What an honour to have Sarah Schlote, founder of EQUUSOMA™ on the podcast! In this potent episode, Sarah shares about her work with Somatic Experiencing®, attachment theory, neuroscience, and trauma-informed horsemanship as they apply to humans and horses... whether horse and rider, during groundwork, or in equine-assisted therapy/learning. We cover a lot of ground, and as you’ll hear during this episode, I can’t wait to take part in an EQUUSOMA™ program with Sarah in the future and have her back on the podcast for more of her “couples therapy” for humans and their horses.

Sarah Schlote, MA, RP, CCC, SEP is a Registered Psychotherapist, trauma therapist and Somatic Experiencing® Practitioner who has been involved in the field of animal-assisted interventions since 2003. A former St. John Ambulance Therapy Dogs volunteer, her main focus aside from her in-office private practice is partnering with horses to support health and healing. She is the founder of EQUUSOMA™, a training model integrating Somatic Experiencing®, attachment theory and equine-assisted trauma recovery, and has started promoting Therapist-Assisted Horsemanship™, bringing a trauma and attachment lens as well as trauma-informed horsemanship principles to improve the relationship between owners and their horses (and their coaches and instructors)

Learn more about Sarah and her work at www.equusoma.com and www.sarahschlote.com (coming soon)

Correction: When discussing anthropomorphism, Sarah suggested adopting a different lens and used the words animalocentrism or mammaliacentrism.  These terms were used in error; the words should have been animalomorphism or mammaliamorphism (a term she coined in 2017); that is, looking at human and animal behaviour from the lens of our shared mammalian traits/form (commonalities as described in affective neuroscience, polyvagal theory, and other frameworks) as opposed to looking at animals through a human lens.