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.

It’s been awhile since I made a blog post. It wasn’t that I didn’t have anything to say. In fact, this quest became much more than I had ever imagined it would be, an odyssey that took me 13 weeks, 13,400 miles, and through 13 national parks and monuments. Somewhere along the way, as I traveled roads new and familiar, I realized it was a retrospective look at what has shaped me, and at the same time, gave me new perspectives on how to transform and move forward.

So I will go back and reconstruct some of the amazing moments, life-changing experiences, and incredible insights I was so fortunate to have.

When last I posted, I was on my way to visit family. I’ll breeze through some of this, so as not to bore you. However, there are a few things that I’ll share here because they were either shamanic in nature, or have an impact on stories I will share later.

Having had the challenges I had on the first part of my journey, with sickness, finances, and juggling work with travel, I was relieved to arrive at my eldest sister Linda’s in Omaha, Nebraska.

When I was 11, Linda came home from a summer selling books door-to-door after her freshman year in college. She handed me a tape series by Zig Ziglar, called See You At the Top. It was my introduction to personal development information, and I was hooked.

Linda, who became highly successful in sales and recruiting and is now a professional speaker and trainer, has influenced me in so many ways, I’ve lost track. Not only did she introduce me to the world of self-help, she steered me to coaching and to the idea of creating collaborative books by coaches. She has been much more than a sister to me; she’s a mentor, a colleague, and a confidante.

Linda and Reece

I stayed with Linda, her husband Jerry, and son Reece for four days before I moved on to visit Carol, my youngest sister, who lives in Sioux City, Iowa with her husband Brad, and sons Liam and Aiden. Within minutes after walking in the door, Carol looked at me and said, “You look like you need to have a massage. Let me treat you to one.” (I think she had noticed that I couldn’t even stand up straight.) Within minutes, we had an appointment for the next day.

The next morning, as I was preparing to leave for that appointment, Carol’s good friend and next-door neighbor Shelley popped in. She and her husband Brian had finished building their house in the fall, and in February they had awakened to a fire that completely destroyed the interior of the house. Luckily, no one was hurt, but they had to move out for 4 months while the house was rebuilt.

Shelley didn’t know I was in town, so was surprised to see me. We talked for a bit, then I said I had to leave for my massage with Kathy Awtry. She said that she was also seeing Kathy that day, just after me! The universe works in mysterious ways, as you will see.

During my session with Kathy, we talked about my study of shamanism and the healing and energy work I do in depossession and soul retrievals. She was fascinated and full of questions.

A couple of hours after my massage, Shelley called me and had barely said hello when she asked me what I do. After I clarified that she was asking about my shamanic work, she said that after she had explained to Kathy what was going on for her, Kathy had suggested Shelley call me to have me do some work on her and her house.

Apparently, she and Brian, as well as their children, had been seeing a spirit in their house prior to the fire, specifically a woman. Neither had ever had experience with spirits, but they felt strongly that she was somehow involved with the fire. They had also been experiencing behaviors that weren’t typical in their relationship, with lots of anger and frustration, before the fire, as well as after.

Having never had any experience clearing energy for houses or land, I wasn’t sure what I would do. I decided I would approach it the same way I would a person: call in the spirits, do a drumming extraction while journeying, and let the spirits guide me in what to do next.

What an amazing experience! I immediately saw the woman in my mind. She was afraid, but not of me or Brian and Shelley. She was, in fact, trying to help them. It was her abusive husband’s spirit that she was protecting them from. His spirit was also there, elusive, lurking, trying to avoid me and what I was doing. The woman explained that he had not only abused her, but had ended up killing her, dumping her body in the nearby lake, and no one had ever discovered or said anything about her disappearance.

She went on to explain that he was an evil man who had caused a lot of people harm. They had lived on the property, and the image I was shown was of a run-down trailer in a very destitute trailer park on the land Shelley and Brian and Carol and Brad had built their houses on.

