by Bettina Shultz-Jobe, LPC, NBCC | Jun 26, 2025 | Basics of Natural Lifemanship, Case Studies, Equine Assisted Trainings, Personal Growth
When it comes to equine-assisted services, we often focus on the profound emotional and psychological breakthroughs that happen when humans and horses connect. We celebrate the moments when a client finds their voice, builds confidence, or processes trauma through their relationship with these magnificent equine partners. But there’s something fundamental we’re missing in many conversations about this work—something that determines whether these breakthroughs happen at all.
Your body is speaking, whether you realize it or not, and the horses are listening.
The Language Horses Understand Best
When we engage with a horse, we enter a conversation that precedes spoken language. Horses are hardwired to read the subtle communications of movement, posture, and energy that reveal intention, emotional state, and even past experiences. They don’t care about your credentials, your therapeutic techniques, or your carefully crafted treatment plans. They care about what your body is telling them at this moment.
This creates both an incredible opportunity and a significant challenge for those of us working in equine-assisted services. The opportunity lies in the immediate, honest feedback horses provide about our internal states. The challenge is that most of us have never been trained to understand what our bodies are actually communicating.
We live in a culture that has taught us to separate the mind from the body, to treat physical wellness as distinct from mental health. But here’s what science tells us: our brain, body, and nervous system develop together from the very beginning.
In utero, it’s not that the brain develops first and then tells the body to move. Rather, the body begins moving in reflexive patterns, and it’s through this movement that neural pathways form.
Movement builds the brain. And trauma, by altering our movement patterns, reshapes our neural landscape in ways that affect how we think, feel, and relate to the world.
Trauma Changes the Way We Move
When trauma occurs, the body adapts. These adaptations are often protective, and they are usually unconscious.
We see this played out in the bodies of trauma survivors—shoulders turned inward, eyes cast downward, feet turned inward with toes curled toward the midline. This particular posture, interestingly, mirrors one of our earliest intrauterine movements, when a developing baby moves into the protective fetal position.
When someone lives in this contracted, protective posture consistently, they’re not just physically small—they’re emotionally and energetically small too. They’ve learned to make themselves quiet, invisible, safe. And horses, with their exquisite sensitivity to body language and energy, respond to this communication immediately.
A Story of Change
One of our clients, a woman in her 40s, came to us with a history of early and repeated trauma. Her body moved in a way that reflected her past. She walked with her head down, her shoulders rounded, and her toes curled slightly inward. She carried herself as if trying to disappear.
When she made requests of the horses, they ignored her. Some even pushed her out of their space.
Rather than focusing on what she was saying, we focused on how she was moving. We worked with developmental movement patterns—specifically, the push and reach patterns that help restore a sense of agency. These patterns are part of what we teach in the Embodied Developmental Movement Series.
This wasn’t about telling her how to stand. Instead, we invited her to explore “push” in her body – her ability to push into the earth for support, and her experience of pushing on an object, or another person, to rediscover her internal strength. In exploring “push”, we also explore the felt sense of “I am here”.
As she practiced these movements, her nervous system began to shift. Her stance changed. Her energy became more organized.
We didn’t ask her to stand a certain way, we helped her find what she needed to hold herself tall.
Eventually, the horses started to respond to her differently. They began to listen, to connect, and to willingly choose to cooperate with her requests.
The change was not just physical, it was emotional and relational. And it began in the body.
Subtle Adjustments Make a Big Impact
Another client, an executive with a high level of anxiety, presented a different movement pattern. On the surface she appeared confident, straight-backed with her head up. But her movement told a more complex story.
When she reached toward her horse, her weight shifted backward. Her knees were locked, and she stood heavily on her heels. She believed she was grounded. In truth, she was leaning away.
With gentle guidance, she softened her knees and allowed her full foot to meet the ground. For the first time, she felt her toes. This simple change brought her into a more neutral and balanced position. Her horse responded with a deep breath and moved toward her.
That moment marked a turning point. By learning to move in a more integrated way, she experienced a deeper sense of connection—with herself and with her horse. A shift she couldn’t help but take into the rest of her relationships.
Retained Reflexes and Incomplete Patterns
We also see clients who carry reflexes that were never fully integrated during development. (Sometimes it is just a part of themselves who carries the reflex.) The Moro reflex, for example, is a startle response that should complete in infancy. When it remains active, it can show up in adult clients as sudden backward movement, difficulty recovering from surprise, or heightened reactivity.
In equine sessions, this often becomes visible during mounted work. If a horse makes a sudden stop or shift, the client may flinch backward and struggle to return to center. These reactions are not about the horse. They are rooted in the body’s unprocessed history.
By working with these reflexes in an intentional manner, we help clients build the capacity to stay present. We help them complete movements that were never allowed to finish.
A Change the Horses Can See
The people we work with often begin to feel change in their bodies before they see it reflected in their lives. In traditional relationships, others may take time to notice or trust a person’s transformation.
But horses notice right away.
