2021 Annual Report: The Windhorse Legacy Project
The Windhorse Legacy Project (WLP) is a program of the Windhorse Guild, a non-profit 501(c)3 based in Boulder, Colorado (www.windhorseguild.org). The term windhorse, a symbol we adopted from a contemplative wisdom tradition, signifies the life force of true kindness that uplifts the human spirit. The Guild has a committed Board of Directors who provide oversight for the WLP. The Legacy Project is primarily supported by financial donations, with additional revenue from trainings and consultations.
I have served as the founding Director of the WLP since 2002. I was a close student/colleague/friend of my mentor of twenty-five years, Edward Podvoll, MD (1936–2003). Together with a small team, we co-founded the first Windhorse therapeutic center for the care of persons with severe mental illness, in Boulder, Colorado, in 1981. Since then, I have taken on significant responsibility for the integrity of the Windhorse clinical approach. The Legacy Project is guided by an educational vision to preserve the accumulated philosophy, methods, and experience of Windhorse; to make it widely accessible; and to guide its evolution for the benefit of Windhorse practitioners, persons suffering with mental illness, and the world-wide mental health field.
Historical background and lasting intentions.
I clearly remember the seminal moment in 1981 when the Windhorse clinical program began. One summer evening I sat in a clinical supervision meeting with seven other colleagues led by Dr. Podvoll. He was presenting his therapy work with a young woman in a local psychiatric hospital who was just emerging from a severe psychosis. We fell into a paralyzing silence as we faced the truth that she was soon to be discharged but that there was nowhere for her to live and continue working on her fragile recovery. It suddenly dawned on us that together we could do something to help. The next evening, we held our first team meeting with this intelligent and perceptive woman on her inpatient unit. We sat in a circle and, to our surprise, she addressed each of us in turn with insightful, reflective comments about our personalities. Her courage to speak honestly and our courage to listen set the pattern for reciprocal communication, which became a hallmark of Windhorse care. Soon after, we helped her family rent a home in a residential neighborhood. We then set up our first therapeutic household with live-in housemates. Each of the seven team members began to meet with the client for three-hour periods in ordinary activities, which we came to call basic attendance. Dr. Podvoll also continued his intensive psychotherapy with her.
This was our first experience of creating a comprehensive healing environment from the ground up with the client as co-participant, where we could all grow based on reciprocal communication. This story conveys the essence of the Windhorse approach. We still bring that fresh and open attitude to creating a therapeutic team in response to the truth of each client’s situation. That original sense of mutual exploration and learning, inspired by our trust in the healing power embedded in the human spirit, continues to rouse the sanity of all involved. This is a wonder to behold and to remember.
The lasting significance of Dr. Podvoll’s legacy, and how we have carried on.
Dr. Podvoll was a well-known pioneer in the mental health field who developed innovations in community treatment for persons recovering from severe mental illness. He was unique in joining his classical training in intensive psychoanalytic psychotherapy with the path of Buddhist meditation, founding the new field of contemplative psychotherapy. This field opens up new psychological insights, deeper empathy with extreme states, and re-awakens us to the role of spirituality in recovery. Upon his death, I inherited his comprehensive body of work: his classic book Recovering Sanity (Shambhala Publications, 2003), six-hundred audio recordings of his teaching, published and unpublished manuscripts, lecture and author notes, clinical logs, and personal correspondence. Many of these recordings document the historical events of that first Windhorse community in Boulder. Dr. Podvoll led his life as a scholar, teacher, healer, author, contemplative, and a loving friend to many of us. He had an adventurous spirit sparked by genius and was a trailblazer in carving the future of whole-person medicine.
I knew Dr. Podvoll as a quiet, thoughtful presence with a deep affinity for persons lost in madness. I respected the breadth of his knowledge and experience, which he balanced with the humble directness of his words. His wonderful sense of humor could illuminate the darkest situation. I learned more than I can say in my twenty-five-year training with him. Perhaps most importantly, I learned how to mentor other students in the well-rounded path of the healing discipline of the Windhorse approach. I learned how to learn, and how to help others embody the Windhorse style of learning embedded in relationships.
Currently, I am mentoring thirteen senior Windhorse teachers throughout the Windhorse international community. In 2012, after ten years of working alongside each other, Polly Banerjee Gallagher, Matt Allen, Blake Baily, and I formed the Legacy Group. Polly is currently the Director of the Boulder Windhorse center. As we are consciously studying legacy succession, these next-generation teachers are committed to carrying the torch forward when it is their turn. This fall, the Legacy Group met with the Windhorse Guild Board of Directors to present our succession plan for the Legacy Project, which the Board embraced whole-heartedly.
The rich legacy of Dr. Podvoll, the Windhorse teachers, and our forty years of clinical experience steadily grows in relevance to the modern mental health field, and the WLP intends to share this widely. For example, in December 2020, we published a new book by Dr. Podvoll titled Healing Discipline. In addition to publication, we are equally committed to developing ourselves as masters of the healing arts and to bringing our early discoveries into the light of new developments in our field. Core dimensions of our time-tested paradigm are: a coherent psychology of extreme mental states; the clinical methods to create sane therapeutic environments; the value of genuine, committed relationships with clients; an array of interpersonal and contemplative training methods for staff development.
