Embody Mental Health

Posts Tagged ‘complementary medicine’

THE FOLLOWING IS AN INTERVIEW WITH NANCY COYNE, MD. She is a trauma therapist, psychiatrist, yoga practitioner, horse lover, and artist who has taken all her passions and made the best use of them to assist traumatized persons in healing.  She uses a combination of mind/body, creative arts, and animal-bond approaches in her therapy and has collaborated with horse professional Shelley Rosenberg at the Epona Center in Arizona to create a therapeutic program for trauma survivors incorporating all her practices and passions entitled “Horses as Healers”.

I was blown away by both Nancy and Shelly in their stories, their passion for their work, and (for my own self) having found other people out there motivated in the same direction and integrating a mix of creative arts, yoga, and equine facilitated psychotherapy for healing from trauma.  I hope you all will find as much joy, passion, and inspiration in the following interview with Nancy Coyne, MD.  I am excited to bring Shelley Rosenberg’s interview in an upcoming post–equally as passionate and poignant as the one to follow.  Enjoy.  Be inspired.  Be moved to action.

Q:  How long have your worked in the field of trauma and PTSD?  Is this your primary population in your practice?  What led you to work with this population of people?

30 plus years.  Don’t know why but people just found me.

Q:  What is your psychotherapy background?  What led you to work in Equine Facilitated Psychotherapyand train with the Epona Center apprenticeship program?

I have always studied and practiced psychotherapy-learning whatever has been current dynamic, interactive, Reichian (where I started ) CBT, DBT, somatic , and in the past 5 years equine facilitated.  Horses came back into the forefront of my life by chance- a friend who ran a therapeutic riding program wanted me to help start a program to treat trauma survivors.  Then I came out west to learn what other people were doing.

Q:  You use yoga, breathing exercises, EMDR, and creative arts as well as EFP in your therapy practice.  What led you to incorporate mind/body, creative and complementary therapies into your practice?

I started out interested in mind-body- as a Reichian therapist, and I have been a longtime yoga student and practitioner.  Also I have always been an artist so incorporating art into psychotherapy seemed natural.

Q:  What is effective about using yoga in mental health work?  Creative arts? Equine Facilitated Psychotherapy?  What have you learned about yourself, healing, and mental health practice in the process of applying the above techniques in your work as a mental health practitioner?

Effective- yoga re focusses on the body where experience lives.  Art-to right or old brain image making-by passing defenses and pointing right to the authentic self’s truth.  As for what have i learned- that I best practice what I preach and that teaching or healing is the best way to learn something.  That I best take very good compassionate care of my self and that life is brief and precious and that we can alleviate lots of suffering by meditating and accepting what is with compassion.

Q:  What has been most rewarding about this creative approach to mental health?  What has been most surprising?

I can be fully authentic and speak in my own languages .  Surprising – that the rest of the world seems to be getting interested recently (holistic healing is going mainstream)

Q:  When and why did you become involved in the Epona Center’s programming?  What drew you to this work?  Did you have any hesitations about moving into the world of EFP?  What have you learned from the horses and the work with horses about yourself, your clients, and your work as a whole?

2006-came to Epona center for experience and training.  Horses are natural yogis-slow down, stay present, breath, connect with soul, nature, one another.  No hesitations.  Horses teach me about my fears, my difficulty setting boundaries, my spaciness, my ability to have fun and just play.  Clients have life changing moments with horses much more rapidly and deeply than in the office.  We all love being outdoors, in nature, being authentic and we all meet as equal partners (horses don’t care who has the diploma)

Q:  You have created a program called “Horses as Healers” at the Epona Center in Arizona.  What led to the creation of this program with your Shelley Rosenberg?  What led you to create the program in the format you did–with the incorporation of creative arts, yoga, and other methods of complementary therapies?

About 70% of the people who came to all the programs seemed to be trauma survivors- so we crafted the program to fit their issues.

Q:  How is it working in a mental health capacity with a trained equine professional?  How do you both balance your professional backgrounds and goals for clients (re: learning horsemanship skills and creating therapeutic experiences) to create a cohesive psychotherapeutic experience for your clients?

