Entering graduate school at 51 years old may not have been my most brilliant move in life. At least, it doesn’t feel that way right now. As I scratch and claw my way to the finish line by May 2018, I will have been working on my MS in clinical mental health counseling for 6 years. Six years. Of course, it is a 60-credit-hour degree program, and adding the 15-credit-hour concentration in equine-assisted psychotherapy (the reason for the MS in the first place), I now realize that the expectation I had set for myself to finish 75 masters-level credit hours in 3 years was blatantly ridiculous. Especially while maintaining a full-time job. Add to that the time and expense of traveling to Arizona 6 times as required for graduation, plus the strain of having to be away from home for 9-day stretches as I attended mandatory three-day colloquiums and four-day equine intensives (sandwiched between a full day of flying on each end). What was I thinking?!?

Never mind what the degree program required of me; I could never have imagined when I started this journey what the Universe would require of me, which was a far greater test of my mettle. [Read more…] about Grief and Grad School: The Untold Story

Today, I enjoyed a FaceBook post by Robert Moss in which he discusses how the hero Bellerophon dreamed that the goddess Athena gave him the bridle he could use to capture Pegasus, the winged horse – and woke to find the bridle beside him.

“And so mighty Bellerophon eagerly stretched the gentle charmed bridle around its jaws and caught the winged horse.” – Pindar

Robert was suggesting that gifts from the Otherworld can be brought through to this world. I don’t disagree.

The point of Robert’s musings aside, I was impacted by the fact that dreaming a bridle (albeit as a gift from the wise Athena) and then capturing the horse with this goddess-sent charm was the solution to the dilemma of how to ride Pegasus.

[Read more…] about Riding Pegasus

Patrick Buffalo says horse therapy helps move people ‘from the head back to the heart’

Read the article here:

http://www.cbc.ca/beta/news/indigenous/horse-therapy-residential-school-survivor-1.4204072

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Introduction to the Shamanic Journey: a One Day Workshop

The 2-year shamanic apprentice group honored a pin oak in the grove (with gifts and love) who volunteered last night to be a prayer tree for the Farm and everyone who comes here. We then tied our prayers onto her branches in the form of “clootie” rags or prayer flags so she could carry them for us to the creative forces of the universe. In many shamanic cultures, trees are considered sacred for their ability to bridge heaven and earth.