When most people think of Kanab, Utah, they picture stunning red rock formations, slot canyons, and bright desert skies. But for therapist Emilee Krupa, Kanab is much more: It’s the birthplace of her career. It was there that she first saw the effectiveness of experiential therapy.
She got her start as a therapist at a wilderness therapy program for youth on public lands in Kanab. Local Paiute community members taught the youth about plant medicines, survival methods, and traditional skills like carving.
“Wilderness therapy shaped me as a therapist,” she recalls. “I worked with some of the best therapists on the planet.” The experimental nature taught her that healing doesn’t always happen sitting on a couch.
“It wasn’t talk-therapy driven,” she explains. “Instead of having a 17-year-old sit and talk about their feelings, we’d go hiking. We’d learn to bust a fire. Every kid had to create their own fire kit from sage and from juniper. We didn't have lighters, flint, or steel.” The kids also carved their own spoons from Rocky Mountain juniper. “It was a really incredible experience that…opened my eyes to more experiential models.”
Wilderness therapy wasn’t glamorous. Her clients were primarily teens and young adults struggling with addiction or substance-use disorders. She lived in Las Vegas at the time, and woke up at 3 a.m. every Monday to drive four hours to Kanab. She’d spend two days living out of a retrofitted early-2000s Ford Explorer—mattress, sleeping bag, and all—before driving back to Vegas.
The desert winters were brutal. “I was six months pregnant, sleeping in my car in the middle of a snowstorm. I woke up and literally couldn’t open my car door because so much snow had fallen overnight.” That was the moment she knew she needed to step away and focus on her family.
After leaving wilderness therapy, Emilee shifted into tech for a time while raising her two children. But eventually her heart pulled her back to working in mental health—this time through ketamine-assisted therapy, another non-traditional treatment plan. Emilee quickly saw positive results for patients working with ketamine-assisted therapy.
In 2023, her life changed again. She had just finished nursing her youngest when she noticed something was wrong. She discovered a lump, but at the time, she thought it was just a clogged milk duct. When it became painful, however, she went to her doctor, and a biopsy confirmed a diagnosis that no 32-year-old mother expects: invasive ductal carcinoma—breast cancer, with a tumor nearly seven centimeters long.
“Everything flipped overnight. I went from working and raising my kids to fighting for my life.”
She began an experimental treatment at Huntsman Cancer Institute—a new chemo-immunotherapy combination that shrank the tumor rapidly, but that came with severe side effects. After chemo ended, her health declined sharply. She dropped from about 160 pounds to 100. She cycled in and out of the hospital, put on steroids and a rotating list of medications. But it wasn’t working.
A physician finally told her some terrifying news: they’d done everything they could. “At this point, we can only try to keep you alive and hope your body eventually responds.”
Then a doctor and friend made an unexpected suggestion: a fecal microbiota transplant (FMT). This procedure is unavailable in the U.S. except for treating the bacterial infection C diff., but internationally, FMT is used more extensively. Emilee contacted a clinic in the UK, but they didn’t offer treatment to recent cancer survivors. However, they recommended a specialist in Germany.
Within days, Emilee and her husband were on a plane to Germany to meet a physician renowned for treating complex post-chemo cases. He conducted extensive diagnostic testing: vitamin absorption, mineral levels, heavy metals, pesticides, mold exposure—all the things no one in the U.S. had investigated. He found her body was completely depleted.
She underwent FMT, intensive vitamin, mineral, and peptide infusions, NAD therapy, and a personalized protocol aimed at restoring her devastated system.
Within three days, she was off the steroids, the same steroids no doctor in the U.S. could taper without her crashing. Soon, she felt better than she had in her entire adult life.
She even had enough energy to explore Germany, something unimaginable just weeks before.
“That doctor saved my life.” Emilee’s experience inspired her to open Koru Wellness in Lehi.
Her mission emerged directly from her recovery, and her motto is “Test—don’t guess.”
In other words, she doesn’t experiment, pinpointing the problem before recommending treatments. She’s watched so many patients struggle with depression or anxiety, and sometimes they don’t know why they feel the way they do.
At Koru Wellness, treatment can include traditional talk therapy, ketamine-assisted therapy, extensive lab testing to identify nutrient deficiencies, toxic exposures, or other issues, vitamin and mineral IV infusions or injections tailored to patients’ personal lab results, and ear acupuncture (the Five-Needle Protocol), especially effective for trauma, anxiety, sleep issues, and addiction.
“There is no one-size-fits-all approach,” Emilee says. Her goal is to heal the mind and restore the body, with everything geared to the individual. Sometimes the answer is psychological, but sometimes it’s a deficiency, like a vitamin D deficiency so severe that it explains months of depression during Utah’s dark winters.
Unlike many ketamine clinics, Koru’s method includes a licensed therapist in the room for the entire session. Emilee feels ketamine is safe and effective when it’s monitored correctly by medical professionals and a therapist. She believes that people need guidance, connection, and integration—not to be “left alone in a room with an IV.”
“We’re not anti-medication, and we’re not anti-holistic medicine either,” she explains. Western medicine saved her life, but extensive testing, FMT treatment, and vitamins and nutrients saved her again when the side effects of the chemotherapy were life-threatening.
Emilee no longer sleeps in a Ford Explorer in snowstorms or hikes plateaus with teens learning to carve spoons. She has taken everything she’s learned and created a well-rounded care program. She is a mother, a survivor, a clinician, and an advocate for integrative therapy care.