Embody Mental Health

Posts Tagged ‘Cowgirl Yoga’

As promised, to round up my adventures in Sonoita, Arizona is an interview I am excited to present with Margaret Burns Vap of the wonderful Cowgirl Yoga Retreats!  Margaret is the founder of Big Sky Yoga Retreat and discovered  yoga about 10 years ago while working and living in the chaos of life in Manhattan, working for L’Oreal. “A few years and several hundred down dogs later,” as she writes on her website biography, Margaret left corporate NYC and followed her yoga passion to DC and created Georgetown Yoga.

Her yogic journey brought her to Bozemon, Montana where she has combined her innate creativity, yoga practice, and the crisp mountainous beauty of her surroundings to build a wonderful retreat program that integrates some of the best mind, body, and spirit wellness and renewal in action (or so I gather as I salivate over the retreats on her website).  She is a mother, wife, yogini, and horseback rider who has integrated her passions in life into her passions in business to create Big Sky Yoga Retreats and Cowgirl Yoga where she integrates yoga and riding for a unique retreat experience–something like organically therapeutic programming.  Nothing like endless Montana skies, horses, and downdogs to make someone slip into bliss. Thank you Margaret for your innovative work and sharing your passion and story with us!

Q 1:   Margaret, what was your inspiration for creating a retreat that combines yoga and horses?

A: It came together rather unexpectedly; when I was working on a business plan for Big Sky Yoga Retreats prior to moving to Montana, my advisor/business partner, who is also an equestrian, repeatedly suggested this idea. I initially shied away from it, given my lack of horse experience. Once I moved out here and began to spend time around horses, it all became clear; these two incredibly powerful experiences garner even more meaning when they are combined.

My philosophy is that yoga helps you do anything better. I’ve seen it happen with myself and my students. When I was first learning to ride seriously, I felt like I was a new yoga student. I remembered how challenging it can be to try something new that you’re not good at; it’s a beautiful but humbling process. I began to recognize all the parallels between being a riding and yoga student, and it inspired me. I knew my yoga practice influenced my riding in a positive way, and I felt the desire to want to share this with others – so Cowgirl Yoga was born.
Q 2:  What is your background in both the yogic and equine worlds?

A:  Riding was a childhood dream, and I shared the love of horses that many young girls have. But like many, I never had the opportunity to be around them much, so the dream faded. Until we moved to Montana a few years ago. I was fortunate to realize this dream as an adult, and embraced all things horses, and learning how to ride and be a cowgirl. When I bought my own horse last summer, I cried; it was a very powerful moment to fulfill this dream.
I’ve always been active and loved exercise, and I vividly remember when I was living in new york city over 10 years ago; I would go to the gym and watch the yoga classes. I was really curious, but it took me awhile to try it. Then once I did, it was true love. I haven’t been without it since, and it’s influenced my life in more ways than I can count. I love that I am able to share the gift of yoga with others through my work; it is immensely rewarding, on both a personal and professional level. Yoga has enabled me to meet many people that I would have never otherwise met; it enhances my health and well-being endlessly; the list goes on and on. And yoga goes well with everything – so now I combine it with riding too.

Q 3: What is a COWGIRL YOGA RETREAT?  What does a day at your retreat look like?

A: Officially, Cowgirl Yoga is Yoga & Horseback Riding Retreats for Women, for all levels of yoginis and equestrians.

From our website copy (which I wrote, and am endlessly refining in order to best capture in words what we do): Imagine a week of yoga and horses – a girl’s dream come true. Explore how both can put you in touch with your potential and teach you a lot about yourself. We’ll practice yoga, spend time with horses, and kick up our heels in cowgirl-friendly Bozeman.

Come join fellow wanna-be cowgirls for yoga and fun in and out of the saddle under Montana’s legendary Big Sky. We’ll explore the link between yoga and riding to improve not only your saddle skills, but also your overall well-being. Through yoga poses and breathing techniques we will learn how to improve balance and body alignment. Best of all, experience how the horse-human connection deepens as you practice yoga. We’ll take all that out on the trail and ride with new friends both human and equine on scenic mountain trails, immersing ourselves in nature and the cowgirl yoga spirit.

Our motto, which I am proud of, is: Add a little Yeehaw to your Namaste. And that is what Cowgirl Yoga is all about. We want you to yell “Yeehaw!” when you have a break-through on the yoga mat, and murmur “Namaste” when you feel that amazing connection between human and horse. So we take those two words out of their typical context a bit.

