Born of a lifelong kinship with horses, Alma Miel is an emerging project that encompasses my various ways of working with and learning from them. Horses are phenomenally generous and patient, giving us humans the gift of presence and honesty, while co-regulating with us and helping our bodies and minds release traumas and transform stuck patterns within us.
Their love and mighty hearts require that we humans bring our highest capacities, integrity, nobleness, and humility to our interactions with them, as they deserve nothing less. When horses and people come together, beautiful and unexpected things can happen that uplift both human and equine beings.
In this spirit, Alma Miel offers:
- Equine-collaborative therapy for humans.
- Colt starting and trauma-responsive healing for horses.
- Horse-human connection & play.
- Horse “training”: however, I only work with horses whose human counterparts are willing to do trauma healing or personal transformation work within themselves, if we see that that is part of what is going on with the horse or the relationship.
When working with an equine client, I ask that the human be willing to do their own healing work as well, whether with me or others, since so often the “issues” that are showing up with our horse companions exist within a contextual field that includes our own human traumas, fears, insecurities, and longings.
Both human and equine clients are within my scope of practice, as I have completed extensive training/certification in both psychotherapy and horse training.
Most recently, I have been apprenticing with the Scarpati family in Argentina, becoming certified in their method of Doma India Scarpati, an indigenous style of horse training that is unique, effective, elegant, noble, and full of love.
I am also on the Practitioner Track in Equusoma, a training in horse-human trauma recovery integrating Somatic Experiencing techniques and principles.
I’m currently exploring how to bring my therapeutic work with people and horses together, so as to offer equine-collaborative sessions to human clients, and human-collaborative sessions with horse clients: it’s emerging organically, so if you’re interested please let me know and maybe it can be part of our next steps together.
As a horse-crazy kid longing for riding bareback across wide open expanses of earth and sky, I found myself instead stuck in Silicon Valley, anathema to my soul, with no access to opportunities to try out the ways of riding and training that I imagined. My amazing mom finally got me to a barn when I was 11, where I was able to work in exchange for lessons, eventually getting into show jumping and riding the horses that no one else wanted to get on.
This made me a scrappy rider and ever more devoted to these incredible beings, but also left me yearning for something else that I didn’t see anyone doing or interested in…the magic, the mystery, the riding without tack, the bitless/bridleless that now is so easily inspiring and accessible but that in those days before computers or social media was much harder to find if you didn’t happen to live in a place where more ancient and beautiful styles of horsemanship existed. Sometimes I get down on myself that it’s taken me until age 47 to start training, riding, and learning with horses in the ways I always wanted, especially now that YouTube and Instagram have made it easy to learn on one’s own and get inspired by (or compare yourself to) so many incredible, gorgeous, athletic, kind, ethical people out there playing with horses in ways that are informed by ethology and collaboration. But hey, better late than never, right?! I want my kids to see their mom doing things that would have have probably come more easily and been better advised in my 20s, but doing them nonetheless: and now with the benefit of more maturity and experience.