We strive to embody the powerful inspiration to share what Dr. Podvoll called “the human transmission of sanity.” Transmissionhere refers to mutual discovery rather than to a one-way transfer of knowledge. Shared understanding can happen between therapist and client, between mentor and student, and among learning teams, when people are open-minded enough. This may involve explanation and example to show how to work with a situational process, or to simply relax and appreciate the common ground of genuine presence in relationship, no matter how mentally challenged a person may be. Close interpersonal communication is the key to enhanced awareness of the workability of all situations. We can transmit this sane message of true kindness in ever-widening circles of relationship.
The evolution of the international Windhorse community.
Over forty years, the Windhorse clinical approach has evolved and taken root in ten therapeutic centers in the United States, Germany, Austria, and Italy. This international community is now a self-regulating, integrated network with each center responsible for itself. The center directors are elder teachers who protect the centers from becoming rigid institutions that try to control clients or demand that they fit into society. Instead, they create conditions for community members to grow into the best of themselves. Each center has developed its unique social and economic culture and are small enough to maintain face-to-face recognition among their staff, clients, and client families.
For several years, we studied with Maxwell Jones, the post-WWII founder of the therapeutic community movement, which enables me to teach that tradition to our centers. This has allowed us to keep alive our original community spirit of what Max called the “open social system” and to dampen down the insidious forces of institutionalism. The international Windhorse community hosts periodic conferences and has other networking means to promote its integration and evolution. The WLP increasingly provides educational leadership to the international community. For example, last year, the WLP launched its new website as an online resource center (www.windhorseguild.org/legacy-project). I am the last first-generation co-founder providing leadership for the centers and offering the depth of our legacy to them. For me, succession planning is of utmost importance.
Summary of activities for 2021.
A. Developing Windhorse Teachers:
Continue mentoring the Legacy Group, who will assume future leadership responsibility for the Legacy Project.
Continue mentoring Windhorse teachers to promote their clinical, supervisory, writing, and teaching skills.
Complete my major paper, “The Development of Windhorse Teachers,” which will summarize our research and experience in this area to provide a knowledge map for teacher training.
B. Publishing:
This year I have devoted significant time and energy to working with a small study group, that includes a well-known author in the mental health field. We are researching the essential principles of mental health recovery. This work will continue through next year with the intention of making a significant contribution to the field. I am not yet able to openly discuss this project as we are in creative retreat mode.
Continue to build the WLP public website with new content, including the work of Windhorse teachers and like-minded luminaries in our field. To date, our site has hosted 4,000 unique visitors from 84 different countries, including Canada, the UK, Germany, Brazil, China, Pakistan, Japan, and Australia. We now have 650 active subscribers to our mailing list, which continues to grow.
Continue to publish archival works of Edward Podvoll, in print and other media, on our website. We have nearly completed work on the only existing video of Dr. Podvoll, which is of the lecture he gave as he was leaving for life-retreat in a French Buddhist monastery. We are working with a media engineer to publish the nine audio recordings of Dr. Podvoll’s three seminars that are the material for his book Healing Discipline. To date, 258 digital copies of Healing Discipline have been downloaded from our website, and 230 physical copies have been distributed.
C. Trainings:
Continue to develop and teach new course curriculums based on published materials, especially based on our newest book, Healing Discipline. Consult with Windhorse center teachers to develop their training offerings.
D. Supporting the Windhorse International Network:
Build the Windhorse Legacy Drive, an online resource center confidential to the Windhorse international community. This will contain the accessible archive of Edward Podvoll, other teachers, and sensitive resource materials. It will secure our historical documents as the complete knowledge base for future generations of teachers, students, clients, and families.
Continue to foster integration of the ten Windhorse treatment centers by developing our next international conference; internally publish the writing of staff, clients, and client families; offer consultation and dialogue.
Make our knowledge resources more known and available world-wide. Adapt the core principles and methods of our clinical paradigm to other treatment settings. We are in dialogue with several luminaries in the mental health field, providing them access to our archival holdings. In turn, we are learning from their work.
The need for funding.
The future of the Legacy Project is at hand. We will continue to build on what we have accomplished to develop the project to the next level. A key element of that next level is the handing over of my leadership to younger leaders as I gradually retire. I know my time and energy are limited. Each of the Windhorse centers are addressing the crucial questions of succession planning in their own way. What are the heart principles of the Windhorse work? How can we keep to our roots and yet be open to fresh ideas, clinical innovations, and strangers who can become friends? How can we inspire and train younger people? The sustained efforts of the Legacy Project are vital to responding to these questions to ensure future continuity.
The average annual budget for the WLP is $50K. This budget provides funding for me as half-time Director; our Managing Editor, Skye Levy; the Legacy Group; editorial and technical support; and program expenses. Income is primarily from donations from a small group of long-term donors, members of the Legacy Project community, and the Windhorse centers. We also generate earned income from consultations, trainings, and publications.
Tradition guided by the lodestar of basic sanity.
Thank you for giving your time and attention to this report. The Windhorse Legacy Project is fundamentally a research environment in which processes of mental illness and whole-person recovery can be studied with a spirit of respect, openness, and freedom of inquiry. What is learned is then woven into the living story of our tradition. Everything that we do, whether teaching, writing, or studying, comes out of our commitment to life-long learning and growth. The adventure of open inquiry shared among people dedicated to the human transmission of sanity is our communal lodestar. For forty years, Windhorse has shown its potential as a tradition of healing arts to strengthen and grow for generations. We are preserving and building on several unique lines of clinical work, including contemplative psychology and practice, intensive psychotherapy with people in extreme states, and the therapeutic community movement. Together we are a force for good whose ripples join with like-minded ripples that mount in widening waves of basic sanity to help shape a healthy future.