The woman had been trying to warn Shelley and Brian that her husband’s spirit was trying to do them harm, that he was the cause of the change in behavior, and that they needed to protect themselves from him. It was not her, but his energy that had started the fire.

After I finished drumming and worked with my spirit helpers to pass their souls to the light, I shared with Shelley what the spirits had shown me. She was flabbergasted. She confirmed everything that I had relayed to her. Brian had grown up in a nearby town, and had told her that there had been a trailer park, that it was a very poor area of town not that many years before, and that there were several not-so-nice men who had lived in the area.

I suggested to her that we do a depossession for her and Brian as well. We did one for her that night, although Brian was out of town.

The next day, Shelley said that the energy in the house was completely different. She hadn’t even wanted to go into the house, but after the work I did, was now completely free of that feeling. When Brian came home a few days later, he confirmed the same for him.

I let them know that when I passed through again on my way to Arkansas, I would give Brian a session, too. They were both relieved to know the cause of their misfortune, and were eager to know more about shamanism and energy work.

The next day, I headed to my hometown, Howard, South Dakota.

The next day, I awoke with more energy than I’d had in a while. I logged onto my computer to answer a few emails and check my banking. What I found was disturbing. Someone had been using my PayPal credit card number to purchase things and PayPal had been taking the money from my checking to pay for it! My hotel stays had taken much more than anticipated from my budget, so I was stunned to see what was left.

After contacting my bank and making arrangements to make sure everything was covered, I canceled my PayPal credit card (which was still in my possession) at their website, packed my things, and headed for Vista Caballo, the ranch of Lisa Dee, an author in Horse as Teacher: The Path to Authenticity. It was Saturday and PayPal’s offices were closed. I’d have to deal with it on Monday.

Last October, I flew to Texas and drove my new car home on a road trip through Santa Fe and the Four Corners area. I had visited Lisa and her fiancé Jess on that trip, having a lovely dinner with them and their weekend guests. This time through, Lisa had graciously offered their cabin for me to stay. I told Lisa how significant that was in light of my banking situation. From there and over the weekend, we had a number of discussions about prosperity, abundance, and the perception of both. Lisa has an incredible way of shining light on things, coaching and teaching in a way that is both informative and transformational.

Jess, a world-class competitor in bicycling, was on a training ride, so Lisa and I took the opportunity to catch up. Sitting in their outdoor, fire-heated soak tub, she talked about the Law of Attraction and how most of the information about that universal principle just scratches the surface. What is missing is how we value ourselves, and how we treat money in energetic terms. Lisa brought up the example of how we look at the value of a penny. Ironically, on my trip, whenever I had received pennies in change, I would casually flip them into a canister on the counter, not wanting to “deal” with “just” a penny.

Without my revealing this piece of information, Lisa went on to say that most people don’t understand that a penny is as valuable as any other denomination. Since it’s all energy, we should treat it all with respect. She hit that on the nail.

She continued that we often don’t value ourselves and what we bring to the world any more than that penny. And with our vibration set to not value ourselves, it’s no wonder the law of attraction isn’t working. Lisa has created two successful companies, having recently sold one for a very large sum. She knows about prosperity and how to attract financial abundance. I absorbed everything she said.

What she and Jess have built reflects that she walks her talk. The cabin was luxurious, with attention to every detail, from the artwork on the walls to the candles lining the Jacuzzi bathtub. After unpacking and as we walked to the barn to feed the horses, she asked how everything was in the cabin. I joked that I would love to stay on as her camp cook, and she replied that they are actually building another cabin so that they can hire someone to do that. She encouraged me to check out what they were building

if I had a chance the next day.

As Lisa cleaned the stalls in the barn and fed the horses, she asked if I was getting any messages from the horses. When I had visited in October, her horse Hakomi had communicated to Lisa that she and I could have a conversation without Lisa having to translate. I had promised Hakomi I would be in contact with her through a journey after I finished that trip. When I saw her in the corral, I realized that I had not done as I had promised. While the other horses were curious about me, Hakomi ignored my presence.

