Horse Sense

Sometimes a whinnying four-legged therapist can teach you everything you need to know.

By Rose Spinelli

Bars of rain pelt my windshield, slowing traffic and making me fretful. I'm headed to an unusual horse stable—Equine Magic at Loghaven, 60 miles from my Chicago home—for a long-anticipated four-day getaway. But this sudden downpour threatens to make me late and jars my equanimity. The workshop I'm attending is called "Dancing with Horses," which I've just this moment decided has a New Age ring that I don't like.

Casting judgment is my fallback position when I'm confronted with comfort-zone challenges like the one I'm experiencing now. I catch myself this time, but then flip seamlessly to self-doubt: What if I can't shake my creeping negativity? What if the horses take a dislike to me? What if four days in the country drives me bats? Thankfully, the day will begin with a yoga class. As fallbacks go, yoga is a more nourishing bet.

Equine Magic is part of a nationwide movement of people who, drawing on years of equine expertise and a deep love of horses, teach a practice called Equine Facilitated Experiential Learning (EFEL). In it, working with horses seldom means riding them; instead, participants communicate through one-on-one contact in a pen. The Epona Approach to EFEL was developed by horse trainer and author Linda Kohanov, of Sonoita, Arizona, whose studies of the horse-human connection convinced her that horses make powerful teachers. EFEL proponents say that simple nonverbal interactions with horses can help us build self-confidence and explore buried feelings, which in turn can help us overcome career, relationship, and other difficulties.

Kohanov's theory is that horses resurrect dormant or lost parts of ourselves—intuition and deep yin energy, for instance. At Loghaven, the focus is on awakening the spirit and honing emotional skills. Eve Lee and her daughter Kathy Johnson work as a team. They added yoga to the program after they discovered that people opened up more to the horses after practice.

Each day begins with an hourlong yoga class and ends with an extended Savasana. Kathy is trained in the gentle Svaroopa method that uses modified traditional poses to support spinal opening. This is good news; the day before the workshop began, I muscled my way into Virabhadrasana III (Warrior III), exacerbating a niggling hip pain into serious discomfort and imbalance.

Yet more than my sacrum needs balancing. For some time, I've had a vague notion that I need to take my power back. My sister seems to be projecting familial anger onto me, and a too-needy friend has been sapping my energy. It's time to pull away a few protective layers and address these things. I need to learn to create boundaries while still connecting with my loved ones. I'm hoping that dancing with horses will help me do that.

Equine Magic sits on 17 acres just south of sacred Potawatami land, much of which is set aside for the horses to graze. For human grazing there is a large organic garden. Overhead, a sandhill crane occasionally sweeps across the sky.

The Loghaven building, so named because Eve and her husband handcrafted it from logs and stone, is both cozy and airy. Yoga classes meet on the lower level, where enormous windows frame the land outside. Inside, our connection to the Divine knows no devotional bias. Native American drums line the walls and a bronze statue of Shiva sits at the head of the class. After yoga—after Kathy has adjusted spines, cradled heads, and covered us with unspeakably soft blankets, she leaves us with the day's contemplation: Let your guard down. And after we change into boots and denim and trek across a swath of green to the stable—though the air is still thick with moisture, the sky still ominous, I begin to open to the beauty that surrounds us.

Our group is small; in all, we are four women and a man. In a comfy room off the stable, we sit in a circle and Eve shares some basic horse sense: Respect the horses' boundaries. If we need to, we're to pick up the wand—basically a long riding crop—that's always in the center of the pen, and hold it across our body. The horses will respect that.

Eve also shares EFEL fundamentals. Making a heart connection and showing your true self to the horse is the core of the work. If your outer behavior matches your inner emotions, she says, the horse will take you on your terms—even if your emotions are less than sunny. Put on a false self, and the horse will always find a way to tell you. We'll have several opportunities to enter the pen with our chosen steed. The workshop will culminate in a "dance," an improvisational horse-human exchange of energy and movement, with music courtesy of Kathy's husband, James.

Meeting the herd for the first time is a lot like silent speed dating, and appearances can lead to huge assumptions. My eyes fall upon Ruby, a magnificent 11-year-old dun-colored mare, and I am smitten. As we all do, I share with the group my first impression: I love her and choose to work with her first. When it's time for Eve to disclose the horses' stories, she tells us that Ruby is the most volatile; her former name was Strike and Bite. Uh oh. But Ruby is a wise girl too, Eve says, and I decide to stick with my choice, uncertain whether it's hubris or instinct at work. Eve doesn't discourage me; she and Kathy will keep me safe. Just give Ruby a wide berth, she says, and remember to use the wand anytime I'm in trouble.

But I never do. Instead, I view the wand as a sign of force, and I want to be nice. I misread Ruby's signals, perceiving stillness as permission to advance. Eve senses Ruby's nervousness as I close in. "Pick up the wand," she tells me again and again. But I do nothing. Astonishingly, Ruby begins to nose it, as if to bring balance to our relationship. I understand all this later, but Ruby recognized how little access I had to my emotions right then, and she didn't trust me.

The horses are masters at role-play, sometimes gentle, sometimes not. During another session in the pen, Sir Celebrity, a 19-year-old gelding with a great sense of humor, head butts me, backing me up over the wand, which I still can't seem to pick up. Set your boundaries already, he seems to say.

On our final day, the day we dance, each of us is to choose our partner. While some of us want partners we'll feel safe with, others need to settle unfinished business. I choose Sir Celebrity. We're all anxious about looking foolish, but Eve doesn't judge. She shares with us the wise words of medicine man Rolling Thunder. I do not need to think that thought. "That's all it takes," she says. "It gets you out of hell."

As I watch the others give in to the swelling music and exchange energy with energy, connect soul to soul with creatures nearly 10 times their size, I indulge thoughts of giving up. During lunch, as James sets up the speakers and tests the music volume, my little toe somehow finds its way onto a bee, and I get stung. My foot is swollen and hot to the touch. The pain is excruciating. I do not need to think that thought. When my turn comes, I grit my teeth and pull on my boots. I limp to the pen, but once inside, I feel no pain. Time and space have no meaning. If Eve calls out to me, I do not hear. It's just my horse and me and the warmth of the sun. The music begins, and this time I do not hesitate. I pick up the wand and we dance.

Rose Spinelli is a freelance writer in Chicago.