Each day on a CY retreat is unique, but the themes are recurring: nurturing the horse-human connection, and connecting what we do on the yoga mat to our time with the horses. Every day has deep yoga practices as well as horse time, and each practice feeds the other. On the yoga mat, we spend time not only preparing our bodies for the physical aspects of riding, but also preparing our hearts and minds to be open and receptive to the horse’s energy. We bring back the emotions and sensations from our horse interaction to our mats, for processing in new ways. It’s a cycle with a beautiful rhythm, that encourages unexpected personal discoveries.

As if that isn’t enough, we eat fabulous gourmet local food, savor sipping wine, soak in hot springs, and even get in a hike. Cowgirl Yoga is definitely an active vacation, for mind, body and spirit.
Q 4:  What is your role in the day-to-day running of BIG SKY RETREATS?

A: A little bit of everything! As a business owner, I’m pretty much a one-woman show. As a result there really is no “typical day” – every day can be so different and I love that. In my corporate days, I had a hard time being in an office for a set time each day, it made me stir crazy. But the trade off is that my work life now isn’t predictable, and it’s a big juggling act, especially since my 4 year old daughter is my top priority. So everything I do revolves around her, and I like it that way (so does she).

My work time is essentially divided into 2 categories: on retreat, which is wild and crazy, filled with meeting new people and experiencing their energy, teaching yoga, and fully participating in whatever retreat we are offering while leading it at the same time. Whoa! But it’s like a vacation for me too, because the harder part is the other category: in-between retreats. That is the real work: coming up with new ideas to market my business, improving our offerings, exploring new partnerships with like-minded businesses, writing about what I do for the Cowgirl Yoga blog and other publications, answering emails, taking bookings, offering travel advice, ETC!
Q 5:  What kind of people come to BIG SKY (Cowgirl Yoga) retreats and what are they looking for in your program?

A: We have women come from all over, all different backgrounds and age ranges. It’s incredible for me to see over and over how such a wide variety of women come together for this experience, most of the time not knowing each other, and then interact like they’ve been good friends for years. Last summer we had a famous supermodel attend ranch camp; I have to admit that I was a little bit worried! But she adored it, she spent an additional week in Montana to explore Yellowstone, and she’s coming back this year. There is something about this experience that appeals to almost everyone.

Many people have been fascinated with Montana and its “wild west” history. Many want a big change of pace. And almost everyone has a story about how yoga or horses has inspired them and changed their life in some way, and they want to deepen that.

Cowgirl Yoga is not your typical vacation. It attracts an active person that also wants an emotional/spiritual component to their time away, whether they recognize that themselves or not. Horses and yoga provide potent, meaningful experiences that you can take back and apply to your daily life. It’s not just escapism. It’s taking this experience you have here and infusing it into your life, using it to inspire positive change back home.

Q 6:  What do you see these retreats do for people in the time they spend with you?  Are there changes in how they act, feel, etc.?

A: I feel very privileged that I get to see women enjoying themselves, learning new things, meeting new people. They exude enthusiasm for life, and that is what I wish we could bottle and send home with everyone to open up when needed – talk about the ultimate souvenir! Again, I am so fortunate to get to see people at their best, at the fullest, richest expression of their personalities. It reminds me how complex we all are, and how much we have to offer one another.

What we do is intense. You are being pushed in many ways, physically and mentally. I think everyone here (CY leaders) understands how to not go too far with that, but rather to gently nudge people towards their own breakthroughs. Sometimes the women end up beyond their comfort zones, and there are tears, anger or frustration. But it’s all part of the process, and in the end a very good thing.
Q 7:  Have you discovered anything unexpected in your journey and vision of COWGIRL YOGA?
A: Perhaps the reminder that something that may seem so simple can be so utterly, absolutely complex and different each and every time we do it. Cowgirl Yoga has definitely been a journey, and like all journeys, has had its ups and downs. There are so many different variables: weather (that’s a big factor here in Montana, where we can have all 4 seasons in one day, any day of the year), the blend of personalities and people’s expectations, horse behavior, lots of unanticipated events that can and do affect our intention. But we’ve learned through each unique group and retreat how to adjust things no matter what comes our way, which has increased our confidence in what we’re doing.