It is challenging and also wonderful.  We work as equals, and each do what we do best.  There is lots of crossover.

Q:  What would you like to tell other mental health professionals looking into complementary therapies for mental health?  What suggestions do you have for integrating a variety of holistic approaches in treatment for mental health?

90 % of all experience and communication is non verbal.  So complementary (non verbal) approaches are very important.  Each of us needs to utilize whatever gifts and talents we have.

Q:  Have you encountered any issues of boundaries using these versatile approaches?  How do you believe a mental health professional can implement a variety of approaches (creative, mind/body, animal-human bond) while maintaining their role as a therapist?

Humility, honesty and being willing to stay with uncomfortable conflicts, talk, work them through and move on. Compassion and humor help.

Q:  What are your hopes for the future of mental health care and integrative/complementary therapies for mental health?  What would you like to see happen in the field in the next 5 years?

I hope we continue to experiment to find ways to alleviate suffering

Q: What would you hope to accomplish in your work in the next 5 years?  What project do you want to do that you haven’t done yet?

I want to finish a book I began 15 years ago about my experiences with abandonment – It is a picture book with some text for adults.

Learn more about Nancy Coyne, MD at http://web.mac.com/coynecreations/iWeb/Site/Welcome.html

Q:  Any words of wisdom, inspiration, or anything additional you would like to leave the readers with?

Each one of us has the capacity to help and heal our own and each others’ wounds.  The horses and yoga remind us not to get too serious or arrogant.

“ They must often change, who would be constant in happiness or wisdom.”

Confucius

 

Iguanas are everywhere in Florida.  Outside my office window on any given day I can hear the tapping of iguana lips on a glass door, heavy thuds of thick scales, beckoning to be noticed and not so subtly asking, “Food Please Humans Who Sometimes Feed Me!”  Sometimes they even make squawking sounds when they become furious at being ignored–they are persistent and insistent creatures with never-ending bellies.  I have also learned that in a chill, yes they occasionally occur in South Florida, an iguana will freeze and then thaw again when in warm sunlight, completely unfazed by the experience.  How Zen of them.

Sometimes in life we become frozen in our lives, stagnated by circumstances, complacency, or just comfort.  I have spoken about this before and my own experience with this phenomenon.  I realize more every day, as I feel my life flower and bloom in exciting new ways, how much I was in such a iguana-like freeze prior to leaving New Jersey.  I was in desperate need of sunlight and a thaw and I didn’t even know it.  Surrounded by the coziness of a place I had always known, friends I had for a long time, family that surrounded me I had to try very little to effect anything in my life and as a result I effected very little. 

In moving into the sunlight and out of the freeze–both literal and metaphoric–I have shifted something, shaken up the mix, and out came all this blossoms of change that have been wonderfully rich.  I have met amazing people, adventured on many new projects, and stretched my own imagination of what might be possible.  I think we all need these moments from time to time to push us forward into the new–it is a spiritual invigoration. 

Amid all of this thawing and stretching in the sunlight (and I cannot stress how much I feel emotionally revived by sunlight and warmth in the Holiday Season) I have decided to commit fully to writing the book that has been on my mind and in my heart for quite some time.  It will be a labor of love and adjectives and it may take me the better part of a year to fully bring to paper (well to laptop virtual paper that is) but I have decided that it is something I must stop procrastinating on and start literarily enacting.  It will encompass all of this journey of complementary medicine, yoga, equine facilitated therapies, and my personal exploration of each into a memoir-like account.  I am excited and intimidated by the challenge.

I now throw out this thawing momentum to everyone to push your limits, step out of your box, and thaw a little in the sunlight.  Breathe out your inner iguana-like metamorphosis, updog into the sunlight (like the iguana in the picture above), and find how far you can stretch yourself.  Be uncomfortable, be intimidated, but be invigorated and alive by the prospect.  Dream big, think tall, and screech out loud like any impatient and persistent iguana would. 

“Forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair.”

Kahlil Gibran