|
|
|
|
|
|
REVIEWS AND ARTICLES
|
|
|
|
Articles about Spirit Horse have appeared
in:
|
|
|
|
Bristol Spark 1997 - Spirit Horse Nomadic
Circle...Into The Wilder West!
|
|
|
Sacred Hoop Issue 20 (1998) - Spirit Horse
Camps (back issue available to purchase
here.)
|
|
|
 Kindred Spirit Issue 56 (2001) - Once we were wild (back issue
available to purchase
here.)
|
|
|
Sacred Hoop Issue 51 (2006) - A place for
growing. (back issue available to
purchase here.)
|
|
|
Kindred Spirit Issue 90 (2008) - Coming
Home: As a young woman, Polly, wept for a
place to call home. Read about her
incredible discovery of a modern tribe that
ended her search.
(back issue available to purchase
here )
|
|
|
 Sacred Hoop Issue 63 (2009) - When
the witch asks: When her life began to come
apart at the seams, Polly found the threads
of a new story with the help of Spirit
Horse in an ancient valley in
Wales.
(back issue available to purchase
here)
|
|
Bristol
Spark (1997)
Many journalists have come to experience
Spirit Horse and report back to the world.
This is the original version of the report
of Catharine Stott, working for the Bristol
Spark (published 1997)
Spirit Horse Nomadic Circle...Into The
Wilder West!
I’m reluctant to tell you about my
time at Spirit Horse Nomadic Circle for two
reasons. First, to put the experience into
cold, hard print, I have to blow my
‘Kate Adie of Positive Change’
cover and confess to being a damaged person
trying to patch myself back together. Also,
I don’t want you to book all the
places on this year’s camps.
You see, Spirit Horse rekindled fires in me
put out when I reached adolescence, threw
away my hunting knife and Narnia books and
tried really hard to believe in money,
mortgages and traditional family values.
But Spirit Horse showed me there was magic
on 20th Century earth, if I opened myself
to its daily spiritual, physical and mental
challenge. When I went to the Spirit Horse
Shamanic Contemplation camp in Wales,
I’d been trying to find a spiritual
path for a while. The combination of
Buddhism and Shamanism seemed ideal,
despite knowing little about either.
Hungarian healer Erika Indra, and Irish
ceremonialist and storyteller Shivam
O’Brien have exclusive use of a
beautiful valley somewhere near Welshpool.
Over the eight years they’ve been
running courses they’ve built up a
small settlement of carpet-lined yurts,
tipis and benders dotted among trees and
gorges and by streams. You can take your
own tent, or stay in theirs. Or, do what I
did, stay in several. I also ate like a
horse and made friends like never
before.
Shamanic contemplation turned out to be a
spiritual group process. Bring together 20
strangers, led by two delightful,
charismatic, respectful but challenging
human beings experienced in the power of
ritual and groups and, as Erika said
‘things start cooking’. They
said we wouldn’t leave the same
people and they weren’t kidding.
Recurrent phrases were ‘seize
opportunity by the forelock’ and
‘don’t wait until you’re
ready to do it, just do it’.
Erika and Shivam made a great team: she
seeing each of us, seeing though our
defences and behaviours; he driving the
group through the ceremonies, almost
challenging us to do and be more than we
thought we could.
At the time I needed some serious healing,
love and a new hunger for my life. I
didn’t know this and turned up
wearing my cynical front. After three days
I had no front left. I was a huge
relief.
The midnight sweat lodge (a native American
idea, ritual performed in the pitch black
in a bender tent converted into a kind of
sauna), alternately terrified and elated
me. We spent the day building it and
collecting old wood for the huge fire to
heat the rocks in. Being naked inside a
very hot, dark bender, knowing I
couldn’t leave until the ritual was
over was at first terrifying (actually most
things on this camp scared the life out of
me and I became increasingly angry at the
way I let my fear hold me back). But I did
two sessions out of three and was damn
proud of myself.
The singing lesson struck terror in my
heart. Years of shaming mean I don’t
sing in front of anyone, buster. I said no
and fell apart. But the group waited for me
and that afternoon on the mountainside I
discovered my voice was not so bad after
all. And I got angry at the monsters of my
youth who’d told me it was.
Several of us were in deep childhood pain,
so Erika and Shivam introduced ceremonies
to help us heal and grow up. Bear-hugging
(I wept), chocolate giving (I wept),
burying our parents (I grew up a bit).
Walking through a medicine wheel (I came
out silently triumphant). I even got a
rocking – 18 people cradled me in
their arms and sang to me, while others
massaged my feet and head. I said it was
the most beautiful experience of my life
and I meant it.
One day I visited Erika, Stone Medicine
Woman, in a cave by a waterfall. I’m
not telling you what she told me about
myself, but I left several inches taller.
Most of the week I was either in bits or
dying of self-consciousness. And always
someone took care of me, such as one of the
site crew, Bear, who won a place in my
heart forever with his gentleness, instant
lyrics and didgeridoo playing.
By the end I’d amazed myself several
times by doing things I’d always
thought I was incapable of. And was
operating mostly with my extra senses, not
my head for a change. I wanted to stay
there the rest of the summer.
To sum up: Spirit Horse is a wild,
fantastic, romantic, real, useful, inward
bound and outward bound spiritual
adventure. I got more out of that nine days
than four years at university, and am now
doing their year long course. Go if you
want to confront some of your fears,
destroy some of your illusions about
yourself and grow. If you’d rather
just relax, keep your denial system intact
and your extra senses shut down, I’ve
heard Butlins is very nice!
Catharine Stott
|
|
|
