Horse Therapy: The Power of Authentic Reflection
Horse Therapy: The Power of Authentic Reflection
“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” - Carl Jung
What does “Authentic Reflection” mean to you?
You might be in a place of wondering how to truly replenish yourself. You might wish to dissolve a background fatigue. You might have a restlessness that is feeling draining for you. You might be confused by a sense of something being out of balance, in your nervous system, and in your mind. The “answer” to finding a sense of peace within - replenished within, energized in the background of yourself, restfulness, balance, regulated - can be found in the process of reflection, in Authentic Reflection.
Perhaps you are a high powered professional, with “not enough time” to reflect. Maybe, like me, you have placed a lot of importance on doing, creating, acting and performing in your career to achieve the results that improve the lives around you, as well as your own life. However, perhaps, like me, you are also aware that there is a subtle tension or stress operating in the background, and perhaps you have moments of feeling a certain kind of fatigue - maybe not actual burnout but knowing that there is a sense of vitality, buoyancy or fulfillment that is missing. I found, despite outward success, at one point in my life, that I could no longer ignore a sense of knowing that a greater balance could be present for me. As I explored a neuroscience-based renewal of my physical body, I also found a neuroscience-based renewal of my inner self and was gradually pulled into a deeper and deeper renewal through the power of a specific process of authentic reflection that allowed me to have a greater agency and true empowerment in creating my life, my well being, and my process of assisting my clients in deeper personal growth, leadership capacity, and, in a more profound process of healing.
In this article you will find:
a description of how horse therapy supports Authentic Reflection
a story of a personal moment of Authentic Reflection that I had with Horses
a shared personal moment of taking myself seriously that may support you
why Authentic Reflection matters
why peering into our Unconscious matters
how Authentic Reflection happens in Horse Therapy
an update of the “Coming Soon” for our horse therapy offerings
On Horse Therapy
Horse therapy is a beautiful, powerful and meaningful way to get in touch with who we truly are, and remove obstacles in the path to being truly empowered to live the life of our dreams, and to heal on a deeper level.
When we take the time to enter into Authentic Reflection with horses, in a specific space held to allow for insight to come to us from the inner realms of our unconscious, we can receive profound insights into who we are and how we create our lives. We can heal, we can have ‘aha’ moments, we can feel held, we can feel renewal, we can envision our brightest future, and we can enter into a state of timeless grace where our inner nature nourishes us on a deep level; dissolving fatigue, doubt, fear, burnout, anxiety, despair and more.
Horses allow for us to enter into a deep state of Authentic Reflection, where we have the opportunity to receive the honest truth of what we need to know to move forwards towards healing our pain, and manifesting our dreams. When we are struggling from past hurt and perhaps not fully acknowledged or understood pain, being in the space that horses hold for us to see our inner truth, can be deeply healing. In the state of Authentic Reflection that horses hold for us, we can rebalance the nervous system, enter into awareness of how we actually feel about our lives, and do the healing work to reclaim our True Self.
A Story
As my path of healing with horses and understanding what they bring to our capacity to awaken our consciousness, has evolved over the years, the neuroscience of how horses heal has been a fascinating parallel to some of the deep reflections that I have received personally, and that I have facilitated in my coaching with horses practice.
One of the powerful moments that I will always remember, was a moment where, having studied at Epona Rise and certified in Horse Medicine Leadership, I had woken early to be with the horses. At that time, I was co-leading our Horses & Neuroscience Retreat with Hillary Schneider and her gorgeous herd. I would go out in the mornings to be with the horses, and to enter into a state of reflection to receive any guidance they had for me for the day, and for holding space for the guests.
Despite my own studies and experience, having more recently entered into hosting equine-assisted interventions, I was still feeling a bit timid in my knowledge and capacity to teach. In my coaching practice, I have found this not uncommon with many of my women coaching clients. These clients have vast areas of knowledge and experience, yet unconsciously shy away from being in the beauty of their own wisdom and authourity. The unconscious programming from a modern society influenced by hundreds of years of the oppression of women, has remained present despite these clients having achieved outwards success.
I felt called by one horse named Jet, who stood int he morning sun looking at me as I stood by my cabin drinking my cozy morning coffee, and so I wandered slowly out to the pasture, watching for the signs that I have been trained to read, that the horses were welcoming my into their sacred space of deep reflection.
