Healing Horses Sanctuary

If you want to deal with your unpredictable demons, it’s appropriate to make a pit stop at a place where the climate is as unpredictable, with dark, ominous clouds erasing the coastal mountaintops in the not too far distance – Pitt Meadows BC, located in the the coastal region of British Columbia and just 30 minutes east of Vancouver.

“Hi, my name is ZsaZsa,” she says to the seven people in front of her. “Welcome to the Healing Horses Sanctuary for your personal equine guided journey.”

A sweet, musty smell of horse lingers in the air, and for no reason at all, a 1,100 pound chestnut gelding named Rocky rears and tears off in a farting, sweating gallop in hot pursuit of Aunyx, a slightly built black arab. This is their way of introducing themselves. Rocky’s massive body, thick mane and tail fly through the air as he releases a high-pitched scream at Aunyx that rips into your eardrums and rattles your insides. Participants sitting on the sidelines waiting to enter the arena hold their breath in anticipation, awe or fear.

ZsaZsa is just as much in awe of these beautiful animals as everybody else is. She tells the group, “That’s sheer joy and playfulness – an emotion that’s somewhat foreign to most of us humans on a daily basis.”

By the looks on their faces, these people are ready for an experience of joy. They don’t appear to have felt it for some time. They miss the feeling and that’s why they’re here.

ZsaZsa starts the session by telling these folks that she’s not here to change anybody’s life. “I don’t have the power to do so,” she says. “I don’t have your answers. We’re not here, by that I mean the horses or myself, to argue with or discredit traditional healing or therapeutic modalities. We’re not saying that traditional psychotherapy isn’t helpful but we certainly hope that we can add to whatever already exists in the therapy world as you may know it.” She adds “If you’re to achieve the peace, joy, and spiritual fulfillment that you want so badly, it depends upon one thing and one thing only–your willingness to simply do something different.”

ZsaZsa has been a practicing coach for a number of years, but her tools don’t involve an office and her helpers don’t arrive in suits or high heels. “You’re going to open your heart and soul,” she tells the group, “and you’re going to talk with and listen to the horse.

“How you relate to these animals will tell us what you’ve learned over the course of your lifetime about how you relate to all living things. Your behaviours and beliefs have been ingrained from how you treat people.” She pauses and adds, “Remember one thing: It’s not about the horse. What we’re here to look at is what you’ve learned over the course of your lifetime that either works for or against you in your relationships.”

She stops for a second and then continues. “Keep in mind that you’ve been conditioned to be externally focused in all of your relationships. This is one of the true impediments to our being able to learn anything about ourselves. Let me ask you this: How much time do you spend during the day wondering what others are thinking and feeling, and concocting stories about why they’re behaving as they do? See, as long as I’m focused on you in such a manner, it will be impossible for me to connect with you because I’m not present with myself.

“So, what I suggest you do is pay attention to what you’re thinking and pay attention to what you’re feeling. Know that these two things dictate the way you live your life. By focusing your attention internally as opposed to externally, you’ll be able to be present enough to connect with any other living thing, which will also cause you to take responsibility for your life and how you live it.

“I won’t judge you, but I will observe. I pledge to tell you the truth, to be kind, but sometimes to be blunt. Together, let’s examine the stories you’re making up to see how many of them are based in reality.”

Most of the stories ZsaZsa and the horses see have one thing in common: Pain. Most of this pain is rooted in self-doubt and fear.  ”We’re born as ‘bundles of joy’. Over our lifetimes we’ve been imprinted by everything else around us and we lose our ability to return to that sense of joy”.

Well, that’s true. Babies, just as horses, generally are full of joy—they’re happy and remain so unless they’re hungry or experiencing some discomfort. Once that’s alleviated, they’re right back in the joy state. They’re at one with everything on the planet. They run on pure emotion and never doubt themselves.

“Horses in their natural environment don’t know what it means to doubt themselves either or to be afraid other than the survival level,” ZsaZsa says. “Then they get surrounded bythe  human world and the inconsistency that comes with it. Welcome to a world full of scary people.

