Horses encourage us to listen deeply to ourselves and others, to strengthen our relationships and to feel our connections.

Horses are non-predatory animals and bring their social and emotional intelligence to assist humans to access awareness of internal states, non-verbal communication clues, and leadership abilities.

Living in a herd, horses survive and thrive by collectively holding various positions to keep watch, nurture, guide, discipline and graze. Their sentience, ability to lead and hyper vigilance creates an awesome arena for people to attune, to feel , and to co-regulate. By regulating and re-setting the stress response system in the brain and body,  people are able to engage with horses experientially to learn and practice new ways of being, seeing, and doing, opening up possibilities to begin new patterns and reparative relations with community, family and themselves. The horses can provide both a sensory and somatic experience of being in relationship.

Horses, as herd animals, are acutely sensitive to social and relational cues. They seek safety and balance. Providing immediate feedback, they sense conscious and unconscious emotions and incongruence to human interactions and respond to arousal levels including fight, flight or freeze.