Repair
from the
Roots
Yarrow Achiellea Millefolium: Helps to heal wounds, supports brain health, improves digestion, reduces inflammation, soothes the nervous system, and can help with depression and anxiety.
Our healing journeys are inextricably connected. We are reminded of our relationship with the land that sustains and nourishes both equines and humans. Because Nature faithfully embodies this relational principle of reciprocity, we chose the name Yarrow, as it reflects our understanding of the mutual healing that can take place through connected relationships. Known as ‘a wound healer,’ the herbal healing properties of yarrow align with the internal healing that can take place for both equines and humans through connected relationships.
Surrounded by bird song, we find ourselves aided in our growth and healing journeys as we move with intention outside of office space and walls. The rhythmic sounds that abound in Nature, help to ground and hold us within the present moment, inviting us to pause. As the herd is held by the earth, so too are we. This reciprocity of healing guides who we are and who we are seeking to become.
“These ancients carry teachings in the ways that they live. They remind us of the enduring power that arises from mutualism, from the sharing of gifts carried by each species. Balanced reciprocity has enabled them to flourish under the most stressful of conditions.”
~ Robin Wall Kimmerer Umbilicaria; The Belly Button of the World
Trauma Informed
Trauma Informed ways of being, and trauma informed relationships, are for all of us.
We all benefit from being treated with dignity, the offering of choices, knowing what to expect to happen next, predictability, rhythm, consistency, consent, validation, collaboration and experiencing connection.
Each of our bodies hold the somatic memories of stressful encounters. The cumulative effect of these stressful encounters can have a significant impact on our health, wellbeing, relationships, and how we respond when our stress response is activated.
Chronic stress, grief, and trauma, are stored in the body through neuro-networks of association. These internal networks of association connect our somatic memories and intensify our responses depending on how trauma became held in the body. Because of this, the encounters that we have with one another are often not neutral, and yet, every encounter- even the most challenging ones- have the potential to be turned into encounters that are healing. This ‘both/and’ understanding regarding the potential of each of our encounters is true for both equines and humans. A healing encounter is one that provides dignity and offers choice. It is through restoring dignity and choice that we create and restore trust.
Chronic stress, trauma and systemic oppression are carried in the body both individually and collectively, and often have taken place in the context of relationships. Because of this, it is through somatic embodiment and connected relationships, that healing and new ways of responding become possible.
Through a trauma informed lens, all behaviors are communication and all emotions are valid. Behaviors are the body’s way of releasing, coping, adapting and/or surviving. When we shift our focus from the behaviors to instead, meeting the needs beneath the behaviors, a collaborative, creative and transformative partnership can truly begin.
Attachment
Yarrow is a Natural Lifemanship® practice .
Natural Lifemanship® is a principle based practice that applies Dr. Bruce Perry’s Neurosequential Model of Therapeutics (NMT), as well as attachment theory, to both horse and human relationships.
The type of attachment we received is not our fault, and yet it does become our responsibility (Natural Lifemanship®). Our relational patterns reflect the type of attachment we received, impacting our relationships throughout every developmental stage until we help heal the attachment wounds that remain.
These memories and sensations are carried unconsciously in the body, which is why when stress occurs, our unconscious body response is activated. Our unconscious body response is often not in alignment with our conscious values and desired ways of responding and relating.
These memories are preverbal which prevents us from being able to talk or think our way to healing.
It can feel simultaneously overwhelming and empowering to hold this awareness. Yarrow offers space and the support needed to receive somatic experiences that help to heal our attachment wounds that have felt outside of our control.
Through making nonverbal requests for connection, attuning to our internal needs, as well as the needs of our equine partner, we experience an internal connection that we can return to regardless of space and time. As we inevitably make mistakes, there are endless opportunities to complete the circle of attachment through repair, strengthening trusted pathways that restore connection for a more secure attachment.
Somatic Embodiment
‘Our bodies are the place where our stories reside.’ ~Prentis Hemphill (The Embodiment Institute)
Somatic embodiment is a practice. It is the practice of coming home, with awareness, to our bodies. Through this conscious coming home, we experience an awakening of attunement, that deepens the quality of connection and relationship we have with ourselves. It is from this place of internal connection, that somatic embodiment guides us towards a way of being in the world that honors the inherent dignity of others, and values choice as essential for living from a place of embodied connection.