“Every organization and culture I’ve ever been subjected to appears to be frightened,” she explains. “I’ve been working in the corporate world for over 30 years. If I could boil down every problem that ever walked around in any office that I’ve occupied every human being suffers from two things in varying degrees of intensity, two things that are taught to us. They’re called self-doubt and fear.

“There’s the fear of physical harm and of emotional harm. There’s the fear of not being good enough. There’s the constant fear of being discovered. Anyone who really wants to grow, expand and know who they are has to travel uncharted territories all the time. So that kind of person has
to live in a world of I don’t know, which is scary, but it’s the only place where you learn anything. What you always find on the opposite side of fear and self-doubt is joy. Joy is our birthright– we’re born with it. But it gets taken away from us and we have to go back and reclaim it.”

Asking for forgiveness

ZsaZsa continues by telling a story about what she learned from Kissimmee about 8 years ago. “Kissimmee was the first horse I raised and trained on my own. It was suggested that I hire a professional trainer to work with me and Kissimmee so that I could take her training to a higher level, being a “newbie” myself. The trainer arrived and did a little ground work with her and felt she was obstinate and stubborn because she was not willing to move off of pressure applied her face to get her to turn away from him. He felt he needed to “break her” of what he deemed was bad behavior. So he continued on working to get her to move off to pressure and the battle began. The harder he tried to force her away the harder she refused to the point where she started rearing up to get his hand away from her face. He got angry and whipped her to drive her away. My heart felt like it was about to break.

In that painful moment, a light bulb went off in my head. I thought to myself, I get it. Anytime someone is in a relationship with any living thing and has the need to win, the battle is already lost and the possibility for connection, closeness and cooperation is over.”

I ended the training session immediately. The trainer told me she would never be a good horse because I had spoiled her and she was too head strong. I took Kissimmee aside on my own. After reassuring her that she hadn’t done anything wrong, and apologizing for the hurtful behavior extended her, I asked her for forgiveness.

Later that same afternoon, I tried the same exercise with Kiss only instead of demanding that she move off of pressure I asked her and within 3 gentle attempts she willingly moved off for a long as I was asking her to move.

A couple of years later, she ran into the same trainer while she was at an event with Kiss and he couldn’t believe it was the same horse. The horse was soft, supple and willing. “Whatever you’ve done her with seems to have worked, she’s turned into a really good horse”. All I did different was ask instead of demand and be willing to give a little in return for a lot.

She goes on to explain that she’s never had that same issue with Kissimmee again. “I’ve had that problem with a number of people,” ZsaZsa claims, “but I’ve been able to rein it in because when I find myself trying to win, I realize it is time to stop. Not because I want to lose but because someone has to be big enough to make the first concession. But this whole culture is set up to win or lose. We’ve got to win, which means someone is going to lose. We’ve got to be right which means someone has to be wrong. With this mentality it means that we cannot even hope to connect with each other.”

For ZsaZsa, it’s all about connection, and the first step to healing is connecting with a horse. The issues that show up when we move to connect include mental, physical and emotional abuse– not limited to marriages on the rocks, parent-child relationships gone bad, and much worse concerns including rape and abandonment.

The group is brought into a large arena and each person is told to walk around the area, to just observe and see what the horses do. Not to approach directly but to let the horses do the initial approaching.

This single act of just being seems to bring out a lot of our personal fears about fitting in, being accepted, being good enough. Everyone’s tendancy is to want to “do” something to win approval instead of just being themselves.

The mini-dramas being played out on this sandy ground can easily become much more serious, though. For example, Kate, a young woman whose parents abandoned her and sent her to live in various foster homes is afraid of the horses because she’s scared to death of being rejected again.

“If you walk through your fear that something must be wrong with you, then what you always find on the other side is that there’s nothing wrong with you. And there’s nothing to be afraid of,” she tells her.

“What happens then?” the woman asks, sobbing.

“When you get to that other side, there’s only one thing waiting– joy.”