During a session, the pace, content, and depth is set by you. You will learn simple processes that help you negotiate the symptoms of stress and trauma without becoming overwhelmed. You will be guided to go ‘underneath’ the overwhelming emotions and touch into the physical sensations, to experience a sense of flow – a sense of ‘coming home.’
Our consulting room is outdoors
Being in nature has a calming, restorative and regulating effect on our bodies – which helps to re-engage our thinking brains, immune and digestive systems.
Our healing and therapy team includes a herd of physically and emotionally healthy horses whose natural state is equilibrium. When we are in their space, our bodies’ nervous systems naturally entrain or syncrhronise to the restorative rhythms of the horses. This can have the effect of re-setting our own nervous system to a state of equilibrium.
From this balanced state, we gently begin to address what is causing you distress.
We usually sit in a space near or among the horses – you choose. Throughout our sessions you are invited to check in and notice how safe you feel, and what you would like to have happen for more safety or comfort.
As your energetic presence shifts during our sessions, the horses respond in-the-moment to these changes. At times they will be supporting the release of discordant energy, at other times they will co-regulate your nervous system, and they may respond to your thoughts, beliefs, and emotions with their behaviour. For example, if you are feeling vulnerable, they may lay down around you.
Go slow to go fast
Ironically, we achieve more, and move faster towards your desired outcomes when we go slowly. This is because our nervous systems don’t like surprises, fast-paced anything, overwhelm, or cathartic releases. A very small incremental shift yields big changes.
You are not required to re-live past adverse experiences
Our bodies remember everything, and usually the imprint of past experiences show up in our current lives. We work with what shows up now, or what takes your attention and energy without reliving past adverse experiences.
You develop skills for working with emotions and intense experiences
We show you important life skills to allow emotions and intense experiences to be felt in a safe and controlled way so that you can maintain equilibrium, feel safe in your body, and experience more vitality and greater resilience.
Together we will discover your unique body/mind/spirit impulses that lie in waiting to restore you back to wholeness. During the course of a series of sessions, you will experience more resilience in the face of life’s challenges. Overall, you will experience more vibrancy and a greater capacity to succeed at the larger shifts you desire in life – whether they are physical, mental or emotional, or spiritual.
Elements of our approach
Education – learn how your body responds to stress and trauma and why/how post traumatic stress develops
Practice – learn skills and processes for developing resilience and self-regulation
Release – gently release unresolved survival energy bound in the body
Embody – develop the capacity to feel the wide and sometimes subtle range of sensations, energy and aliveness
Engage – connect with the horses in specific ways to soothe, regulate, and attune your nervous system to its normal rhythm
Experience – a sense of well-being
Re-discover – your sense of Self
How many sessions and at what intervals?
The number of sessions and the time in between them is up to you, however here is a guide to help you decide.
Three stages of healing
- Single sessions are UNLOCKING sessions with the focus on moving your autonomic nervous system out of its stuck range, and experience greater balance. Although symptoms of relief often come about, the newly unlocked system may feel unfamiliar and left on its own can become confused by the re-introduced logic it has forgotten.
- For this reason, best results occur when the unlocking session is followed by a series of sessions for STABILISING, so that the new responses and nervous system logic becomes familiar and can re-establish a new baseline.
- RESILIENCE comes with persistence and practice, and a deeper connection and alignment with your core sense of self.
Unlocking: Single session
Stabilising: Usually 3 – 5 session
Resilience: Usually 3 – 5 session
- No horse experience required
- Horsemanship skills are not taught
- Participation is by choice for both humans and horses
- For young adults to seniors
- Suitable for people with physical limitations or fear of horses