Integrating Horses Into Healing for Drug and Alcohol Addiction
HORSES AND THE MYSTICAL PATH
By Drs. Adele Von Rust, Marlena Deborah and Thomas McCormick
Publisher: New World Library
ISBN : 1-57731-450-6
By JESSICA HEATLEY
A book about the expansion of the human soul, most notably through mysticism and integrated work with horses isn’t the likeliest of books you'd imagine would fall off the shelf of your garden variety psychotherapist. However, the lives of three authors of this book, Drs. Adele Von Rust, Marlena Deborah and Thomas McCormick make it impossible to pigeon hole.
The McCormicks spent over 30 years teaching psychology and psychiatry in Spanish universities and it was this immersion in Iberian culture, renowned for its deep spiritual respect for the horse, which prompted them to undertake their wisdom pilgrimage. From Scotland to India to Santiago de Compostela in Mexico via southern Spain and Morocco, the McCormicks garnered evidence for their reasoning behind integrating horses into their spiritual healing practice.
This research was to be the innovative foundation for the design of their current programs, which use horses to help people with mental illness, criminals and individuals with drug and alcohol addiction. The book essentially strives to impart the spiritual significance of the horse by recounting the stories of those whose lives have been irreversibly touched by the animal.
Some of these stories are awe inspiring, some tragic and some are just plain unbelievable. It’s really up to the reader to decipher what is within the realms of his or her belief system. However, it’s impossible to deny the esoteric, mystical and inexplicable aspects of life that constantly pop up when horses enter the mix.
The McCormicks identify the horse as symbol of nature and spirit. They espouse a technique for disengaging the Ego, “by standing before a horse, in complete humility, full of respect and wonder, and encounter the ground of your own being.”
At times, the book is difficult to navigate due to repetition of premise and a slightly skewed style that in part, resembles a friend’s letter – stories are often relayed as an after_thought, unsure whether they have been communicated previously. The writing however, is imbued with a contagious sense of joy for the connectedness of the universe and it is hard to finish a book like this and not feel positively moved.
There are many fascinating stories which would have any animal lover racing out for a copy, if even to say “I told you so” to those skeptical ones among us who claim that animals have no soul. At your peril, the McCormicks would advise!
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