Have you ever bought something and it turned out not to be what you expected? That happened to me last summer when I bought a horse for trail riding. I knew that she didn’t have much training, but did not expect what came up when I started working with her. This is the story of Diva, and how a trauma-informed approach to working with her has led to a transformation.
I mention Somatic Experiencing™ in the video. I am beginning my second year of a three year training to become a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner. SE is a body-based, or somatic, approach to trauma recovery that works to release trauma energy stored in the body in a safe and titrated manner. What I have found in my Equine Facilitated Learning work is that trauma often shows up as a client begins to get in touch with their body. Somatic Experiencing and the Internal Family Systems training that I have taken enable me to help the client work through trauma if it arises in a session.
The difference in working with humans or horses in trauma recovery is that humans have a story about their trauma. With the horse, we will probably never really know the story. The bottom line is that we don’t need to know the story, we just need to be able to read the nervous system and know how to facilitate the dissipation of trauma energy when it arises.
Here is the story of The Transformation of Diva: