What Horses Can Teach Us About Gentleness

An interview with Lori Halliday — Founder of Horse & Heart

This article is part of an interview series, where I ask fellow sensitive healers, coaches, artists, and spiritual teachers how they embody Gentleness in their businesses and personal lives. I call them Gentleness Ambassadors :)

It was beautiful interviewing Lori Halliday to learn how she left her hectic and highly stressful city life, to living a much gentler and more connected life through being present with horses. She and her family have been living intimately with horses at the Horse & Heart Ranch she founded over twenty years ago.

Through this article, I will be sharing with you some of her profound experiences in restoring Gentleness in herself and others through being with horses in nature.

More about Lori Halliday and Horse & Heart Ranch

Lori Halliday is the Founder and Executive Director at Horse & Heart Ranch — a charitable organization located in California, USA, that hosts a variety of studies through Natural Horsemanship to both children and adults.

Lori has 20 years of experience in Natural Horsemanship and has been a certified Equine Experiential Learning trainer for over 15 years. She has a strong formal education in the behavioral sciences — psychology, sociology, criminology, cultural anthropology, and art. She has been immersed in personal development, growth, and transformational work here at the ranch. Congruency Coaching is a great passion of hers as she truly enjoys empowering others to their aligned life.

Lori has studied with and been inspired by many of the most advanced, generous, compassionate, and skillful teachers of our age: Cathryn Clerc, Linda Kohanov, Carolyn Resnick, Jonathan Field, Pat, and Linda Parelli, and Buck Branaman.

Drawing on this rich background, Lori has created in Horse & Heart, a beautiful, tranquil, and safe place for others to study, learn, and grow under her guidance, with a horse partner. Lori works with adults, children, and at-risk youth. She has also worked extensively in the mental health field with adults and youth in institutional, transitional living, group home, and independent living environments.

The questions I asked Lori are in headings and her answers are within each section.

Can you tell us more about you and your work?

I live in northern California on a horse ranch, and we’ve been here for about 20 years. I live here with my husband and my daughter, and we have 10 horses and 1 donkey who live here at the ranch. We also have a bunch of dogs, chickens, cats, and the whole nine yards!

Natural Horsemanship, to us, is about respecting the horse and respecting the human and the individual relationships that are forming each day. Allowing those relationships to naturally develop with the right timing and noticing the way they naturally magnetize one another.

People approach horsemanship for many different reasons and come with a myriad of unique expectations. There is a wealth of knowledge to be know through the way of the horse whether your intentions are to heal emotional wounds, develop rhythm and timing, ride for pleasure or for competition. So, it’s not that we only teach one specific technique in order to be with horses; it is that we nurture and honor the relationships that are emerging.

I also do a lot of movement-based training. I’m a dancer and movement coach with Moving Expressions where I share the Axis Syllabus International Research Community, Gyrotonic, Pilates, Biodynamic Cranial Therapy, and Integrated Movement Classes.” I am a Congruency and Alignment Coach with Wisehorsewoman.com where I coach leaders to align with their congruent selves, and their hearts desires so they can live from their genius and do the things they love to do. It’s like awakening to your secret superpowers!

How was Horse & Heart Ranch born?

My daughter Ella loved horses since she was just a tiny two-year-old. We were messing around with the horses, studying, and trying to figure everything out. It was all brand new, and we were learning from someone else.

A friend of ours, Bonita Bella, a grandmother, came and said, “Oh Lori! Victoria and Sophia would like to train with you. They’d like for you to teach them about horses.” I said, “Oh no, I don’t know anything, I’ve just started.”

She said, “Well, we have this amount of money, which was very little money to give you for both girls. They told us that you’re their teacher. Are you saying you’re not willing to share what you know with Victoria and Sophia?”

I said, “Yes, I’m willing to share what I know, Bella. Thank you.”

And that’s how it started! We had a little camp, and it was just about sharing the horses with these five kids. It later turned into an incredible summer camp for hundreds of kids! Lots of kids have been coming every summer for 15 years! It’s like putting on a little greek wedding every summer; it’s completely crazy.

This whole world opened up wide for us and that has now been my life for 20 years.

How do you spend a typical day at your ranch?

At Horse & Heart Ranch, we support people who cannot afford to come to the program, one in three students comes on scholarship. We work all day to manifest enough money to maintain our ranch and to support our charity work.

We feed the horses three times a day, and I often see five clients a day. I work with people all day in one-on-one sessions or small groups. I take coaching calls early in the morning or evening, depending on the time zones of my clients. Most people think I’m a hermit and that I live up here alone, and I don’t get out much (factual lol). But the truth is students attend class here.

I find it beautiful to be outside, surrounded by the redwoods, the soil, and all other living creatures.

Being with the horses is like being with whales — they are majestic, sentient beings. Just to be present and be near them is such a gift!

I have this hectic life to support my privilege to live with these horses, and to share this life with other people as a way of self-discovery, bringing them back home to themselves.

When we are grounded and at home in ourselves, we get to live our hearts’ desires and be the change the world needs.

How do you embody Gentleness through natural horsemanship and coaching work with your clients?

Lori describes her work with foster children and women.

I work with foster children who were taken away from their parents. These children are in a lot of pain.

These foster children don’t trust anybody. Many of them refuse to be touched. They don’t want to sit in a room with the door closed with a stranger writing things down. They need space and a different approach.

So these children come here, and they’re in pain. I don’t do anything in particular to them. I do hold sacred space for them. I teach them how to be safe — how to keep their bodies safe.

