A film documenting a Texas couple's efforts to connect with their autistic son through horses has been released.
The true story provides an account of the family's remarkable adventure that took them to Mongolia in their efforts to heal their son through combining contact with horses and shamanic healing.
The Horse Boy tells the story of Rowan Isaacson, who was diagnosed with autism in April, 2004, when two years old.
It is a condition which now affects one child in every 150.
The charming, animated, blue-eyed, brown-haired boy suddenly ceased to say the few words he had accrued over the previous year. He began to flap his arms and babble, to obsessively line up his toys, retreat into himself for hours at a time, avoid eye contact, and scream uncontrollably and inconsolably.
It left his parents, Rupert Isaacson and Kristin Neff, distraught. They sought the best possible medical care for their son, but traditional therapies had little effect.
That same year, while casting about for solutions, Rowan's father Rupert stumbled upon something extraordinary.
He noticed that his quarter horse mare, Betsy, displayed submissive body language to the two-year-old boy whenever he wandered, babbling and spasmodic, into the horse pasture.
 The Horse Boy tells the story of autistic boy Rowan Isaacson. |
Intrigued, Rupert put him up on the mare's back. Immediately Rowan's self-stimulation stopped, replaced by an unusual, even blissful calm. The next day Rupert took Rowan riding with him, holding him in front of him in the saddle. Not only did the shrieking and jerking cease, Rowan began to talk.
Rupert had found his way into his son's world. Betsy, the patient, bay mare, had provided the link between his world and his son's.
That same year, Rupert Isaacson - a human rights activist and journalist - had to bring a number of San Bushman hunter-gatherers from Southern Africa to America to speak about the loss of their land to diamond mining.
Kristin, a professor of psychology, joined Rupert for part of that journey; 10 days at a gathering of healers, elders and shamans from around the world.
While there, some of the healers brought Rowan into their ceremonies, praying over him, going into trance. Rowan's autistic symptoms began dramatically to reverse. So, thought his father, where in the world is there a place that combines horses and shamanic healing?
In the summer of 2007, Rupert and Kristin took Rowan to Mongolia, journeying on horseback from healer to healer, shaman to shaman, across the wide Steppe, and up into the forests of Siberia.
The movie, directed by Michel Orion Scott, is described as part travel adventure, part insight into shamanic healing and part intimate look at the autistic mind.
The 93-minute film is based on Isaacson's best-selling book of the same name.
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