When a client stands more grounded, breathes more deeply, or moves with intention, the horse responds immediately. That response builds trust. It reinforces the change. It gives the client something to hold onto when the outside world is slower to catch up.
This is one of the reasons equine-assisted work is so powerful. It allows clients to experience the impact of their healing as it happens.
The Role of the Practitioner
To do this work well, we must become students of movement. We need to understand how the body was designed to move, how trauma alters that movement, and how we can guide clients in regaining patterns that support regulation and connection.
This is what the Embodied Developmental Movement Series teaches.
Across four progressive trainings, we explore the motor patterns and reflexes that shape human development. We practice observing the body with care and clarity. And we learn how to support small, intentional shifts that lead to meaningful transformation.
The work of developmental movement is about connecting with our most basic, and pervasive, way of experiencing the world. As a facilitator, we can observe gesture, posture, gait, breath, patterns of tension and collapse, and so much more.
We can lean into the subtle nuances of how our clients move through their world, and rebuild patterns from the ground up that support health and harmony.
When you become more fluent in the language of movement, you gain new tools for healing. And you help your clients discover what it means to be fully present in their own bodies—and in their relationships.
Healing rooted in the body
When we help someone move differently, we help them live and connect differently. That is the heart of this work.
If you already practice a somatic lens with your clients, these trainings will add to your toolbox and enrich your skills. See more in your client’s subtleties, get to the root of the issue faster, and have more ways to creatively bring integration and clarity to your sessions.
If you are new to somatic work, or are unsure about your scope of practice, these trainings can offer you what you need to have a solid foundation to offer clients. By attending all four trainings, you create your somatic movement scope of practice.
If you are ready to deepen your practice and explore the intelligence of movement, we invite you to explore the Embodied Developmental Movement Series with Mark Taylor and Bettina Shultz-Jobe and join us.
by Bettina Shultz-Jobe, LPC, NBCC | Apr 20, 2023 | Case Studies, Personal Growth, Testimonials & Reflections
One of our dedicated Natural Lifemanship practitioners, Sarah Willeman Doran, recently authored a chapter in the new book, Integrating Horses into Healing that details her transformational healing journey with horses and specifically, her transformational experience with Natural Lifemanship.
As a Dually Advanced Certified NL Practitioner and Equine Professional (Advanced NLC-P,EP), Sarah embodies our mission at Natural Lifemanship and we’re excited to share a brief recap of what she shared about NL. To read the full chapter and other life changing stories of healing and transformation, get the book here: Integrating Horses into Healing.
A Fallen Star
Sarah’s relationship with horses begins in the competitive world of showjumping. At a young age, she was competing at the Grand Prix level and was seen as a rising star in the sport. She knew how to get the most out of her horses and saw great success early on. There was no telling how far she could go.
But behind the scenes, Sarah had faced abuse from one of her coaches. She’d suppressed her trauma to continue to perform in the sport she loved, and didn’t realize until far later how damaging this was.
Sarah’s meteoric rise in Grand Prix jumping would come to an abrupt end following traumatic riding injuries. She would eventually recover to win an intercollegiate individual national championship riding for Stanford University, but would never be able to return to a Grand Prix jumping level, and stepped out of competitive horse jumping.
But her journey with horses would eventually take a new path. .
A New Beginning
Following early retirement from competitive riding, Sarah shifted her focus to developing young horses. At the same time, she was also walking the path of personal growth and deep healing.
When Sarah came across the Fundamentals of NL and the Fundamentals Practicum, her relationship with trauma was changed forever. She found a new understanding of how trauma affects the nervous system, opening the way to greater self-compassion and healing.
“The NL model gave me a chance to work through nervous-system activation ‘in the field,’ which can create a more embodied and deeper experience than an office setting provides,” Sarah writes.
Finding early success with the Fundamentals of NL, Sarah went on to do a series of therapy intensives with her Natural Lifemanship therapist, each lasting three to four days.
“We processed a series of traumatic memories, and I truly felt my sense of them shift. It’s not that I’ve forgotten any of what happened, but now I can think of those things without feeling a jolt through my body,” Sarah explains.
Sarah’s third intensive session was her breakthrough moment, which she described as “coming out of a fog.” Finally able to process her trauma and have a deeper connection with her inner being, she gained the strength and wisdom to make positive changes in her life.
The Natural Lifemanship Institute offers Transformative Training
As Sarah continued to take NL courses for her own growth and her work with clients, she explained, “For me, at the trainings, some of my most powerful growth experiences were not even about the work with the horses. Rather, certain interpersonal moments were what the field of psychology calls ‘corrective emotional experiences.’ These were moments when I felt truly seen and cared for, when trainers recognized my needs and practiced one of the core NL principles: making sure not to take away the other’s sense of choice.” The following story is about one of these moments at an Intensive Practicum.
