Equine Somatic Pathways™ Foundations Course

A nervous‑system‑led, trauma‑informed, body‑based method for working with horses so you can facilitate real, sustainable change for yourself, for clients, and horses

Open Enrollment: SPRING & FALL 2026

BEGIN YOUR JOURNEY →
 

We’re all wildly drawn to horses, and we all meet inevitable blocks in the relationship.

Horses are masters of clear non verbal communication in relationship and they ask us to give them the same clarity. When we listen, they will show us where our communication doesnt offer connection in relationship.

In this training, we start with regulation, deepen our capacity to feel and respond in relationship, and integrate body‑based tools that shift unconscious patterns of relating; changes you and your clients can take into all relationships.

Is this for you?

You’ll feel at home here if you’re a:

  • Therapist, coach, or mental health professional seeking a grounded, ethical way to integrate horses into somatic, trauma‑informed care.
  • Equine professional or somatic practitioner who sees disconnection between horse and client and wants real‑time, trauma‑informed tools that support both horse and human.
  • Equine enthusiast and lover of self‑inquiry who is drawn to experiential and body based relational work.
If your body just exhaled, or you felt a big yes, this is for you.
BEGIN YOUR JOURNEY →

What you’ll learn (and how you’ll use it)

By the end of this course, you’ll be able to:
  • Accurately track regulation (vs. performance) in both horse and human.
  • Support regulation when things get tricky and expand capacity without overwhelm.
  • Work with horses with consent and choice, reading approach/avoid patterns with precision.
  • Guide sessions that move from intervention to insight to integration, with horses’ welfare and clients’ dignity at the center.
You’ll leave with:
  • Downloadable session plans, grounding tools for different client presentations, tracking sheets, consent & safety checklists, and field guides you can carry into the arena.
  • The curriculum integrates somatic regulation, authentic relationship with choice, equine ethology, sensorimotor awareness, attachment‑aware support, parts‑informed inquiry, a broad range of somatic regulation concepts and developmental movement concepts, mindfulness, and trauma‑informed care.

Endorsed by Leaders in the Field

— Jacqui Kona, International EAP Trainer & Clinician; Founder, Skye Therapy Solutions

This has been one of the most meaningful professional and personal experiences I’ve had in my journey. I’m leaving with a deeper sense of attunement - to myself, to my clients, and to the horses who partner with us.

This work shifted how I show up with clients and taught me the importance of working from internal clarity and calm. Cara integrates parts work and polyvagal theory beautifully, and the small-group collaboration was invaluable.
What stood out was how the work unfolded naturally - unexpected yet deeply aligned with what needed attention. The emotional depth emerged in a gentle, grounded way - never forced.

This training emphasizes experience over performance, presence over protocol. Cara models humility, curiosity, empathy, and ethical partnership with horses. Instead of teaching a rigid method, she supported me in developing my own embodied understanding. The learning environment felt safe, collaborative, and genuinely trauma-informed.

As an international EAP trainer and clinician since 2011, I’ve completed many certifications. This is one of the top ones. I’ll be having all of my clinicians trained in this model.”

The course pathway

14 modules across 12 months, blending theory with embodied practice

A professional training that deepens the way humans and horses understand, regulate, and connect.

This 14 module journey builds the foundation of safety, awareness, and attunement before moving into relational movement and facilitation. Each module expands your capacity to guide healing and connection through presence, pacing, and partnership.

Designed for equine professionals, coaches, therapists and those who enjoy self and equine discovery.
Equine professionals learn to recognize and respond to nervous system patterns in both horses and humans. They come to understand why clients sometimes flood, freeze, or overreact and how to help everyone return to calm connection.
Coaches discover practical ways to support regulation and relational presence that extend far beyond the arena.
Therapists integrate this work into their practice as a bridge between somatic, relational, and experiential approaches, helping clients embody relational change rather than just talk about it.

MODULE 1

Module 1:
Foundations of Regulation and Relationship

Learn how calm, clear beginnings shape every interaction. You’ll tune your awareness to early signs of stress and ease, set clean agreements, and pace sessions for safety and connection within yourself, with the horse, and with others.
Outcome: embodied awareness, clearer reads, and a reliable base for the work ahead.

Module 2

Module 2:
Resourcing and Inner Stability

Build reliable anchors you can return to when intensity rises. You’ll practice simple body-based ways to settle and re-center, so closeness and challenge feel more workable.
Outcome: dependable self-regulation, emotional steadiness, and confidence under stress.

Module 3

Module 3:
Neurobiology of Connection

Awareness becomes the bridge from old patterns to new possibilities. By tracking micro-shifts in posture, breath, and attention, you’ll experience how the nervous system learns through rhythm and repetition. Each small noticing helps transform reaction into choice; reshaping safety from the inside out.
Outcome: clearer timing, fluid connection, and durable nervous-system change.

