"While most of us are familiar with the word trauma, it is often hard to define. This is because trauma is experiential and what causes trauma differs from person to person, from horse to horse. In most cases, trauma results from an experience where the sympathetic nervous system activates the fight or flight instinct, reacting to a situation that is perceived as life threatening. It ends up in a freeze response when high activation is combined with helplessness. The activation remains in the nervous system creating future challenges.

When a trauma is stored in the body, the body will unconsciously work to release the trauma. It will recreate the situation in different ways in an effort to fully play out the traumatic scenario. Regrettably, because we are unaware of the body's effort, we once again repress the necessary release and sometimes create even more trauma in the body. Think of a situation where you have recognized a horse has a fear, and despite your best effort to stop her from acting out, she continues to overreact and never seems to get over it. Until the horse is allowed a safe situation to release the energy, she will not truly "get over it." " from The Joy of the Journey

Trauma Intensives

Jodine Carruthers is highly skilled in guiding traumatized horses, and their humans, through the healing process as well as helping both horse and human develop skills to move safely back into a rewarding horse/human partnership. She understands the fine balance between teaching the necessary skills and boundaries to create a safe space, while allowing the horse to release the stored trauma once it is in that safe space. 

 For more information on our Trauma Intensives please Contact Us.

Jodine's book recommendations for learning more about trauma can be found in the UnderstandingTrauma category of HH Recommended Reading List.