September 30, 2009 – News & Views

Rupert Isaacson, Author of The Horse Boy, visits Ohio Wesleyan
Shares story of Mongolian trek to help autistic son

Image courtesy of Little, Brown, and Company

Rowan’s condition was heartbreaking as he drifted further and further from contact with the outside world and suffered tantrums that lasted up to four hours several times a day. When Rupert, a lifelong horseman who also was well-acquainted with the shamanic traditions of healing, noticed that his son entered a state of deep relaxation and began to speak immediately when he was placed on a neighbor’s horse, an idea was born. Why not combine a horse culture with the benefits of traditional medicine to see if Rowan could be helped?

Although Rupert’s wife, Kristin Neff, initially was less than enthusiastic about the idea, she signed on for the journey as well, and the family’s story of gains and losses, trial and error, joy and despair in the desolation of Mongolia, is inspiring. Mongolian shamans came for hundreds of miles to meet Rowan and his parents and to perform healing rituals. At the end of the trip, after an arduous two-day journey on horseback up a 12,000-foot mountain near the Russian border, the family met with the reindeer herders. Among these people was reportedly the most powerful shaman in Mongolia. After speaking with the family and performing a simple and gentle ritual over Rowan, the shaman announced that Rowan would improve and that the two problems that had most plagued him—incontinence and tantrums—would leave him that day. And indeed, on that very day, there was marked improvement in both, and that improvement has been sustained.

Rowan is still autistic, but he is, in many ways, a new child. He plays with other children, and his intellectual development is on par, or better, than that of children his age. In fact, after learning fractions on horseback rather than through a group of worksheets in a classroom, he is now able to calculate mixed numbers accurately in his head.

Most professionals now believe there is an interplay between genetic sensitivity and environmental factors that results in a diagnosis of autism. “More and more children are autistic; it’s now one in a hundred births,” Isaacson says, “and society will change because of it.” Autism is found in every culture, but it is only in the developed nations that autistic people are isolated from the rest of society. In more primitive cultures, Isaacson says, they are accepted and frequently revered as artists, musicians, problem-solvers, and often, as shamans. “Most shamans have had at least some kind of neuropsychiatric episodes in their lives,” Isaacson says, “and it makes them more sensitive and aware of spiritual dimensions.” Those with the gift of autism, as Isaacson calls it, have much to teach the rest of us, and autistic people can make great contributions to society’s understanding of important truths.

Isaacson says that the Mongolian adventure was not to seek a cure for Rowan’s autism, but a search for healing for both the child and the family. In that, the trip was an unqualified success.

The Horse Boy is available at amazon.com and bookstores throughout the country.

For more information about autism, visit www.autism-society.org or www.autismspeaks.org.

– Gretchen Hirsch