Embody Mental Health

Posts Tagged ‘Equine Facilitated Psychotherapy’

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.

“With the past, I have nothing to do; nor with the future.  I live now.”   Ralph Waldo Emerson

I have had one of those weeks that has been enlightening, invigorating, and inspiring on every human level possible.  From the human to the equine I have heard the journeys of survivors, thrivers, and those who have a story to tell that is so profound it wells tears and lapses breathe just in having heard it. 

In the Rumpus (yes I saw Where The Wild Things Are last weekend) of it all I found synapses blasting and neural paths sparking with a realization of how much all of my work, all of my passions, and all of my life seemed to have been leading to this point of alignment (not to be too dramatic about it) in some way.  If someone had told me before this moment that I would be in a position to both love and align yoga, horses, and psychotherapy together I would have laughed at the incredulousness of the idea.  Today I will say that nothing makes more sense or is more clear to me than how these three worlds collide and echo with sound bites and fragments of each other.

I spent last week (Wednesday to Saturday) at the NARHA Conference in Fort Worth, Texas.  I learned about “Prey Psychology” and the corollaries between Winnicottian Theory and Self-Psychology and Equine Facilitated Psychotherapy.  I found an entire world that had blended so many of the ideas and passions I had been working with into a body of therapeutic work that had been alive for 10-20 years without my even being aware of it.  I was invigorated by the passion of the people in this profession and the well-thought academics behind their practices.  It wasn’t just teaching horsemanship to people in hopes of effecting change in some emotional way it was a full basis of therapeutic practices working with horses as partners in effecting change in people’s lives.  One woman even referred to her equine counterparts as “colleagues” in a context that made it seem absolutely an apt description. 

I heard people discussing the importance of mindfulness, self-soothing techniques, and even horseback yoga as a means of creating emotional wellness not just through the client’s relationship with the horse but also their body, mind, and emotional awareness of themselves.  It was a wonderful experience to be amid people in a world of therapy, present centered living, and holistic treatment for people in emotional distress that I never before knew existed.  I found myself hoping with more earnestness and a real sense that  it was possible for a world of therapy that broke down the four walls of a therapy room and can, will, take people’s healing to creative and intuitive new heights. 

I heard one particular horse trainer describe the horse as a very “present oriented” being stating that as an animal of prey a horse is instinctually imbedded in the present moment, needing to focus on those things that bring them safety, security, and comfort and make them feel wholly well.  I was instantly drawn to consider the two parallels of that–trauma and yoga.  The horse is a great balancer in that it represents a healthy reflection of the traumatized person–it manages its present centered quest for survival while the traumatized person cannot moderate their “prey” experience and feels overwhelmed with their survival needs and unable to find the comfort in the present moment.  I thought also of how the horse is such an excellent metaphor for the perfect yogi/ni.  The horse is able to look at the now, live in the now, and be comforted by what they are given that helps maintain their sense of balance–rejecting that, that does not help them maintain that homeostasis.  They are the perfect mirror to the traumatized person of both what they are and what they want/need to be.  I was fascinated by this beautiful parallel and how the horse is the bridge between emotional disarray and yogic, spiritual centeredness. 

I feel on the precipice of breaking through my own glass ceiling of sorts–personally, professionally, philosophically.  Ever moment I turn around I find a new bread crumb, rich metaphor, deep symbology of this shift–in the good, the bad, and the ugly in my life.  I am grateful for this journey and excited for the next bread crumb that will lead to the next discovery. 

In the world of wordless connection I see horses as the symbol of something ancient, mystical, beautiful, and simple all in one.  As Linda Kohanov states so eloquently in her book The Tao of Equus speaking about her young new horse, “She was standing in a box stall smelling of pine shavings, and she spoke to me more eloquently in silence than anyone ever had in words.”  This is the kind of connection I could only hope for all of us to have–in life, in healing, in growth of self. 

“The wind of heaven is that which blows between a horse’s ears.”             Arabian Proverb