Sarah describes working with the paint horse she’d been partnered with: “It felt satisfying, as we practiced various ways of moving together in the pen and went on to haltering with connection. I later learned the owner said he was head shy, but at the time, our connection had evolved enough that he would move his nose toward the halter and stay relaxed as I brought it over his ears.” It was in one of these moments of quiet connection that a sudden burst of wind and rain swept through the arena. In a split second the horse lost awareness of Sarah, and she narrowly dodged him as he swung his head and took off.
When Sarah returned to the horse, he was agitated, running from one side of the pen to the other, unable to calm down. When she asked for his attention, he would buck and kick at her, at close range.
“I was still focused enough on performing well and pleasing others that I persisted in the pen to a point of complete exhaustion, trying in vain to raise my energy and bring the horse’s attention back to me, to help him connect and calm down,” Sarah said. “By the time I told one of the trainers that I was too exhausted to make any progress, I was in a state of nervous-system freeze that I hadn’t experienced in a long time. It felt familiar. . . I was afraid to tell anyone the extent of what I was feeling, and as usual, I looked basically fine from the outside. I had learned, through many years, how to keep going through these things and not reveal what was happening inside.”
Sarah was worried about going back to training the next day. With her nervous system in overwhelm, she didn’t feel she’d be able to work with the horse safely if he was still dysregulated and aggressive.
“When I arrived, I asked one of the trainers if we could speak privately. When westepped aside from the group, I couldn’t stop the tears, and I felt ashamed. I told her what I was going through, and also that I was worried about letting the trainers down. What happened next felt like a miracle to me: she listened with total kindness and without judgment; she expressed the trainers’ full confidence in my abilities with the horses; and she said I did not have to work with the horse if it didn’t feel safe.”
Sarah tried to work with the horse again, but he was still in an agitated state, and Sarah was still triggered. She was used to being the tough horsewoman from her competitive days and tried to persist at first, but was quickly faced with a fork in the road. Should she continue to hang on to this persistence that made her successful in the competitive world, or was it time to let go and do what was best for her well-being?
Sarah, with the help of her NL trainer, decided to let go.
“This was an empowering turning point. At the time, in my evolution as a person, what I needed most was to choose to put my well-being first. Not only to choose that but to be supported in that choice. To see and feel that my safety mattered, that taking care of myself was not a cause for rejection or abuse of any kind, but rather led to an experience of safety,” Sarah said. “This is what the NL trainer provided that day. She sat with me beside the pen, supporting me in my decision. . . this was a transformative experience of expressing a boundary around my safety and well-being and having it honored.”
Sarah learned more than just how to let go that day. As someone who’d experienced multiple forms of trauma in her youth, it had been difficult for her to express and uphold boundaries. She had been in relationships where boundaries were violated, and hadn’t known how to break the cycle.
At that moment, she was able to make a new choice.
“As we heal, the choices in relationships become much clearer. If we express our boundaries clearly and repeatedly and someone still can’t honor them, the relationship isn’t healthy,” Sarah explains. “At that point, we can either attempt stronger ways to make our request, or we can choose to end the relationship.” That day, Sarah chose to end the relationship knowing that it wasn’t healthy to push herself to work with this horse.
She called this moment a fundamental shift and a vital one for her own healing journey.
The ripple effect of healing
“Learning and practicing Natural Lifemanship changes the way we live. When we improve our relationships, the healing effect ripples outward through those around us. The more we heal ourselves, the more powerfully we can help clients,” she said.
Like many healing journeys, Sarah’s has been long and painful. However, it has also been deeply rewarding. With the transformation she experienced through her Natural Lifemanship training and therapy, Sarah has seen long-term tangible benefits in her life.
With a healthier and renewed nervous system, her baseline state has transformed from stress into wellness. She no longer lives with chronic pain, she feels at home in her own body, and she’s able to build the kind of healthy, connected relationships that bring the greatest sense of meaning in her life.
Sarah is now a certified life coach and a mindfulness meditation teacher. She is building her own Natural Lifemanship practice in Colorado, with plans to open a retreat center in the mountains.
Sarah is also an author, and you are sure to enjoy her writing. Here are some articles that focus on NL specifically:
Natural Lifemanship at the Wild Horse Sanctuary, Part 1
Natural Lifemanship at the Wild Horse Sanctuary, Part 2
The Healing Power of Connection
Building Connected Relationships
Begin Your Own Healing Journey Today
We couldn’t be more grateful to Sarah for sharing her journey of transformation with Natural Lifemanship. The beginning of Sarah’s journey is like so many for our NL community – it all begins with the Fundamentals of Natural Lifemanship.
If you’re ready to learn the principles of Natural Lifemanship, join us for this life-changing training.
by Laura McFarland | Apr 10, 2023 | Applied Principles, Basics of Natural Lifemanship, Case Studies, Personal Growth, The Latest in Equine Assisted Therapy and Learning
We are beyond thrilled to share an amazing new resource for the field edited by Cheryl Meola. We had the honor of contributing severals chapters to this book. When she approached us about contributing chapters, Cheryl said she wanted this book to be a resource for people newly entering the field of equine-assisted services. We were asked to write in a “newbie”-friendly way. That said, we believe this book is equally valuable for seasoned professionals and for those new to the field.
