Practitioners of the Windhorse Approach Answer the Question: What Does the Windhorse Legacy Mean to Me?
In creating the online version of The Windhorse Legacy Project’s archive, we spoke to many people who have been part of the “Windhorse Project”—some since its inception in the early 1980s and many of whom are represented in this collection as authors.
◈ We hope you will add your own responses to the question in the comment field near the bottom of this page ◈
“Honoring and urgency are the two central themes that come to me when I reflect on the legacy of Windhorse. In my role as start-up director of younger Windhorse centers, in Oregon and California, I feel a deep honoring of those who came before, the Windhorse elders who have devoted their entire lives to developing and mastering this unique, complex, beautiful model. Windhorse has become available in previously underserved geographies because of their generous support and mentoring. I feel a growing sense of urgency for the training and preservation of the Windhorse model as the original lineage holders, the direct students of founder Edward Podvoll, approach retirement. I fear that, absent mindful investment now, Windhorse may someday fade into obscurity or, perhaps worse, continue in a diminished form. We mustn’t allow either to happen! To my knowledge, no other modalities on the planet can match what is offered by Windhorse. I was drawn to Windhorse for my own son, and he chose it for himself. The Legacy Project in Boulder is our best and only hope for ensuring the authenticity and sustainability of this work going forward, now and for generations to come.”
— Lisa Teague, Portland, Oregon
“The Windhorse Legacy is a treasure trove of teachings, lectures, writings, study, practice, therapy, action, contemplation, and memory that ultimately has no beginning and no end. There was a specific time and place when the Windhorse Project began, but there were and are immeasurable influences and actions that have shaped and formed and will continue to shape and form Windhorse as it spreads and grows. Maintaining Windhorse Legacy includes gathering such treasures in three directions:
1) May we diligently study and gather the past, learning from those teachers and practitioners who came before us.
2) May we deepen and spread our understanding of the practice and teaching within the present community of Windhorse practitioners.
3) May we envision and allow the time and space for future understandings, iterations, and improvements of Windhorse as future generations deepen the work.”
— Matt Allen, Boulder, Colorado
“Two of the synonyms for the word ‘legacy’ are ‘birthright’ and ‘inheritance.’ The real legacy of Windhorse feels to me like an ever present invitation to stay with and cultivate our humanness, our birthright. Also, to share this invitation with others. Body breathing, soft heart, open awareness: human dignity in service of genuine connection with others, and all of life, as it emerges in its many humbling, terrifying, and luminous forms. What else can we do? How else can we do no further harm and have any shot at healing? The Windhorse legacy, inheritance, birthright, is that of every human, lighting a path through history and the emerging future. A path cleared by courage, presence, awareness, and the open-hearted, all-in, meeting of one person to another, to each other, and then to another, and another.”
— Phoebe Walker, Northampton, Massachusetts
“The intangible gifts from those who came before us make up the Windhorse Legacy. The gift of basic goodness came from Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche. Fearlessness is the path taken to wake up to that basic goodness. It is up to us to acknowledge and accept these gifts and embody them, without embarrassment, in order to keep it alive. In this way we humbly accept the responsibility of becoming legacy holders ourselves and in the process inspire others to step into the lineage of Windhorse. We can fearlessly attend to those who are suffering through the confidence in our own basic goodness and strive to be the conduit to ease their pain through genuine relationship.”
— Polly Banerjee-Gallagher, Boulder, Colorado
“For me, the Windhorse Legacy is something that is alive, dynamic, and growing to encompass the ongoing contributions of those following a common path. There is an energetic quality that draws people together around compassion and respect for each other as clinicians and for our clients. The Windhorse Legacy suggests to me always an intention to use our human capacity for the good of people who might otherwise experience marginalization.”
— Lauren Loos, Portland, Oregon
“We are inheritors of suffering but also the fortunate inheritors of basic goodness. It is our responsibility to notice and acknowledge the pain that exists within ourselves and others and it is also our responsibility to gently cradle pain and give to it the warmth of kindness. Those who have chosen the path of the Windhorse way have received the gift and knowledge of Windhorse—a movement, a model, a community, and a way of being. In order to preserve the aliveness of the Windhorse legacy, it is our responsibility to not only continue our personal practice and study but, as lineage holders, it is with gratitude and humility that we accept the responsibility to transmit intellectual knowledge, transmit contemplative practices, and above all—to embody and transmute Windhorse as a way of being.”
— Dana Doneze, San Luis Obispo, California
“I find the Windhorse Legacy to be about an experience of the way in which we are allowed to show up to the world and our relationships with decency, kindness, and gentleness as well as honesty, sharpness, and transparency. I find there is a gift in the Legacy that has been shared and is being shared with people who are willing to live in this way. To dedicate oneself, in some way, to self and other and explore the common threads of fear and fearlessness through humility and acceptance. I have seen the Windhorse community form around these ideas which come from the Windhorse Legacy, building a mandala, webs of interconnectivity, in which people are willing to give themselves wholly to another, to sit with another person's fear, pain, and suffering and offer themselves, their gentle, courageous selves to find humanity and ground. I watch myself learn to be with, stay with, and not run when feeling afraid or alone, to stay a second longer, to find connection and my own pockets of pain and suffering ... to remain human myself. Windhorse has become a part of who I am and its Legacy is a powerful transmission of the idea that humanity, community, and compassion are all embedded in us, in some simple way. There is a legacy of practice and discipline that accompanies the inherent quality of open, grounded awareness that exists in the Basic Goodness of us all and Windhorse has helped illuminate this to many, to draw out these qualities. In this way, the Legacy seems to be timeless, as if basic attendance and kindness to oneself are known by all and accessible to all … and they are.”
