Some days you can wake up and feel so full of possibilities, and other days you might feel the complete opposite, life may seem nearly unbearable. All beings need to experience mattering no matter how they feel. All beings need safe spaces where they are welcomed as they are and listened to deeply and completely. Horses have an amazing power to heal and to teach.  They offer unconditional friendship, experience a wide range of feelings, and provide immediate, honest, observable feedback in response to our interactions with them. 

Relationships are healing for both horses and humans. Let me share with you a clients recent experience.

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"I had an amazing day today, something I say often. 

And just as often a voice tells me to run far, far away, as fast as I can and that I just need to hide under a rock and die.  It is one of my voices that arise when I feel...

Stress is insidious. As aware as our culture may seem to be about stress interrupting our ability to enjoy life, I wonder how many people truly understand the importance of attuning to the emotional subtleties of stress in order for it to dissipate.   

My husband and I noticed that when our son, Rylan, started kindergarten at age five, he would cling to me when separating. When I returned, he initially greeted me with desperate relief until we were on our way home. Then in the car he expressed loud, angry outbursts of energy, and I needed to pull over to the side of the road to gently hold and soothe him repeatedly. I remember feeling shock, shame, and confusion in my own body, mystified by the perplexing rages my son experienced when transitioning.    

Over time I learned that when we perceive danger in our environment, the way a child does when separating from a parent, the lack of safety amps up a gradual stress response that affects the whole body....

What happens inside of us when we are self-critical? Where does that even begin? I’ve spent some time with this and for a couple of nights I would wake up around 2 or 3 and there would be this self-critical voice spinning around and around. The more it would spin, the more critical it would become.  

What would happen for me was a contraction, a kind of collapse inside of myself. As I woke up a little more, to actually pay attention in a new way, I recognized that this voice had a flavor to it. It was, “How could you?” So, there was shame in there, and as I sat with that, I could hear underneath that “How could you?” that there was deep grief inside of myself.  

This voice inside was listing all of the ways that I had failed as a mother. That’s really huge. My life’s dream when I was a little girl was to be a mother. So, it was rehashing all of those moments that I wanted...