Curiosity Over Fear: Building Resilience in Horses and Humans | Kira Julius | EAW 52
Equine Assisted World with Rupert IsaacsonShow Notes
✨ "The healing process is there in service of your life, not the other way around. Do the healing in order to live." – Kira Julius Kira Julius is a German-Danish horse trainer and equine assisted practitioner whose career has taken her from working young horses in Tanzania at 16, to eight years alongside Australian warmblood specialist Will Rogers — first in the Netherlands, then Germany — to therapeutic work with autistic children and families across Germany, Denmark, Ireland, and the UK. She now runs her own practice through horserealms.com, working with horses, families, and individuals at the intersection of horsemanship and resilience. What makes Kira's perspective unusual is that she has lived the subject she now teaches. A lifelong relationship with anxiety and fear around horses, a family crisis at 18 when her father suffered a stroke that pulled her into an early adult role, and years inside the hyper-demanding world of sport horse training — including a period where her own anxiety became so acute she could barely ride — all of it has shaped a practitioner who speaks from earned experience, not theory. In this conversation, Rupert and Kira go deep on what resilience actually means — for horses, for humans, and for the practitioners who work with both. They move through the groundwork methodology Kira developed starting sensitive warmbloods, the specific exercises that release tension and build connection, and how those same principles apply when working with autistic children. They explore why always being calm may be the wrong goal, how to move through fear rather than wait for it to pass, and why the trauma conversation risks tipping into a place that keeps people stuck. This is a wide-ranging, experience-backed conversation that will resonate with anyone who works with horses, with neurodivergent individuals, or with their own inner life.
If you want to support the show, you can do so at Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/LongRideHome 🔍 What You'll Learn in This Episode How curiosity overrides anxiety — and why doing the thing is often more healing than waiting until you feel ready Why "always being calm" is not the goal for horses or humans, and what heart rate variability tells us about genuine resilience How to distinguish between protective fear and anxious mental noise — and how gut instinct becomes the tool for telling them apart The groundwork methodology Kira used starting sensitive warmbloods: approach and retreat, shoulder yields, hindquarter yields, and why crossing the midline triggers BDNF and neuroplasticity Why the shoulder-in position is both a tension-release tool and a safety tool — and how having it reliably in place can get a handler out of serious trouble How Kira's experience of her father's stroke at 18 shaped her understanding of grief, family strain, and the cost of going into management mode when you're struggling yourself How Kira's own severe anxiety crisis mid-career — when she could barely get on a horse — became the turning point that led her toward therapeutic work with humans Why seeing possibilities rather than problems is the key reframe in both horse training and equine assisted work with neurodivergent clients Why the trauma conversation risks becoming a place people stay rather than move through — and what the spiral model of grief and healing offers instead How projecting limitations onto horses or children blocks their capacity to surprise us, and why listening to the person in front of you matters more than the story others gave you Why joy and play are not extras in equine assisted work — they are the mechanism by which change happens Why practitioners who want horses or clients to make big changes need to be making changes themselves
🎤 Memorable Moments from the Episode [00:12:38] Kira explains why waiting to feel "ready" often keeps anxiety alive — the doing of the thing is what changes your storyline [00:15:00] Kira describes what happened when her father had a stro
More from Equine Assisted World with Rupert Isaacson
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✨ "I think the horse and the animal is kind of an anchor that keeps you in the present." – Krisztina Molnar Deep in the forest near Debrecen in eastern Hungary, a six-year-old foundation has become a home for animal-assisted therapy of every kind: clinical equine-assisted psychotherapy, work with neurodivergent children, family therapy, group therapy for children, adolescents and parents, and sessions for adults, alongside a small riding school, dressage and a vaulting team. Clinical psychologist Krisztina Molnar leads its clinical work with children and parents, supported by a team, 14 horses and three therapy dogs. The original plan was four to six horses and a quiet life in her "fairy forest." Instead, the foundation grew one family, one colleague and one need at a time, guided by a single principle: keep running something only as long as it serves everyone in the story, meaning the clients, the animals and the therapists. Along the way the forest itself became a therapeutic tool, complete with a wishing forest, a mound where problems can be blown away, and a transparent indoor arena that clients describe as a safety bubble inside nature. Rupert and Krisztina explore why nature can take clients deep very quickly, and why that is both a chance and a danger. They discuss how a classic "three wishes" diagnostic task becomes a fairy tale, what Winnicott's transitional space and the "wise mode" of schema therapy have to do with the forest, Hungary's relationship with mental health and transgenerational trauma, the difference between healthy fantasy and delusion, and why the horse is the anchor that keeps a person in the present moment. If you want to support the show, you can do so at Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/LongRideHome 🔍 What You'll Learn in This Episode How a foundation planned for four to six horses grew into a multi-program center with 14 horses, three dogs and a full team Why the guiding rule is to run something only as long as it serves clients, animals and therapists alike Why mentally healthy therapy horses need a natural environment, and how that shapes therapy before a session even starts Why the forest can take clients deep very quickly, and why that brings both a chance to grow and a risk of falling