Horses as healers by Janet Weil

Horses ashealers

Equine somatic psychotherapists like Nancy Jones are using intuitive, four-legged partners to help their clients find transformation.

By Janet Weil Photos by Rebecca Ofstedahl

A young, single woman tragically lost her baby two days before her due date. In grief and despair, she came to psychotherapist Nancy Jones for help. She had delivered her stillborn baby alone, without support from her family or friends. She was shattered, unable to function, suffering with health problems. She rarely slept, and when she did, disturbing dreams tortured her.

Nancy could feel the young woman’s pain, very intense, right on the surface. They had a few therapeutic ‘talk’ sessions, and the woman, one small step at a time, gathered the strength to accept the death of her child. She looked at pictures of her baby. She held Nancy’s newborn grandson. As the woman took slow steps toward acceptance, Nancy encouraged her to do an equine somatic psychotherapy session with Nancy’s thoroughbred mare, Chica, who was a little wild but very intuitive.

Normally, in an equine somatic psychotherapy session, Chica would run crazily around the arena for a time before coming anywhere near the client, who would be lying face up on a massage table, waiting for the session to begin. But this day was different. Nancy described the scene: “In this session, Chica did not run around the arena. The mare moved purposefully around the arena twice and then came directly to the table, approaching the client from the ‘head’ end of the table. This was totally out of character for the horse. Chica carefully stepped up to the table and gently placed her muzzle between the client’s cheek and her shoulder. The woman turned her head into the mare. Chica did not move. She stood there for a very long time while the client cried uncontrollably. She cried and cried and cried. In that moment, there was an energetic holding between the client and the mare that was truly profound. As the client completed her long release, the mare stepped carefully away from the table and rested peacefully. The woman, shaken, got up from the table and said, ‘I have left something behind today. I unburdened some of the pain and suffering I’ve endured since the death of my baby. Finally, I feel I can move forward in my life.’ That horse knew instinctively, deep in her very being, what the woman needed.”

In the Gunnison Valley, equine somatic psychotherapy (ESP) is becoming known as a valid therapeutic alternative, particularly in healing deep pain and loss. In ESP, the horse is incorporated into the therapeutic process and is placed at the focal point of the session; the therapist takes a back seat. Nancy emphasized that in an ESP session, the horse is front and center, unhindered and allowed to interact with the client as it wishes. It’s about the relationship of the client and the horse, not the client and the facilitator. This hands-off approach creates an environment for change and opens doors to the unexpected and unplanned. The process allows clients to experience breakthroughs and find answers for themselves. People from all walks of life have used ESP to grapple with issues: troubled teens, traumatized war

veterans, struggling families. In Nancy’s experience, equine intervention brings the client to the moment, expands awareness, focuses attention and encourages spiritual connection.

Nancy Gex Jones has had a private, “spiritual” psychotherapy practice, Inner Resource Wellness, in the Gunnison Valley since 1998. She sees her clients at her beautiful, sprawling 10X Ranch near Almont. ESP, “a specific type of equine-human sharing of space and time,” has become a valuable adjunct to her spiritual psychotherapy, she said. Because horses are highly sensitive, clients can work through their life struggles by interacting with the horses without feeling judgment or interpretation, as often happens in therapeutic settings. Nancy believes equine somatic psychotherapy encourages clients to be introspective, helping them to heal and grow.

“It allows the psychotherapist to access additional senses and perceptions,” she said. “The sensory system of the equine is beyond our understanding; it is deep, full, ancient and primordial. Horses use their senses daily to sift through the messages from nature, those swirling on the wind or drifting through the weather, observing how the birds fly and what the horse two pastures over is sensing. Horses are tuned into the minutia of natural details without concern for time, calendars or agendas. They convey their feelings through body positions, touch and emotional validation.”

Horse fans often say horses have five hearts. When a horse walks, it pushes the ‘frog,’ the middle of the hoof, up and down. This action forces blood up the legs, thus creating four places where the horse is pumping blood, and the fifth is to the heart. If you touch a horse on its chest and up on its withers, where its neck meets its body, you form a connection from your heart to its heart, a continuous circuit. You can feel this heart connection, Nancy said, and the horse will let you do it until it feels complete and then steps away.

Nancy has long had a deep love for horses. Her equine somatic psychotherapy grew out of her affection and respect for her horses and their intuitive nature, plus her observations of the young people she was seeing in her psychotherapy practice.

