Horses & Healing: Building Healthy Connections in Relationships
I have been around horses for about a decade, but the connection has deepened for me over the past five years and for the first time this year I am getting to call a herd of horses my colleagues.
Before the pandemic, adding in equine therapy to my practice felt like a distant dream. I had tried to add it in previously but the timing just wasn’t right, and I kept hitting roadblocks. The pandemic forced me to get creative. The safest option was to switch to virtual, and eventually when it became clear that outdoor transmission was unlikely, I added in nature-based park sessions for clients. I started to see the benefits of walking with people in session, being in nature, and moving our bodies in unison as we processed through trauma.
One of my personal pandemic projects was to add in virtual training in Natural Lifemanship, Trauma-Focused Equine Assisted Psychotherapy (TF-EAP), while working with my own herd and sending videos in for feedback. For the first half of 2021, I was training and feeling the results for myself of this powerful work, but still unsure of how to make the leap to bring it to my clients. Then in August, I got an email about an open house for Triple Play Farm, an established EAP facility. I attended and within a week the ball was rolling for collaboration. Starting at the end of September, I will be offering equine assisted psychotherapy individual sessions and intensives for couples and families. I am excited to bring this experiential and deeply powerful work to my clients and their families.
Natural Lifemanship: What is it?
The Natural Lifemanship model, founded by Bettina Shultz-Jobe and Tim Jobe, views the relationship as the vehicle for change. Beyond a therapeutic model, Natural Lifemanship is a way of showing up in the world and in relationships.
One of the core tenants of Natural Lifemanship, is that “a good principle is a good principle regardless of where it is applied.” The principles of Natural Lifemanship transfer interchangeably from horses to humans and vice versa, even though the techniques might look a bit different. These principles allow for connected, authentic relationships, for example:
· If it’s not good for both, eventually it’s not good for either.
· True healing cannot occur at the expense of another.
· Relationships begin with requests.
· Pressure is a natural aspect of life.
Equine assisted psychotherapy allows a safe space in real time to practice the conversations necessary for healthy connection in relationships.
How Do These Principles Apply to Therapy?
Pressure is an inherent experience in being alive. When we first wake up in the morning, most people must urinate. We can ignore that urge or pressure, and eventually the pressure will build until we take action to release it or our body naturally takes action for us. Our body internally has pressure, and in relationships there are external ways that we sense pressure. For example, my dog will first scratch at the door to come in, and if I don’t hear him, he will bark, increasing the pressure until I let him into the house.
When someone makes a request in a relationship, it’s pressure. And we have the choice to engage in one of three ways: ignore, resist, or respond. In TF-EAP, a person starts to build a relationship with a horse by making requests, recognizing the horses’ signals, and responding appropriately, while working to remain regulated. Both the horse and human work towards making a connected relationship where choices are freely made. It’s ok to say no to a request, and then we can ask the question, “why no?” to better understand what’s going on in the relationship.
When someone signs up for a TF-EAP session, they might start to make a request for a horse to connect with them. We invite clients to make a request for connection through rhythmic, patterned sensory input, which might look like sounds, clapping or verbalizing, starting with the least amount of pressure necessary. When ignored, we lift our pressure slightly and incrementally, and when met with resistance we calmly keep the pressure the same. As the horse works to figure out the relationship and how to connect, the client works to not take the “wrong” answer personally and to be in the process of learning with the horse. When the horse responds to the request for connection by walking over, we totally release the pressure. The reward is in the release.
Horses are highly attuned to internal emotional changes. They are direct and will help us to see where there may be incongruence in our inner state and external presentation. As the horse and human learn to co-regulate, the relationship becomes strong and connected, mutually symbiotic. The goal is not to control the horse or get the horse to be submissive through compliance, but rather to maintain authentic connection, which ripples out into our human-to-human relationships.
Relationships are Built on Requests
Requests in a relationship are valid, and the question is how I can be rhythmic and predictable in asking and release the pressure once my need is met. Vulnerability is standing at the edge of a request, waiting for it to be met. How we manage that space can say a lot about our attachment style. For example, if we are ignored, do we abandon our initial request and storm away? Or do we get angry and confront, raising our energy erratically?
Natural Lifemanship is focused on reorganizing the brain so that we are capable of self-regulation and accessing “we” thinking instead of “me” thinking. We learn to find what’s right for the relationship, while thinking about how much pressure we use in any request and how we apply it. This translates into our human-to-human relationships when for example, I ask my husband to take out the garbage, and keep asking, and then he finally takes it out, do I then feel the need to give him a lecture about why he couldn’t just take it out in the first place? Or can I release the pressure?
