Embody Mental Health

Archive for the ‘addiction’ Category

REGION 5 NARHA CONFERENCE:

Southeast Region

WHERE:  Indian Springs, Alabama

WHEN:  August 6-8th

REGISTRATION: http://www.narha.org/narha-membership/locate-my-region/region-5

I am getting ready to leave for the Southeast Region 5 NARHA (North American Handicapped Riders Association) Conference in Indian Springs, Alabama.  I have never been to Alabama and I have never heard of Indian Springs before so this should be quite an adventure all around.  I will be co-presenting a workshop (with Maurette Hanson, of Angel Smile Farms and Vinceremos Therapeutic Riding Center) titled : “Out of the Stables & Into The World”.  I will be discussing all of my very favorite things: yoga, horses, and treatment for PTSD including all of these approaches with some Native American equine traditions and rituals in the mix as well.  I am looking forward to it and, who knows, maybe I will see some of you readers there!  If not I am working on two e-books which will soon be available for purchase on the site.

1) Finding Breath: {basic} Yoga for Trauma Manual

2) Prana Equus: Mounted & UnMounted Yoga For Trauma Survivors {in Equine Facilitated Therapies}

I will give a conference update after this weekend in next Wednesday’s posting!  It should be a great collective and I always love speaking about what I love.

A horse doesn’t care how much you know, until he knows how much you care.  by Pat Parelli

Richaard Zwolinksi, LMHC, CASAC and his wife CR Zowlinksi right a great blog/article repository over at PSYCH CENTRAL, one of the only comprehensive virtual hubs for discussions on issues of mental health.  I was honored when this wonderful team/couple asked me if I would do a question/answer interview with them on horses, trauma, and addiction.  Of course I would!  One of my favorite things to discuss. They are presenting it in a THREE PART SERIES over at Psych Central in their virtual article space called “Therapy Soup”.

You can check out part one at : http://blogs.psychcentral.com/therapy-soup/2010/07/ptsd-addiction-and-healing-with-horses-part-one/

I would hurl words into this darkness and wait for the echo, and if an echo sounded, no matter how faintly,  I would send other words to tell, to march, to fight, to create a sense of hunger for life that gnaws in us all.                                              byRichard Wright, American Hunger, 1977

The ex-English Major in me wants to deconstruct this sentence from start to finish.  Every word, every comma, every part of it’s structure is dripping with boldness and defiance.  It makes me want to get out of my chair and take action.  What action?  I don’t know but the potency inspires.  Just me? Ok.  So, I can get a little excited and emphatic about words.  That has always been the case.  Since early readings of LM Montgomery’s prose by my mother before I could utter full sentences I have been incited to action by words and brought more alive and bold in my own life by words I have read on a page.  I have dug in with my fingers to the prose and come out invigorated.  Just me again? Maybe.

But there is something about the creative experience, both imbibing it and creating it, that is profound and brings to life our own lives and living worlds to even greater vibrance than before we explored it through the lens of creativity.  Whether painter, scupltor, woodworker, photographer, writer,  or needlepointer there is osmething about the experience of art (creating or absorbing) that makes us be present, be in the now, and explore our own inner landscapes in new ways and to greater depths.  We mine ourselves and our world and up comes something, as Richard Wright states, that is worth saying.  And, as he describes, with every bit we create, every word that we write, even the tiniest reverberation draws us forward to create more and speak louder onto the page or the canvas or film.

Writing has been in my veins ever since I picked up my first pencil.  I had dreams of writing a novel when I was still scribbling on those giant pads with dotted lines in elementary school.  When I went through my traumas in my late teens and suffered for years with PTSD I stopped writing.   My inner landscape had gone numb and I lost myself.  Without the reflection of the word or the will to pick up a pen and speak I had no way to reflect back to myself who I was.  My voice had always been first in paper and then outloud.  When I came crawling out of PTSD years later I had to rediscover me–both in life and on the page.  Who was I? What was my voice? What did I have to say?  My writing life was so imbedded in my “self” and definition of self that I had to rediscover my voice on the page to know what I wanted to say in my life.

I wrote yesterday about empowerment and for me writing has been my voice, my picket sign, my empowerment far more than anything else.  I can write it before I say it.  Whatever “it” is.  Even my own rauma story came out on paper before it ever came off my lips.

What creative experience gets your blood pumping, your energy blazing, your vision of the world more acute and finite?  What creative experience makes your heart sing?  Maybe it is an actual creative art: writing, painting, photography, film, dance, theatre.  Maybe it is just something that brings you fully alive: swimiing, surfing, motorcycle riding, fishing, parenting.

What makes your heart sing?  What do you wish you had in your life to make it more vibrant and alive?   What do you have in your life that brings you that joy and energy for living that you are grateful for?

I thank writing for many things.  I thank my mother for teaching me the love of words.  Words have been my lifeboat.  What is your lifeboat?