Every time you get on your yoga mat, or on a horse, has the potential to produce a wide range of emotions. You can end up elated, disappointed, and lots of places in between. But I believe it’s the huge potential for our own personal growth that keeps us wanting to come back for more. This is my vision behind Cowgirl Yoga.
Q 8: You have begun expanding your retreat programs to include skiing and yoga, hiking and yoga, yoga and chocolate, and yoga for cancer survivors.  Any new programming on the horizon?
A: I’m an idea person, and a marketing person at heart; I love coming up with new things to try. But I have to be a business woman as well – so for now, I think that we’ve explored enough ideas to create Big Sky Yoga Retreats’ core offerings and identity.

I enjoy the process of finding ways to take what we’ve got and deepen those experiences with embellishments and improvements. For example, in past years we’ve done a hike as a separate activity from yoga and riding. This year, we’re going to do a combo hike/trail ride, where half the group rides while the other half hikes, and then we switch at the halfway point.

I do hope that we will be able to offer a mother-daughter Cowgirl Yoga retreat in the near future, since we’ve received numerous requests for one. And seeing my own daughter enjoy yoga and horses makes this near and dear to my heart. It’s important to me to be able to teach from my own experiences – it gives it credibility and sincerity, in my mind.
Q 9:  My work focuses on yoga, horse therapy, and other creative therapies for mental health and wellness.  Have you ever thought about branching out into retreats with specific focus on wellness, empowerment, self-care, emotional healing, or other fringe “mind/body wellness” type programming?
A: I actually feel that those things are natural results of what we offer. People who make the decision to attend one of our retreats are, to me, exercising a wonderful form of self-care – giving themselves this opportunity to take the time out from their lives  for their health and wellness. That decision is empowering in itself. A yoga practice is empowering, and healing. Discovering that you can ride a horse is empowering, and bonding with a horse is healing.

I mentioned before that I have a business background. I guess I’d have to say I steer clear of “fringe” language for fear of limiting my audience…but I don’t think that sort of thing reflects who I am either. I am a very direct person, and I’m known to ‘tell it like it is’, for better or for worse. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t believe in the potential for very powerful things to happen here, because they do. I just prefer to see them evolve organically on their own, from what I know we can offer. I don’t want to promise things that may not happen for everyone.

Q 10:  Do you think the qualities of wellness, centeredness, and grounding can be found in the programming of BIG SKY RETREATS in general?  How are people when they leave your retreats?
A: I had someone email me after a retreat once to tell me that even though we had been “knee-deep in activities” all week, she had never felt more relaxed. There is so much good energy that circulates here, and there is a balance to what we do despite all the activity we are fitting in to a short time. It just reiterates that no matter what you are doing, balance is essential. We are careful to alternate interactive activity with quieter, introspective ones. Just like in yoga: if you do a deep forward bend you counter with a backbend to balance the body. After an exciting ride, you spend some quiet time with your horse to thank him for that time together.

I warn people that they are headed into a whirlwind of activity when they come on retreat. But although they come here for a very active and rewarding experience, they also leave more centered, grounded and balanced.
Q 11:  In the process of your work with your retreats have you come across many like-minded people who believe in these kind of programs?  Yogi(ini)s, Equestrians, and/or people from other professions like mental health, body workers, health care professionals and otherwise?
A: One of the things that has amazed me about our retreat groups is how much common ground there is. These are people who usually come by themselves and all meet for the first time on retreat; often it’s as if they’ve known each other for years. And if they are interested in what we offer on retreat, it’s very likely that they are also interested in other mind/body, health/wellness modalities too. But for the most part, our typical retreater is not a health/wellness professional, or a horsewoman, or even a yogini with an established practice. It’s a person who wants to deepen their mind/body connection, as well as their connection to nature, and may not get the opportunity to do so in their everyday life.
Q 12:  What has been most surprising about this journey of creating BIG SKY RETREATS and COWGIRL YOGA?
A: How much my work has become my life…and I couldn’t be happier about it! Even though BSYR/Cowgirl Yoga has also taken on a healthy life of its own, it’s so interwoven into my lifestyle and what I believe in, and it incorporates many people whom I respect and learn from. I work with companies that offer amazing products and whose missions I support. I get many opportunities to write about what I do, and I adore writing from my own experiences, because what could be more pure than your own true experience? I feel blessed that I can live and breathe this way. It’s always been important to me to do what I love, but I guess it’s never been as true as it is now. Feeling that passion come through every day is something I am unbelievably grateful for.

