How horses can help us
The secrets of horse whispering are helping change attitudes and behaviour. Carly Thomas lowers her voice and learns.
Wiseman is listening so intently to Sue Spence that he is tilting his head. She isn’t looking at him, but it looks like he would like it if she did.
Wiseman is a horse and Sue Spence is a horsewoman who speaks his language. Spence is speaking to a small crowd of people and anyone walking past could take in the horse, the lunge lead and the woman, and conclude this was a seminar on horsemanship.
But, no, what Spence is here to do is teach people about being better people through how they interact with a large, snorting, tail-swishing creature.
Spence changes her stance, brings her energy up and Wiseman is off at a swift trot. She breathes out, relaxes her posture and the big chestnut gelding responds by walking a wide arch around Spence, before eventually stopping to face her.
It is beautiful to watch, breathtaking in its simplicity and complex when you start to listen to the massive journey Spence has taken to this point, on this farm in A¯ piti, with Kimberley Mcintyre as her student.
It’s one of those stories where you have to step right back to the child struggling at school that Spence once was.
Spence has ADHD, but back then that wasn’t a thing. Back then she was seen as ‘‘a naughty kid that was always getting in trouble for not staying still and talking too much’’.
‘‘I remember looking into my first classroom and being horrified at the realisation that I would have to sit at the same chair at the same desk all day.’’
Spence says she has manic bursts of unnatural energy and that school was a nightmare.
‘‘I didn’t fit in. I felt stupid and I was bullied a lot. Yet my equestrian life was incredible. I was showjumping and eventing from a really young age, but school just wasn’t working.’’
Spence was horse-mad. They were her comfort and now as an adult she says it is obvious ‘‘that horses and ponies were always going to play a big part in my emotional health and healing’’.
She left school and her excess energy saw her follow a career in the fitness industry in Australia, where being bouncy was just the ticket. It was the perfect job for someone with ADHD, she says, and now looking back she sees her ability to teach six high-energy classes a day was a way of self-medicating.
When new regulations forced Spence to study and become qualified, she says she found a way to learn that fitted her brain wiring through the help of a friend.
‘‘She helped me study physiology and anatomy to full-blast Billy Idol and Guns N’ Roses. And my type of people? We need to move while we are learning.’’
Spence became qualified, which in turn took her to new heights within the industry. At a fitness convention she found out she had breast cancer. It rocked her and she says for the first time in her life, during her operations, she couldn’t self-medicate.
‘‘I couldn’t run. I couldn’t ride or jump. I couldn’t do anything. I had to be still and I had to heal.’’
Her anxiety, she says, had nowhere to go.
‘‘My anxiety was so bad and I was getting to the stage where I didn’t want to leave the house. My world was closing in. Anxiety strips you of who you are.’’
Spence still had her horses and one of her ‘‘horsey mates’’ called in to her one day to convince her to come to a natural horsemanship display. It was at the time when the likes of Monty Roberts was becoming a teaching force within the world horse community. The Pat Parellidemonstration that Spence struggled through anxiety to attend was a lifechanging moment. Horses were being worked without ropes or halters. They were circling, popping over jumps, turning on a dime and sliding to a halt.
‘‘All through the person’s body language and the energy they were giving out – it was jaw-dropping. I thought ‘what the heck is happening?’ There was something about those cowboys. And then I realised – it was their stillness. To work at liberty, with that level of connection, you have to have a stillness.’’
So she worked on that. Spence, who was always moving, worked on having stillness and communication with her horses. She was told by one horseman that ‘‘she had too much going on’’, so she figured out how to shift that and to become ‘‘a solid, still, tree’’. Her journey out of anxiety started and then she started to see what she had learnt was a powerful communication for other people as well.
Horses Helping Humans began from there and her first workshop was designed specifically for women. She took her horse, Sunny, and when it came to the part where she talked about boundaries, she got the women to come out and meet her big chestnut gelding.
‘‘I showed them how if I do this, Sunny backs up, and if I do that, Sunny stops. I turned to them and I said: ‘This is what no looks like’. It’s not a word. It’s a projection of self-respect.’’
She hasn’t stopped since then. Spence developed a programme for youth, helping disengaged young people who had experienced problems ranging from homelessness to drug and alcohol addiction, serious family trauma, domestic violence, anxiety and depression. She speaks about a boy who had 36 criminal offences who took part in the programme.
‘‘He’s now got a job, a little girl and he’s never re-offended. I could talk all day about the testimonies of our students.’’
She helps company chief executives understand their personality type and how to better communicate, with her trusty little herd of horses and ponies by her side.
She has a long list of awards, including a community dedication award at the Gold Coast Women in Business Awards. She is still a high-energy, full-speedforward doer, but she knows how to harness it and she knows moments of still, deep ‘‘belly breathing’’ and a ‘‘laserbeam’’ focus are in her toolbox.
Horses Helping Humans has now become a licensed programme she can teach to others. But, she says, it takes a certain person and until now, she hadn’t found anyone in Manawatu¯ to do that.
And that’s where Kimberley Mcintyre, her family farm and business Makoura Lodge, and her faithful horse Wiseman come in. Mcintyre read Spence’s book Horses Who Heal when she knew she was looking ‘‘for something more’’.
‘‘I always wanted to do something like this, but I had never come across the right person or programme. I read the book and thought: ‘Yes, yes, yes’.’’
Mcintyre called Spence up and went to Australia for a Horses Healing Humans conference, then spent a year learning the programme and working with her horses. Spence says Mcintyre’s horse skills are fantastic.
‘‘She is spot on at a very high level. She has something that you can’t teach.’’
She has Wiseman. He is a quarter horse she heard was going to ‘‘be dog tucker’’, so she went and saw him, ‘‘thought there was something about him’’ and brought him home.
The pair have worked together ever since. He is her go-to horse when she leads treks at Makoura Lodge and has been the star of Spence and Mcintyre’s opening of Horses Healing Humans at Makoura Lodge.
The people at the opening are holding themselves a bit differently at the end of the day. One woman who circled Wiseman around her just by being taught how to have a ‘‘dude’’ stance is close to tears. She says she often feels intimidated and walked on, but here is Wiseman respecting her request to walk and feeling her ‘‘woohoo’’ energy when she asks him to trot.
‘‘I feel like I can take this into my life now. It’s amazing. That felt amazing.’’
And with the swish of his tail and the nod of his held-high head, Wiseman is led back to his paddock to go and be a horse. A horse that just happens to helps humans.
Kimberley Mcintyre is running her first Horses Helping Humans programme at Makoura Lodge from September 21-23.
‘‘I couldn’t run. I couldn’t ride or jump. I couldn’t do anything. I had to be still and I had to heal.’’