We’re pleased to share that Paula Josa-Jones will be returning to The Mane Intent to offer a two-day workshop entitled Embodied Equine Experiencing – Expanding Body, Mind and Spirit with Horses on Monday, June 12 and Tuesday, June 13, 2023. See registration details on our Calendar here. If you participated in Paula’s workshop hosted by The Mane Intent in 2019, then you know Paula is an engaging and knowledgeable facilitator who offers up a unique and fun experience for personal discovery and greater self-awareness.
Paula shares: “From my many years of working with horses, I have a deep appreciation for the flexibility and recuperative abilities of the nervous systems of these extraordinary beings. Even though they are prey animals with a finely attuned ability to track their environment, on their own they do not tend to develop fixed emotional and somatic responses – they are master improvisors in a fluid, relational world. That is one of the many lessons that they can share with us.”
“Horses can help us to understand ourselves as partners and cohabitants in an inter-species world in which the language is movement and touch. They mirror our physical and emotional expression and show us when we are “out of sync” – when our inside feelings and outside behaviors are not in harmony. The non-judgmental presence of a horse helps us calm and ground ourselves physically and emotionally and understand more clearly what we are communicating with our bodies and minds,” she adds.
“Horses can help us become more comfortable in our own skin, more trustworthy to ourselves and others. Being seen and felt by a horse helps us to see ourselves more clearly and develop a more conscious and compassionate inner awareness. With their help, we can find a more reliable sense of physical and emotional balance, resilience, and ease,” explains Paula.
This 2-day workshop combines working with horses with somatic movement and touch practices that expand our awareness of what our bodies are feeling and expressing. Grounding experience in the body gives us a clear and vibrant sense of our sensual connection to the earth, each other, and ourselves. By cultivating an improvisational spirit of exploration and play, we gain access to greater expression and openness. Moving mindfully restores qualities of connectivity and confidence by dissolving the separation between inner and outer experiencing. Both days will combine movement and touch exploration with working with horses.
This workshop is suitable for adults 18 years plus. No previous experience with somatic movement, dance or horses is necessary. This is a small group offering with a limited number of spots available.
EMBODIED EQUINE EXPERIENCING helps to:
- Learn how to track your body’s responses and how to settle when activated.
- Build feelings of confidence, mindfulness and a spirit of improvisation.
- Connect with the horse using touch and movement practices that are intuitive and playful, and deepen a feeling of ease and flow for both you and the horse.
- Build trust in your ability to create emotional attunement with the horse.
- Discover how softness and listening create physical and emotional balance.
- Create a more conscious and compassionate relationship with your body.
About Paula Josa-Jones:
Paula Josa-Jones, MA, CLMA, RSMET, SEP TTEAM is a choreographer and movement artist and brings an improvisational perspective to all her work with horses and humans. She believes that this approach helps deepen connection to others and ourselves by opening access to our innate, intuitive, and creative selves.
Paula is a Certified Laban Movement Analyst (CLMA) and a registered Somatic Movement Educator and Therapist (RSME/T) accredited by ISMETA, the International Somatic Movement Education and Therapy Association. She is a Guild certified Tellington TTEAM Practitioner I and a Somatic Experiencing© practitioner, trained in the trauma recovery work of Dr. Peter Levine. She has studied with Body-Mind Centering with Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen and others for the past 40 years. Her writings on movement and dance have been published in Contact Quarterly, Dressage Today, Currents and numerous other publications. Her work is featured in the books Affect, Animals and Autists by Marla Carlson, and Because Art, by John Killacky. Paula’s book, Our Horses, Ourselves: Discovering the Common Body is published by Trafalgar Square Books. Learn more about Paula’s work here.
