BodyMarc: This is a collection of  practices that release subtle tensions that accumulate in day-to-day life in muscles and internal organs. One particular practice I use regularly when I’m working with horses focuses on releasing tension in the hands, so they become a clearer and more effective conduit for communication.

Pandiculation, Feldenkrais: These practices let my brain retrain my body out of unhelpful movement and postural patterns.

Gyrokinesis: This practice brings spirals and continuity into movement, increases fluidity and ease in the body.

Forefoot walking: This practice brings me into a lighter, more balanced and aligned way of walking.

Mastering Alchemy: This evolving body of work continually grows my ability to manage my thoughts and emotions, and to consciously choose the experience of life I would like to have.

Empathy buddies: Regularly meeting with empathy buddies to practice non-violent communication skills deepens my connection to my own feelings and needs, as well as those of others. Human relationships are an endless source of information and awareness on how I show up and how that impacts what occurs in relationship. 

“Dojos” (practice groups): I initiated and facilitate two kinds of 3-4 person online dojos . The “Uncomfortable Questions” dojo grew out of my study of Kasia Urbaniak’s “Verbal Self-Defense Dojo”, and marries that with non-violent communication studies and learnings around shifting out of trauma responses. This grows awareness of where we freeze in communication and tools us with ways to break that freeze and stay present with what we feel and what we want in a given situation. The “Role Play” dojo focuses on playing out verbal  microaggressions (primarily racist ones currently) to grow our skill and possibilities in intervening in those kinds of real-life situations. It brings together the skills of the “Uncomfortable Questions” dojo, non-violent communication skills, and work around race that primarily came out of Roxy Manning’s “Authentic Dialogues across Race and Ethnicity” course. This works our ability to stay present with ourselves, stay in ourselves, in challenging situations. 

The intimacy and endless subtleties of touch make it an extremely powerful, fine, direct way to communicate nervous system to nervous system. The possibilities and intricacies of pressure, timing, rhythm, depth, speed, quality of presence and contact, etc. are deeply compelling to me. Touch is a big part of my work with horses. The intimate nature of touch requires integrity and a moment-to-moment discernment, an ability to sense welcomed vs tolerated touch. 

My formal development with touch began with a professional massage certification (École Guijek, 1996). Healthy, ethical touch, what “tolerated” touch can feel like, as well as firsthand experiences with the touch of different people were all critical aspects of this two-year training. I spent the next few years providing relaxation massages to cancer patients, growing awareness and intelligence in my hands and body. This population taught me about responding with touch to physical/mental/emotional vulnerability, where something may be too much or too little, the delicacy of discerning. They also brought firsthand insight into the impact of people being afraid to touch people who are sick.

My next formal learning around touch was when I began creating tactile graphics for the blind  (1997-1999) (translating visual content of textbooks, drawings, and concepts into tactile form). It developed a finer, more focused, sensitivity in the fingertips. Discerning changes in texture, size, edge, sharpness, height differences, etc. were essential in “decoding” the content of in the tactile graphic. During this time I also began learning to read braille by touch. This added another experience, further refined the practice of, “reading” with my fingers and “seeing” with my mind. Through my fingers my brain began to recognize the feel of the individual pattern of each letter of the alphabet, then began recognizing the pattern of individual words.   

A few years later I pursued a professional training in polarity therapy (École Véga, 2003-2005). This four-year training developed my ‘non-physical’ touch. It strengthened and refined my capacity to focus, to stay present and aware, and to work consciously with subtle energy. 

Movement has been a life-long pleasure and pursuit for me.

• Pandiculation, the work of Ed Barrera, is a new exploration I’m finding fascinating (2021).
• Feldenkrais classes and regular practice have provided me with a way to become aware of, and gently relax, habitual patterns of tension in my body. (2019-present)
• Dance and movement classes were always a way to relax and enjoy myself, feel the feeling of moving in different ways. Over the years  classes included ballet, jazz ballet, African dance,  contact improv, belly dancing, sacred dance, whirling, tai chi chi’h, various forms of yoga, qi gong, swimming,  synchronized swimming, gyrokinesis, yoga sling. Horseback riding was a sensing into how to join with, a given horse’s movement, understand how to organize myself and be effective with the different aids and skills.
• Studies in dance-movement therapy (Concordia University, 2002-2004) opened new ways of  perceiving and understanding movement, working with movement patterns (including speech patterns)

It took many years for me to have a clear sense of what subtle energy means — for me. Even today I don’t attempt to define it for someone else. It may be a sudden awareness of someone else being in the room, even if you have no evidence they’re there. It may be a sense of how the shape of a space influences the experience of that space. It might be sensing someone’s nature simply from being in their presence, no words spoken, or feeling the truth behind someone’s prevarication. The list is endless. The world of subtle energy is infinite, alive. It is where I find myself meeting the horses. 

• Professional training in polarity therapy (École Véga, 2003-2005) This work is about perceiving and using different elemental (earth, water, fire, air, ether) energies to clear and restore healthy flow of these energies in the human body. A beautiful and unique part of the curriculum at École Véga was perceiving people’s elemental “landscapes”, appreciating the beauty and strengths of that person, and using polarity therapy to assist them in their challenges.
• Feng shui studies (2005-2007)
• Mastering Alchemy studies and practice (2008-present)

I’ve always had a natural curiousity about different perceptual experiences of the world. What would have someone behave in a certain way? There was always an intelligence in the behaviour for me and I was curious about that intelligence. What would it be like to live without hearing, or sight, in a wheelchair, or with any orientation or characteristic that has been  placed outside “normal”? I come to horses with that curiousity as well. What is their experience?

The following are pursuits that have fed that curiousity.