Here is a list of the book’s chapters with the titles we contributed in blue:
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- Natural therapeutic aspects of horses by Cheryl Meola and Malaika King Albrecht
- The evolution of equine-assisted services (EAS): horses are good for people by Lorrie Renker, Octavia Brown and Pebbles Turbeville
- Horse Speak and Partnership by Sharon Wilsie and Laura Wilsie
- Relational Equine-Partnered Counseling (REPC) by Hallie Sheade
- An in-depth approach to relational work with equines: Natural Lifemanship by Bettina Shultz-Jobe and Kathleen Choe
- Breathing into relationships: the HERD Institute approach to equine-facilitated psychotherapy by Veronica Lac
- Side-to-side astride: the benefits and challenges of equine mounted work in trauma processing by Susanne Haseman
- Blended therapy modalities in equine-assisted psychotherapy: integrating equine-engaged internal family systems (EE-IFS) and equine-connected eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EC-EMDR) by Jenn Pagone and Kathleen Choe
- Medical therapy (OT, PT, SLP) enhanced with hippotherapy by Joann Benjamin, Ruth Dismuke-Blakely and Karen Gardner
- The Equus Effect: a road to regulation through equine-assisted learning by Jane Strong, David Sonatore and Elizabeth E. Lloyd-Richardson
- Serving those who served…and still serve by Tara Mahoney
- Beyond mind and body: spiritual connections in equine-assisted services by Kathleen Choe and Laura McFarland
- Be the Horse’s Advocate by C. Mike Tomlinson
- Enhancing the horses voice: incorporating Horse Speak into psychotherapy by Susanne Haseman, Sharon Wilsie and Laura Wilsie
- Exploring socio-emotional and cognitive development in horses by Tim Jobe, Tanner Jobe and Rebecca J. Hubbard
- Not just horsing around: an equine professional’s guiding principles by Malaika King Albrecht
- The role of the equine professional in equine-assisted services by Tim Jobe, Tanner Jobe and Reccia Jobe
- Heart centered horsemanship: the horse trainer’s perspective in EAS by Stacey Carter
- A holistic perspective: My transformative journey through Natural Lifemanship by Sarah Willeman Doran
- Are we there yet? The ongoing journey of healing for the healers by Kathleen Choe
- Interventions and strategies toward mental health and wellbeing for professionals by Aviva Vincent and Joanna Robson
- Starting or restarting an equine-assisted services organization: Don’t put the cart before the horse by Nancy Paschall
- The key to a successful non-profit board by John Matthew Kundtz
- How do you know it works: Evaluating equine-assisted service programs by Maureen MacNamara
- Bridging research and practice in equine-assisted services by Kimberly I. Tumlin
- Conclusions and future directions
Each chapter in this book is contributed by an expert in the field and provides an overview of the topic plus concrete examples and helpful resources. We are so proud to have been a part of this effort and cannot recommend this book strongly enough!
Psst…when you order the book through the links in this article, we earn a small affiliate commission. This transparency is important to us, but since we contributed to the book, you know we recommend it whole-heartedly!
by Kate Naylor | Jun 7, 2022 | Applied Principles, Basics of Natural Lifemanship, Case Studies, Personal Growth, The Latest in Equine Assisted Therapy and Learning
We are so pleased to announce that our Natural Lifemanship team has been published again!
A lovely new resource is now available for a variety of practitioners – Nourished: Horses, Animals & Nature in Counselling, Psychotherapy & Mental Health, edited by Meg Kirby, is out now!
Not only do we share our lives with nature and animals, they are an integral and influential part of our well-being. Within the pages of Nourished is wisdom collected from respected professionals across the globe (of whom we are honored to be a part!) on how we can intentionally incorporate the natural and animal world into mental health, wellness, and personal growth.
Working With Horses to Develop Secure Attachment
Natural Lifemanship’s CEO and co-founder Bettina Shultz-Jobe and I are thrilled to have contributed a chapter in Nourished titled “Working With Horses to Develop Secure Attachment”. In this chapter we offer theory as well as a case study discussing how attachment wounds can be brought into awareness, gently explored, and healed through authentic engagement with equines.
We ventured not only into the cognitive aspects of attachment, but the embodied ones as well – for much of our relational patterns are held in the body. As this NL community knows, being in relationship with horses is a unique opportunity to transform ways of being, even when deeply held in the unconscious body.
If you are a practitioner in the field of equine assisted services, this is a chapter, and a book, not to be missed!
Psst…when you order the book through the links in this article, we earn a small affiliate commission. This transparency is important to us, but since we contributed to the book, you know we recommend it whole-heartedly!
by Michael Remole | Jun 3, 2020 | Case Studies, Testimonials & Reflections
This is a letter Michael Remole, NL trainer, recently sent to his clients. We were touched. We related, and we felt more connected to our community. We hope you feel the same way. Thank you Michael for your thoughts, your kindness, and your dedication to genuine connection.
