Parallel Effects Equine

Two years ago my body stopped being something I could manage from the neck up.

Four major episodes in fourteen months. The kind that take you out completely: hemiplegia, the world tilting, the ground disappearing. Strong medication was the only available answer. Something in me knew that was not the path I was willing to take.
So I went looking for something else.

What I found, I did not expect. A practitioner working with somatic body-based process. From my very first session something happened that I had not experienced in any of the many things I had already tried: the meditation, the yoga, the breathing, the self-help practices that I had approached with the same determined willingness I brought to everything.

My body had a say.

It wasn't being overridden or managed or asked to perform a particular kind of healing. It was being listened to. Gradually, not dramatically, not overnight, something began to shift. A little more energy. Less fog. The tingling in my face slowly settling. The constant low hum of fear beginning to loosen its grip.

I have not had a major episode since. I know there are no guarantees what life will bring but having a foundation and living again is everything.
I tell you this not because it is a remarkable story. I tell you this because it is the only reason I do this work. I have been on both sides of this process. I know from the inside what it feels like when the mind has been overriding the body for so long that the body finally breaks through with force. I know what it feels like when the body is finally given permission to lead.

That is not a credential.

It is a conversion. The thing underneath everything I now offer.

Come join us! Me — Michelle and my intuitive herd (Swayze, Jimmy, Two Socks and Whip) 🐴🐴🐴🐴 for The Equine Effect Fall Experience October 17th, 2026! Deepening into understanding the inner workings of your mind

Untangling your mind: Where thought becomes choice.

More info at www.paralleleffects.net

Any horse person will tell you that their horses have made them a better person. Working with horses builds your patience and your out of box thinking skills to name a few. Mine have taught me the gift of pausing life for a second or two. Whether it is pausing to capture of picture of a moment you enjoy, or pausing and taking in what is happening in the moment and living in it. Taking the time to slow down and enjoy the life you are living is a skill we can all keep working on. And I will. 🫶🏼

www.paralleleffects.net

Grief that hides in silence still takes up space in your body. You don’t have to explain why it hurts to a horse for it to be seen. 🧠

Your nervous system doesn’t heal by understanding— it heals by feeling safe. Horses offer that space. No pressure. No performance. Just presence.
When no one else sees it, they sense it. You don’t need the right words for them. You only need to show up as you are.

Comment or send a DM to work with me as a trauma-informed Equine Assisted Development Facilitator with the presence of horses. 🐴

Most people, when they hear that horses are involved in healing work, assume they understand what that means.

The horse as mirror. The horse reflecting your patterns back to you so you can examine them intellectually. The horse as a novel backdrop for the insights you were going to arrive at anyway, just with more fresh air and a better story to tell afterward.
That is not what this is.

The horse is a co-facilitator in the process. A living nervous system whose presence does something measurable and physiological to your nervous system before a single intentional thing has happened. Before you have spoken a word. Before I have done anything. Before you have even decided how you feel about being there.

Heart rates settle. Breath slows. The body begins to arrive in the present moment because it is in the presence of a being that exists nowhere else but here. Horses live in the present completely. That is not a poetic observation. It is a biological fact. They are prey animals whose survival has always depended on full presence in the current moment. They cannot afford to be anywhere else.

Your nervous system knows this without being told.
Something in you responds to being near an animal that is not performing, not managing, not operating from behind a layer of protection. The horse is exactly what it is, in exactly this moment. For a human nervous system that has been braced and overriding and managing for a very long time, that kind of presence is not just calming.

It is disarming.

This is why the horse is not a metaphor. Not a tool. Not a teaching aid designed to illustrate something you could have learned in a different room.

The horse is the work.

Time with horses teaches what regulation really feels like—safety, presence, and connection without pressure. Your nervous system remembers that. And that’s where healing begins

In the quiet rhythm of a horse’s breath, the nervous system finds its way home.

Regulation looks like slowing down, soft eyes, deep breaths… and a horse beside you. 🐎🤍

Come join us — Bridgette at Guage Yoga and my intuitive herd (Swayze, Jimmy, Two Socks and Whip) 🐴🐴🐴🐴 for The Equine Effect Fall Experience Septemeber 29th, 2026!

Join us for yoga, horse facilitated sound bowl meditation and more. No yoga experience needed. Everyone is welcome!

More info at www.paralleleffects.net