A Course With A Horse

Chapter 6

In 2015 and shortly after my book RIDING HOME – The Power of Horses to Heal was published in New York City, I packed up everything, put my horse Austin in his trailer and moved to Vermont. Ever since I had graduated in1967 from their University known as UVM I had always felt an inexplicable inner-connection to the land, the people and the Green Mountains. Since UVM had an excellent Equine Science Department I gave them a copy of my book and asked if they were interested in having me teach a 4-day intensive, 3-credit course in Equine Therapy - Its Principals, Methods and Techniques. The next day I got a call from the Dean’s office telling me they would love to offer my course the following semester. I was truly elated.

               My UVM class was made up of men and women curious to learn how Equine Therapy worked and why it had become such an effective method of healing in the field of mental health. A number of them were also pursuing it as a full-time career. The class turned out to be a tremendous success. As time went on something remarkable also started to happen during the students’ interactions with their horses. A vast number of them began to have self-awareness epiphanies or what I referred to as a Personal Breakthrough.

Liz was a Sociology major working with a horse named Coyote. Although she was a junior she had enrolled at UVM as an a adult and was now 32 years old with a family. When she had finished her Groundwork exercises I walked over to her and asked how she was feeling. She said: “I came to this class very prepared to learn about something to help other people, and one of my profound takeaways is how much this class helped me personally.” I said tell me about that.

Liz sighed deeply and said: “Getting Coyote to move by being persistent, instead for using force and becoming aggressive, as you suggested, was an eye-opener. When my daughter doesn’t do as I ask I have always flipped from being loving to getting angry. I just realized when she finally does what I asked, it’s not out of a willingness to do it, it’s out of fear. Being persistent and not allowing my requests to escalate into force or aggression became much clearer working with Coyote. It really made me think about me.” I said: “Liz, you just had a little bit of a breakthrough.” Liz looked lost in thought. After a moment she looked at me and said: “That was never the parent I wanted to be. I really need to work on not defaulting to the methods of parenting that were given to me.”

 Liz was not the only one to have a breakthrough. When she said: “not defaulting to the methods of parenting that were given to me,” I also had an epiphany. I wondered how many other men and women, including myself, continued to make unconscious choices as adults based on the sometimes insensitive or ineffective parenting we received as children?