Richard M. Foxx, MD
What does cosmetic medicine have to do with horses?
At first blush the answer is “nothing.” The real answer for me, however, has turned out to be “everything.”
Even though I wasn’t born in a saddle on a ranch, horses have always been part of my life. When I was about 12 and I could earn some money delivering groceries I rode my bike into the Orange Mountains near where we lived and rented a horse and rode until my money ran out. “Cowboy” was always the occupation I wrote down first when my teachers asked us what we wanted to be.
Sometimes it takes years for a dream to come true. The army, residency, and work put this particular dream on hold for decades until about 30 years ago when I decided it was now or never and since then I’ve never looked back. Horses will forever be a part of my life.
This is not another “Everything I’ve learned I’ve learned from a horse” article. But I did immerse myself in their world and the approach to life I’ve developed being around horses became a perfect complement to the philosophy I evolved in my spiritual and metaphysical journey that took me from Zen through Tibetan Buddhism and Taoism; the idea that we are all interconnected, the principle of being in the moment, the value of being congruent.
Most of all, I learned the value of being sensitive to non-verbal communication between horse and human, and between human and human. Ultimately it made me more sensitive to my patients’ unspoken goals.
Horses are huge, imposing, sentient beings that, in spite of our frequent misunderstandings, help us help ourselves as we learn to develop the skills they need from us. My journey was so transcending I decided to share my findings and the wisdom of my horses with anyone interested. To facilitate this I’ve begun a program called THE EPONA EXPERIENCE. It will kick off this fall in the desert.
Way back when, when I was about six or so, full of dreams and full of promise, someone took a picture of me on the back of a pony. My BW found that about twelve years ago and had it framed. On the back she wrote: “Once a cowboy, always a cowboy.”
Gotta go.