Module 4

Module 4:

The Neuroscience of Closeness

Here we explore the body’s language of closeness. You’ll discover how proximity, space, and gentle contact influence regulation; for both human and horse. With curiosity and pacing, you learn to offer presence instead of pressure, creating experiences of safety that invite genuine connection.
Outcome: healthy boundaries, expanded tolerance for closeness, and co-regulation rooted in consent.

Module 5

Module 5:
Noticing & Nurturing Balance

In this stage, perception refines. You’ll learn to distinguish true calm from quiet collapse, regulation from control, and to track the rhythms that mark genuine repair. Open attention becomes your compass teaching you to witness change without forcing it.
Outcome: precise somatic discernment, authentic regulation, and balanced co-regulation

Module 6

Module 6:
Supporting Nervous system Repair

Leadership here means clarity with compassion. You’ll practice timing, rhythm, and focused attention to help both horse and human move from anxiety or avoidance into curiosity. Working at the edge of comfort, you learn to hold steadiness while inviting change.
Outcome: confident timing, resilient presence, and leadership that builds capacity not compliance.

Module 7

Module 7:
Relational Touch & Parts Awareness

Discover how gentle, attuned touch and quiet presence reveal the different parts of you that protect, reach, or pull away. Learn to include them. without letting them steer, so connection deepens.
Outcome: internal harmony, authentic connection, and responses led by your whole self.

Module 8

Module 8:
Staying with Rupture and repair

When tension rises, know what to do. You’ll learn simple interventions that bring you (and your horse) back to workable connection.
Outcome: practical tools for restoring calm, faster recovery, and relationships that repair and strengthen.

Module 9

Module 9:
Sensation, Emotion & Relational Clarity

Catch the just-before moment. Learn to separate raw body sensations from the story and use that clarity to shift the interaction in real time. Include the sides of you that protect or retreat without letting them run the show.
Outcome: quicker reads, cleaner resets, and more ease and choice in connection

Module 10

Module 10:
Grounding & Relational Trust

We explore how the body finds safety through support and stillness learning to rest, regulate, and prepare for authentic movement and connection. You’ll deepen your felt sense of trust in your own body and bring that steadiness into your relationships with horses and people.
Outcome: reliable grounding, embodied presence, and the capacity to move from calm rather than tension.

Module 11

Module 11:
Boundaries & Invitations in Motion

Turn grounded presence into two essentials: a clear “not now” that keeps connection intact, and a genuine invitation that doesn’t grasp. Learn to act, then return to ease so every moment has choice.
Outcome: steadier boundaries, warmer bids for contact, and fewer misreads.

Module 12

Module 12:
From Grounded Breath to Confident Contact

Settle quickly, then build contact and closeness that stay consented and easy to release. Use the horse’s feedback to fine-tune timing and recover steadiness fast.
Outcome: rapid reset, confident contact, understand body based relational safety

Module 13

Module 13:
Release and Return

This module brings the whole cycle together; connection, separation, and return. We look at how relationships, human and equine, find rhythm again after intensity, and how trust deepens when every pause stays connected. Recovery becomes part of the movement itself, teaching both bodies how to let go without losing each other.
Outcome: calm recoveries, smoother transitions, and relationships that move naturally between contact and rest.

Module 14

Module 14:

Integration, Ethics, and Equine Business Foundations

This final module brings everything together through guided assignments and real-time application. You’ll refine your rhythm of connection, repair, and rest, tracking your own regulation patterns, and reflecting on what changes in you and your horse. Mock sessions, ethics and the practical business tools are incorporated to help support your next steps.
Outcome: confident, embodied facilitation; clear awareness of triggers and repair; and a grounded readiness to carry this work into your professional practice and everyday life.

Equine Somatic Pathways™ Foundations Course

 Open Enrollment: SPRING & FALL 2026

Begin Your Journey

Hi, I’m Cara Gereau, LMFT

Supporting clients in equine relational work, understanding and supporting equine regulation, and witnessing how somatic tools transform both humans and horses is my wild passion. We begin with compassionate awareness of what is true now, build skill in tracking patterns of regulation in you and in the equine partner, and support shifts that bring more capacity to both so you can reliably offer that to clients.

Equine Somatic Pathways grew when I noticed the somatic methods that worked best in the therapy room weren’t being applied in equine‑facilitated settings. The work has grown through years of clinical practice, study, and the lived wisdom of working in relational liberty. 

The method is intentionally simple: observe, slow down, notice, respond, bring patterns into the here‑and‑now and let the nervous system lead our interventions.

Depth That Changes Your Work

— Participant

“Regulation begins when the body remembers it is supported, not when it tries to perform calm is a lesson Impacting all my work."

— Participant

“Developmental gestures have been the most transformative part of my attachment work.”

— Participant

“This course opened new ways of seeing and evoking therapeutic growth.”

What Students Notice First

— Participant

“My biggest takeaway is less doing and more feeling.”

