Student and Therapist Newsletter Archive
   - Horse - Vets - Equine - Animals

+ Horse Whispers. - July06

I've got a slightly different newsletter for you this time, I'm featuring an article written by author Chris Bray about a seminar I gave to Vets in 1999. It was part of weekend on alternative treatments for horses. I was giving the cranio sacral perspective. It was a hard audience but thanks to the horse, the Vets had a compelling demonstration of trauma release in action.
I'll hand over to Chris.

*** Horse Whispers***

'Picture this. We're in the outskirts of Bellbowrie, a small town not far from Brisbane, Australia. And here's a man. He's full-faced, solidly built, not yet forty but hair already on the go for grey. Could be anything. If he told you he was a major in the army, or an inspector of mines, or a plumber, you wouldn't be greatly surprised. But whatever he happens to be, now as we watch him, rolled shirt sleeves, tan trousers, sensible black shoes, he's doing something you don't see every day.

This fact isn't lost on the spectators, all twelve of them. They watch in silence, nine men and three women, each one in a state of suspended judgment, each one positioned somewhere along the bell curve from unbelief to understanding. The man has his hands, arms widely outstretched, resting on a horse's back. He has his head turned to one side and we can see his eyes. They are, but surely for the moment, closed. And the horse, in a sweetness of reciprocal movement, has in its turn inclined its head to gaze back at the man. For long moments neither of them moves a muscle.

Ah, now of course we know what he is. He has to be a vet. So what's this? A party-trick? "Pin-The-Tail-On-The-Donkey?" He'd better open his eyes, we tell ourselves, before he starts inserting the needle, the pill, the suppository or whatever? We look around for the vet's bag. But there is none.

One of the spectators stirs, impatient, glancing at his watch. His impatience seems rewarded. The man's moving his hands now, slowly down along the horse's back, across and down to the thigh of the back leg, his hands framing the power of it. He pauses there a moment, stooping. Then he kneels and holds the leg lower down, lifting it, following it back as it extends, vulnerable, still.

The spectators catch their breath. They know a thing or two about horses. This is dangerous. This is not a hold the most experienced farrier would even dream of taking. The man's head is exposed. One kick and he's hurt, possibly killed. But his eyes remain closed, with no apprehension of danger. The spectators glance at each other, caught between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand they want to warn the man but, on the other, fear if they do say something to warn him it might startle the horse into kicking him anyway.

And then again, something else seems to be happening, quelling alarm. A thickening of the air, a beat, a harmony, a pulse. Eyes still shut, kneeling, the man holds the horse's leg, engrossed in this shared pulsation. It's so evident now, in some subtle way, that the spectators feel it too. As the pulse shifts into stillness they let go of their fear for the man. The stillness becomes real.

Within this sanctuary the horse's leg trembles in the man's hands. And though it already seems at full stretch, now it relaxes out still further until the iron hoof arcs gently down to rest on the straw. The man opens his eyes, stands, dusts off his hands and says into the stunned silence, matter-of-fact, "So that's released now. Keep an eye on it, though. Might take a couple of weeks for the pelvis to settle." His accent is Irish.

And the horse? Interesting. Though no vet had been able to discover any weakness or reason for the strange behaviour, it had formed the habit of unexpectedly bowing forward onto its right foreleg and throwing its riders. And now this man, who the spectators variously called "John" or "Mister Dalton" was declaring the problem fixed. But how?

John tells them that for a period in its life the horse had been hobbled, with something like a metal shackle to its right foreleg. He looks to
the owner for confirmation. The owner nods, wondering how John could possibly have known. "And the trauma of that," he goes on, "was the reason for its falling forward." This flat announcement is digested in silence. Then someone says - someone had to - that if the front leg was the problem what was he doing hanging onto the back in that frankly suicidal way?

John acknowledges the question to be a good one. "Because," he tells the spectators, "that was where the trauma had lodged."

He starts to explain. To be honest, it sounds uncomfortably out-there-with-the-fairies to me, a light year from equine suppositories.

Stuff about the cranio sacral rhythm and cranio sacral fluid, tissue motility and the effects of trauma and so on. I think everyone tuned out, the way you can, looking someone dead in the eye and apparently fascinated and actually wondering how much the dripping tap in the shower might be adding to your water bill.

"Whatever, yeah, really interesting," says the impatient one, "I don't mean to be rude -John, was it? - but the thing is, will the bloody horse go on throwing riders?"

Another good question. It never did again.

As I drove away, what remained for me of that scene was the sweetness of the exchange between man and horse. Though the man had his eyes shut throughout, they were all the same somehow looking at each other. It was a look so full of life, of trust. As if they shared a secret.

Then I turned on the radio. Found myself listening to something about families in crisis. Eased back into the everyday world. By the fourth set of traffic lights the extraordinary healing I'd seen was a memory.

But it was one of those memories that wouldn't go away. It nagged at me. Finally, after days, weeks, I accepted the need to find out more.'

******

Chris found out quite a bit more and has gone on to write quite a few pieces on cranio sacral therapy since. He plans to turn them into a book
one day. He wrote a lovely piece about a boy I treated who was diagnosed autistic psychotic.

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