Aluna: Can you describe the relationship that we humans have with horses?

Linda: Many people don't recognize horses as sentient beings, but rather treat them as pets that are more like children. This makes the average horse/human relationship dysfunctional because people aren't acknowledging the sentience of their horse.

There's a lot of evidence to suggest that horses are extremely psychic. They have a high degree of emotional intelligence which they are able to teach human beings.

A horse can tell when you are walking up to him what state you're in and what you're feeling, even if you're hiding it from yourself. This is a highly developed survival technique, because in their natural environment horses are preyed upon. So to be able to assess from a distance the intentions and emotional state of their herd, other animals, or predators is important. Essentially, horses in captivity have transferred this skill to their relationships with human beings.

People tend to think horses are misbehaving when in fact they are reflecting what is out of balance in the humans around them. A lot of people struggle with their horses in conventional riding centers, not realizing that they have to make internal changes if they want their horse to change. They're berating their horses for things that are really going on inside of themselves.

Aluna: Can you talk about the work that you do with horses?

Linda: Essentially, we work with horses to help people. We call it equine-facilitated psychotherapy. We work on the emotional and spiritual levels of existence. We also have experiential learning programs teaching emotional fitness skills, assertiveness, multisensory awareness, intuition, and creativity through working with horses.

Many of the people who come to us are already working as counselors or spiritual advisers. They come here to refine their skills and go deeper. Working with a horse provides a living biofeedback system. If we are clear and open to what we are truly feeling, the horse will reflect that awareness with instant positive feedback, becoming more balanced and cooperative. Horses also mirror when we're not clear and open, mostly through what people in conventional equestrian contexts consider "misbehavior." In my practice, I actually reinforce the horse's ability to mirror imbalances in human clients; I help these animals to refine what I call "controlled misbehavior," and they very quickly learn to reflect fear, anger, depression, and sadness in safe ways.

Aluna: What prompted you to do this work?

Linda: Initially, I got a horse with the intent of getting as far away from the human race as possible. I was living a stressed-out life as a music critic and radio announcer. So I bought a horse to ride out into the desert and have a relationship that wasn't emotionally draining.

What I found was that horses are incredibly honest and very consistent and congruent. So I always knew where I stood with my horse. I also discovered that, in that honesty and congruency, my horse would reflect back to me whatever I was truly feeling — and often hiding, even from myself.

So as it turned out I couldn't get away from my stress and just go for a ride. I had to face all of my own issues when I was with my horse. If I were feeling angry, then my horse would reflect that back to me. If I were feeling fear, there was no social mask I could put on that would prevent my horse from reflecting that I was truly afraid.

Then I began to notice, at the stables where I boarded my horses, that I could tell what was really going on with people by how their horses were responding to them. I became acutely aware that the horses were reflecting whatever was going on in the life of the people they were interacting with.

So I began to investigate this phenomenon as a journalist, with the intention of writing an article on the subject. My research led to a body of work that simply couldn't fit into a thousand words, so I wrote the book The Tao of Equus.

The process of writing that book actually became my own journey of self-discovery. This led me to founding Epona Equestrian Services in Tuscon, Arizona, where people from all over the world come to explore the healing potential of working with horses.

Aluna: Could you share an example of working with a horse in this way?

Linda: I've found over the years that people who've been abused will be almost uncontrollably attracted to horses with similar backgrounds and emotional issues. This happened most graphically with a woman named Nancy, the mother of one of my riding students. She bought a horse named Rocky that had been profoundly mistreated.

As it turned out, the emotional resonance that brought Nancy into his life would be the foundation for them both to heal similar wounds. You see, people and horses who've experienced similar difficulties, betrayals, and abuses are like two strings tuned to the same note. So whenever Nancy was in a heightened state of turmoil, Rocky couldn't help but resonate with her.

Rocky had become so fearful and violent in his reactions to everyday events that the vet was pushing to have him put down. In a last-ditch effort to save him, Nancy asked me to take a look at Rocky.

No one could even get close enough to touch him at that time, but after connecting with him from about ten feet away, I came up with what I thought was a metaphor for his behavior. I had no idea it related directly to Nancy's life.

