Join Matthew as he talks to Sun Meyer on the power of equine therapy to restore a sense of safety, connectedness and calm.
What if the problems of the modern world aren’t really about power, money, war or religion? What if they’re rooted in our individual and collective experience of trauma?
Journalist Matthew Green has spent years experimenting with alternative approaches to mental health to help with his own periods of depression. In this podcast, Matthew speaks with the pioneering healers, visionaries, thinkers and activists he encountered on his journey.
Sun Meyer has emerged as one of the world’s leading pioneers of equine therapy — a form of inner work based on the power of the horse-human bond. Sun explores how her own experience with grief informs her work, while Matthew describes how an equine therapy session with Sun some years ago cast a broken relationship in a new light.
To help explain why learning to connect with a horse can be so transformative, Sun walks Matthew through the influential work of Dr Stephen Porges, whose “Polyvagal Theory” is gaining growing recognition among trauma therapists, and provides a framework for understanding the neurobiological underpinnings of equine work. Sun cautions that it can be misleading to talk about “healing,” when much of the task of recovering from trauma may involve learning to build a new relationship with lasting pain from the past.
Nevertheless, Sun has seen how equine therapy has helped many people to change their lives in ways they might never have imagined possible before they encountered her herd. Trained in a wide range of evidence-based trauma therapies, Sun is working to bring greater professionalism to the field via her IFEEL Qualifications organisation, offering accredited training in Equine Facilitated Human Development, Organisational Development and Pyschotruamatology. Sun is also leading research into Extreme Stress and Human Behaviour Change through working with horses.
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