Embody Mental Health

Archive for the ‘animals & healing wednesday’ 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.

We long for an affection altogether ignorant of our faults.  Heaven has accorded this to us in the uncritical canine attachment.  by George Eliot

My pitbull/lab Guinness loves to lap swim.  Lately, his eager to learn brain has been craving more than just the run of the mill dog swimming laps routine and I have taught him to competitively swim {against me}.  He, the doggie paddle, me, freestyle ala my middle school swim team days.  We both come home at the end of a long, hard, training day sore and limping; the nature of competition pushing each of us to our  max out point.  Sometimes he cheats, and cuts me off, or sticks his bum right in my lane, but I let him get away with it.

Animals can be therapeutic at many levels.  My dog, at present, is teaching me to get back my competitive swimming edge; an unlikely swim team partner, but a companion even in this unique and unorthodox way.  He is a “lap dog” of a different sort and I love him for it.  Meanwhile, in the background, my attention hungry terrier, Gracie, limps from a minor cut on her foot, while jeering with high pitched barks, like a soccer mom on the sidelines of our laps.  Occasionally, she falls in while caught off guard too close to the edge during a boisterous barking fit and daintily swims her way to the steps and shakes off in a huff; how she does hate getting her feet wet.

My beagle/pug Gaia has a slight obsession with my goggles and when I get too close to the edge she will lunge at my face, popping under the water’s chlorinated surface and bouncing back up, eager to get at the plastic encasing my eyes…as if it were some doggie pool toy, taunting her from a distance.

The whole experience is quite comical as I mediate the swimming laps with Guinness, monitoring the sidelines hysteria of Gracie, and the OCD goggle compulsion of Gaia all while trying to get a little bit of Floridian sun and swim in for myself.  I laugh to myself and think, “Is this mess family?” as I can hear my husband in the background grilling up salmon and muttering something about needing the next new Mac product.  I laugh a little bit and think {in response to myself}, “I hope so.”

Just a little tidbit from the pool’s edge on a Wednesday night with the family.  Thinking about the many ways in which animals can be therapeutic in life.  How they can teach us lessons about ourselves and our capacities for caring.  Or even just help us define what “family” might look like.