Horses!

I came back from Arizona last night, just to see if there was still snow on the ground in Wisconsin, and sure enough, there it was. I have to confess that I signed up for the equine retreat at Sunstone, a healing center for cancer survivors on the edge of Tucson, mostly because of the weather. When I left Madison on Wednesday, it was 10 degrees Fahrenheit. And the first full day in Arizona, basking in the sun and even seeking shade when the afternoon temperature climbed toward 80, I started thinking that maybe I really should move someplace warm. Not Arizona, but maybe LA? Not a very practical or sensible idea, but oh, so tempting.

I discovered, though, flying back yesterday that even I can't live someplace for 31 years without getting attached to it. The sky was clear as we flew over Minnesota and approached the Mississippi River, which we crossed right at the confluence with the Wisconsin River. There was (of course) snow on the ground, and because it was late afternoon, the shadows really defined the topography. We paralleled the Wisconsin, heading east, until it took off to the north, and then we flew over all three of Madison's lakes, as well as the isthmus with the state capitol dome shining gold in the setting sun--it was a spectacular flight. And as soon as we crossed the Mississippi, the refrain from an old song, "The Wisconsin That I Love," came, unbidden, into my head, and played over and over until we landed. I guess I won't be moving.

But as a result of the weekend at Sunstone, I hope to be adding two activities to my schedule: returning to a qi gong class, and doing something with horses, perhaps volunteering at a nearby stable that offers equine therapy to people with disabilities. I discovered that I love to be near horses, and would love to learn to work with them, discovering more about how they sense people's energy, and how I can use my energy to make them respond as I wish.

If there was a theme to the retreat, I think it could be described as "intention." We didn't ride the horses (because of liability issues), but performed several exercises with them, learning how to make them turn left and right without touching them, how to get them to jump over a low barrier and to walk over a pipe lying on the ground, how to get them to move to the rail of the round pen and then walk, trot, and lope (gallop) in a particular direction around the pen (clockwise or counter-clockwise), always signaling our intent by changing the size and direction of our "energy bubble." At the end of this last exercise, we stood in the middle of the pen, calmed ourselves down and quieted our energy, which attracted the horse, because horses, being prey animals, like calm places. I was really good at this (it's a lot easier for me to be calm than to make my energy large and compelling enough to get the horse to lope) and the horse, whose name was Romeo, came right up to me and put his head on my shoulder and relaxed. I fell immediately in love. Makes me feel like a 12-year-old girl!

The equine exercises were especially emotional for several participants, some of whom had spent a lot of time with horses, or with a horse they owned, as young people, and who were suddenly put back in touch with their younger selves, whom they'd abandoned or forgotten, and for others who were afraid of horses, and discovered that they really could face and even draw hope and have affection for and control something much bigger than themselves. (Yes, the horse in those cases was a clear metaphor for cancer.) I haven't had much previous experience with horses--I rode with a friend several times in the year or two after I graduated from college, and I horse-packed into the Tetons with my kids and my sister Paula in 1987--and I'm not afraid of horses. Also, I haven't had much problem with intention since the mid-1980s, after I completed treatment for Hodgkin's disease and determined (after a lot of agonizing) to leave my marriage. But I still felt the exercises as powerful; I enjoyed learning to manipulate my energy field; and I wanted much more of that sort of experience.

The retreat also included short introductions to various kinds of meditation and relaxation techniques and to cognitive therapy as a technique for quelling anxiety, a session on nutrition offered by an excellent nutritionist, a qi gong session, and delicious meals with opportunities to get to know the other participants, all of whom were either cancer survivors or their caretakers (including two spouses and one sister of survivors). I made friends with several participants with whom I hope to stay in email touch, and I was especially impressed by the retreat coordinator, Erin Blanchette, who is the best facilitator of anything I've ever met.

The only real down-side to the weekend was learning that our retreat is the last Sunstone will offer. The facility, which is quite beautiful and extensive, on 14 acres, is about to go up for sale. Sunstone runs four or five resource centers for cancer patients and survivors; these are mostly, I think, in hospitals in the Tucson area, and they serve thousands of people each year. The retreat center served, at most, 500 people a year, and was extremely expensive to operate and maintain, so the board decided in late February to close the retreat center and concentrate on the resource centers. The retreat center was run entirely on contributions, and as Erin explained, it has proven very difficult to convince funders that care for the emotional and spiritual needs of cancer patients and survivors is as important as chemotherapy, radiation, or surgery. The oncology community is beginning to come around to this idea; at UW Hospital, for example, I see a physician who specializes in integrative medicine and who works out of the oncology clinic one day each week; I also see an acupuncturist (who is a naturopathic doctor) at the clinic. But I think there are relatively few oncologists like Allan Hamilton, the neurosurgeon who owns Rancho Bosque and runs the equine therapy program with his wife Jane, a psychologist, who really embrace and practice "alternative" and "complementary" modalities along with traditional Western medicine. And as far as funding goes-- research into the sexy and high-profile diseases like breast and prostate cancer attracts the big bucks.

Well-- speaking of alternative therapies, time for me to go to my Feldenkrais class. More next week.