I love it when the horses notice the gate to their favourite paddock is open. They swiftly move up the hill into it. I also feel privileged enough to be able to provide them with the the 5 freedoms are (Animal Welfare Act 1999):

- Freedom from hunger and thirst (food and water) All animals need clean water and a well-balanced,
​   healthy diet.
- Freedom from discomfort (shelter) ...
- Freedom from pain, injury, and disease (medical care) ...
- Freedom to behave naturally (exercise) ...
- Freedom from fear and distress (love and understanding)

How lucky am I!

A recent session involved a middle-aged man who was recovering from an illness, partly related to stress and burnout.  We had 3 horses in the session with us and 2 of them stayed on the edge of the area for most of the session.  The large white horse very deliberately lay down in the middle of the area and stayed there for a time.  The client pointed out that the horse looked very relaxed.  He hadn’t seen the horse do this before.  He didn’t want to approach it, though it was a horse he like to be with. 
 
The horse changed position a couple of times, though stayed laying down.  It eventually got up very slowly and stood quietly in the edge of the area until the end of the session.
 
The client talked about how he had felt guilty about the need to rest in the last few weeks whilst feeling unwell.  This was partly related to his difficulty with self-care.  He wondered if the horse was showing him how to rest, even though it was difficult for him to acknowledge.
 
“It takes courage to say yes to rest and play in a culture where exhaustion is seen as a status symbol” -  Brené Brown
​

​Horses are said to be able to read/sense humans’ feelings and emotions, which they mirror back to clients.   This process can be helpful in therapy and learning.  This abridged poem speaks of a divine mirror.

​Richard Rohr (Abridged)

​We recently had the first session with a man who had experienced a life where people perceived him as confronting and aggressive. One of the horses immediately approached him and put its nose gently on different parts of his clothing. He described feeling anxious and asked several times, “what is it doing?” The horse stood for some time with the man and the man asked more questions and comments, “Why is it doing this?”, “You guys must’ve trained the horses really well so they would approach me”.

This man was truly puzzled at why the horse was approaching him. He was too scared to move close to the horse. The horse eventually moved away about 2-3 metres. We encouraged him to move closer to the horse. He was anxious but did this. The horse moved closer to him when he did this. Finally, they were standing together and the man agreed reluctantly to try to touch the horse on its neck.

He and the horse stood together for a few minutes and the man had, had enough time and wanted to finish. He said, in the end, that he had never been that close to a horse before, and that maybe he “used to be” an aggressive person, rather than he still is.

No-one who knew this man reported him to be aggressive or confronting. He is a big man but came across as very soft and gentle. The health professional who referred him called him a big “teddy bear”. It’s interesting that 30 minutes with a perceptive horse has questioned this mans’ belief of 20 years when he has not questioned this before.

Sometimes a horse is needed to show us our “distorted beliefs” to help us get closer to our authentic selves.

Whanaungatanga. 1. (noun) relationship, kinship, sense of family connection - a relationship through shared experiences and working together which provides people with a sense of belonging. It develops as a result of kinship rights and obligations, which also serve to strengthen each member of the kin group. (Maori dictionary)

I recently attended some training related to horses. One of the questions asked was, how do horses show care or concern to each other. The answer was “standing together, eating together, just being together”.

A wise horse advocate once said, “A horse will be OK leaving the herd alone, to attend shows or go out riding etc; when they know that they are coming back to their herd, and they feel that it is a stable place to be.”

Whakawhanaungatanga has also been called “connectedness”. Connection to our whanau, iwi, hapu or our family and the important people around us. If this connectedness was broken, severed or damaged through trauma, abuse or other suffering, our sense of belonging can be non-existent or distorted.

One of the aims of counselling, therapy or other similar types of support, is to assist this search belonging or re-connectedness. Equine assisted therapy can also help with this.
​
We all need a secure herd to embed in, return to; to ground us and foster our inner strength, and enable us to lean into our suffering and bear the weights of life whatever they are for us.

​It’s been a challenging year, especially the latter part. I’ve met and worked with the bravest and most remarkable people.  I feel privileged to have worked with these people and that they have trusted our team with their problems and have chosen to work with us.  I am continually amazed by their stories and their resilience.
 
I am also humbled by the horses I work with.  Their “presence” and perceptiveness are some of the reasons I keep doing this work and why I wanted to do it in the first place. Our limited human communication can never completely understand these creatures who are simple, present and authentic. 
 
