Finding Quiet: Living in Loveland

Most of the time yesterday (Sunday) and today (Monday) has been spent in Loveland. Yesterday, we walked out of the apartment to the view of the Colorado Rockies (I left the roof, so you can get a better feel for the context).

Our Orientation Session, where all 14 students (7 from USA, 4 from Canada, 1 from Belgium, 1 from Australia and 1 from Italy) met, along with 5 of the faculty from the Equine Massage Therapy College.

The focus of the Orientation session was on questions like:

Introductions, including horse experience and "Why are you here?"
Using breath for focusing, scan and notice what is going on internally
What does it mean to be a "Learner"?
Being aware of different levels of listening and their effects
Taking responsibilty for our choices and actions

Today we had a full day of school (8-5pm), and our classroom. Here is a view (courtesy of Jessica's camera) -- you can see Kimi as the ever attentive student, while I am a bit distracted.)

This morning we worked on "movement" -- considering what we are learning as "movement therapy", or working to achieve efficient and/or optimal movement from our clients. Kind of neat idea that can be applicable with maintaining a "problem solving" and outcome-oriented approach to massage.

Then we had a lunch break and although I have taken some pictures of the landscape (which is so striking!) I thought that the picture below was a bit more interesting way to show you our "lunch room" (thanks, again, to Jessica). Sue, in the

foreground is another Canadian, from Halifax. She drove down (!) so that she could bring her dog Barrymore - a German Sheperd who is having some hip troubles.

This afternoon's class was more on communication including tools to working on quality inquiry and advocacy. Definitely useful tools for working with new and repeating clients -- not to mention within other relationships.

Tomorrow afternoon we have our first "Handling and Quieting" class -- so will get to see and watch (maybe work with) horses! Yeah!

I am going to publish this, and send out the link -- I hope to keep lots of people up-dated. So, feel free to check back in a couple of days for more pics and more rambling.