At first, in the pasture, I felt like there wasn’t that much happening. I entered into that “Blank Slate” place where I was no longer thinking about my upcoming day of guiding retreat guests with Hillary, but rather in a space of nothingness. My analytical brain was jumping around having thoughts like, “You are doing nothing, do you even know why you are out here, this is ridiculous.” I have trained a lot in my life to simply put these thoughts to the side, without judgment, and so I did this.
Gradually, I felt pulled into the herd of horses. Then, one by one, they began to lay down. I took video of the experience, as it was pretty unbelievable. A horse that was the very first horse to greet me at Epona Rise - a horse named Indra - pulled me over to him energetically, and then lay down. For a horse to lay down beside you, is a deep honour. I was deeply touched, as he is also a horse that stays far away when our unconscious energy is off.
I sat down beside him, and took the time to settle my excitement, and to consistently orient my attention to what Indra might be saying to me, if he could speak. I deepened my breath, using my knowledge of neuroscience and the electromagnetic heart field, to move into a receptive state of Authentic Reflection.
In this state, I received greater awareness of a realization that it is my time to Teach. Logically and practically, I have taught a lot in my life thus far. I was a Clinical Instructor at the University of British Columbia, and ran a Mindfulness Program at Vancouver General Hospital, called “Take a Breath.” I have taught in many lectures, including in the lectures I gave as part of BrainTalks at UBC, a program that ran for eight years to host a space for recent innovations in the science of the brain to be accessible to physicians for continuing medical education credits and for the general public. However, as I have observed in many of my women coaching clients, my capacity to stand in my own wisdom and authourity, was unconsciously weak.
As I entered into this state of Authentic Reflection, something within my unconscious shifted. As it was in my unconscious, I have not words for this shift. It simply did, and I began to take myself more seriously.
For me, this was also deeply healing. I had been through some painful experiences where the only choice I had was to choose how to respond, and patiently wait for my physical reality around me to change. In this state of Authentic Reflection, my neuroscience changed, and my unconscious changed. After this, I was able to be authentically in a space of greater self worth, and to move forward in expanding my teachings.
What is Authentic Reflection
Reflection is a powerful way to reset and recharge the brain. The neuroanatomy of the human brain is such that there is a network of connections that becomes active, or “lights up” as we say in neuroimaging language, when we reflect. The neuroscience and electromagnetic presence of horses allow for the process of reflection to become more honest, as horses have a capacity to help us heal and grow, that surpasses the over-analytical tendency that only human therapy brings to the process of healing. This more honest reflection, is Authentic Reflection, and it activates areas in the brain called the Default Modal Network, pictured above.
Unconscious patterns of reflection happen often. We can think of our inner self, as a landscape, something I love to refer to as the Landscape of the Psyche, and the reason that I have named my private psychiatry practice, Inner Landscapes. Just like in adventure novels, there are many hidden and unexplored territories in the Landscape of the Psyche. In these unknown inner lands, lies the beliefs and patterns and mysteries of the unconscious. These beliefs, patterns and mysteries become more available to us, when we can enter into a state of Authentic Reflection.
When we wish to experience success, or, when we are confused by our own behaviour that does not match what we wish to do, or, when we are challenged by obstacles in our lives and not sure what to do with our thoughts and feelings, often the answer lies within the lands of the unconscious. Psychotherapy, is a way to bring the unconscious into the light, and so improve our intelligence around knowing ourselves, our emotions, and who we really are - our Authentic Self.
If we do not take the time to look at what is unconscious, we allow the beliefs and feelings and thoughts within the unconscious, to direct our life. Whether you are comfortable with this fact or not, neuroimaging studies have shown that feelings are what direct how we see potential opportunities in the world, and how we make choices. In a process called Emotional Cognition, our brain quickly accesses our feelings around the various aspects of our lives, and references these subconscious or unconscious feelings to ascribed value to the world we see around us, and thus the choices that we wish to take, and the choices we choose to take.
As Carl Jung so efficiently stated in his quote above, “until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” In other words, if you do not take the time to understand aspects of your unconscious, you will feel that your life is directing and controlling you, rather than you having agency and empowerment in choosing how to Create your Life.
In other words, when you choose to look at your unconscious, you move out of chronic disempowerment and into a place of choosing to be empowered, with the profound act of choosing to know your True and Authentic Self.
Authentic Reflection and Horse Therapy
My work with people to date with horses has been equine-guided sessions for personal growth, leadership and spiritual awareness. The beauty and majesty of these experiences have nourished me on a level for which I have few words.
Horse therapy is also known as equine-assisted healing, equine-assisted therapy, and equine-assisted psychotherapy. Simply put, horse therapy is the process of human beings receiving healing with horses.