— Participant

“I have a new awareness of attachment trauma in clients and how to notice even the smallest ruptures.”

— Participant

“Tracking the horse and the client together opened a deeper relational layer than I’d ever accessed before.”

Format & support

Two paths:

Self‑Led

Receive immediate access to this program. This includes:

  • 14 modules you can complete at your own pace
  • Module videos guiding theory and embodied practices for human and horse
  • Reading/audio homework to deepen integration
  • Experiential homework for practical skill‑building
  • Reflective Homework for integration
  • Experiential Practice Guides
  • Sample Session Flow Guides
  • Session Tracking Guides
  • Private discussion group
  • Business and Marketing Guides
  • Option to Join one or two In Person Practice Groups
  • Access: 15 months to all modules and downloads
CHOOSE YOUR PATH →

Certification Cohort

Open Dates: March 1st and September 1st
  • Everything in Self‑Led plus
  • 7 hours of live consultation support  (mix of individual and small‑group consultation included in the course price)
  • Peer Support Meetings
  • Module quizzes and structured practicum assignments
  • Recorded homework with personalized video feedback
  • Final case review and certificate of completion
  • Two Case Consultation Sessions Post Completion

 A 12-month professional training with a one-month integration and capstone period for completion

CHOOSE YOUR PATH →

Certification in ESP reflects demonstrated competence within this model. It is not a professional license.

ESP In-Person Practice Intensives

Optional Upgrade for Certification and Self-Led Students

The ESP Practice Intensives are optional, three-day, in-person experiences offered twice per year open to both Certification Cohort and Self-Led participants. Each intensive blends guided demonstration, supervised horse practice, peer observation, and self-inquiry and reflection.

Learn more!

 Spring Intensive
March 2026 - March 2027

or

Fall Intensive
Sep 2026 - Sep 2027

Investment
Self Led

Self‑Led

Equine Somatic Pathways™ Foundations Course


One Time Payment

$1,895

 
OR

Four Month Payment Plan

$500

 

BEGIN YOUR JOURNEY →

Self‑Led

Equine Somatic Pathways™ Foundations Course

WHAT YOU RECEIVE:

  • 14 modules you can complete at your own pace
  • Module videos guiding theory and embodied practices for human and horse
  • Reading/audio homework to deepen integration
  • Experiential homework for practical skill‑building
  • Reflective Homework for integration
  • Experiential Practice Guides
  • Sample Session Flow Guides
  • Session Tracking Guides
  • Private discussion group
  • Business and Marketing Guides
  • Option to Join one or two In Person Practice Groups
  • Access: 15 months to all modules and downloads

Save 15% off your Equine Somatic Pathways™ Foundations Course with code "EARLYBIRD15" at checkout


Expires January 1st. 

Investment
Certification Cohort

Now enrolling for 2026 programs beginning March 1st and September 1st. 

Spring 2026 Cohort

Equine Somatic Pathways™ Foundations Course

Beginning March 1, 2026

One Time Payment

$3,995

OR

Four Month Payment Plan

$999

BEGIN YOUR JOURNEY →

Fall 2026 Cohort

Equine Somatic Pathways™ Foundations Course

Beginning September 1, 2026

One Time Payment

$3,995

OR

Four Month Payment Plan

$999

BEGIN YOUR JOURNEY →

Time commitment:

Plan on ~7 hours per module (≈1.5 hr video, ≈2 hrs reading/listening, ≈2 hr experiential practice, ≈1 hr reflective practice ), Video Recording, Submission and Review (~.5 hour a month)
Across 14 modules, that’s ~98 hours over 12 months
Certification participants add; ~7 hours of consultation over the 12 months including two consultation sessions after completion within 2 months, Small Peer Consultation Group  (~1 hour twice a month),

“This is such heart-expansive work. When you get to implement it and it’s real and tangible and you can feel it—and then you start sharing it with your clients… it’s just huge.”

“It’s been really exciting because I’m seeing the work grow already. My students are even being able to mentor it further. So it’s growing already.”

“I do feel like I have more confidence as a therapist because I’ve learned so much in this—about the nervous system, sensorimotor work, and horses’ body language.”

“Being rooted in value and self-worth and being very confident about what I bring to this world… there’s something very comforting about that, and this course helped me land there.”

“I absolutely love this course. I took it in more deeply than I ever imagined. I’m usually training and teaching people to understand animal language, but this brought in the mental health and the science of brain work and how our body reacts. It changed how I see both myself and my students.”

Still on the fence?

Access the FREE five body-based practices to help you settle, reconnect, and create calmer sessions for both you and your horse..

Access The guide →

Frequently asked questions

Ready to begin?

If an approach that is embodied, relational, honest, and humane is for you, your clients, and the horses you hold dear,  we’d love to have you come join us.

Enroll in Equine Somatic Pathways →

Questions? Send Cara an email here