As an empath, a business owner, and a mental health professional, there are so many pieces of this COVID-19 plan that are quite difficult to fully address and properly articulate. In short, my heart is broken.
My heart breaks as I put on my mask and head out to greet your child. I try hard to smile under this mask and show the excitement with my eyes, yet it is not the same. I can feel the glances of “are you going to make my child wear a mask?” and “you believe this stuff?” and “it’s about time you meet in person again.” My heart breaks as our young clients try to make sense of why a “safe place”—a place where we promote authenticity and a metaphorical mask free zone now requires a mask to keep us safe. I cringe as I watch myself and our client fight our masks as they slide down our face, get into our eyes, and muffle our words. It’s not the same, and I battle wondering whether telehealth was better than this awkward clumsy in-person session. But I have to remind myself that connection is on a continuum and this IS connection, even if it feels awkward.
My heart breaks as I watch your child touch doorknobs and grab buckets or latches. I ask myself a million questions…did we wipe that down properly since the last client touched it? Did the client touch their face after? I pray that my clients don’t feel me holding my breath, but I know they do. My biggest fear is not me catching the virus, but what if a decision I made to open up to in-person sessions causes your family to be directly impacted by this virus. I ask myself a million times, “did I make the right decision?” We want to help people and I pray that this is somehow helping.
My heart is also very heavy for everyone given the way this virus is wreaking havoc on all areas of our lives—most importantly our mental health. I hear the hurt in your voices and I feel the fear about the current state of things, as well as the fear of the future when we talk. I know how desperately we all want answers and we want to fix this. As an empath, one of my greatest gifts is to feel what you are feeling. Right now, it is as if the volume to my empathy is blasting to a deafening volume. Daily I am faced with the question, do I shut it off, do I figure out some way to turn down the volume, or do I learn to live with the volume blaring? As I think about that, I know the pros and cons of each decision. I often find myself paralyzed by all of the various ways for me to move forward.
Over the last two months, I have shared with clients about ambiguous loss and how it impacts people. We’ve talked (I’ve even taught) on the idea that we are all grieving various losses and that each one of us has experienced loss on various levels. What I did not realize was that coming back to in-person sessions would be what made me see more of the ambiguous losses.
Lately, I’ve been working on the things I can do for myself personally that help me move toward a healthier version of myself. I returned to running during this time after one of Dr. Perry’s office hours with Dr. Brandt. She talked about rest, refuel & reflect. Something struck me that day and I have logged over 100 miles in just a few weeks. I have been running the same road every day, but varying the distances. This past Monday I decided to do one of my shortest runs and go a different route. Interestingly, it was insane how difficult it was. It felt as if I were running a marathon. My body did not have any problem with the mileage. My brain did because it was new; it wasn’t what I was used to and I did not have those normal benchmarks of how far I had run. This is similar to what’s been happening with COVID-19 for me. I’ve been on the same route (telehealth) for a while now. Even though it’s had its own challenges, it’s what I know. This week, we embarked on a new route by adding some in-person sessions. Mentally, it has thrown me for a loop.
During my runs, I’ve been listening to music and an older song from FUN came on my playlist, “put one foot in front of the other.” That has been on repeat in my head. So today, I am taking one foot and I am placing it in front of the other. I do not have the answers and I cannot fix this situation. As an agency, we will continue to strive to provide exceptional services, despite having to wear masks and concerns over germs. As an individual, I will work hard to identify those areas that are out of my control and what areas I can control. And together with my clients, we will navigate this new normal and work hard to ensure that the physical masks do not hinder what we both need—genuine connection.
by Kathleen Choe | Aug 29, 2019 | Case Studies, Horsemanship
By Kathleen Choe and Tanner Jobe
Recently, Tanner and I had an experience in an Equine Assisted Psychotherapy session where we had planned to do trauma processing with our client using Equine Connected Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EC-EMDR) which is essentially EMDR while mounted on a horse, where the movement of the horse provides Dual Attention Stimulus as well as relational connection for the client. The problem was, our equine therapy partner, Gretta, was having a great deal of trouble with connection that day. Prior to the start of the session, Tanner spent an hour in the pasture with her, asking her to connect, which she eventually did while at liberty, but when he asked her to halter with connection, she alternated between dissociating and submitting, or resisting by pulling her head away or walking off.
When the client arrived, I went to greet her at the cabin where we begin our sessions with a check in, leaving Tanner in the pasture with Gretta, assuming he would arrive at the round pen shortly with Gretta in tow. After half an hour of talking with the client about her transfers of learning from the previous session and what our therapeutic goals were for the current one, I noticed that Tanner and Gretta still had not appeared. I knew the client was eager to do trauma processing that day and had come prepared with a particular memory she had targeted to work on. I stepped out of the cabin and called to Tanner, asking him if he would be bringing Gretta soon (as in, now!). He called back that we would have to come to the pasture. I immediately felt both awkward and annoyed, awkward towards the client, who was ready to go with the mounted work we had planned on doing, and annoyed with Tanner for not just settling for an ear flick or eye ball’s worth of connection so that he could halter Gretta in good conscience and cooperate with our agenda for today’s session.
