While recovering from her second bout of breast cancer, Dr. Sandie Hucal found peace on her property near Cochrane, where she helps rescue horses and other animals in need.
While recovering from her second bout of breast cancer, Dr. Sandie Hucal found peace on her property near Cochrane, where she helps rescue horses and other animals in need.
Now, the registered psychotherapist is hoping to share that same positive experience in nature with a new equine-based ecotherapy program designed specifically for cancer patients and their families.
“I've been through breast cancer twice. Being able to just go out into the forest, be with the horses, was a huge part of the healing experience for me, ” said Hucal, who owns Free Spirit Sanctuary. “Going through cancer for a lot of people brings up questions around, ‘Why are we here? What are we meant to do?' You don't know how much time you have, so how can you make your life matter?
“I find that horses and animals and nature really helps you get grounded and get connected with who you are. You can just be yourself and get a sense of what matters to you and what you would like to do with your life. ”
Hucal is licensed in family medicine and ran a psychotherapy practice in Calgary for many years before being diagnosed with breast cancer in 2003. After undergoing a lumpectomy, she went looking for a property outside the boundaries of the big city.
She found land 30 kilometres northwest of Cochrane and opened Free Spirit, but still maintained her busy office. Then, five years after her original diagnosis, she received word of a recurrence.
“Shortly after that I closed my office practice, ” Hucal recalled. “It was a wake-up call for me that I needed to look more at what was important to me and what kind of a life I wanted to live. ”
After a mastectomy and rounds of chemotherapy, Hucal has been cancer free since 2009. She continues to run Free Spirit and recently began thinking about how she could combine the increasing popularity of the healing power of horses with her long-time background in psychotherapy.
Her newly-created Nature Therapy for Cancer Survivors and Family, Friends or Caregivers experiential program - which is offered in individual or small group sessions and is covered by Alberta Health Services - begins this week.
“Because animals have always been a huge part of my life … It's a perfect coming together of the two, ” Hucal said. “All of the elements of this program are evidence-based from studies that have been done that these practices have benefit to people's health and well-being, ” she said.
Group sessions are limited to four people per block, which will run for four weeks at a time. Detailed information is on her website at www.freespiritsanctuary.ca.
Hucal said even though ecotherapy is a growing field of practice for doctors like her, it's certainly not a groundbreaking concept.
“It's kind of ironic because (nature) has always been there … there's nothing new about it, ” she said. “It's a safe place to just come out, be able to have the freedom of being in nature and the support of the animals.
“I think meaning and purpose come from finding something that aligns with your values that you can connect to and contribute to that is greater than yourself. That's kind of the ultimate focus. ”