The other day I had someone call to inquire about attending a retreat. We were chatting, and I asked her how she found out about us. There was a long silence, and then she told me she was crying. She shared how a personal tragedy had spurred her to seek something she desperately needed in her life right now: some healing time for herself. I’d never met or spoken to this person before, but this conversation had the power to move me to tears. It was a reminder of how lucky I am to be doing what I am doing, and making a positive difference in people’s lives (including my own!).
Q 13:  What are you most passionate about in your work and your life?  What drives and propels you forward in this work?
A: I think I answered this in the previous question…

Q 14:  What is your hope for COWGIRL YOGA as it moves forward into the next year? Next five years?
A: I hope that the momentum continues to build and we continue to grow, and that more and more women will come to Montana to become Cowgirl Yoginis. Starting a business is tough; this is my second round (I owned a yoga studio in my previous home, Washington DC, for six years before we moved to Montana). It’s a few years in when things become more rewarding, and you can really start to fine-tune your vision. So right about now is my favorite part of that cycle. I’m really looking forward to it.

Q 15:  Any last words of wisdom you want to leave people with in regards to yoga, horses, or life in general?
A: Keep practicing, keep riding, and let both infuse their life-altering magic into your soul. Nothing else has taught me that life is a journey and we need to enjoy the ride more than yoga and horses. Yeehaw & Namaste.

“Move and the way will open.”

Zen Proverb

REMEMBERING THE RESTORATIVE: FROM CLIENT-CARE TO SELF-CARE

As someone who has guided clients through the intrinsic healing experience of yoga from yoga studio students to combat veterans I know how amazing and rejuvenating it can be.  Likewise, when I integrated yoga into the equine therapy practices I felt this light of finding a combined practice that resonated so profoundly for people that I wondered how I could bring this gift to every client I ever worked with that day forward.  Combat veterans and other trauma survivors seem to find drastic levels of healing in the experiential practices of mind/body medicine with a yogic edge and relational therapy through the silent compassion of a horse.  I had seen this therapeutic magic in action, seen the teary eyes of a modern day warrior gently petting the flank of his equine companion.  I knew this was something un-ignorable and I wanted to spread the concepts and conjoined practices to every place of pain I could, and to every person in need of connectedness. 

In my fervor, however, I had still never been a participant so I had never experienced the combination of body scans, somatic attunements, centering and grounding exercises, yoga, and horses all in one gloriously zen package.  I got the chance to see the results as a therapist and take part in the clients’ processes but not indulge myself in the participant role.  By the time I was packing up my boots and jeans for my trek to Arizona I was ready for a temporary role shift and some horse & yoga indulgences of my own.  Perphaps even a few revelations and epiphanies of my own as well.

I knew there would be mind/body practices in Shelley and Nancy’s equine program but when I received the email 3 days before leaving for Arizona stating, “Bring yoga clothes for the morning,” I nearly wept from excitement–seriously.  I had been putting self-care on the back-burner for a while; a fact that came fully into focus while giving my “Room to Breath” self-care workshop to a room full of women desperately in need of self-care a few weeks prior.  I was exhausted, I was drained, and part of me was wishing to be on the other end of the room–to be more participant than guide (although I love both roles in their own way). 

What is it about the nature of a woman that makes us constantly take from our own personal well of energy long past the time that every drip has been ladled out of it–until we are digging up moist dirt looking for water?  That is a mostly rhetorical question because I could give about 50 answers off the top of my head–ones that always come up when I give self-care workshops and ones that always resonate with me being someone who preaches far more than I practice when it comes to self-nurturing activities.

Well, I thought, I would, finally, give back to me.  And the deliciousness of yoga mornings, greeted by a dawning sun in the guesthouse of a cozy Arizona farm, was definitely enough to bring tears to my tired eyes.  Since ending yoga school for my teacher training life had caught up with me fast between a new job, private practice, workshops, and fine-tuning materials for upcoming trainings, not to mention 3 weeks of a killer sinus infection.  I had not even had time to maintain my own personal yoga practice in any way.  I needed a dose of the yogic in a big way.  I always felt the response of my body, mind, and spirit when I fell into a yoga drought–my brain got more distracted and white noise crept in, my body stiffened up, and my shoulder muscles tightened to rigid blocks of muscular tissue.  I felt distanced from any semblance of soulful peace.