apart Why children who are overloaded by impressions may fear the forest, and what they are really afraid of How having a forest, an arena, a small indoor and an inside room lets the therapist tune the setting to each client's safety needs How a transparent indoor arena, chosen because it was the cheapest option, works as a "safety bubble" and a transitional space How magical places in the forest, like the wishing forest and the mound where problems are blown away, are built around clients' psychological needs How the diagnostic "three wishes" task becomes a fairy tale, and how to translate a child's wish into an underlying need What schema therapy is, and how the forest may help clients connect to their inner "wise mode" How to tell healthy fantasy from delusion: does it connect you to yourself and others, or disconnect you? Why the horse acts as an anchor to the present moment How Krisztina sees dressage as maintaining harmony through constant rebalancing, and why training of any kind helps therapy horses handle more situations 🎤 Memorable Moments from the Episode 00:03:40 Krisztina introduces herself as a clinical psychologist specializing in children and parents, certified to include her therapy dogs in sessions 00:07:10 She reveals the original plan: four to six horses and a peaceful, quiet life in her fairy forest, which is not what happened 00:08:50 Krisztina shares the one principle that guides every program: it runs only as long as it serves clients, animals and therapists 00:22:50 She explains that frightened clients are not afraid of nature itself but of their own impulses projected onto the forest 00:41:50 Krisztina describes nature as a model of resilience: a tree meeting an obstacle grows around it
✨ "Well, I'm an engineer. I collect data." – Laila Rahmatian Laila Rahmatian is an autism mom and former NASA engineer, originally from Houston and living in Indianapolis, Indiana when her son Donatello was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder in October 2024 — now based near Frankfurt, Germany. Unlike most guests on this show, Laila isn't a practitioner — she's a service user. After her son's diagnosis, she brought her engineering background to bear on his care, systematically tracking data across a comparison of therapy approaches and, eventually, more than 70 Horse Boy Method sessions. This conversation covers Laila's diagnosis journey, why she walked away from a well-regarded autism center within minutes of touring it, the chance referral that led her family to Horse Boy Method after relocating to Germany, and the session-by-session developmental milestones her data captured — from a son who could barely stay on a horse for a minute to one making spontaneous eye contact, sleeping through the night, and initiating speech. If you want to support the show, you can do so at Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/LongRideHome
✨ "It's not that I gave up. I switched." – Carolina Lockwood Carolina Lockwood joins Rupert Isaacson from Bariloche, in the Patagonia region of Argentina, where she has spent more than 30 years building equine-assisted work from the ground up — first blending art therapy with horses, then training directly with Rupert in Texas, then running an intensive Horse Boy–style program, then coaching, and now facilitating horse-based energy healing. What makes Carolina's story distinctive is the environment she's built it in. In the areas around Bariloche, horse theft for meat is a real and recurring danger — over the years Carolina has lost five horses to thieves, including cases where stolen horses were found slaughtered. She talks candidly about tracking horses down with the police, the informal social protections that eventually stabilized her herd's safety, and the anxiety that never fully goes away even after 30 years without an incident. The conversation traces her full arc: building a team of six staff and 30 kids a week at the height of her program, learning to read burnout in both horses and herself, closing that chapter deliberately rather than abandoning the work altogether, and evolving into equine coaching (trained through Kathy Pike and the Linda Kohanov lineage), liberty work (with Jean-François Pignon and Celeste Solzenne), and now a year-plus training in horse-facilitated energy healing with Saskia Marroquin of Caballo Cósmico. Along the way, Rupert and Carolina dig into what "energy work" actually means in practical terms, and why practitioners shouldn't feel locked into one rigid model for life. If you want to support the show, you can do so at Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/LongRideHome 🔍 What You'll Learn in This Episode How Carolina moved from art therapy and ceramics work with special-needs kids into equine-assisted work in Bariloche, Patagonia Why she traveled to Texas to train directly with Rupert after discovering the Horse Boy film What it's actually like running horses in a region where theft and slaughter for meat is a recurring, organized threat — and how she and her family tracked down stolen horses with the police Why gauchos' and polo horses are rarely stolen while therapy and pleasure horses are the ones targeted How Carolina rebuilt her herd's security by relocating and relying on informal community protection rather than fences or guns What her own "non-structure structure" for horse welfare looks like, built around free roaming, herd life, and trust — and how it differs from the fitness-and-conditioning approach used in Horse Boy Method How she learned to read burnout in a horse, including a beloved therapy horse who started biting handlers when he was "done" Why she eventually closed her intensive riding-based program on purpose, and how she thinks about that decision now How she transitioned into equine coaching, training with Kathy Pike and the lineage of Linda Kohanov in Colorado What liberty work with Jean-François Pignon and his student Celeste Solzenne taught her about horses reflecting a person's inner state How she began training in horse-facilitated energy healing with Saskia Marroquin of Caballo Cósmico, and what that work looks like in practice The story of a terminally ill client whose final wish involved Carolina's horses, and what it revealed to her about this kind of healing What Carolina's dream is for a future retreat and rescue sanctuary in Patagonia, and why she's decided to say it out loud
✨ "It's not about the job or the wages. You have to love it with absolute passion." – Helen Picha