Could I have those three days back again? Or better yet, shrink the time spent at that workshop down to about three hours, keeping the good stuff and forgetting the useless tripe?
I’m a teacher, okay? And as a teacher, I need a certain amount of continuing ed credits, and I also like to explore different topics in search of things that will help me be a better teacher. So when the district advertised an upcoming seminar based on horses - training, interacting, and whatnot, I was really interested. I have a friend who trains miniature horses, and what I learned from hanging out with her was that training animals shares a great many parallels with working with students. You must be consistent, you must clearly share your expectations, you must allow a little room for self-expression, and so on.
What I got instead was the distilled essence of namby-pamby fuzzy-headed New Age holistic homeopathic horseshit. Understand, please, that I am a Wiccan, and as such fall into the New Age category. However, I’m also a rational person who wants evidence to support claims, has an affection for Occam’s Razor, and less tolerance for minor crap like auras and dream interpretation than you’d think. I should have known I was in for it when the schedule listed twice as much time for “processing” than it did for actual physical activities with the horses. I did pretty much know I was in for it when the “safety lecture” was each person reciting “I will take 100% responsibility for myself, thus contributing to the safety of the group.” A lovely thought, but when I’ve explained that I’ve been around the regular size horses - you know, 1200 pounds and more of skittish temperment - I’d like a little more than just “oh, we’ll tell you what to do”.
We meditated. Meditation is fine and dandy. I like meditation . . . when I’m taking a yoga class or at home on my own. Meditation in order to open my psyche to the horse’s spirit just doesn’t strike me as a fruitful use of my time when I’m hear to learn things that can help me in the classroom. Should I be foolish enough to meditate in an effort to open my psyche to my students’ spirits, I do believe I would be killed and eaten by them.
Oh, and did you know that horses can talk? Yes. Silly me. I thought the workshop leader originally meant something like “horses have a complex and intuitive body language. If you learn to read their signals, you will be able to predict their behavior.” No. That would be a valuable use of my time. Along those lines, I only caught a few comments that might possibly serve me. Instead, I was told that different horses said things like:
- take me seriously. I want to be a part of the workshop.
- you are sad and frightened. I will be your healer.
- if you lose 25 pounds, I’ll take you on a ride.
- I was a warrior horse in a past life.
I learned that the workshop leader is part of a government funded study of hippotherapy. That’s really nice, and I think it should be available to more people. However, when she said her coworker had included the names of two other scientists on his grant documentation when they had been dead the past ten years, I should have realized, it wasn’t done as a gesture of respect. No, it was done because those two dead scientists continued to advise on the project. Death is, after all, just another form of Being, and the dead are just as likely to tell us they still don’t like Chinese food as report that the Other Side is full of fluffy bunnies and daffodils.
The first day of work, I found out that I’m allergic to horses. The workshop leader nodded sagely and told me that my body was trying to tell me something. Yeah, like maybe how my immune system perceived animal dander as a threat, I thought to myself. She happened to walk by as I sneezed while standing next to a gelding. “What were you just thinking?” she demanded. “Uh, crap, I don’t have a Kleenex?” I answered.
Ye Gods. Three days of this. Three days of “ask the horse how old she is. She’ll tell you.” Three days of “my, what a beautiful aura you have.” Three days of having every comment I made parsed for spiritual significance. Three days of mystical bullshit so thick and steady, I could have fertilized the school grounds for the next school year. What did I get out of it? About twenty minutes of getting a mare to run in circles around me and trying to read her signals that she was ready to come in and join the herd.
And because I kept my thoughts mostly to myself or phrased them only in the mildest form of suggestion (“that sounds like an interesting idea, but in order to be successful with the established hierarchy, you need a control group”), I have been adopted by this group. I’m supposed to be one of those who goes out and spreads the gospel about this workshop. I was tempted to release my Wild Woman Archetype in an effort to stimulate their third eyes by putting a stilleto through each forehead involved.
And, oh, crap, I just realized this woman has my email address. sigh