— Dimitri Egan, San Luis Obispo, California
“Because of early life experiences, I know what it feels like to be utterly lost: hurting myself, hurting others, thrown around in tumbling, compounding bewilderment, without any reference point for a way out of that state. I know what it feels like to be loved as well, having the experience of loving others so strongly that at times it was hard to bear. I sensed I was essentially a good person, but was helplessly disoriented in cycles of synergistic confusion.
Alongside the experiences of such intense suffering, the confounding coexistence of feeling worthwhile created a passionate yearning for something I didn’t know existed. At some point, this yearning to escape my bewilderment became the most compelling and urgent reference point in my life.
It was in that open state of mind and heart that I encountered Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche. Here was someone with unfathomable confidence, pointing to a reliable path out of such confusion: It is completely possible to live as an expression of one’s basic sanity. The unbelievable relief, joy, gratitude, and love that arose out of that meeting, and which is vividly with me to this moment—now decades later—is my most clear and powerful experience of legacy in its highest form: Offering something to people so that they may help themselves to be free of suffering, and so that they may help others to do the same. Trungpa was the inspiration and deepest rootstock of the Windhorse Project, helping Dr. Podvoll and so many of us wake up to our basic sanity. He was also the first to say that he was just a small part of a vast and ancient legacy stream, in which he worked tirelessly so that it would blossom in the West.
I think my story is useful as it includes prototypical elements for the way in which many Windhorse clients and families come to us: in serious pain and confusion, and looking for a way to further connect with their basic sanity. With this as the ground of inspiration, and within my role in the Windhorse Project, I aspire to offer a multifaceted legacy, befitting of what is possible. The foundation of this will be to do the work and to support the work, continually passing along the gifts that have been so generously given by our clients, their families, and the myriad forms that our teachers may take. The work will then energize the evolution of our clinical, social, and organizational knowledge, which we will share within as well as outside our Windhorse communities. That evolution will help us to better understand how to nurture individuals and community in order that they may develop and amplify this legacy stream in their own way. And ultimately, as we continue to explore what is possible as a legacy, we will make no attempt to “own Windhorse,” but to let it generously flow through us, like Ed did.
May this legacy be of help to people who are lost in mental confusion, their families, psychology professionals, and anyone interested in compassionate approaches to recovering sanity. May this be an ever-expanding presence in our world, showing how we may best care for ourselves and each other. May this legacy result in society based on intrinsic dignity and compassion, benefitting each individual through infinitely diverse expressions of goodness.”
— Chuck Knapp, Boulder, Colorado
“The windhorse legacy is a commitment to everyone’s innate sanity.
struggling in this world with all its beauty and confusion—
love and hate and indifference
the seduction of identifying with thoughts and emotions and making them as solid as rocks
it is easy to get lost
it is possible to come back
it is painful to get lost
it is painful to let go of the solidity you have created, although it makes you suffer
I reach out to those who create a field of sanity
I am proud to be a part of this field of sanity
it is a signpost
a reminder
I am kind of thrown into it
like being born into a certain family
I woke up into this field of sanity
sometimes it feels safe
I reach out to people who suffer a lot more than I do
sometimes it feels shaky, never on the safe side
it is seductive
it is about connecting
it is about being
it is about trust
it is about patience
being with others’ confusion and watching out for their sanity makes it irresistible to watch out for my own sanity
Holding confusion in my heart until it loosens its ties”
— Michaela Nowak, Vienna, Austria
“It’s as if I’ve been sailing for years … and finally I have found a harbor … because Windhorse is an environment that comes to create, within which one moves in a certain way. And we like to compare it to a curtain, those of the desert nomads, or any part of the world. It’s a tent that can be mounted anywhere, if you know how to do it. And then you can invite people, welcome them, but at the same time, cause you have mounted the curtain, you are somehow responsible for the atmosphere that is created inside. One might say, in order to resume the above sentence, the task of the Basic Attender is setting the conditions in order that ‘in the ordinary, the extraordinary happens.’”
— Paola Parini, Turin, Italy
“The Second Person”
As we move through this space—
past architecture and paint,
form and sensation,
into laughter, food, and the colors we can see ...
As we soar by illness and dis-ease, our cheeks a tousled bedspread,
an alpine pond
molested by clouds, tossed stones and the passing of time,
we fool ourselves.
We make believe it’s all ahead.
But a song gets our attention
and as we turn around
the wind blows our thinning horse hair
into a single, black calligraphy brush.
We squint our eyes.
We can just make out those brave ones, the dumb ones, the smart,
the meek and the perky,
those masters and slaves,
monsters and saviors,
distillers and destroyers—
those
who have gone before us, and
who have
taken
one
on the chin.
Quick! someone yells.
Write it all down before we forget!