Somatic embodiment is when our actions align with our way of being in the world. When we are under stress, we often notice ways that our responses may not align with our desired way of being. In these moments, we are gently reminded, that somatic embodiment is a practice. Alta Starr, lead facilitator with generative somatics and Director of Training for BOLD shares,
‘A core principle of somatic practice is knowing and honoring our ways of reacting to stress and pressure, while increasing our capacity to tolerate the reactions pressure sparks in us; instead of reacting automatically, returning to a centered presence and the range of choice it offers.’
At Yarrow, our somatic embodiment practice happens through creating a nonverbal, connected relationship with an equine partner. An essential aspect of relationships is making requests. How our requests were responded to during our early attachment has a significant impact on how comfortable we may feel making requests or how we go about making requests. For many of us, humans and equines, both asking for connection and responding to requests for connection, can spark a stress response within our bodies. As we honor the ways in which our equine partner responds to these nonverbal requests, we strengthen our capacity to attune to our bodies and offer them support from a place of grounded connection. Together, new somatic memories are co-created, as we experience agency to choose and internally sense connection, even under pressure, through somatic embodiment.
‘By increasingly inhabiting your body and building tolerance for the truths that live in you, you begin to consciously integrate all who you are into a living wholeness, able to connect authentically and with accountability to others.’
~Alta Starr
Whole Brain Integration
‘An Integrated Brain is akin to a Secure Attachment.’
~Dr. Daniel Siegel
A whole brain approach brings an understanding of the ways in which our brains developed from the bottom up and inside out (Dr. Bruce Perry’s NMT). This understanding can have a significant impact on the ways in which we go about the somatic experience of self-regulation and co-regulation.
We draw from Dr. Siegel’s work on the Whole Brain deepening our understanding of what happens neurobiologically when our stress response is activated and the parts of our brain that we easily can lose access to. Through bottom-up regulation, we develop our capacity to regain access to our whole brain, deepen our connection, and tap into our internal wisdom.
Kasho Ho with The Embodiment Institute shares,
‘The brain is part of the ecosystem that our bodies are a part of. It is not the only agent. We want to help the mind to be active, while being in right relationship with the rest of the body.’
Through this whole brain integration, being in right relationship with the rest of the body (Kasha Ho), we can strengthen our capacity to respond from embodied connection, lend our grounded nervous system, strengthen a secure attachment and transform our relational patterns. When daily life stressors inevitably occur, we have trusted pathways that we can return to. As mammals, this whole brain integration, applies to both equines and humans, and is foundational to our learning and healing journeys at Yarrow.
Mutual Reciprocity
Equines are not an object.
Equines are sentient beings. They are not a tool, a mirror, a metaphor, human projection, therapist, or flawless magical creature. In Natural Lifemanship®, a horse is a horse. Thinking of horses as our mirrors, or as our spiritual guides and personal healers, although seemingly positive, further objectifies them as their primary purpose becomes meeting our needs.
As prey and herd animals, equines are highly sensitive beings, which makes them very aware of our internal states. They are responsive, in the moment, with their own feedback. However, they are not a mirror reflection of ourselves. They are their own unique self, with their own somatic memories, sensations, dispositions, preferences and dislikes. They come with their own needs for creating and strengthening neuro-pathways for connection that are healing.
In Natural Lifemanship®, the healing does not come from the horse. Healing comes through a connected relationship that is equally healing for the horse as it is for the human.
At Yarrow, our ethical practice is further guided by Healing Encounters’ relationship principle:
The extent to which we are providing encounters that are healing, is the extent to which we are creating and nurturing pathways that are healing for ourselves.
Yarrow resonates with Natural Lifemanship’s® relational principle,
‘If it is harmful for one person in the relationship, it is harmful for both, and ultimately the relationship. Healing cannot take place at the expense of another.’
The welfare, wellbeing and healing journey of each equine is integral to the healing process.
As mammals, equines have a need for authentic connection. They do not thrive in isolation. As herd animals, they depend on complex, interconnected relationships that are created through subtle, embodied communication. Because of this, equines offer us an opportunity to create and deepen our somatic pathways for embodied connection. As we do so, we begin to offer them a relationship that is created through subtle noticing, offering choices, honoring consent, embodied communication and internal connection. This is the gift of healing that comes through mutual, relational reciprocity.
Just as the internal shift transfers to our human relationships, so too does the strengthening of a secure attachment impact equines’ relationships within the herd. We are not seeking only to improve the quality of of connection that equines have with humans, we value equally the quality of connection that they experience with themselves and one another.