​I lost a horse to illness this year. The decision to end her life had to be made and it was the right decision.  It was and still is heart-wrenching and I miss her.

She was funny and sweet and cheeky and always first in line for food.  She was helpful to children and walked beside them when they were sad or angry, and tolerated their activities around her.  She reminded people of their loved ones who had passed on.  When someone was sad, she often would approach them and put her soft nose on their cheek and blow in their ear.  Her knees hurt due to her age.
 
After she died, another horse, who had known her for 20 years, stood over her body for 3 hours and could not take their eyes of her, when they carried her body gently into the grave.  
​
Jaleah, I miss you and I want to remember you as the stunning, beautiful creature that you were. 
 
Nga mihi, a ka aroha ahau ki a koe

Things change and new people and horses join us.  A new year brings new opportunities and challenges.

Have a safe and blessed New Year!

We work regularly with 3 horses, a small pony, a larger pony and a tall, heavy dark brown horse. Despite this large horse being a gentle giant, it often will represent people in clients lives, who were abusive and related to their traumatic experiences.
 
Myself and my colleague have often felt a little sorry for this horse, as, due to its size, rather than it's personality, it gets labelled the "bad guy" quite often.
​
Recently, we started working with a woman who has some anger issues.  She is familiar with horses and so the size of the horses has not seemed to be an issue for her.  In the first session she spent some time individually with all of the horses.  She brushed them one at a time.  The small pony walked away from her, the larger pony stayed still.  But the large brown horse stayed with her.  When she moved away it followed, staying close by.  When the woman moved towards the other horses, the big horse stood in between her and them.  For more than 30 minutes this horse stayed right next to the woman.  Human and horse were connected and no words were spoken in this time.

Eventually the woman said, "I wanted to choose the other horse, but the big guy chose me.  I think I need this horse as the other ones are too scared to carry my baggage.  This one is big enough to handle it."

The scary, "abusive" horse became the big strong capable horse that could carry the weight of the burden that the woman had brought in with her.  

We worked with a young man some time ago with a history of deprivation and abuse.  One of the things we were asked, was to try to help him address his anger.  This was difficult for him to manage. 

We asked him to carry out an activity which included identifying some challenges and goals he had.  He chose “anger” and “frustration” as challenges and “sports” as a goal he wanted to achieve.  He was asked to build representations of this out of the props available in the arena.  It took him a long time to identify a goal he wanted to achieve, and it seemed that he said sports just to get the task over with.  After identifying these things, he was also asked to find a good quality he could name about himself.  When we asked this, he said “I don’t know” and then lay down on the grass.  The task of finding good qualities about himself seemed insurmountable.  We asked him to continue with the task and left him with the horses to complete the task. 

This young man stayed laying or sitting on the ground for the remainder of the session, approximately 45 minutes.  2 of the horses moved in and out of the spaces he had built but stayed away from him.  The white horse in the session, moved slowly closer to the young man over the time he was sitting on the ground, and for the last 20 minutes of the session stood between him and the frustration and anger spaces, just behind him. 

As soon as we ended the session he stood up and put his arms around this white horse.  He stayed with this horse for a time.  He finally said that this horse reminded him of a very close friend.

Sometimes our good qualities are hard to see and our flaws and challenges seem overwhelming, so much so, that it stops us in our tracks and silences us.   
​
Knowing a wise friend, “has our back” is sometimes all we need to be able to move forward.

 Recently, I was privileged to work with a young girl who had tragically lost her mother to cancer.  She did not speak about this very much in sessions but occasionally one or other of the horses would remind her of her mother.  In one session we were looking at building obstacles, which consisted of poles and cones.  The horses would not go close to the obstacles at all.  The girl tried to change them by lowering the obstacle or moving position of them but the horses would not move near them.
 
The girl thought the horses were scared to go over the obstacles and this is why they stayed away.  She decided to remove the obstacle completely and make the “obstacle” into a walkway.  She made it narrower and then chose the same horse to take through.  This horse would only walk through this with the another horse in the area.  The girl did this a few times and each time the horse would go through only with the other one.
 
The girl eventually said, “they can go through the area only with their friend.  Then they don’t feel so scared”. 
 
The “obstacle” of the loss of her mother (as she had mentioned at an earlier session) was something she couldn’t go near, as the horses “described” to her.  But she saw they were able to “go through” the difficult area with a friend, and so it wasn’t as fearful as being alone.
 
The simplicity and discernment of the horses’ actions are, as usual, much more profound than words.