Teaching us the benefits of slowing down and appreciating what really matters
A FARM GIRL, a pharmacist and a personal trainer. But in her pursuit of well-being and balance, Elsie de Jager-Olsson realised that a mind-body connection was incomplete without anchoring it to the spirit.
Elsie’s journey took her from a farm in the Free State to Canada, Tanzania, and back, where she is now running the Rensburg Hoek Guest Farm.
It’s a place where guests can turn on to nature, find meaning, turn off from technology and tune out unnecessary distraction. The Facilitated Equine Experiential Learning (Feel) practice is the biggest drawcard, with its noble semi-wild Arabian horses.
Domesticated for more than 5 000 years, horses have been our companions, working animals, livestock and even therapists. Attuned to human emotion, they mirror – and amplify – the behaviour of humans. They can also boost confidence, improve self-esteem, reduce anxiety and depression, and help diminish fear. They are what many of us need in our ever-increasing stressed-out lives.
Raised on a farm, Elsie says she was destined to study, while her brother would take over the farming. But being close to nature and “on the edge of life itself”, she finally realised that she needed to choose farm life.
Her journey to where she now finds peace, which she is sharing with those open to learning it for themselves, has taken her on a circuitous route, starting with studying pharmacy. She learnt the right doses of medicine that could heal the sick, but became quickly disillusioned, observing that access to medicine was about money and that medicine cannot heal all ailments.
One night, finding herself in a particularly low place after her husband had left her: “I opened the Bible and a verse read: ‘You will lay hands on the sick and they will get better.’ I realised that I was making money from other peoples’ diseases, and that didn’t sit well with me.
“I also then had an epiphany that I do not have to go and look for the sick, they actually come to me.”
Elsie then left the private sector and went to work for the Department of Health, where her patients were sick and could not pay for medicine. “But I could help them heal.”
Three years ago, she left it all behind and travelled to Tanzania, where she stumbled on a settlement started by a Swedish church in 1945.
“There was nothing left: originally, the settlement had coconut plantations, accommodation and a school. The project was handed over in 1999, but they never learnt how to run the place.” That trip inspired her to create her “Garden of Life project” back in her community, where she teaches the unemployed and children how to grow their own food.
Horses though, have been the missing piece of her puzzle: De Jager-Olsson says she grew up around horses, but never realised how they would link the body, mind and spirit.
“The horses brought in the heart aspect. This has become my business model – to bring well-being back into balance for people. We do everything ourselves on the farm and our guests help out, going back to basics and appreciating the simple life. Horses help us to tap into the wisdom of the heart. Our horses are not domesticated, they are wild in the mountains, untampered with. They pick up on the energy from their environment.”
The Rensburg Hoek Guest Farm does not offer horse riding.
De Jager-Olsson says that’s because her horses should not be dominated: “They are partners and have free will.” Rensburg Hoek is the only Feel facility in the world that uses wild horses that live in the mountains; and also, the first and only Feel facility in Africa.
“Aside from the Feel experience, we also milk by hand – all our dairy products are made on the farm. In our Garden of Life, we grow our own organic vegetables; our beef and chicken are free-range.”
It’s all about connecting with nature and the self.
She says they’ve had extraordinary results: A German traveller for example, who visited in March this year (pre-Covid-19), had never interacted with horses before, but the experience was so profound that he is writing a book about it.
“We give people the tools to resolve and manage their stress. Every answer is inside you and the horses merely help bring it out. This is different from normal retreats; it’s not a five-star environment, you experience how we live,” she cautions.
Life is like a business, she says: There’s an income and an expense column in the balance sheet. The question more of us should be asking ourselves is how we can serve – not what we can make out of others. We need to make our lives count.
“You are your biggest asset; you should invest in yourself so you can live your life to the fullest. Equip yourself: the teacher will only appear if you’re open to the lesson.”
Editor’s Note:
We all have choices in life. We can continue to feed our ego, or we can come to the realisation that in order to receive, we should first give. De Jager-Olsson, who was three times top achiever and awarded Springbok colours in endurance riding with her Franselzi associate horse stud, is teaching us the benefits of slowing life down and appreciating what really matters. Spending the rest of her life to improve well-being, being a professional pharmacist, she has realised that pushing a profit-driven narrative is nothing in comparison to tapping into the abundant natural healing resources given to us by nature. In a life-altering decision, she set her Franselzi stud free, to roam in the Free State mountains so that they, and those who care to, can Feel.