As we walked to the pasture, I found myself nervously re-summarizing to the client the importance of the principles of choice and mutual partnership in building relationships, including for the horse, principles we had introduced and then affirmed repeatedly throughout the course of the therapy thus far, explaining the damage that would be done to our relationship with Gretta if we forced her to submit to being haltered and led to the round pen instead of asking for her cooperation in participating in the session. I was saying all the “right words” consistent with the principles of Natural Lifemanship, but inwardly I was struggling with concern for failing the client’s expectations and not meeting the client’s needs. My professional values of delivering a quality product and following through on commitment clashed with what I viewed as Tanner’s puritanical insistence that we wait for Gretta to choose to cooperate. As we walked through the gate into the pasture it began to rain. Tanner was standing next to Gretta holding out the halter calmly and patiently. Gretta looked tense with a determined set to her jaw. Surveying the scene, I was tense and angry, inwardly hissing at Tanner to just put the damn halter on and be done with it! Gretta’s nose was centimeters away from the noseband. So close!
I took a deep breath and decided to let Tanner explain to the client why she wasn’t going to be doing mounted trauma processing that day. As the rain slid down my already chilly neck, I morosely pictured this client terminating future sessions and walking away from EAP in frustration.
Tanner asked the client how Gretta seemed to be feeling about being haltered today. (“Not that bad,” I thought). The client observed that Gretta seemed anxious every time Tanner offered the halter to her.
“What would happen if I just put it on anyway?” he asked her. (“Nothing!” I screamed inside. “She would just stand there and let you do it!”)
The client thought a moment, then said, “She would probably let you do it, but it wouldn’t feel good to her on the inside.”
“How would it affect our relationship then?” Tanner continued.
“She would feel used,” the client responded. Then she continued, “I do that. I just want a certain outcome so I get impatient and push forward no matter what the other person is showing me they feel about it.”
Standing there in the rain, watching my client fully grasp what was happening between Gretta and Tanner, and applying it to her own life and style of relating, I felt the fallacy of my product-oriented, outcome-focused style of therapy come crashing down around me.
Yes, Tanner could have simply buckled the halter on Gretta and she probably would have followed him out of the pasture to the round pen, let us put on a bareback pad and then the client on her back, and walked around in circles behind Tanner while the client processed her traumatic memory. The client might even have felt some relief from the toxic emotions embedded in her experience. However, in approaching the session this way, sticking to our plan despite the clear feedback from a vital member of the therapy team, we would have violated the basic tenets of the Natural Lifemanship model of EAP: building an attuned, connected relationship is the goal of any interaction, and that this is the kind of good, healthy relationship that is the vehicle for healing and change. Gretta would have become a glorified rocking chair, a vehicle for carrying the client, reduced to a tool. Objectifying and instrumentalizing Gretta in this way would have modeled for the client that is o.k. to sometimes “use” others in the service of our recovery, that there are situations where the “higher good” of the outcome justifies the means employed to get there.
Not only Gretta’s welfare would have been compromised, however. The client’s potential for true, deeper healing would have been affected as well. Without the relational connection between the client and the one who carries her, the limbic system would not be engaged in a manner that promotes re-wiring of the faulty neural pathways wired around the trauma to grow new neuronal pathways of trust and growth. Gretta would have been left without even a connection to her horse professional, much less her rider. Her pathways for dissociation and compliance would be strengthened, making it much harder for her to trust offers of choice and connection in the future, and the client’s pathways for being controlled by or controlling others would unhappily be strengthened as well.
I called Laura (the director of education and research for NL) after the session, expressing concern about how the client might have perceived the experience, and her potential disappointment and frustration that she wasn’t able to process her trauma target that day. I shared my fears that I was compromising my professional responsibilities and explained that even when I’m having a bad day I have to show up for the client and attend to their needs, no matter how or what I’m feeling, despite the hard things that may be going on in my personal life. The therapeutic relationship is somewhat one-sided between counselor and client in that the counselor does not ask the client to meet her needs in the same way one might in a personal relationship. Laura pointed out that I have a choice about whether to conduct sessions when my personal life is in crisis, and that if I choose to meet with a client I’m deciding to put aside my personal struggles to attend to theirs. If our equine therapy partners are not able to make these choices in the same manner then how are we being congruent with our inherent belief that they are equal members of a team based on mutual partnership and cooperation? (In other words, Laura agreed with Tanner!)
