Brumby Equine-Assisted Therapy

05/06/2026

Awareness in Practice: Embodiment & Relational Presence

🌱What happens when we slow down enough to truly notice?

This one-day experiential workshop invites participants to explore awareness through nature, embodied experience, and connection alongside horses.

Through guided experiential activities, participants are supported to slow down and become more aware of what is happening within themselves, around them, and in relationship with others.

Together, we will explore:
🌱Present-moment awareness
🌱Nervous system regulation
🌱Embodied noticing
🌱Relational awareness
🌱Grounding and connection
🌱The relationship between mind, body, and environment

Working alongside horses offers a unique opportunity for awareness to become more immediate, embodied, and observable.

At the heart of this workshop is the understanding that awareness is the foundation for growth and change. Often, our ways of being, relating, protecting ourselves, avoiding discomfort, and meeting our needs happen automatically and outside of our awareness. Many of these patterns developed for good reasons and helped us navigate our world. However, when they become automatic, they can begin to limit our choices.

Awareness helps bring these patterns into consciousness.

We may notice we hold our breath when anxious, withdraw when overwhelmed, say “yes” when we want to say “no”, or find ourselves repeating familiar ways of relating to others. Through awareness, what was once automatic becomes visible.

As awareness grows, choice becomes possible.

Rather than reacting automatically, we begin to have greater capacity to respond with intention, curiosity, and flexibility. This workshop is an invitation to explore what happens when we slow down, notice, and become more present to ourselves, others, and the world around us.

📅 Saturday 12th September
📅 Sunday 13th September

📍 Kanimbla, Blue Mountains NSW

Open to anyone wanting to deepen their awareness and presence in a grounded and experiential way. No horse experience is needed.

For more information:
📧 [email protected]
📞 0413 781 727

🌐 Brumby Equine Assisted Therapy⁠

🌱 Nurturing Minds 🌱
Holistic Nature-Based Therapeutic Approaches in Mental Health & Wellbeing.
🙎🏻‍♀️Counselling
🐴Equine - Assisted
🌿Nature - Based

🔗Learn more: link in bio
📍 Blue Mountains, NSW 2790

04/06/2026

From the moment we enter this world, we are held. Before we have words, before we can care for ourselves, our survival depends on connection. We learn about safety, belonging, and relationship through being with others.

We are wired for connection, belonging, and social interaction. We have never existed on this planet as isolated individuals. We have always been part of something larger.

Our nervous system learns what is safe through being with someone who is steady, present, and attuned to us.

When that is there, the body settles. Connection feels okay. Relationships feel possible.

When it is not, the nervous system adapts. It learns to stay on guard, shut down, or rely only on itself. Over time, connection can begin to feel uncomfortable, or even unsafe.

Yet the need for connection never disappears. Instead, our experiences of closeness can become fractured, and the walls we build for protection can grow higher. Protection from disappointment, hurt, rejection, loss or something els.

This is where working alongside horses can create a lived experience of something different.

Horses respond to what is happening in the present moment. They are highly attuned to shifts within the nervous system and offer feedback without judgement, shame, pressure, or expectation. They do not require you to perform, prove yourself, or be someone different.

Instead, horses create opportunities for us to experiment, explore, and stay curious about our moment-to-moment experience. And when something softens, even slightly, the horse often responds to that too.

That moment is different.

It is not talked through or analysed.

It is experienced.

Through invitation and exploration a nervous system that has learned connection is unsafe can begin to experience a version of connection that does not overwhelm, demand, or push. That can be an experience of co-regulation.

And when the body experiences this repeatedly, in a way that feels steady and safe, a natural shift can begin.

Not because we have told ourselves a new story, but because the body has experienced something different enough to begin creating one.

🌐www.brumbyeat.com.au

02/06/2026

Our availability is regularly changing, and we currently have immediate capacity to welcome new enquiries.

Sessions are available at our Kanimbla property, where counselling can be supported by our co-therapists, our herd, alongside nature-based experiences. We also offer room-based counselling and nature-based counselling options.

We also have availability for room-based and walk-and-talk counselling at our second location, Waratah Holistic Health in Katoomba, every Wednesday, with most morning appointments currently available.

If this is something you have been curious to explore, or if you have noticed yourself, your child, or a loved one needing some extra support, please feel welcome to reach out.

📧 [email protected]
📞 0411 241 166
🌿 Brumby Equine Assisted Therapy & Waratah Holistic Health Counselling

✅ACA Registered Counsellor
✅EAT Certified
✅Insured
✅NDIS Registered Provider

NDIS participants, private clients, children, adolescents and adults welcome.

01/06/2026

I always leave my professional training feeling full and enriched by the generosity, openness, and willingness within our Gestalt training group. The theme of this workshop was capacity, growth, limitations, strengths, discomfort, and support, both professionally and personally.

One of the students shared an analogy that beautifully captured the growth process. They spoke about how infants learn to walk. Before they can walk independently, they fall many times. Sometimes they hold onto furniture for support. Sometimes they hold a parent’s hand. Eventually, through practice, repetition, and experience, they develop the capacity to take steps on their own. Like learning to walk, growth is rarely smooth or linear. It often involves uncertainty, mistakes, setbacks, experimentation, and trying again.

We frequently hear phrases such as, “discomfort is where growth happens” or “push yourself outside your comfort zone.” While I understand the intention behind these ideas, I also believe that discomfort alone does not create growth.

Discomfort without safety may not lead to growth.