Soon, the kids start to breathe, relax, just brush (the horse’s hair) with one hand and rub with the other hand. Their whole parasympathetic system starts relaxing. The next thing you know, they are smiling and laughing. They start telling me what they love, their fears, their secrets.

They are making intimate contact with a giant 1200 pound furry beast and they feel calm and relaxed. They’ve are entrained with the breath and the gut of this creature that’s emanating in a much larger field than a human. They’re brought into their own body. It’s happening naturally with the rhythms of the horse and the rhythms of the land. And having the willingness of an adult to be with these kids without doing anything to them makes such a real difference to them. A bond and trust develop.

The women I coach are so harsh with the way they talk to themselves.

I want to find out what makes their hearts sing so that they can remember what that feels like. Grown-ups literally forget to think about what they love. We forget how much gentle care we need.

The professional dancers I work with are brutal to themselves. They’re sometimes bulimic, self-critical and they’re so afraid. They don’t even want to come up to the front row and dance. They experience self-loathing.

I spend the first 15 minutes of a dance class with 20 professional dancers, getting them to breathe and sigh and recall their favorite childhood animals so that we can get them to feel more, enter the realm of the animal body, and actually be freed up to want to dance.

We’re all meant to dance. Dance is not for people who do it for a living — that’s crazy! That’s like saying art is for people who paint for a living. Music, art, and dance are for everyone.

What kind of Harshness have you released in your personal life so far?

I lived in a very traditional family that focused firmly on education. With the privilege to education, I felt I had to do one of the top jobs to help save people, and I thought I needed to be a lawyer or a doctor.

So I went into law because I wanted to serve people, but I ended up working in a prosecuting attorney’s office at 19 years old for a whole summer! I sat in on child abuse and rape cases, listened to that all summer, typed in ‘No’ to people’s parole requests! It was brutal and clarifying.

I was completely disillusioned by what it was going to be like to make a difference in law, so I had to leave that industry. It was very startling to me.

We have all these different expectations around education, and many people don’t end up working in their first field or industry.

I worked in the mental health industry too. I saw horrific events and experienced rough living conditions in both institutional and home living environments.

That’s not the kind of superhero I am — that was not a safe place for me, with my mind and heart so open and porous.

So yes I’ve tried some serious high-flying career tracks which did not turn out to be my path. I thought I was meant to do all these things because I am smart with excellent grades and there were so many expectations piled upon me.

I lived in the city in my 20s and 30s. I was not always spending time with horses; I only got to see them at summer camps.

Now I’m 51, and I founded the Horse & Heart Ranch 20 years ago. Since then, I have released some of the Harshness of forcing myself to learn and do what I thought I’m supposed to be learning and doing. I am now doing what I truly love and working within my Genius.

I have been diving into so many different kinds of learning that are more aligned with who I truly am.

So that’s when I came out of the closet as a ‘mover’/dancer. My spine was injured, so I learned this training called Axis Syllabus for therapeutic reasons. Next thing you know, I’m a master teacher in this training!

Axis Syllabus is all about training people to know their physical structure so they can dance, run, ride on a horse, or whatever they love, effectively and sustainably.

I’ve worked with many of the great natural horsemanship teachers. I love them all, and of course, they’re only human, so some things work, and some things don’t work. Some parts of being human can get in the way of the beautiful teaching, like any teachings.

I am a diligent, lifetime student; even right now, I see a couple’s counselor and a personal counselor. I’m also in a coaching group with five other coaches. I just finished a 10-day coaching challenge with 900 women of color to raise $10,000 in 10 days! I study Breath Work with Dr. John Amaral and do personal growth work with two business teams!

I’m allowing myself to learn everything I’m passionate about, and I’m figuring out what works and what doesn’t work.

What final message would you like to give to the world about Gentleness?

My mother was the most benevolent person. She’s passed away now. Her name is Teresita Jasmin. She had the most incredible Gentleness. She was full of Music, Creativity, Kindness, and Love, yes, more love.

She was the vocal champion of the Philippines when she was younger, but in the USA, she was a beautician who worked three jobs and was very poor. We have experienced much harshness and racism our whole lives.

But she just sang all the time like a Lark and birds came around her house to be near her. She was like a magical being and that extreme level of Gentleness and whatever you want to call it — Jesus Christ consciousness, Buddha consciousness, Universal consciousness, is so alive inside of me, my brother, sister, and daughter.

We all have the experience of being with the Gentleness and also being with the Harshness.

The horses have taught me we can’t force ourselves when we are with them. We must listen within. They are prey animals, hunted like rabbits or deer, and we’re predators — the hunters

I need to understand my own predatory nature and manage myself so I can be present to this prey animal partner. I have to stand gently side by side with my horse, as a friend, instead of pushing forward and being harsh.

So all of these natural predatory behaviors that we have can be enacted or incited in a way that I might call Harshness. The Gentleness I see is embodied and enacted in the way the horses are living together in a herd. They’re always seeking the way to go back to relaxation in the parasympathetic system — back to grazing, again to rest and digest.

I know when I’m joyful, I can dance, and when I’m relaxed, I listen to my horse partners. I understand that this is a gateway to connect to ourselves and each other. To connect to nature, to animals, is the Gentle Way.

It’s not passive, but it’s the Gentle Way, and it’s the Beauty Way.

I hope you will enjoy watching her describe Gentleness and Harshness to you.

A big thank you to Lori Halliday for such a healing and insightful conversation!

If you are interested in connecting with Lori Halliday, do contact her through her websites: https://www.wisehorsewoman.com/, https://www.horseandheart.org/, and Facebook page.