience.

“My heart explodes with joy just seeing other people use it,” Liesegang said. “That’s what it’s all about: passing it along. I get to see other people succeed.”

It’s because of that growth and progress in veterans that physical therapists like Laferrier and Betz are fierce advocates for the winter sports clinic and other adaptive sports clinics.

“If we’re not gathering and taking care of these veterans, there’s going to be tremendous deficits in their quality of life,” Betz said.

For Liesegang, her clinic experience is shifting from being a pioneer to being a mentor, much like the Vietnam veterans were to her. She still skis, but osteoporosis means she has to take it a little easier with the activities.

“The baton has been passed, and now I’m reaching back and bringing people up,” said Liesegang. “It’s how we are. It’s how veterans roll. You reach back and bring your brothers and sisters up. They did it for me. Now it’s my turn.”