In processing the session afterwards, Tanner and I discussed the importance of having alternative methods of trauma processing to offer the client should the equine partner not be able to participate in mounted work in a relationally connected manner on any given day, rather than trying to stick to the original plan, which would ultimately be at the expense of both client and horse. We could have the client walk beside the horse, perhaps touching her side as they walk together, or do traditional EMDR using eye movements or tappers, or employ other somatic interventions like drumming to provide the Dual Attention Stimulus and grounding involved in effective processing. Introducing these concepts at the beginning of the therapy process so the client understands that the course of the session will be dependent on what is actually happening relationally in the present rather than being defined by a pre-determined agenda will be key to developing a shared understanding of how Equine Assisted Psychotherapy true to the Natural Lifemanship model actually works.
Tanner’s Point of View
I had been working with Kathleen as her equine professional in therapy sessions for a couple of months. The person she had been partnering with previously went on maternity leave so I was filling in for sessions that were already in progress – basically, entering the process of therapy at some point other than the beginning. This provided many initial challenges. First, Kathleen had already built rapport and established a therapeutic relationship with the client and I was replacing someone who had also done the same. Second, I was working with Kathleen in therapy for the first time ever. We already had a relationship as NL trainers and had worked together in that capacity but had never actually worked together in therapy sessions. Third, I was working at an equine facility I had never visited before and was partnering with horses I had never met prior to these therapy sessions. Another part of that challenge was that I was only doing two sessions on Tuesday mornings at this facility and balancing that with a mountain of other responsibilities for Natural Lifemanship. I really did not have the time I would have preferred to meet and build relationships with the horses we would be partnering with in therapy sessions. (I know others can relate to this!) I would have to build these relationships as therapy sessions progressed and do so in a way that did not disrupt the process for the client. Furthermore, I had very little knowledge about the relationship patterns that the horses had developed from their interactions with various people on a daily basis and if those people were aligned with me and NL philosophically. I just wasn’t sure what the horses were learning about relationships outside of their interactions with me. I did not “own” these horses and I did not care for them daily, and I knew it was not reasonable for me to expect those who did to suddenly change their interactions based on my philosophy. Again, I know others can relate. Nonetheless, the proof of the pudding is in the eating, so with all of these things in mind I began the process of working with Kathleen as part of the therapy team with the intention to take it as it comes and simply do my best to adapt and learn.
The transition into sessions went fairly smoothly and soon I was starting to learn about our client as well as the horses involved in our sessions. I was told that Gretta was the horse they had been partnering with for mounted work and went out to get her for one of our first sessions. I immediately noticed that Gretta was uncomfortable with my presence. She was tense in the ears, face, and eyes. When I said hello and asked her to engage, she maintained the tension and did her best to ignore my request for minimal attention. I found that I could walk right up to her and she was not threatening but she also would not really engage with me. I could touch her and she did not seem to change, respond, or react. She did not clearly say yes or no. She would even let me halter her. She did pull her head away slightly but not emphatically. It seemed as though she did not want anything to do with me but also did not expend any energy to get away from me. In my error, not knowing Gretta at all and only operating off of information from others and my own assumptions from that information, I put her halter on and led her out of the paddock. Throughout that morning’s interactions I learned a lot about Gretta. She disconnected and tried to eat grass at every opportunity. She was touchy around her girth and even grooming there caused her to pin her ears and nip at me. Tightening the girth of the bareback pad resulted in her attempting to bite me. Nonetheless, I gently did my best to push through all of these standard processes that a horse goes through in preparation for mounted work and started to lead her to the round pen. Leading her further away from the paddocks and barn to a round pen that was a little more remote, I noticed her anxiety increase significantly. She walked fast and out in front of me attempting to drag me along. Her head shot down to feverishly eat grass at every opportunity (one of her attempts to regulate). Her head would shoot up and ears and eyes harden as she looked at the round pen by the therapy cabin where we were to do our work for the morning. I stayed calm and continued to ask her to be aware of me and to walk without stepping on me as we moved to the round pen. When we entered the round pen, I removed the lead rope from her halter and she immediately trotted away investigating the round pen with an anxious energy. When I put a little pressure on her back hip and asked that she engage with me she appeared agitated and maybe even a bit angry. She pinned her ears and bucked and kicked and galloped around the pen. I did what I know to do and kept the pressure the same while staying calm and relational until she was able to connect and attach (follow me while calm, present, and connected). Then I asked her to detach (move way) and received the same anxious, aggressive response. I helped her calm down and engage through detachment and then asked her to reattach. When she was able to detach while remaining connected I reattached the lead rope and mounted. I wanted to make sure she was safe to ride. She proved to be ok but she was clearly still full of anxiety. However, the client had arrived and was waiting with Kathleen outside of the pen so that we could start her session. I decided this had to be good enough and we proceeded with the therapy session. We had the client mount and we started moving in a circle with me leading Gretta. At one point I remember the sun umbrella on the deck of the cabin suddenly falling over and spooking Gretta. She jumped sideways and almost lost our client but I was able to get her to stop. Gretta was obviously anxious and on edge the entire session – as we got to a certain section of the pen she would worry about something that was out in the trees. She would speed up and at times trot ahead of me as we passed this section of the pen. It was a stressful session for me as I had to do a lot of work trying to make sure Gretta was not going to hurt our client. I did not like having to manage all of that. I knew Gretta and I had a lot of work to do moving forward.