• Working under the blindfold, learning to read braille by touch, translating visual drawings and concepts into tactile form, in my work designing, producing and researching tactile graphics for the blind (1997-1999). The blindfold work brought very useful embodied insights into moving around the world with a visual impairment. Seeking these experiences was my way to better understand my “readers”, increase the chances of creating effective tactile graphics for them. It was painful to realize that (for many reasons) it was sighted people creating tactile graphics, designing for an experience we did not inhabit. What might visually-impaired people create?Unlike looking at a visual image and seeing it in its entirety, reading a tactile graphic is a conscious, step-by-step process. The fingers and brain join as the tactile sensations are gathered over time and organized into a meaningful whole. There are also endless complexities around the nature of visual vs tactile perception. For example, the visual perception of a dot in a 5 pt font size is compellingly different from the fingers reading the translation of that dot into tactile form. One project I had was to develop word tiles to introduce sentence structure to young students. One noun tile I needed to create was for (playground) “slide”. I spent time feeling my kinesthetic experiences of sliding down a slide, playing with ideas on representing the qualities of that experience. The final tile appeared visually as a softly rounded line that started in one upper corner and went diagonally across to the bottom corner, curving into a slight upward arc as it arrived at the bottom corner. The tactile experience I had aimed to convey was the feeling of sliding down a slide, having the finger experience that feeling as it “read” the tile. The firm, smooth, aluminum medium of the tile was also a consideration as it let the finger glide freely. Each tile was a compelling research puzzle for me. While the effectiveness of the tactile graphic for the “reader” was always the priority in my work in this area, a secondary priority was to also make visually appealing to the sighted, so the sighted would not be so afraid of that world, would be intrigued and drawn into it. 
• Working with developmentally delayed adults as an assistant to the dance-movement therapist at the Centre for the Arts in Human Development at Concordia University in Montreal (2003-2005). Each client had their own unique expression and presence, and engaging each was always a wonderful learning experience in connection.
• Assisting with busing multiply handicapped kids to horse therapy at the Montreal School for the Deaf (1995). Many of these kids were in wheelchairs, and each had their individual needs. 
• Exploring creative movement activities with Alzheimer residents (2006). This was perhaps the most challenging of the environments I engaged, and while I didn’t feel successful most of the time, I came away with a deeper appreciation for the residents and the people caring for them. 

Thinking of how to present something in a way that minimizes misunderstandings, enhances ease and comfort of understanding and perception, is both an art and a set of skills, and relevant to working effectively with both horses and humans. Some of the key studies and experiences that developed my capacity in this fascinating area are:

• User interface design studies (1990-1995) This was a wonderful few years looking at the complexities of, and amusing anecdotes around, designing effective user interfaces. 
• Designing, producing, researching tactile graphics for the blind (1997-1999) (both translating visual drawings into tactile form, and creating tactile work with no visual equivalent). This was a rich exploration of creating effective tactile “images”, and of translating visual or conceptual information into tactile form. Where does information get lost? Where can’t it be translated? What is necessary to translate? Who decides what is necessary (edits the information?). The technologies, the size of tactile vs visual elements, the sequential vs whole perception way a tactile graphic is ready, made all of these very immediate, practical decisions. This work also highlighted how extraneous detail can weaken the signal in communication. If we are building an image of something by having only our fingers touch it, everything we touch in that tactile image becomes a piece of information to fit into the complete mental image we are building. 
• Professional technical writer in high tech (1999-2007) Producing various computer hardware and software manuals involved using language, structure, layout, visual aesthetics to enhance the ease of the end user in finding and accurately interpreting information.

The more relaxed, peaceful, and present I am in relationship, aware of what I’m feeling and wanting, interested to hear what another is feeling and wanting, the more I contribute to the creation of nurturing, harmonious relationships — whether the relationship is with horses or humans. This is conscious, intentional work that is always evolving and refining itself. One particular attention point is understanding how to bring peace into painful divisions among people.

• Feminine Power generative communication practice (2011-2018) evolved further through studies and practice in non-violent communication (The Compassion Course (2020-2021), practice group for that course, and weekly meetings with empathy buddies to increase relationship skills and capacities)
• Managing mental-emotional energy Various courses and practices to grow my skill in shifting my mental-emotional state into a one that is more open and aware, gives access to more possibilities in a given situation.
• Peace-making courses with James O’Dea (2012, 2015)
• “Authentic Dialogues across Race and Ethnicity” course with Roxy Manning (Spring 2021), an intense and very practical course using non-violent communication as a foundation for dialogues between white and global majority participants. The dialogues were challenging, vulnberable ones, created to offer global majority participants the opportunity to express to white people, their personal experience of living inside a white supremacist culture. 
• Understanding power dynamics Studying and applying the work of Kasia Urbaniak around power dynamics and how to influence the direction of power to ultimately enhance everyone’s well-being. (2020-present)
• Various readings, talks, summits around the embodied nature of (human) trauma (personal, collective, inter-generational), and how foundational that is to our relationship with others and our experience of life. (2018-present). The Optimal Performance Panic Attacks course in my equine background also added insight. (2020).

Certified Feminine Power Transformational Leader (since 2012), actively using and growing those skills and capacities by working collaboratively and facilitating small groups (2012-present)

My way of researching is by taking in information and experiences, feeling how they fit together mentally-emotionally and in my physical body, staying open and curious, seeing what emerges from there, refining my understanding as I go. Rather than a sequential or obvious process, it’s an unfolding, with multiple attention points informing that unfolding. While I was exposed to the traditional academic idea of ‘research’, and had the skill for meticulous research, that form of research felt untrustworthy. I saw more variables at play than were ever defined, more contexts than could be accounted for. The past decade I’ve grown into my own way of researching, discovering, a way of ‘unfolding with’.