Horses Offer a Simple, Sacred Connection
So often, your greatest struggles - with anxiety, with depression, with endless cycles of conflict - come from one source: a lack of connection to yourself.
With all the obligations and stresses of modern life, it’s so damn easy to become alienated from your true self. And it’s so much harder to find your way back to you.
It’s as if modern life is designed to distract us from what really matters. You disconnect from your body, your dreams, and your heart. You lose track of what makes you excited to be alive and the people who mean the most.
Horses have a way of calling us back to ourselves.
You only need to be in the presence of a horse for a short time to start learning the power of slowing down, being in the moment, and being fully in your own body.
When you call on the power and presence of a horse as part of your healing journey and begin Equine Facilitated Psychotherapy, you start to see deep, lasting changes in how you move through life, experience your own mind, and feel in your own skin.
Horses Hold Space for Healing and Realization
When you’re at the barn, looking into the eyes of an animal that’s so big and so powerful, something changes.
You start to realize that this beautiful creature helps you slow down and see yourself in a new way. You start to see that all those worries and problems that seem to dominate everyday aren’t really as permanent and impossible as you thought.
When you’re out in the pasture, looking up to a limitless blue sky and feeling held by the trees that surround this special piece of land, your perspective shifts and opens.
You can get back to the elements of being alive: the breath in your lungs, the sun on your face, the hand that reaches out to stroke a soft nose.
Being with the horses opens you up to your own healing and your own process. It becomes easier to say what really matters and focus on what’s really troubling your mind and weighing down your heart.
Is it time to have your next therapy session down at the barn?
Can I let you in on a secret? If I could, I would see all of my therapy clients at the barn.
I have been in practice for more than a decade now, and I know that sitting down in the office (or getting on Zoom!) can inspire deep, lasting change.
There’s something about Equine Facilitated Therapy, however, that brings people to profound transformations. I watch clients “get unstuck” from issues that have held them back for years after just a few sessions amongst the horses.
When you come out to the barn and stand amongst the stillness and sweetness of the horses, you get to release so much of what does not serve you… your relationship struggles, your depression, your anxiety, your rage.
Why is a therapy session out with the horses so effective?
It’s the play, the spontaneity, the sense of being safe and yet also stepping into the unexpected every session.
When you’re out with the horses, your questions and worries begin to take on a different shape. Getting out of the chair and out under the sky helps you find embodied solutions to your problems.
And even if you’re intimidated by their size or the fact that you're “not a horse person,” the horses’ gentle presence enables you to let down your guard, release your armor, and express yourself from a softer, more receptive place.
In such an environment, you and I can look at problems and pressures through a much different frame. Our conversations - and your own healing - can go further than you imagined.
Horses connect you to mother nature. Horses connect you to your essential nature.
Equine Facilitated Psychotherapy can be a great option if you feel like you’ve reached a plateau with traditional talk therapy.
EFP is a great option for professional women who are looking for a new source of vitality and connection. Couples who are seeking a new way to relate to one another benefit a great deal from coming to the barn together.
I think of EFP as a portal to deep, enduring transformation that will help you:
Enhance your communication skills and make you more responsive to your own intuition
Set and maintain your emotional and physical boundaries
Build your confidence, clarity, and connection to your mind, emotions, and spirit
Horses invite you to be your most authentic self.
Gently yet insistently they ask us to drop all the pretenses and the performances that we use in daily life. Through horses, we find humility. They see through even the lies we tell ourselves so we can live with a new sense of honesty and deep-rooted truth.
What you need to know about Equine Facilitated Psychotherapy
EFP is not about horseback riding and requires zero horse experience.
The focus is on being with the horses in the barn and in the field. Your level of interaction with the horses is based on your interest and comfort level. The vast majority of work is done with both feet on the ground.
Every session will look a little different and will be structured in response to a number of variables: the client’s comfort level with horses, the weather, and the horses’ moods (part of the power of EFP is in learning to respond to and get comfortable with how we can’t always control the way the horse participates in the session!)
Sometimes, we may simply stand at the side of the fence and observe the herd. Other sessions may involve touching, grooming, or leading a horse. Because the barn property is so beautiful and so many of us need more intimate experiences with nature, our sessions can also include walks in the small forest that surrounds the pastures.
All EFP sessions are held at our barn in Great Falls, Virginia.
Wear closed toed shoes and pants to session and expect that you might get dirty.
If you can’t always make it to the barn, you can always book an online therapy session.
Half-day immersion experiences are available. Contact me to discuss setting up an individualized therapeutic retreat.