I’m joined by Melissa Clary, a Gestalt Equine Therapy practitioner, to discuss the power of integrating horses into the therapeutic process.
Nature is always talking to us, especially through animals. I’m joined by Melissa Clary, a Gestalt Equine Therapy practitioner, to discuss the power of integrating horses into the therapeutic process.
Melissa discovered Gestalt Equine Therapy first as a client when she was searching for a way to find more peace and connection within her body. In our conversation, she walks us through what a session looks like and highlights some of the breakthroughs she’s witnessed both as a client and practitioner.
Melissa expands on the healing capacity of horses and what we can learn from being in their presence. We also touch on clues that Gestalt Equine Therapy might be helpful for someone navigating menopause and entering their third act of life, which is Melissa’s area of focus.
Listen in to learn more about the profound healing power of Gestalt Equine Therapy.
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Dana Frost 00:07
Welcome to Vitally You, a podcast created to introduce you to the tools that will be your roadmap for feeling younger while growing older. I'm your host Dana frost, a wellness expert, life coach and energy medicine practitioner. Here's what you can expect conversations about vitality from the inside out with guest experts in the field of health, culture and spirituality and solo episodes along the way from me where I do deep dives into the topics of aging, heart intelligence, energy, medicine, and your innate capacity to heal. If you want to feel younger, while growing older, this is the place for you.
Dana Frost 00:52
Hi, everyone. I'm Dana Frost, your host of the Vitally You podcast. If you're tuning in, when this episode goes live, I'll be in Bali on an epic retreat. I'm really excited to share my reflections with everyone and if all goes as planned, I'll be coming to you live from Bali on next week's episode. And but this week, I have a really special guest for you. Melissa Clary is a former school psychologist who after raising her family returned to her love for horses. She studied equine Gestalt through the touched by a horse program in Elizabeth, Colorado. She currently works with women in times of transition with a focus on menopause. Her practice in the outskirts of Chicago is a place where women can find respite and healing as they move through life's challenges. Melissa was a client of Gestalt prior to becoming a practitioner with horses and found deep understanding through the use of somatic and neuro linguistics.
Dana Frost 01:51
She is currently studying to become a master of Gestalt, as she so truly believes in this healing modality. Before we welcome Alyssa, I want to thank lifewave x 39 stem cell activation patch technology for sponsoring the podcast. Learn more about how you can activate your own stem cells to behave like younger cells and reset your gene expression. You'll find a link in the show notes. Melissa, it's a real pleasure to have you on the show this week. Thank you for joining me.
Melissa Clary 02:25
Thank you. Happy to be here.
Dana Frost 02:27
Yeah. So for the listeners, we had quite the technological disturbance. before the show started. I mean, technological disturbances like I've literally never had before I start recording. So that was really interesting. So I'm, I'm assuming this is a really important episode for all of us. And Melissa, so I'm so curious to learn more about your work. So could you tell us how you came to be an equine Gestalt practitioner? Hmm,
Melissa Clary 02:59
sure. Well, I came at it first as a client. So I sat in the client chair, and my first six and I should back up a little bit. I did my Master's in psychoanalytic theory in Counseling and School Psychology. And I had been in psychoanalytic therapy for with different practitioners, but with one in particular for about 15 years. So traditional talk therapy. So a huge proponent of but for me, I had hit a mark, where I was wondering about was I experiencing joy was I at peace with my past, where was I? And it was save a lot of emails from different. I'm longtime horse girl, so a lot of different email chains for equine products, experiences, therapies, and one passed on the computer. And on a whim, I signed up for it and it was with an equine Gestalt practitioner in Arizona.
Melissa Clary 04:07
And I flew out there in my late 40s and sat as a client in a group experience with other women. This was in 2018 December and had a really profound and powerful journey. I don't even know how to describe it to you, but it was exactly what I needed. And soon I was applying to be a student. I'm a graduate of Melissa Pierce, she's out in Colorado. She runs the touched by a horse program. And she has three different trainings, equine facilitation, equine Gestalt, and then she also has a mastery of of Gestalt. And I'm currently have my equine Gestalt through her but I'm in my fourth year of Studying Gestalt with with my mentor and teacher there. So I came first Yeah.
