‘FEEL’ isn’t learned, it’s activated in your nervous system!
There are millions of horse-professionals (and professional horse-lovers) out there with huge hearts overflowing with passion. We are all doing the best we can to help horses live their best lives, and I believe I’ve found the missing link…
The Somatics I teach (called Hanna Somatics®) is a very specific way of activating the nervous system to trigger the natural reflex of Pandiculation. This is how we reverse Motor-Sensory Amnesia, which is an acquired collection of chronic unconscious muscle tension and skewed body awareness that builds up over time and blocks us from being able to Feel and move like we were born to.
This revolutionary and UNIQUE Somatic work helps both horses and humans get out of pain, reduce muscle tension, correct crookedness, restore body awareness and improve posture, BUT we do not do it together at the same time. It’s something you learn to do for/with your own body, or learn how to do from the ground with a horse to help them.
Hanna Somatics ‘wakes up’ the whole motor-sensory system and gives humans a direct way to work with the part of our brain involved in regulating our posture, controlling our energetic field and having ‘Feel’ with horses.
For horses it brings them out of a ‘shut-down’ or hyper-stimulated state, helps them find their way out of Learned Helplessness, and actualizes their potential as athletes and intelligent beings.
The act of doing Equine Hanna Somatics®, where we guide the horse through a session of targeted voluntary Pandiculation exercises, is a deeply pleasant and bonding experience between horse and handler, and can be very meditative for the person doing it.
At the same time, the nervous systems of the horse and handler begin to merge and harmonize while doing this work, and the approach we use, which is based on inviting the horse to participate willingly, includes asking permission, getting consent and not using traditional pressure or aids to direct the horse, which brings us to a whole new level of inter-species connection, and opens the door for incredibly complex and rewarding conversations and experiences with horses…
It’s my mission and passion to get every horse to experience the amazing benefits of Hanna Somatics by teaching their owners and trainers to be their own ‘bodyworkers’ and to empower every equestrian to take back control of their own body and health by learning to use Somatic Movement to re-write our own patterns and awaken our natural abilities to Feel and move without pain…
If any of this has resonated with you, then you have found your home and we welcome you with pricked ears, open arms and enthusiastic squeals. And probably a green smear or two.
Hi, I’m Alissa.
Let’s get to know each other!
Things I love
• The smell of horses (do I even need to type this one?).
- The smell of horses (do I even need to type this one?).
- I love a good scenic drive and that’s my favorite time to do my deep thinking. I like to imagine I’m riding a horse through wild country (or sometimes on golf courses, there, I said it!).
- I might be a little obsessed with pumpernickel bagels.
- Boots or barefoot most of the time (just like my horses!)
- Coffee. Permaculture. Neuroscience…
Things I could do without
- Chickens in the barn – just not for me.
- Dry lips…I can’t handle it. I have to have chapstick with me at all times.
- My kids getting up so dang early in the mornings…don’t they know sleeping in is amazing?
- Eating Uni…do you know what that is? Never been a fan.
I can’t wait to learn more about what makes you…you!
My fave > things
I created FEEL-EMBODIED in an effort to have a positive effect on the world.
By expanding Connections, Awareness and Empathy…
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I didn’t always have it
so easy with horses…
I was a riding instructor and horse re-habber, burning the candle at both ends running my own barn in Hawaii when my life changed: one of my horses was having an off day when I was scheduled to take a friend-of-a-friend on a dreamy beach trail ride… and that was the day I discovered Hanna Somatics.
Fast forward three years and I had become a certified Equine Hanna Somatics®(EHS) practitioner, and I was helping horses rapidly recover from ‘mysterious lamenesses’ and ‘last-resort’ situations on the regular by helping them to un-learn their patterns of chronic tension.
Fast forward a bit more, and I started co-teaching the EHS professional training program that certifies practitioners, and I had a busy schedule flying back and forth to Europe teaching clinics and working hands-on with dressage horses, race horses, trail horses, and even sport horses on the path to becoming Olympic athletes!
Along the way, I was starting to work more and more with the riders, (and their partners, students and employees) to help them use what I knew to get out of chronic pain, ditch stiffness, feel great and ride like they were born to ride… and I stumbled head over heels into the discovery that THIS was the way to develop Feel 100 times faster! By literally exercising our ‘feel muscles’ (aka the sensing-feeling and moving control-center of our brains).
Now, I’m driven to help other equestrians, bodyworkers, instructors and other professionals in the horse industry to discover the ease and freedom they can access using the natural reflexes they were born with (aka science!), AND to help all their horses do the same.
It took me years and a happy not-so-accidental path to find this stuff out and start using it to finally get the kind of results with horses and for my students that we have all been dreaming about. But now that I know and have had a decade of practice, I know just how to teach it to Y-O-U in much less time. I can’t wait to help you become the rider and partner of your horses dreams.
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