I made a lot of mistakes that first session and I took note of what I needed to improve and I started showing up at least an hour early for our sessions so that I could spend the appropriate amount of time connecting with Gretta and making sure I got true consent from her every step of the way before asking her to carry our client. I started really making sure Gretta was present when I made a request and that I was attuned to the emotions she felt around each request that I made. Typically, I would show up with the halter to bring her in and we would spend around 30 minutes in the paddock simply getting to the place in which she could look at me calmly, without anxiety, and then follow me at liberty while being fully present. I would offer the halter and wait for her to give me a clear yes and then proceed through the process of grooming and saddling and mounting with the same attuned concern for our relationship and her willful participation in the session. Her overall anxiety was starting to go down and things were improving steadily though she still seemed to be generally grumpy (and maybe even a little pissed) about being asked to do anything. It seemed to me that she typically felt lots of strong feelings in her daily life and just pushed them down and held them in – appeased, submitted, and dissociated. (Check out these two blogs to better understand dissociation with horses: When Dissociation Looks Like Cooperation or Six Signs Your Horse May be Dissociating or Submitting Rather than Choosing to Connect) When I would ask her to truly communicate with me how she felt about doing the things I was asking, it seemed I was the target of pent up aggression that she felt much of the time when I was not with her. Every morning an hour before session Gretta and I would work on this. It did not at all feel fair to me. I had no way of knowing if these outbursts towards me were a symptom of her daily life or a symptom of our relationship. What I did know, is that no matter what, I would have to be committed to doing the work to help her be less aggressive and more connected and I would have to do it slowly in that one hour before sessions on Tuesday mornings because that is all the time I could afford to spend with her. I would have to be happy taking improvements slowly as they came in hopes that the one hour I spent with Gretta each week, or every other week, would be enough to affect real change in her pattern of relating. Sound familiar? So I was committed to the relationship with Gretta and this is where we return to the morning that Kathleen arrives to discover me still asking Gretta to consent to the halter. (Can Animals Consent? – check out this blog on the subject)
It was a cold rainy day. The paddock had big sloppy hoof-shaped mud holes stomped out of it in the places where the horses preferred to gather around the round bale. It was not pleasurable to be out in the light mist trying to catch a horse for a therapy session that might not happen if it started raining any harder. So feeling some stress of my own I set out following Gretta through the mud and rain as she resisted basic engagement with me as usual. I stayed committed to our relationship – it seemed as though Gretta was begging me to take control of her – I refused.
At some point, Kathleen showed up and checked in on us. She watched for a bit and then had to return to the cabin to meet our client when she showed up. When the client arrived, she and Kathleen noticed me in virtually the same place with Gretta trying to resist and then comply but never really connecting with me. It started raining a little bit harder and Gretta was smart enough to move underneath the shed in the paddock. She would connect a little and follow me, then disconnect and resist and return to the shed where she would then reconnect with me. She seemed to be smart enough to want to continue this process out of the rain. I was happy to oblige. So. . . we were under the shed and were staying pretty connected and had progressed to working on accepting the halter. Gretta would get stark still and then try to check out (dissociate). I would ask her to reconnect and offer the halter and she would pull her head away showing tension in her ears and eyes and muzzle. I was acutely aware that our client had arrived and that I clearly did not have a horse prepared for mounted work. I expected Kathleen would have some other options and would arrive with the client to help her become a part of this process and that we would follow Gretta’s lead today. I was aware of my frustration and was consciously releasing the tension it caused in my body as I worked through this process with Gretta. Kathleen eventually emerged from the cabin asking if we were going to be ready soon. I was frustrated with this question as I thought it was pretty obvious that I could not give any definite answers to that question. Kathleen was polite but I could tell there was some tension and anxiety that accompanied the question. I suggested that she bring the client out so she could be a part of the process. Okay, so I basically suggested that Kathleen change the clinical plan for the session because the horse had not consented to participate.
It was not a comfortable feeling but I was not willing to accept compliance from Gretta, our client’s therapy partner. I was also keenly aware that I did not want to be responsible for the safety of a client on a horse who was anxious and had not consented to the halter and had certainly not consented to being ridden. The beauty of the situation is that both Kathleen and I were feeling some stress, pressure and anxiety, but were both able to regulate, relate, and reason so the session turned out to be beneficial for both horse and client. Remember, if it’s not good for both, it’s eventually not good for either, and true healing cannot happen at the expense of another. This work is about connection and relationship – for the client AND horse.
In a perfect world, after that first session with Gretta, I would have set aside loads of time for us to work on lots and lots of stuff before she resumed mounted work in therapy sessions. We all did our best in the moment and tried to adapt and change and grow. We continue down that path.
Tanner and Kathleen are both NL trainers and will be teaching at the 2019 NL Conference. Check it out!
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