Dana Frost 05:07
And so could you I want to I want you to describe what Gestalt equine Gestalt therapy is. But first, I want to know what changed internally before we were the client. And afterwards,
Melissa Clary 05:23
pretty simply what my experience with talk therapy had been talking around it talking through it, I had never had an experience of the pain, I had never felt it in my body. So it never left my body. So Gestalt is known for a phrase the body speaks first, which is interesting, because Gestalt was born out of Freud's work in the 40s. And now, that seems to be something front and center in the therapeutic world, is how our bodies keep the score. Yeah, but yeah, this book, The Body Keeps the Score. Yeah. So it's more about getting out of your head and into your body. And that's what the experience was, for me, was feeling it in my body and allowing for release. And really understanding how my background was playing into the foreground, the unfinished business of our lives. And sitting with a horse and an equine Gestalt therapist, it was the path that I needed to deal with the unfinished business and move forward. So
Dana Frost 06:39
that's really beautiful. Thank you. I think that that's such a poignant issue, or point, Melissa is metabolizing. And really feeling in the body, what we've experienced, because I always say the spine Keeps the Score. It's the library of everything that's ever happened to us. And actually, this morning on Instagram, one of my clients, had a post about her dad, and she was talking, her dad had visited her recently, and she was sharing how she's done so much work on her relationship with her dad. And she's so thankful that she's at this point where she really made peace in their relationship. And it made me think, and I think I commented on her post, if we don't make peace with our past, it will chase us, and it will chase us like an MF.
Dana Frost 07:33
And so isn't it interesting that really what's flourishing now, in terms of therapy, really, are these modalities that allow us to be present with our feelings with our past, and make peace with it and feel it in our body instead of, you know, being appear in our head, which is our cultural tendency is to operate from our head. So this is really interesting, Melissa.
Melissa Clary 08:03
And the beauty of horses is that they are large prey animals to survive, they have to live in their bodies, they have to be aware of their body in space, and also the herd bodies. And I think there's some of the most beautiful teachers for us, because of their, their senses, like they are always sensing what's around them, including us.
Dana Frost 08:34
Could you take us through the client experience? What is it that a client, you know, what can they expect when they would go to an equine Gestalt therapist?
08:44
So I work from a barn, so that will probably be the major differences. It's a horse barn. And a typical session will begin looking like talk therapy. So we'll be sitting, the client and I sitting face to face. And one of the first questions I'll ask is, how are you showing up today? Where are you today? And that really the begins the time. Gestalt is body centered. So we're talking about what's happening within the body where the client might feel pain. So semantics are important. I'm also looking at language, the neuro Linguistics of, of language, the Quds, the shoulds, the just, that's a big part of the session.
Melissa Clary 09:41
So I'm starting by looking for for clues and an entry into how to develop contact with the client how the client is showing up and where are they? The second half of the session is in partnership with the horse And the horses at free liberty in a round pen. And depending on what the client is entering, what they what is what they're bringing up in their current foreground, I watched the horse I watched how the horse interacts with that my watch the sensitivities. And often a discussion happens. And I'm always amazed at how powerful that part of the session is the the horse and the client.
Melissa Clary 10:35
Horses do a lot of amazing things. If we settle ourselves and ground ourselves and let them be, they look for congruency, they want us to be congruent. So I'll give you an example. I just had a client that I saw, a lot of the women that I see are in the menopause years. That's my, my niche. That's the love. I work with younger clientele as well. But that is really what I my focus. And my study is in the menopause years. And this particular client had an experience with with both parents, where she had been, I would say viewed verbally abused, she had been told a lot of things about herself. She was dumb, she was lazy. And she held on to these, you know, in her late 50s, early 60s, these beliefs about herself these very limiting beliefs, these interjects and we've done a lot of work about letting go of them how there was no truth to that.
Melissa Clary 11:45
And she was in the round pen with the horse. And she was saying some stem sentences, she was saying some things she believed about herself. And she had the horse following behind her very energetically. And I noticed that the horse stopped at one point. And I asked her and I said what, what just happened? And she said, I started to think about myself and not a very positive way, I started to fall back into my old ways of thinking my parents words of being you know, fat, lazy, stupid, started to resonate within me. And
Melissa Clary 12:34
I feel that's what horses really do so beautifully. They're these sentient, powerful beings, and they're always reading how congruent we are. Is our body showing how are thoughts are we living in congruence? See, they do a lot of other amazing things. But I thought that was a good example to to share of what a session will often look like.
Dana Frost 13:05
Yeah, that's really interesting, because they're only reading the energy.
13:09
Always, always. They do not understand necessarily everything we say. But they do understand our intentions. They read our intentions, in partnership with horses, and they're very large prey animals that eat grass. We are a natural predator for them. Our eyes are, you know, right here on our heads and theirs are on either side. And we've been able to domesticate a lot from them, but not their sense of hypervigilance, their sense of reading energy.
Melissa Clary 13:51
I love this partnership with horses. You know, I think the horse healing way that we are now has been growing. And I think for those that are suffering from real grief and loss and post traumatic stress disorder, that can't always access the words. It's a wonderful way with the help of a 1,200 pound animal to access your body. We talked a little bit about how the body speaks first, and really coming into the body is what I think horses allow. It's so great for us as humans.
