Nina Leijerstam Shares How Horses Help Humans Heal
How Horses Help Humans Heal
Horses may seem an unlikely therapist, but they have shown remarkable abilities in helping people overcome emotional and psychological challenges. By reading human energy and mirroring emotions, horses guide us to deep insight and integration. They offer us heart centred access to our intuitive wisdom and emotional intelligence.
Blocked Healing Wisdom
When facing emotional turmoil and in search of spiritual growth, we can easily get stuck in narratives and patterns from the past, while ignoring our intuitive wisdom. We search so hard for understanding that we block the true guidance of our higher selves and miss the messages in our energy fields. We often forget that our healing already resides within and that we are all connected to and guided by something far greater than ourselves.
The Solution: Horse Sense
Horses can detect vibrational energy on a level that we humans have long forgotten. Simply put they react to how we make them feel. They can sense our energetic or emotional blockages, long held trauma, patterns of behaviour and mirror our unexpressed, subconscious needs. They can read our authentic intention, hopes and fears by bypassing our words and rational defences. With the help of experienced Equine Assisted Coaches, they can guide people to a place of transformation, enabling new ways of being to emerge.
The Science: Emotional Breakthroughs
Equine-assisted learning is a proven, experiential approach that leads to emotional and behavioural breakthroughs. Interacting with therapy horses in their natural state, without riding, activates non-analytical brain waves associated with intuition and flow states. This opens new neural pathways for rapid change, with benefits often seen in as little as 2-3 sessions. In the words of a psychotherapist, ‘One session of Equine Therapy equates too many months of conventional talk therapy. The horses seem to get straight to the heart of the matter, very gently yet always profoundly. They allow people to experience a felt sense of acceptance and potential’.
Why Horses?
Horses are profoundly intuitive herd animals. As creatures of prey with 55 million years of evolution behind them, they are experts at working as a highly effective collective. With their ability to read intention, mirror emotions and respond to subtle cues, equines provide the perfect teammates for developing a deeper understanding of ourselves and of our impact on others.
When horses interact instinctively with people, free from restriction, ropes or commands, they communicate authentically in a way humans can understand – no horse experience required. Equine Assisted Learning taps this intuitive connection. Without riding or horsemanship, horse and human meet honestly, enabling organic feedback.
Horses sense fear in another horse from a distance of several miles, can tell if a predator is hungry or already has a belly-full. It’s no wonder they know what we’re thinking and feeling before we’ve even stepped through the gate!
The Sessions: Insight Through Interaction
Each session is unique, evolving organically as the horses respond to the client’s energy and needs. The horses often become metaphors, acting out dynamics the client struggles with. Someone with boundary issues may find the horses become pushy, while someone releasing grief may experience nurturing. With an expert guide, these experiences provide profound insights that integrate both emotionally and cognitively.
Many find even one session sparks positive life changes. Longstanding beliefs lose power, relationships shift, and a sense of freedom and self-acceptance emerges.
As one client shared, ‘I really hadn’t anticipated how deeply the work could go in such a short space of time. The horses mirrored my internal shifts and played out scenarios I needed to reconnect with. I left with deep insight into how to find space and self-respect. Five months later, I continue to feel so much lighter, so much more myself.’
Aleksandra Filipovic, Head of Oncology, PureTech Health, London
The herd especially love assisting those open to working energetically and intuitively. As well as helping young people through mental health disorders and professionals with effective leadership, they have guided mystics, healers, psychics, and more by moving past the limitations of convention and deeper into the heart space. Many liken the work alongside horses to embodied shadow work, cellular clearing, past life recall, ancestral healing and family constellations. The labels are unimportant. What’s indisputable is the power of honest, real-time feedback from a herd of social experts in front of whom nothing can be hidden.
What Insights Await You? Get In Touch If You’d Like To Find Out!
We’re based near Frome, Somerset and offer weekly sessions as well as weekend immersives for people travelling some distance. If you are a professional who works in a team and would like to see how the herd help nurture and align, you’d be welcome to arrange a consultation so we can discuss suitable team development programmes.
About The Author
Nina Leijerstam is Founder and Programme Director of Track Clinic, bringing over 25 year’s experience working with horses as well as a background in yoga teaching and business consulting. After training internationally as an Equine Assisted Somatic Coach and Behaviourist, Nina established Track Clinic in 2016 and now runs her practice alongside a well-established herd of therapy horses and a team of licensed practitioners from a beautiful 7 acre field in the heart of Somerset, near Frome.
Her passion stems from her personal healing through equine therapy. This shaped her belief in the horse’s emotional mirroring and transformative capacity.
Track Clinic offers Equine Assisted Psychotherapy for adults and children, Equine Assisted Coaching for professionals and a range of corporate programmes, such as Rest and Restore Away days and Team Flow Programmes, for teams who want to build greater emotional intelligence, resilience and uncover new found potential.
More information about Track Clinic visit www.trackclinic.co.uk or contact nina@trackclinic.co.uk
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