Healing with horses has ancient roots. In some languages, there are phrases for horses, where horse wisdom is considered more ancient than the development of language. Indigenous cultures, including many Native American tribes, regarded horses as spiritual allies and guides. For some peoples, horses were acknowledged as “kin” rather than “animals’ for their sophisticated, sentient intelligence. Many healing and ceremonial experiences involved horses for emotional entering and guidance. Lakota people held ceremonial practices where individuals would attune to horses in silence, allowing emotional expression, healing and ancestral wisdom to surface through the shared presence with horses. Ancient Germanic peoples took care of white horses in sacred groves, never using the horses for riding, only for healing and supporting a process of accessing intuitive guidance. In ancient China, horses were honoured for how they helped humans to invigorate and balance life force energy, with the energetic power of the presence of the horse having it’s own term, referred to as “ma qi.” In Mongolian traditions, time spent with horses was recognized as restorative, reinforcing a sense of balance with the natural world.
Energetically, horses attune as back to the awareness of the intelligence in our hearts, and in our electromagnetic heart field. With hearts that are five to six times the size of humans hearts, horses also have an energetic heart field that is about five times larger than the human heart field. In practical, simple electromagnetic physics, we know that the more powerful heart field, pulls the smaller weaker heart field, into the frequency of the larger heart field. We know that the human heart field, when emotionally unbalanced, when in need of healing, has a more chaotic frequency, leading to emotional and mental suffering. More subtle stress that we might be unconscious of, still appears in an unhealthy heart rate variability, with the science of this studied increasingly in a field called neurocardiology. Horses, however, can have very healthy and strong heart rate variability, supporting humans in their presence, to re-balance, and so heal mental emotional distress.
In the medical and scientific world, healing with horses is recognized, and increasingly studied. In British Columbia, Canada, where I practice, horse therapy is recognized as an alternative and complimentary therapy for healing mental emotional disorders. The science behind this is multi-faceted.
Research by Kovacs and colleagues, published in 2025, showed that equine-assisted interventions significantly enhanced self-regulation, identity integration, and metalization. The way in which horses allowed clients to have an experiential, embodied process, seemed to be the method through which clients could access and reorganize internal patterns that were not reachable through verbal processing with another human only.
A book by Hannah Burgon published in 2022, describes how the phenomenological approach in horse therapy supports trauma recovery through embodiment and emotional coherence - in other words, where the client became conscious of emotions in a way that matched and aligned with physical awareness and thoughts, where physical, emotional and mental processes became coherent, or harmonious. The process was again identified as one where the unconscious became conscious through the non-verbal processing in the presence of the horse.
There are many more studies, but that is all that I will touch on today. As we design our offerings to be launched soon, we are weaving in the science, with the ancient practices, and with space for the non-verbal and energetic presence of healing that horses offer in horse assisted psychotherapy.
As I write today, out my window I watch my four horses rest deeply in the morning sunshine - that beautiful morning sunshine of the fall that glances sideways, creating long dramatic shadows contrasting the great peace of all four horses lying down to rest. It feels like they are energetically present with me, supporting me as I write on Authentic Reflection and Healing with Horses.
As I write, I feel the profound awareness of a both humble and honoured place within my heart, to be here on this journey with horses. I do truly feel that horses hold the energetic key to reclaiming our true nature as human beings, finding our way back to that unconscious knowing that we are here to steward a healthy earth and a balance with it’s creatures, and to heal any division and separation that has happened as we became lost in our own creations, instead of using our powerful capacity to design to enhance the balance in nature. It is my hope, and my dream, and I hold the vision in my heart - that through the psychotherapy and the coaching with horses, I may bring a greater awareness to the inner worlds of our human consciousness, as to how to co-create an authentic state of balance within ourselves, and within the natural world. And, it is through this powerful state of Authentic Reflection with horses, supported by the knowledge we have of the neuroscience and neuroanatomy of transformation, that we can move towards the healing and the creativity, of being able to dream a beautiful future for all of us, into being, to the best of our ability.
With gratitude for all of you who have supported me along the way,
Dr. Maia Love
More:
Article by Kovacs and colleagues 2025
Book by Hannah Burgon 2022: Equine-Assisted Therapy and Learning with At-Risk Young People
Epona Rise Retreat Centre with Hillary Schneider and her herd
Horses and Neuroscience: The Book by Maia Love MD and Hillary Shcneider
Photography by Audrey May (all photos in this article by Audrey May)