Dana Frost 14:36
Yeah, so so it's the feedback that the client is getting from the horse that allows them to sink in and it's um, I know it's not biofeedback, but it's a little bit you get this feedback and so you're able to be more reflective and feel what's happening.
Melissa Clary 14:56
And we're looking always for awareness. We're the clients own awareness. So the style, the Gestalt approach is a little bit different than the psychoanalytic approach where it's a diagnosis. Gestalt is that the client is creative, resourceful, and whole. So right away at the start, that's how I see the client, how the horse sees the client, and they have the answers themselves. And their awareness and their experience of the session can be very much different than how I'm seeing it. Because they're really feeling into it. Yeah, did that. I hope that
Dana Frost 15:40
makes so much sense. And I did not know that foundation of Gestalt that the person is creative, resourceful, and whole. And I always say to my clients, you know, the answers The answers lie within your system, we are just mining data from your system through your own awareness. And so I really appreciate that because I think that we propagated a victim mentality in terms of therapy, and we ended there's a sense that we outsource our healing to other people. And whether it's a doctor or a psychiatrist, and that it creates a further, you know, mentality that I'm not capable. And it's along the victim mentality instead of their competent mentality. Hmm,
16:30
Absolutely. It's probably one of the reasons why I love Gestalt is that that's, you know, the basis of the approach. This is not to diminish past trauma. Past trauma definitely plays a role and how people are, you know, showing up today, you know,
Melissa Clary 16:51
Pain plus resistance is a big part of our suffering. And a lot of times people have ignored it pushed it down, said, That's just how I am. And Gestalt is really peeling that back and asking the question, you know, is that really, you know, how you are? Or is there a different path? And most clients can say, there's a different path after a few sessions. And then we work, what does that path look like for you? And where do you want to go? So we do vision work, we do work around values. And it's interesting, because I had never done values or vision work until I was in my late 40s, early 50s. I had never thought about my own values and what that meant to me. And it's beautiful to do that with a horse.
Dana Frost 17:50
Yeah. And so being present with the horse, is that a part of every session, Melissa?
Melissa Clary 17:56
Yes, yes. And it can look a little bit different each time. But the horse is always part of this session. Typically, like I said, we talk for a while first. And then in the horses, you know, reading the energy. I have one horse who it's a mayor, and she can hardly wait for a woman to get in the ring with her. It's like she just detects female energy. And I want to be a part of that. And she's just the most beautiful, beautiful healer. And she's had her own struggles in life, my mare. And life has not been easy for her. She's off the track, thoroughbred and highly sensitive, highly intelligent. And she's just a beautiful healer.
Dana Frost 18:54
That gives me the goosebumps.
Melissa Clary 18:57
Yeah, she's really, she's really something she's really, I stand in awe of her. And we started to touch on a little bit about like, being regulated nervous system being regulated. And
Melissa Clary 19:13
I found that a lot of clients that sit in front of me did not have the experience of them being a child and learning how to regulate their nervous systems, because they didn't have parents that allowed for that. The parents were not capable. And so when they're with a horse, I will see them reach out and put their hand on the horse's chest. And I just see the breathing change. There's been some studies that show that when horses and humans are together in a grounded way, our heartbeats slow down dramatically and match theirs. So I do think they offer that gift to us. It's a matter of getting to a point where we're willing to be aware and accept and experience the energy of it.
Dana Frost 20:12
Yeah, when you said the energy, the heart syncs up. That resonates. I do a lot of work with Heart Math. And yeah, yeah. So it would be really interesting to know how the energy resonance of a horse versus a human. And just I don't know, are you aware of any work around around that?
20:35
I believe there was a study done in 2017. And I would have to go back and look it up, I will tell you that horses read vibration. They are vibrational animals. And when we are in our lowest living form of vibration, which is shame, they pick that up quite easily. And I have seen horses approach someone who's experiencing a great level of shame. I have seen them do something called leaching, where it's almost like repetitive yawning. And it's almost if they're trying to remove that they want to live in harmony that's safe for the herd. And in many ways we've entered as part of their herd. So they're always working.
Melissa Clary 21:29
I mean, I've seen horses do chakra balancing. I've seen a woman who had a very difficult time finding her own voice in the world and her own truth. And the horse would just come to her and put the muzzle right there. On her throat chakra. Yes, yes. So it's, it's I'm always I mean, I know there's a documentary that's coming out about the healing capacity of horses. And it begins, the person who's developing it begins the documentary with I have seen miracles every day with horses and humans. And I'm just I'm so honored that I get to, to do this work. I believe so strongly. And I'm so passionate about it.