"Imagine," I told Nancy, "that you were raped as a teenager. A few years later, you married a man who seemed very gentle and understanding. Yet once you had that wedding ring on your finger, he thought you should just get over your conflicting feelings about sex. He suddenly began to treat you as though he owned you.

"You knew he loved you, but he was impatient with you. You felt trapped, as though you wanted to run away. Yet you also realized he was your only real hope for connection.

"Rocky feels that way. He knows you care for him, but he can't automatically let go of years of abuse and mistrust. He can't become intimate so easily.

"Know what I mean?"

Nancy just stared at me in silence for a moment. "Basically," she said, shaking her head in disbelief, "you just told my life story."

Nancy's life was reaching a state of crisis. She'd lost her job, and her husband was having an affair, partly because of his inability to deal with her childhood sexual trauma. Though Nancy tried to put on a happy face around Rocky, his comfort level seemed directly tied to her own hidden feelings.

"Tell Rocky what you're feeling," I advised. "Get it out in the open so he doesn't have to mirror it for you. He won't necessarily understand what you're saying, but by expressing your true feelings, you'll become congruent, and you'll release the tension behind those emotions."

For ten minutes, Nancy spoke candidly to the horse about the violence, shame, and betrayal she'd experienced. She promised Rocky she wouldn't push him, that she would treat him the way she wanted to be treated by men in her own life. My eyes began to sting in response to her story. The moment I let go of my professional distance and allowed the tears to flow, Rocky stepped forward and rested his head in the center of my chest.

Horses don't judge us or reject us for what we're feeling. It's the act of trying to suppress our emotions that drives them insane. Rocky took that notion one step further. He showed us that even a horse written off as "loco," a horse considered too crazy to live, could feel safe enough to approach us the moment we let down our guard and began to speak from the heart.

As it turns out, Rocky also demanded that his trainer be congruent with his emotions. Jerry was a very experienced "horse whisperer" style trainer. He was gentle with the animals, but didn't particularly believe they had a sophisticated understanding of emotion. Yet with Rocky, a lot of this man's best techniques weren't working. The day Jerry finally broke down and cried about a recent death in his family, Rocky rested his head in the center of this man's chest, just as he had with me. That was the day Rocky allowed Jerry to ride him for the first time.

A month later, Rocky was taking his owner on trail rides and carrying little children around on his back. Though he isn't a therapy horse per se, he has a healing effect on everyone he encounters. Jerry said it felt as though the horse were siphoning the grief and pain right out of his body.

There are many horses out there like Rocky. Most are considered crazy and are treated as such, when really they are profoundly talented, empathic healers.

Aluna: Wow! What a great story. Is there anything more you'd like to share?

Linda: The thing that is really fascinating about working with horses is that they exemplify the strength of feminine values. A lot of people don't realize this because horses are such powerful animals. Their whole existence, however, is tempered by values that we would consider to be feminine.

For example, horses value relationship over territory, which is how most women relate to the world. They also emphasize feeling and intuition over reason — though they do have a good capacity for reason in novel situations.

Horses also emphasize process over goal. The end never justifies the means for a horse. Like natural Taoists, horses know the masculine but keep to the feminine.

Horses are not in conflict with themselves; they never feel one thing and do another. There's a lot we humans can learn from that.

Linda Kohanov is an author, speaker, riding instructor, and horse trainer who specializes in what she calls equine experiential learning and equine-facilitated psychotherapy. In 1997, she founded Epona Equestrian Services (see TaoOfEquus.com), a Tucson-based collective of riding instructors and counselors exploring the healing potential of working with horses. In addition to formal equine-facilitated psychotherapy sessions, Epona offers equine experiential learning programs in stress reduction, parenting skills, leadership techniques, consensus-building relationship models, mindfulness, intuition, creativity, sensory awareness, and women's empowerment. Besides her fifteen years as a radio producer and announcer, Linda has worked as a music critic and print journalist, writing for such publications as CD Review, Down Beat, JAZZIZ, Jazz Times, Pulse! and New Age Journal. She lives with her husband, composer and musician Steve Roach, and their horses outside Tucson, Arizona. She can be reached by email at .