Discomfort without curiosity may not lead to growth.

Discomfort without the opportunity to pause, reflect, and integrate may not lead to growth.

Discomfort without support can become overwhelming rather than developmental.

Growth seems to emerge when challenge is balanced with enough safety, support, and awareness to stay present with what is unfolding. It is often through this process that we expand our capacity, deepen our understanding of ourselves, and discover that we are capable of more than we previously believed.

Perhaps growth is not about avoiding discomfort or forcing ourselves beyond our limits.

Perhaps growth is about gradually increasing our capacity to stay with what is unfamiliar, uncertain, or challenging while remaining connected to ourselves and the supports available to us.

Growth is not a destination but an ongoing process. Capacity develops over time, often through small and imperfect steps. Like learning to walk, meaningful growth is rarely achieved in isolation and is often shaped by the experiences, relationships, and support that help us keep moving forward.

29/05/2026

I really appreciated reading this article and wanted to share it.

The article was written by Camilla Mowbray and Sarah, both part of the team at Equine Assisted Therapy Australia (EATA).

EATA community, has made a significant contribution to the development, professionalism, and ethical foundations of Equine Assisted Therapy in Australia. What I continue to value is EATA’s commitment to supporting the wellbeing, safety, and welfare of both humans and horses within the therapeutic space.

For anyone interested in learning more about Equine Assisted Therapy and it’s foundations, I highly recommend giving it a read:

https://magazine.theaca.net.au/collections/emag-2-4/equine-assisted-therapy-australia?fbclid=IwZnRzaASGzZBleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBzcnRjBmFwcF9pZAo2NjI4NTY4Mzc5AAEejDJnzdxCTyksyuVc6uSvz5p38StWrKbzqueca4dQYd69pzpVliVg-WZuMK0_aem_ipyhSXLnv2Fl50LeL81UBQ

Equine assisted therapy australia is transforming mental health support. Discover its history, benefits, and how it is shaping the future of therapy today. (154 characters)

28/05/2026

The increase of children and young people experiencing mental health challenges continues to grow. These challenges can include anxiety, emotional dysregulation, trauma, low self-esteem, social disconnection, behavioural difficulties, and struggles with confidence and emotional expression.

Research continues to highlight the importance of early intervention, showing that supporting children earlier in life can help reduce the long-term impact of mental health difficulties into adolescence and adulthood.

Studies exploring Equine Assisted Therapy (EAT) and equine-assisted interventions continue to show promising outcomes for children and young people across emotional, behavioural, social, and psychological wellbeing. Research has identified improvements in emotional regulation, resilience, confidence, communication, social skills, self-awareness, coping capacities, and relationship building.

For many children, particularly those who find it difficult to engage in traditional talk-based therapy alone, Equine Assisted Therapy can offer a more experiential, relational, and regulating environment.

Working alongside horses can support children in building emotional awareness, confidence, connection, nervous system regulation, boundaries, and a greater sense of safety within themselves and in relationships.

As research in this field continues to grow, Equine Assisted Therapy is increasingly being recognised as a valuable and supportive intervention for children and young people experiencing emotional, social, and mental health challenges.

🌱📚References:
Taylor & Francis – Healing in relationships, the power of equine-assisted intervention

Frontiers in Psychiatry – Equine-assisted psychotherapy and adolescent mental health

26/05/2026

We often learn how to hold the heaviness of pain and stay with discomfort, yet sometimes forget to hold the moments of lightness too.

The moments where being held feels safe.
The moments that show us there is hope.
The moments that remind us how far we have come.
The moments that validate something true within our core.
The moments of giving gratitude.
The moments when we notice ourselves practising compassion.
The moments where we choose to say no with grace.
The moments when we decide not to plant that seed in our garden.
The moments where we take a different path.
The moments where we practise self-care in its simplest form.
The moments where we notice the silence and no longer fear it.

And the moments where, with complete contentment, we choose ourselves.

As therapists, we often build the capacity to stay with discomfort, learning how to sit alongside pain, uncertainty, grief, fear, and vulnerability, trusting that with enough safety, presence, and time, something can begin to soften or unfold.

But there is also something important in learning to stay with moments of softness, connection, joy, calm, and contentment.

Sometimes these moments can feel unfamiliar or fleeting, especially if we have spent much of our lives in survival. Yet they matter deeply too.

They remind us that growth is not only found in what we survive, but also in our ability to notice, receive, and remain present with what feels gentle, nourishing, and light.

25/05/2026

Anxiety disorders are currently the most common mental health condition experienced in Australia.

Anxiety is more than just worry. It can impact the whole body and nervous system through overwhelm, racing thoughts, hypervigilance, emotional dysregulation, muscle tension, difficulty sleeping, and a persistent sense of feeling on edge.

Because anxiety lives not only in the mind, but also within the body and nervous system, many therapeutic approaches are now recognising the importance of experiential, relational, and body-based support.

Equine-assisted therapy, can support individuals to become more attuned to their nervous system responses, body sensations, emotions, and patterns of stress in real time.

Horses are highly sensitive to non-verbal communication, emotional shifts, and physiological changes. Through guided interactions alongside horses and nature, individuals may begin to experience grounding, emotional regulation, increased self-awareness, and moments of connection and safety within the body.

For some people, support does not always begin through words alone. Sometimes it begins through connection, relationship, movement, environment, and feeling safe enough within the body to slow down and notice what is happening in the present moment. 🌱🐴