Nancy received a master’s degree in spiritual psychology from the University of Santa Monica, after spending 20 years in the radio business. (Many in Crested Butte know her also for acting in the Mountain Theatre and raising her daughters, Malia and Hallie.) She studied for several years at the Radix Institute, practicing a bodycentered psychotherapy model. She also studied with Linda Kohanov, who founded the equine group Epona. Kohanov wrote The Tao of Equus, the definitive text on equine psychotherapy that explores the healing potential of the horse-human bond. Nancy additionally explored Eagala, a highly respected, global equine treatment model that creates “an arena of possibilities where people’s lives can change.”

In her practice, Nancy began to notice how her younger clients, in particular the teens, would connect with her horses when they met in the barn, talking about their bodies, their body image and what they felt when they worked or played with the animals. So much more growth and learning seemed to happen. The young people would open up, and she could have conversations

with them that were introspective and meaningful, while they were grooming or playing with the horses.

Recently, a mom brought her young daughter to Nancy for help. The girl was shutting down at home, being super hard on herself, not wanting to connect with her family. She was full of blame and self-recrimination. This young girl had no experience with horses. She came to the ranch to meet Nancy’s three horses and immediately felt an attraction to one of them. For the first three or four times at the ranch, she groomed, talked to and played with that horse. Sometimes she would get loud, and Nancy would tell her, “That’s uncomfortable for the horse.” She would stop. “I get it.” She learned organically about self-regulation and boundaries. The horse was drawn to the girl and would hang over the fence when he heard her car pull up. The girl told Nancy what she loved about the horse was she couldn’t have an attitude with him. “When I have an attitude, he confronts me. He gets an attitude right back,” she said. She and the horse were developing a stronger, more positive relationship.

Horses can feel deep into a person and know what’s hurting, Nancy said. They can use their bodies and their intuition while offering a connection – which in this case helped the girl feel more connected to herself. Nancy told the girl she could touch the horse’s nose. The girl smiled as she reached out to the horse. “I’ve never felt anything so soft.” The horse leaned down and put his nose next to her and held still while she rubbed his face. The heart connection was there. Horses respond to our emotions, Nancy said. Healing happens from non-judgment and unconditional acceptance.

Another young client of Nancy’s had difficulty balancing the left and right hemispheres of her brain. The doctor had given her exercises to do, but they weren’t working. Nancy put the girl on a horse, and balance was immediately achieved through transference of electrical energy from the horse. That horse knew what the girl needed.

Horses want to include us in their energy field, Nancy said. They want to share a space with humans. They want to be included, to be close to people and to teach us. They really would like us to be part of their herd. This feeling of inclusion gives the client a sense of wellbeing and a connection with the horse. It feels safe and reassuring. Approaching horses helps us to

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reflect how we approach our relationships and how we can face other big and overwhelming things in our life. We learn through the animals’ unconditional acceptance to allow our feelings, to be who we are without shame or judgment. We can realize that every experience is an opportunity for growth.

Nancy has many stories about the intuitive power of horses. A woman from Boulder came to an ESP demonstration Nancy was giving. Out in the arena, overlooking the rolling fields, the visitor lay down on the table face up. The horse walked right up to the woman and put his nose on her stomach. He started to go around and around with his lips on her stomach. When she eventually got up, she said, “I was never going to tell anyone during the workshop, but I have a large ovarian cyst right where the horse was touching me.”

Touching or even looking at a horse connects us to it through oxytocin, the bonding hormone. It’s the hormone women produce when breastfeeding that causes a mother and her baby to bond. When humans lived mostly on farms and in rural communities, we produced more oxytocin and were much more connected because we touched the animals that lived with and around us, Nancy noted. Now we’ve lost that connection and we’re more distant.

In order to evade predators, horses have become extremely sensitive to their environment and highly emotionally intelligent. In an equine somatic psychotherapy session, the horse willingly brings those qualities into the process to assist in the healing of the human. The energy in this encounter is of tremendous surrender and vulnerability. Nancy senses profound magic in each ESP session. “It feels charged with information both species are gaining and sharing and attempting to communicate in their vulnerable states. Horses instinctively analyze and react to our body language and other non-verbal cues, reading our intent and providing valuable feedback and insights,” she said.

To Nancy, horses are a mysterious gift to the therapist and to anyone who wants to heal or be transformed. She senses these highly evolved beings protecting, nurturing and gently guiding us, waiting for us to acknowledge the wisdom they hold. She quotes Kohanov’s writings about horses: “They have an extraordinary ability to awaken intuition in humans, while mirroring the authentic feelings people try to hide, making these animals powerful, therapeutic teachers and healers.” b