CHECKING INTO THE OM HOTEL…

So, you may be wondering, what is the Om Hotel?  Is it a place? Is it a state of mind? The answer is–yes.  You create the space in a place and it becomes the conduit to a state of mind.  The place can be as simple as a yoga mat or a wooden floor or if you have a penchant for improvisation, it can even be on the back of the horse.  It can be a squared off corner of a room, or a particular room in a house, or an Arizonan guesthouse down a quiet dirt road with plenty of sunlight, soft yogic crooning, and a singing bowl or two.  The latter is where I laid myself at 9:00am on the first day of the “Riding Your Way Into a Mutual Relationship” workshop which Shelley and Nancy had crafted with the Epona Method as a base and the flavors of their expertise sprinkled throughout which, to my great delight included a very qualified psychotherapist yoga teacher at one end (Nancy) and an expertly intuitive horsewoman at the other (Shelley).

My “Om Hotel” experience began every morning for 3 days with a fluid, peaceful, and restorative yoga practice led by Nancy which was such a gentle yawn into the morning I could have spent about 3 hours in the guesthouse studio.  Nancy wove together the best of somatics and language from both psychotherapy such that the merging was seamless and helped evoke people’s true states of self without feeling invasive or probing.  Her postures were gentle and meditative, bringing the practice to a room full of horsewomen without yoga background in such a palatable way that it left them all wanting to go home and begin a regular practice of their own–which I always love to hear.

The studio walls were coated in a sunlight shade of yellow and mats were lined across the cream tile urging anyone entering to melt into the cool earth and let their yoga take them away from the external and come back to the root of themselves.  As I always like to quote e.e. cummings, taking us equine yoginis on a journey to, “…the root of the root and the bud of the bud and the sky of the sky of a tree called life.”  There were sun salutations, light meditations, restorative postures, and soft melodies; the perfect sampler of the practice to a room of beginners and one lapsed-yogini in need for a lot of softness in her practice.

The “Om Hotel” practice provided me with a return to my inner yogini with a side of self-reflection and introspection.  I loved the morning practices and relished a return to my private practice every evening, returning to the Xanadu Ranch and taking my practice to a comforting place–for muscles sore from saddle sitting and other unfamiliar farm-related aches.  Another beautiful revelation was the increasing level of yogi in each of the workshop participants leading to the creation, by Cathy (one of the participants with a very earthy sensibility and highly attuned intuition), of such equine/yogic terms as “om trot” and “spiritual legs”.  I was in love with the blossoming of vocabulary and the embracing of the yogic in the equine.  Although my ability to achieve my own “om trot” later in the week was quite a difficult thing.

THE PRANA EQUUS IN ACTION…

Prana, in yogic terms, is the vital life-sustaining force that is the root of our root and is embodied in our breath–life begins and ends with breath and, in my study, how we breathe says a lot about how we live.  The same can be said about how we ride.  Our breath acts as a barometer for our emotional experience and while riding your horse, part of the communication in the “mutual relationship” and the language we silently convey to the horse, comes in the forms of movement and breath.  Much like in yoga it is in the movement and breath that all communication and all of the emotional experience is acted out.  So to find your yoga in the equine is crucial in my opinion–and luckily, it seems, it also is the same for Nancy and Shelley’s work and workshops.  I loved how much they integrated body awareness, emotional experience in the body, and our body and breath language into their workshop–for me it proved to be even more revelational than I expected.  And resonated so much with the work I had been doing integrating the two practices together in my own little South Florida pietry dish of life.

My riding, I have learned, brings out all of the survival mechanism responses and discomfort spoken in physiology which I will discuss more in the next few posts.  This was a vital deepening of my own body awareness and attunement to how the oldest of habits die hard.  I carried my om with me and my breath skills as much as I could but my personal mounted equine work definitely tested my yogic capacities.  

I am one of those people for whom it is difficult enough to, say, tie my shoes and chew gum symultaneously let alone find my horseback seat, balance, breath, and hand placement–this I am going to need to work on.  Perhaps I need to chew gum and tie my shoes more often to build the tactile multitasking.  For now I am going to try a few oms to recalibrate my brain after an already long week–even longer while reminscing and longing for days spent alongside roundpens, on horseback, or on a yoga mat.  There is something diminishing about the return to an office-based week and paperwork-laden life.  Here is hoping all of you find a little bit of “The Om Hotel” in your daily life!

Stay tuned for the upcoming posts in this series:

• RUNAWAY BRIDLE: THAT WHICH IS LOST & FOUND AMID HORSES
• FEET FIRST: A HORSEWOMAN-STYLED REFLEXOLOGY
• REFLECTIVE ROUNDPENNING & BOUNDARY GOATS
• ….& ending with a NEW interview with yoga & equine enthusiast, Margaret Burns vap of COWGIRL YOGA & BIG SKY YOGA RETREATS!

“The infinite is in the finite of every instant.”

Zen Proverb