The Healing Herd of Touched by a Horse

Melisa’s Story of Bringing Horses Into Her Psychotherapy & Coaching Work

I have been a horsewoman since I was ten years old and have had hundreds of horses in my care throughout my life. I have partnered with horses in traditional ways, but I have also been one of the earliest pioneers in working with them to emotionally heal humans. 

I’ve owned several ranches and boarding facilities while raising horses, training them, and showing them in competition. I’ve had the unique experience of breeding and raising horses at a top level as well as trail riding all over the United States. I share all of this as a small glimpse into the depth of my traditional experience with equines.

Started in the 1980s

In the 1980s, I bought a small twenty-five-acre ranch as a summer refuge for our family to escape the desert heat of our ranch in Cave Creek, Arizona. The new ranch bordered the Coconino Forest in Flagstaff, Arizona. I escaped with our children as soon as school let out and usually hauled eight or so horses up there with us. 

I continued to see clients there and hosted retreats. One summer I began to notice that the horses were interacting on their own with my clients when they were on break between sessions. What I witnessed was that it seemed far easier for my clients to access and express deep emotions after they had been in the presence of horses. They would often self-report a profound feeling in their body while standing in the presence of the horse. The internet was not yet invented, so I could not compare notes with any therapists.

By the following summer, I began inviting my clients to join me at the barn and purposefully created Gestalt “contact” between a horse and my client. That same summer, I experimented with having the horse observe the full Gestalt sessions through a round pen fence and eventually crafted the certified by Melisa Pearce Equine Gestalt Coaching Method™ I use and teach today.

As the internet came online, I knew I was the first—and most likely only—person combining Gestalt with equines in a professional way. By the 2000s, there were a few others who had adopted the concept in their own style. 

Horses are Natural Gestaltists

They hold no judgments and live in the present moment in their daily lives. They are keenly aware and expressive of their somatic energy fields and are highly self-aware of who they are, so they show up honestly when interacting with each other or a person. They desire for humans to clean up their energy fields and not hold on to anger or emotions that are making them ill. 

Contrasted to dogs, who chum easily and do tricks for a food treat, horses are in the prey side of the predator-prey polarity. They seek authenticity and congruence to feel safe. This means that they have a keen, natural ability to reveal when they sense a person who is thinking, feeling, and intuiting their personal truth as well as someone who is lying to themselves or thinking one way and feeling another.

Horse As My Partner Coach  

Each horse has their own unique gifts and way of expressing their clairsentient awareness to the Gestalt Coach. They are keenly drawn to the authenticity of the Gestalt experiments, sensitive to the contact cycle and the authenticity required of the clients. The horses are full-on partners in the process.

This is not a system in which we anthropomorphize onto the horse, nor do they simply participate during the debriefing process after an activity, as is common in the equine-assisted healing field. In our unique method of combining the experiential nature of Gestalt and the pieces of work in the presence of the horse, they become free to express what they notice, see, and feel energetically with our clients.              

People who are unfamiliar with horses may be somewhat taken back by this concept. But for me, it is an example of how humans feel superior to animals in our abilities to think and feel. In actuality, many animals have proven that they are brilliant in their own right and often in areas we don’t understand and therefore deny. I don’t deny. My horses are brilliant in the Equine Gestalt Coaching Method work, and I am honored and very blessed that they showed themselves to me in this way over thirty years ago.

Today, I work as a human who can assist horses in expressing their healing gifts, and I honor them for the true healers they are.