Horse as Teacher Book 1

Before leaving on my road trip, my colleague and partner in the Horse as Teacher book series, Kathy Pike, had asked if I would stand in for her shamanic teacher in her workshop in June in Carbondale, Colorado. I had agreed, thinking it would be on my way back home. However, when I found out my brother and his band, Snydley Whiplash, were having a 25th anniversary reunion for the 4th of July, I wanted to be there for the performance. I also wanted to go back to Arkansas to meet with more of the women and see if the land was truly drawing me to be there.

In the end, I decided to make a dash to Colorado without stopping along the way for sightseeing. After teaching at the workshop, I would see where the road led me. At that point, I would either go back to South Dakota or head west from there.

Kathy’s workshop was the 3rd of 4 held over a year’s time for her apprenticeship program, teaching students to become Equine Facilitated Learning and Coaching practitioners and facilitators. This week-long session was focused on the internal work the participants needed to do to become a practitioner. Kathy has a shamanic colleague who had been there the first two sessions, but couldn’t teach in this one.

I arrived the two days before the start to help Kathy prepare. We went to pick up her assistant Reggie from the airport the night I arrived. Reggie is a therapist who decided to follow her path of working with horses and after living 60+ years in New York, moved to Texas just before meeting Kathy and starting to work as her assistant. Holding space for all of the horses, participants, and other people involved is a big effort. We were also all three staying in Kathy’s small casita, so being able to work well together was critical. The three of us had a great time, balancing each other throughout the week.

Coaching With Horses Workshop Ranch

The next morning we drove the 30 miles to the ranch where the workshop was being held. The drive out was spectacular, taking us into a long, gradually narrowing valley, the road winding along a tree-lined river. The pastures were filled with horses as we weaved our way to the far end of the valley. The ranch sat below a beautiful view of a show-capped mountain, the water flowing past dandelion-filled pastures, the horses grazing contentedly in the bright sun. This was a little piece of heaven.

The first three days of the week would be an experiential workshop. In that portion, there would be one person who was not part of the year-long program. The rest would finish the week, but Blaine was only there for the first session. Kathy had explained on the way that he was the husband of a woman who would be taking the program the next year, and he was there to experience some of what Tracy would explore. She had also explained that he was a minister and wasn’t sure how the Shamanic piece of the workshop would be for him.

That question was answered immediately when we met. It was an instant, deep connection. As we walked to the stand of trees by the small waterfall from the pond to the creek that I had chosen for our teaching, he started peppering me with questions. Blaine is a handsome, curious man with a deep strength and gentleness that is perfectly suited for the work he does. I definitely felt that we had had many conversations in many lifetimes.

Setting of Shamanic Teaching

The other participants were also very curious and connected to the shamanic teachings I shared with them. I taught them to journey to find their power animals and a spirit guide for the work they would be doing during the next few days. Then they journeyed to those spirits to find out what they needed to change or remove from their path in order to move forward. I also explained the medicine wheel, making sacred space, and creating rituals and daily practices, no matter how that looks for each person. There seemed to be a number of breakthroughs in the teaching session, and much more as the week progressed.

The next day, I took the other half of the group to the teaching space. Again, there were profound learnings that they shared with me. The setting, the subject, and the participants, as well as the facilitators made the week a very powerful grounding experience. But most of all were the horses. They are most amazing beings.

As events unfolded after returning to South Dakota, I began to see what had compelled me to go home. It didn’t take long.

My brother Tony and his wife Sandi and their children, Danielle, Kelsey, and Andrew, had moved from the farmhouse where I had grown up into my parent’s house in town a few months earlier. I had originally planned to stay at the farm, since I would have my own space and time to roam and reminisce. However, no matter how much you want to go back to what you have known, it’s never the same. The moment I walked in the house, I knew it wasn’t going to be what I had envisioned.

Instead, Tony set up his fifth-wheel trailer in front of the house in town and I had my own space to set up my office and be close but not in their way. Then the winter storms that had followed me across country came. For a couple of weeks it alternated between threats of snow and rain. Mind you, this was in May! South Dakota had been drenched all spring, and it continued. I came to find out that was true across all of the western states when I finally turned my car west toward home. However, that was a ways down the road, literally and figuratively.

My niece Kelsey was graduating from high school so I jumped in to help prepare for the celebration and events involved in that rite of passage. I also caught up with work, editing several projects. The days were full.

Then one day as I was working, my brother knocked on the door and asked if I wanted to talk with his banker. Kevin was there for his annual visit with Tony about the farm loans from his bank. Apparently, the bankers there go to the farmer. As it happens, Kevin was also my family business’s banker and Tony thought it would be good for me to meet him in person.

As we talked, Tony said that he had talked with Kevin about the possibility of selling the family land. This was huge news, as Tony farmed the land, and by being willing to sell it, he was in effect saying he was ready to walk away from the only thing he had ever done.

Kevin suggested that now was the best time in terms of land values. The recession hadn’t affected the prices of farm land and they were at their highest. He said that the market was still going up, but that he wasn’t sure how long that would last. There was also the consideration that capital gains taxes would be going up considerably at the end of the year.

After Kevin left, I talked with Tony and we decided to bring it to the family call we held every other week. When my siblings heard about our conversation, it was decided that since I was already there, the others would travel home for Memorial Day weekend and we would have our annual retreat to decide if we would actually sell the land and how that would look if we did. Because of the sensitive nature, we were not to tell anyone what our purpose was. Fortunately, we have had annual meetings before, so our many cousins and relatives weren’t curious.

Not only could I not write about this part of my trip due to the confidentiality, my energy was suddenly focused on the emotional impact on my family of selling the family land. I knew then why I was meant to be there. My days were filled with phone calls between siblings and visits to the county courthouse to get information. What I realized was just how much I didn’t know about the land I had grown up on. A whole new world was revealed. And because Tony and I had always been close, I was able to spend quality time with him talking about the decision and how that would impact him.

During this time, I realized how much my shamanic work and my coaching really helped see perspectives that did not come easily to everyone. We are very fortunate. My siblings all get along very well. We communicate well and each of us brings our individual talents to the family business.

Of my seven siblings, several were ready to sell, but two were not. While Tony was no longer eager to farm, he still wanted to find a way to maintain some land for his horses. Carol also wanted to build a hunting lodge, but didn’t have the money reserves to purchase any of the land on her own. After many phone calls, I suggested that she and Tony buy back some of the land after we had sold the rest. We were almost certain that one or more of our cousins would be highly interested in purchasing the land. I was sure that they would agree to that type of swap.

Once that question was answered, the rest of the pieces started to fall into place. When we met at the retreat, we wrote down our intentions and our objectives for the weekend. In the end, all of them were met with love, joy, and excitement. We decided to sell the land. We called our cousin Max and asked him if he was interested. He was. He made a generous offer and we accepted. We are now in the midst of finalizing the deal. Max offered some of the land to his brothers and another cousin, and by the end of the year, it will have transferred hands to them.

Because money is energy, and this opened up a new flow of that energy to everyone, several of us experienced a release of things that have been blocked for years. Houses sold, jobs changed for the better, and for me, suddenly I had more work than I could keep up with. I’ve experienced how not having money can affect your life. The irony is that even though the deal isn’t complete, the energy has shifted. This was a huge realization for me and has affected me in a multitude of ways. Although I didn’t have money in the bank, I FELT prosperous. It was coming from within and the law of attraction shifted into high gear.