I am Anita. I am a certified Eponaquest Instructor, EAGALA Instructor, Yoga teacher, OneHorseLife Teacher and a certified Health Coach.

For most of my 47-year long life, I have been around, loving, enjoying, riding, playing with, been curious about and learning from horses.

Attending a traditional riding school at a young age left me with many more questions than answers on how to connect with these wonderful animals.

I bought my first horse with my first salary from my first job as an Engineer in Water & Environmental Planning. Inferno was, what I later realized very similar to myself, a very thin and stressed horse, who only knew how to run very fast – with poor brakes! Therefore, I started searching, searching for knowledge on how to help her to become the best horse she could be – and how to make myself the best horse-owner I could be.

The search for knowledge has not always been easy as I found that the knowledge I was searching for was not always easily accessible. It has taken me on several journeys, some far away abroad to foreign countries. There have been many incredible horse-people that has inspired me through the years, people like; Carolyn Resnick, Linda Kohanov, Anna Marciniak, Klaus F. Hempfling, Fredrik Pignon, Jean Francois Pignon, Marc Rashid, Bill Dorrance, Marjike De Jong, Karen Rolf and Alexander Nevzorov, and Stina Herberg, to mention a few.

After a period of searching and learning, I increasingly came to the conclusion that the greatest teachers of them all – was my horses!

What we can learn from the horses is so infinitely more valuable than what we can teach them!

Throughout the years, it has become more and more evident to me how strong, positive and important the influence from my horses has been in my life. There was a period in my life were I was exposed to quite stressful events in both my personal and professional life. An airplane crash pushed both my body and soul through trauma. Several years as an emergency humanitarian aid worker in war zones and places exposed to natural disasters subjected me to severe burnout and PTSD.

Having been subjected to these stressful events in my life, every time I went to my horse, riding her or just being with her, I started to notice that the only thing REAL that existed was the two of us: My horse and I. Nothing else was important.

In fact, that horse helped me to find my way back to myself. More than any other therapy could have done. Just by being a horse!

One day, during a horse trainer event, I met a shaman woman. She wrote the name “Linda Kohanov” and the title of Linda’s wonderful book “The Tao of Equus” in my notebook. I didn’t even know there was something called Horse Assisted Therapy at that point. Coming home from that event, I started to read Linda’s book. I was stunned about how much I resonated with her story and from my own experience with the incredible healing power of horses. I started to look for opportunities to learn more, and this brought me on several journeys to Germany, England and finally to Linda’s place in the desert in Arizona. In all these places I visited, I met some wonderful horses and people. The energy surrounding these events felt wonderful, peaceful, respectful and understanding. I proudly received my Eponaquest Instructor training certification in 2015.

I still enjoy training horses. I have an intention to make these new ways of horse training built on friendship and mutual communication more accessible to people.

However, what originally started as a search for knowledge on how to train horses, has made me realize that what is more important, is what we can learn from them.

My desire has become to facilitate people to experience the partnership that can exist between human and horses. A partnership where boundaries are mutually respected, where emotions are understood as the language of connection and interaction. To teach humans about reconnecting with their deepest intuition, and with nature, inviting horses as our teachers.

In these days when our planet is threatened by manmade climate changes and global warming, a result of humans turning their back to their origin and mother earth, it is time to reconnect with nature and make the ancient wisdom help us back into balance. Like a friend of mine once said; Man and nature can never be divided because man is nature!

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Anita will be one of the facilitators at the very first EPONA workshop from 25th of February till the 2nd of March, 2018. Learn more here

I am very excited to meet Anita and Caroline here in February. Let me know if you are interested to join, this workshop has six places.

Our nation was called Yurumein before the British invaded and changed our name. During the workshop I will share the unique, strong and shocking story of our island which is today called St. Vincent.

Much sunshine from all of us

Stina