The Day the Horse Became the Therapist. WithCarmen Theobald

If you’re still selling your healing services like a box of gluten-free granola — soft, bland, and desperately hoping to blend into Whole Foods — Carmen Theobald is your wake-up neigh. She doesn’t just speak with horses; she translates them into healing balms for burnt-out first responders and emotionally arid healers. On Spiritual Conversation, the podcast by HolisticCircle hosted by the irrepressibly curious Philipp Kobald, Carmen doesn’t trot out clichés. She gallops past them with a clarity that hits harder than a yoga retreat in Mercury retrograde.

Carmen’s story starts with trauma — a school shooting in Montreal — and unravels into a revelation on a horse farm in Ontario. What began as a rural detour turned into a full-body yes from the universe, as she now runs Horse Sense North, a sanctuary for humans who’ve forgotten how to feel and horses who absolutely haven’t.

Why the Horse Knows You’re Lying

Horses, it turns out, don’t buy your nonsense. You can’t fake your way past a thousand-pound prey animal with a PhD in body language and no tolerance for emotional dishonesty. Carmen explains that when you walk into a round pen, the horse immediately knows whether your insides match your outsides. If they don’t, it walks away. Not out of spite. Out of clarity.

For healers, the message here isn’t about marketing tactics or branding funnels — it’s about congruence. People buy healing from those who walk their talk, not those who curate a filtered self while suppressing their inner chaos. The horse, quite simply, demands that you be real. Imagine if your next Instagram post had to pass an equine lie detector. What would you write?

The Burnout Whisperers

Carmen’s work focuses heavily on first responders — paramedics, police, firefighters — the folk we call when everything’s gone to hell. These are people trained to handle trauma but rarely given space to process it. Enter the horse: a quiet, non-verbal guru with an instinct for authenticity. Carmen doesn’t just throw her clients at the animals and hope for magic. She crafts an environment — a sacred soup of land, presence, and carefully curated silence — where breakthroughs happen without a single tearful monologue.

Healers, take note. If you’re wondering how to design a client experience that actually changes lives, this isn’t about adding more affirmations. It’s about curating truth.

My Therapist Eats Hay (And Also Cooks)

It’s not just the horses doing the heavy lifting. Carmen’s farm is an 88-acre co-conspirator in the healing journey. The land, acknowledged as the traditional territory of the Anishinabe and Mississauga Nations, offers more than pretty Instagram backdrops. It delivers grounding, stillness, and a sense of being held that no sage stick can replicate.

There’s also food. Yes, actual food. Prepared by Carmen’s partner — a chef-farmer who caters every workshop with local, soul-nourishing meals. If you think that’s irrelevant to healing, you’ve clearly never cried into a stew that tastes like someone finally saw you. Philipp, host and eternal spiritual snack-seeker, could be heard practically unwrapping imaginary cutlery mid-recording — spiritually drooling with every description, possibly surrounded by invisible napkins and hope.

The Price of Pretending

Healers are often asked to “hold space,” a phrase that’s been stretched to cover everything from deep empathy to mild nodding. But Carmen reminds us that holding space isn’t passive. It’s an act of embodied presence, one where your nervous system signals safety rather than judgment or detachment. Horses require that. So do your clients.

And yet, so many healers market themselves from a place of fear — afraid to be too loud, too niche, too honest. Carmen’s work is a not-so-gentle prompt to drop the mask. If a horse can walk away when your energy’s fake, imagine what your ideal clients are doing.

Don’t Bring Your Buzzwords to a Round Pen

You can’t vibe your way through horse therapy. There’s no spiritual bypassing here — no crystal grid elaborate enough to hide your emotional disconnection. Carmen’s approach is refreshingly devoid of fluff. It’s rooted in nervous system regulation, embodied awareness, and real-time feedback from creatures who couldn’t care less about your brand colors.

Healers who trade in “high vibes only” are quietly burning out behind the scenes. Carmen offers a different path — one of wholeness, not perfection. One where power and gentleness are allowed to co-exist. Yes, you can be both.

Crying Is Optional, Regulation Is Not

Contrary to popular belief, not every session at Horse Sense North ends in tears. Carmen emphasizes that healing isn’t always loud. Sometimes it’s subtle: a deeper breath, a shift in stance, a nervous system finally letting go of fight-or-flight mode. And for first responders especially, healing in silence is sometimes the only way forward.

So if your coaching practice hinges on dramatic emotional releases, you may be missing the quieter — but arguably more profound — layers of change. Carmen’s horses don’t need a backstory. They need presence. And so do your clients.

The Anti-Guru Guru

Perhaps what’s most compelling about Carmen is that she’s not selling transformation. She’s offering reconnection. To your breath. To the land. To your unmasked self. And if a thousand-pound animal can do that better than your last ten therapists, maybe it’s time to rethink who (or what) your real teacher is.

Philipp Kobald, host of Spiritual Conversation, holds the space like a seasoned ringmaster: curious, witty, and not afraid to laugh at the absurdity of it all. The conversation between him and Carmen is less interview, more soul ping-pong — with a few hay-scented truth bombs for good measure.

You could skip the @HolisticCircle YouTube channel. But then you’d miss the moment Carmen’s horse stares someone into existential honesty. And really, isn’t that what we’re all here for?

#HolisticCircle, #PhilippKobald, #SpiritualConversation, #HorseSenseNorth, #EquineTherapy, #HealingWithHorses, #TraumaRecovery, #HealersOnTheRise, #FirstResponderWellness, #AuthenticHealing

Copyright Information:

© 2025 HolisticCircle.org . All rights reserved