Dana Frost 22:19
Yeah, it's, I can feel that and I in a, I've experienced it to be powerful. When I did my master coach training, and we had equine therapy. There was something I wanted to ask you, oh, talk a little bit about the herd mentality because one of the aspects I think that we're missing as humans is that connectedness and, you know, the sense of divisiveness and in our in the American psyche, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, by your own bootstraps. And so talk to us a little bit about the herd mentality.
22:59
Yeah, it's so fascinating to me. So, you know, we in the United States, we have horses that live in the wild. They're not necessarily protected, but they do live in bands and families. And they're, you know, you've probably heard the phrase an alpha mare. There's a lead mare in the herd, and the babies or the elder horses are in the middle. And the females will protect the outsides as well as the boys and the stallion. And they're in constant communication with one another. Whether through vocalization of a weenie, or through, you know, their ears are always telling, you know, the story, and their ears work independently of each other. And they're constantly sending signals to stay safe to keep each other safe. And it's a family system.
Melissa Clary 24:01
But I would say it's much much more with that because they will pick up orphan horses, they will protect an elderly so there's a lot of wisdom in the herd. It's a collective that they really depend on it's yes, there might be individuals that serve a greater need like the stallion. But the collective is what what is so important to them and they form deep deep bonds with each other. They mourn, they mourn the loss they grief in in domesticated barns were like where I am. I do see bonded horses just yesterday, I lead my mare out and my gelding that lives, you know right next door and they can greet each other through the fence. He got upset he wasn't ready for her to go out for the day. His turn was coming, but he let me know that He wanted to be with her. So I love how nature is always talking to us through animals. So yeah, those there is.
Dana Frost 25:09
So I have was there a message for you yesterday that was personal through that?
Melissa Clary 25:15
Yes. He's interesting. He, like I said, my mayor has been through a lot of trauma. So her needs are she's attended to medically and emotionally. And he was letting me know that he also wanted to be attended to I'm pretty sure. And it didn't necessarily have to be me. It could be his, his girlfriend that I was leading away from him. But he was loud and clear
Dana Frost 25:43
in that, and so who so most of your work is with menopausal women, which I think you know, that's that's a real opportunity. Many years menopausal postmenopausal and and you know, I think for most of the women that I talked to it really that transition starts in Peri menopausal because there are so many physiological symptoms that that women experience. And what are some of the clues that a woman might have that would be indicators that wow, maybe equine therapy is for me, and maybe I should check this out.
26:21
It's interesting, because a lot of women come to me in the third act, for the simple reason that their bodies are yelling, for the first time, they're having physical, and it's causing a huge disruption in their life, maybe the biggest disruption. And what they're finding is that they haven't, for years paid attention to their bodies, either they were raising children or working on a career or maybe caretaking for their own parents, but life has been very, very, very busy. And they're starting to listen. And maybe they have more time that they usually maybe the kids have left the house or the career is winding down or they've gone part time, where there's been a great loss, and grief. And so they'll show up and we start looking at the past, it's often the first place that they go to. And there's often a lot of unresolved things that come up whether in you know, childhood, the teenage years.
Melissa Clary 27:34
And it's interesting to me how it often coincides with those menopause years, where the keeping it down the implosion, it just can't happen anymore. It's all starts to come up. implosion is a gestalt defense mechanism. And I've had people say, you know, I've been white knuckling for so long. And my grip is starting to loosen, and I'm afraid and that's why I'm here. I do think menopause is a time for great discovery and great healing.
Dana Frost 28:13
I agree with you. I've Yes, I it was in my own life. And I see that with clients and other women. So thank you. We are nearing the end of our conversation, Melissa. And it's you've given us just something so interesting to consider as a modality that we can access, right?
Melissa Clary 28:36
It's very powerful. You know, when you're with a 1200 pound animal, it's hard not to feel into yourself. And you can't lie to a 1200 pound animal either. So it's really it's a beautiful, beautiful modality. And I'm so glad that it's getting more and more
Dana Frost 28:58
exposure. Well, thank you for your work. And Melissa, where can people find you?
29:04
So, heels down healing is my website and it's also my Instagram. So you can find me there. Okay. Heel stamp healing.
Dana Frost 29:13
Yeah. Wonderful. So I do have a question that I ask all my guests at the end of the episode. What does feeling younger while growing older mean to you, Melissa?
Melissa Clary 29:24
Oh, I can answer that liking myself more and more. Oh, that's beautiful. That is what I have found is that I like myself more and more every day.
Dana Frost 29:36
That is beautiful. What a wonderful way to end. Thank you so much for being a guest this week, Melissa. Thank you everyone for joining us this week on the vital you podcast. If you're enjoying these episodes, please leave a review, hit subscribe and share relevant episodes with the people you love. Until next week, I'm streaming love from my heart to yours