Hakomi, Vista Caballo

Mikey and Angel came to greet me, but Promise held back, interested, but shy. Angel is very gregarious, extremely intelligent, and wants attention. Mikey is a calm horse, observing everything, and not reactive. Both picked on Promise, but she would just walk away and not engage with their antics.

Mikey and Promise

I put my hand on Promise’s back, which she tolerated, more focused on her eating. She occasionally looked back at me, curious to know what I was doing. I was drawn to her stomach and put my hand there. Lisa watched me and then said that Promise had always had a sensitive stomach. An image came to me that Promise had a nervous stomach because she didn’t trust that she was staying with Lisa. I told Lisa what was coming to me.

Hakomi, Mikey, Promise, and Angel

She related that every time she had people come to the ranch for workshops and sessions, Promise’s stomach would get worse. I asked what her history was. She had been passed from person to person, just getting settled in when another change would happen. I suggested that maybe when people came she was concerned that she would have to leave with them.

Lisa immediately began to tell Promise that she was safe and secure. She would never have to leave. Promise seemed to respond, visibly relaxing and going back to eat. I put my hands on her stomach and started to send healing energy to her. A few minutes passed and she moved toward me, seeming to want more of what I was doing. If I moved away, she would position herself for more.

About that time, Hakomi came through the barn, walked directly to Promise and nipped at her. When Promise moved away, Hakomi did it again. Then Angel and Mikey did the same thing. Promise just continued to move away, never engaging in retaliation.

Then, as if Hakomi’s voice was in my head, I heard clearly, “Why are you working with her, first? Why didn’t you contact me like you said you would?” I immediately saw that she was upset that Promise was getting special treatment, and as lead mare, she was being bypassed.

I told Lisa the message I was getting, as Hakomi walked toward me, stood in front of me, and looked directly at me, like a woman scorned. I got the message. I apologized to her and told her I would connect with her later, as Promise needed some healing energy right now. She seemed to accept that and made her way to the back corral to continue eating.

After Jess returned and we all had dinner, we looked out at the horses who had been released into the yard. Promise was lying down on the ground, looking like she was uncomfortable. Watching her, Lisa began to become concerned that she might be having colic.

She wasn’t getting up, a clear sign that something wasn’t right. Jess got her back to the barn where Lisa and I started working with her. I put my hands on her stomach while Lisa massaged the muscles around her tail to stimulate her to eliminate.

As I sent healing energy to her through my hands she continued to move closer to me, pressing her back end toward me. Whatever we were doing seemed to be helping. She started to pass gas. We worked for another 10 minutes or so. Eventually, Promise moved away from us to the hay on the ground, and started to eat. A very good sign.

Later, Lisa went to check on her. When Lisa asked how she was, Promise led her to a pile of dung and smelling it, looked back at Lisa as if to say, “See, aren’t you proud of me?”

Much later, before I fell asleep in the amazingly comfortable bed, I took another dip in the soak tub. The stars were out on a beautiful, clear night. I had brought my drum and my Native American flute with me to the soak tub, and as I sat on the submerged step, I played the flute. The horses came out of the barn to listen, rapt with attention. The notes filled the space with sound.

Then I picked up the drum and began to journey. I met my horse spirit guide and was immediately connected with Hakomi. We had a long conversation about the day’s events. She shared how each horse was doing, saying that Promise was very grateful for our help.

She continued to explain that she would help me connect with other horses, just like my horse spirit guide. She explained that she was a translator and was eager to help me with energy work for horses. She also said that she had felt disrespected by my not connecting with her after my visit in October. I was duly reprimanded, then forgiven. She’s an amazing horse, that one.

I slept like the dead that night, awaking to a bright sunrise.