Sharing the Windhorse Approach

The commitments of the Legacy Project are:

◈ To protect the heritage of the evolving Windhorse Project

◈ To preserve the heart of the Windhorse tradition for future generations

◈ To serve the learning needs of the international network of Windhorse therapeutic communities, and of all persons exploring recovery from extreme states

◈ To communicate sanity for the benefit of our challenged world

Background

The founding of the “Windhorse Project” in Boulder, Colorado, in 1981 was a seminal event in the field of clinical work with persons suffering with serious mental disorders. The first Windhorse therapeutic community (1981–1987) was the culmination of the career of Edward Podvoll, MD. He was a pioneer who joined his classical psychoanalytic training with intensive contemplative experience during the last thirty years of his life. Dr. Podvoll inspired generations of therapists through four life phases: as the senior staff psychiatrist at Chestnut Lodge and Austen Riggs Center (1966–1977), his teaching at Naropa University (1978–1990), his work with Windhorse (1981–2003) that culminated in the publication of his Recovering Sanity (Shambhala Publications, 2003), and his twelve-year meditation retreat in a Buddhist monastery (1990–2002). During 2003, the last year of his life, he returned to live with us in Boulder, CO, where he continued to teach with the poignant intimacy of a man facing death.

I am the current director of the Legacy Project. Several of my colleagues and I had worked alongside Dr. Podvoll from 1978 through his death. We inherited his extensive intellectual legacy. This legacy consists of the copyright to Recovering Sanity, 600 audio tapes of his lectures and clinical consultations, an extensive collection of his manuscripts, lecture and author notes, clinical logs, and correspondence. In addition to this core material, we continue to archive twenty-six years of recorded teaching and writing by other Windhorse therapists and clients, and many other valued mentors. This is an extensive and valuable archive that we intend to preserve and share with future generations of persons, organizations, and universities interested in exploring the psychology of, and recovery from, extreme states of human experience.

Activity

In 2013, with the support of a generous foundation grant to the Windhorse Guild, we formed a small working Legacy Group. Our intention was to research the process of how the Windhorse tradition is transmitted person-to-person, by our personal engagement in that process. “Research” for us means to bring the spirit of open inquiry to direct experience grounded in study of the Legacy. We continue to engage in that dynamic process of Windhorse transmission through archival research, clinical studies, group dialogue, writing papers, and teacher training. All these activities are illuminated by the mentoring relationship, which is the co-learning process at the heart of transmission. We actively engage with the other maturing teachers working in the international Windhorse community. Rousing the shared energy of our community dedication, we strive to embody the living quality of the Windhorse tradition. Dr. Podvoll left us these relevant instructions:

“No community can survive without the presence of teachers or elders who can transmit the wisdom of the community and train others to become teachers. In this way, the practices of the community can stay alive and have a continuity beyond the teachers. Just as the presence of a knowledgeable team leader catalyzes an individual therapeutic home, such leadership responsibility is crucial in larger treatment communities.”

— "Recovering Sanity," 2003, p. 312

We have discovered that the best teachers are the best students. We recognize we are all students openly sharing the Legacy journey into the future.

Intention

The Legacy Project is guided by an educational vision to preserve the Legacy, make it widely accessible, and guide its evolution. We intend to serve the learning needs of the international network of Windhorse centers and practitioners. We also hope to contribute to the larger dialogue of the world-wide recovery movement. We will do this with training teachers, making study materials available widely, and conducting trainings in the field of recovery from mental disorders. Our scope widens beyond Windhorse to preserve and publish the lasting contributions of elder psychotherapists, teachers, and recovered persons on our website.

By way of sharing the profound impact that this body of work has had on those already close to it, we have compiled submissions to the question, “What Does the Windhorse Legacy Mean to Me?” from a number of authors represented in this library as well as practitioners of the Windhorse approach. As you explore the archive, we hope you will add your own responses to that question in the comment field that appears at the end of each article.

Together we can bring hope and inspiration to everyone working with extreme mental states. It is clearly time for the goodness of human sanity to cross cultural and theoretical borders.

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