When we keep pressure dialed up in our relationships there becomes little incentive for others to meet my request. A connected, attuned relationship between horse and human flows with pressure and release, with connection as the goal, and yet these principles flow so seamlessly into our human-to-human family interactions, as well. We learn to express our needs, switching from ultimatums to the opportunity for do-overs, from punishment to teaching, from controlling others to controlling ourselves.
Attachment and Horses
A core aspect of the dance of requests in relationships is developing a sensitivity to signals, which is an antecedent to developing secure attachment. This starts when we are infants. A new mom notices her baby crying, and works to interpret that cue: is she hungry, tired, needs a diaper change? Healthy attachment is all about attunement, but when our needs weren’t attuned to by an adult, often it feels chaotic and disorganized. The cross-brain connections that develop in healthy attachment and rhythmic regulation in childhood can either be lost or perhaps weren’t ever established in the case of early childhood trauma.
As we approach the months before birthing into the world, we hear the repetitive sound of our mother’s heartbeat, and we are rocked by her pelvis as she moves us through the world. However, when our mother is under intense stress when she is pregnant with us, we aren’t always getting very rhythmic, patterned, or predictable sensory input. Horses have an ability to carry us, to rock our bodies, and to rewire the brain towards connection to the one who carries us. The horse allows us to practice reparenting while quite literally being carried.
Neurobiology of Horses and Humans
Humans and horses are both born with a biological imperative and innate desire to connect with others. In the wild, horses are herbivore prey animals, meaning they are the ones being hunted. They keep themselves safe by being in the herd and in relationship with one another, and they are highly attuned to danger, ready to flee at any moment. When we can become regulated and authentic, we have the possibility of developing a deeply relational connection with a horse that ripples out into our human-to-human relationships. A horse is not an object, a mirror, a tool, or a metaphor, but rather a living, breathing, sentient being that is capable of functional or dysfunctional relationships with us, where we can practice the conversations necessary for healthy attached relationships.
Horses and humans share very similar bottoms of the brain. Like a human who has experienced trauma, a horse’s brain is dominated by the lower regions focused on survival, an essential skill for a horse. When humans endure trauma, we have the same biological responses of fight, flight, or freeze and can have a tough time regulating the nervous system. Through rhythmic, patterned, predictable and safe sensory input, we can draw on neuroplasticity, rewiring our brain and nervous systems for connection and regulation. First we regulate, then we relate, then we can reason.
Imagine clearing a path in the woods, at first it would be hard work to clear out some old trees and fill in the holes, but with time and repetition, we would establish a clear, well-worn path, and the old paths we use less of would wither away. Our neural connections are the same. As we practice showing up in relationship in connected ways, it becomes more natural and easier to remain regulated in connection with others, and our previous patterns of avoidance or anxiety in relationship can dissolve.
My Personal Work
Roland is my wild, skiddish, curious gelding that I have been partnering with for my Natural Lifemanship training. I adore Roland for his curiosity and his zest for life and up to this point I thought we had a decent relationship. I have been filming my work with him over the course of the last year and getting feedback on some of the subconscious ways I engage in relationship. I learned about my own attachment style tendencies and misinterpretations in our connection.
Roland and I have learned through rupture and repair in our relationship. My trainers helped me work on healthy attachment through detachment…asking Roland to move away from me if he tries to connect through control. Being able to have detachment is a marker of a healthy relationship. For example, a toddler will leave their parents and walk away to get a bit of space, then will return gleefully. I have been working on detachment and healthy connection with Roland, and learning how all pervasive this work is in my own life and in the lives of my clients.
Horses give us a way to bypass the preconceived notions we hold about how someone should show up in relationship to us, illuminating how we ourselves show up in partnership. They can highlight our emotions, sometimes faster than we are aware of them. Riding and being with horses is a way for me to connect into the present moment, and work on healthy connected relationships. I am so thrilled to be able to share these gifts with my clients in the coming years.
References:
Jobe, T., Shultz-Jobe, B., McFarland, L. & Naylor, K. (2021). Natural Lifemanship’s Trauma- Focused Equine Assisted Psychotherapy (TF-EAP) and Trauma Informed Equine Assisted Learning (TI-EAL). Liberty Hill: Natural Lifemanship.
https://naturallifemanship.com/building-connected-relationships/
