Live the Change

EMPLACING - EMBODYING - REWILDING MY HEART

What does an ecotherapist and rewilder do to take care of their own rewilding and ecological intersubjective connection with what is around them and what is present?

They do this 😊

And if it is unclear what I am doing, I am taking a break, putting myself in the field, sitting, laying down, while Teo the Dog is munching on some grass and just observing the surroundings. We are both emplacing and embodying ourselves. Teo is a master, I am a student. Like any other modern human being, I had mostly forgotten how to do this, so some reclaiming has been needed through the years, hence the idea of rewilding humans (rewilding our hearts). I also call this "radical grounding" :-)

emplacing embodying radicalgrounding

REWILDING EQUINE ASSISTED PRACTICES

Sonja and I gave a presentation at the Equine Cultures in Transition conference in Manchester last summer on this very topic. Now we are continuing to expand our ideas and are writing an article for Frontiers special topic issue "Animal-Assisted Support in Public Mental Health: Evidence, Ethics, and Lifespan Perspectives”

But we are both independent (and rebellious 😉) researchers and scientists, and the fee to have our article published is around 2000 Euro. None of us are wealthy (which comes with being rebellious and daring to think and operate outside of all the proverbial boxes…) and we are checking if anyone, or any organization or institution are up for supporting us with the fee?

This is the manuscript summary that has been accepted:

"This manuscript critically examines equine assisted practices (EAP) through the lens of ecotherapeutic, ecopsychological, ecophilosophical, and ecosocial frameworks, arguing that EAP cannot be genuinely healing and integrative while grounded in unequal power relations between horses and humans, anthropocentric control and suppression of agency and subjectivity. The paper draws from intersectional and interdisciplinary literature and many years of practicing equine assisted work and being part of the field, offering the writers an opportunity to contextualize and situate EAP as part of a structurally systemic oppression inherited from both the mental health care sector and the equestrian sports sector, and the paper evaluates resulting uncritically accepted power dynamics and oppressive systems in EAP.

We argue that authentic relationality cannot emerge without recognizing and enabling agency and subjectivity of all who participate in equine assisted practices, including the horse. Yet, current practices rely heavily on equestrianism and its underlying systems of oppression based on human-centred goals, objectification, instrumentalization, human needs-based session organization, and specific expectations of equine behavior. But also on psychotherapeutic, psychiatric, and biomedical theory with their own systemic power inequalities between practitioner and "help-seeker" and ideas about what a healing and ethical relationship should look like, and who and what is a tool and who and what should be centered.

The concept of 'rewilding' is proposed as a necessary re-contextualization and a reorientation in the ex*****on of EAP toward more ethical, humane, and equal human mental health support. Rewilding EAP calls for a paradigmatic shift away from hierarchical, linear, oppressive, and uncritically inherited systems toward eco-centred, experientially trusting, epistemically just, ecodynamically relational approaches.”

If you feel called to support us, either reach out to me or Sonja, or if you want to donate a sum towards having this article published, you can also use my Buy Me a Coffee page and mark your donation with “Rewilding Equine Assisted Practices” or something similar so I know what it is meant for.

I want to mention something about mine and Sonja’s role in the EAP field, we have constantly been operating in the fringes of it, kept on bringing in our ideas of more quality, more acknowledgement of everyone’s subjectivity, agency and needs, we have debated what equine welfare actually is and brought our ideas into our trainings in former MiMer Centre. We understand if reading what we say is triggering defensiveness and a wish to ignore us or tell us how wrong we are. We are used to that, but so strongly believe that what we bring is very important for the field to grow and become more self-reflective and self-aware. Rules, regulations and registers are not the only measures needed to create and maintain the development of a healthy field of work. Ethics includes constantly scrutinizing everything from our ideas, theories, regulations, and practices.

And we are here for that.

This is the link to my Buy Me a Coffee page: https://buymeacoffee.com/katarinat

If you want to reach out to me you can use my messenger or contact me at [email protected]

PS. You find our presentation from Manchester here:
https://www.academia.edu/129892634/Rewilding_Equine_Assisted_Interventions_Integrating_Ecodynamics_and_Ecosocial_Thinking_into_EAI

Picture: Sonja and me after the first training in EAP/L we gave together (also with Emily Kieson) in January 2019 in Sweden through our NGO MiMer Centre (which we had to close down due to lack of funding), we have continued to work together in different settings, ways, and projects. Photo credit: Roland Gudinge, MoodFrames.

FÖR DIG SOM VILL PROVA PÅ EKOTERAPI OCH/ELLER MER JÄMLIK TERAPI

Många har fått det värre i livet, i stället för bättre, efter den ”vård” de mottagit inom psykiatrin eller genom psykoterapi. Eller så har det bara inte gett någon hjälp alls.

Det är så klart helt fel. Vård ska inte skada. Men dessutom, man ska inte vårda de som inte är sjuka. Och bara för att du ”mår dåligt” ibland, eller ofta, betyder det inte att du är sjuk.

Det betyder att du allt som oftast är en kännande, tänkande människa om varit med om saker som du inte fått hjälp att titta på och bearbeta. Det kan vara allt från att känna att man inte passar in, livsstress, livsval, till små och stora trauman, våld, försummelse, förlust osv. Det händer att det finns biologiska/genetiska orsaker till dåligt mående, och det är viktigt att utesluta, men jag gissar på att i mer än 90% av fallen är det inte en biologisk/genetisk orsak. Det är en livsorsak. Och är det en biologisk/genetisk orsak så hör du inte hemma i psykiatrin i alla fall, utan får väldigt troligt bättre hjälp inom ett annat medicinskt fält.

Psykiatrin och den slags psykoterapi som ser sig som en del av en medicinsk behandling, utnämner sig själva till experter på människor och ger sig själva tolkningsföreträde över vad personen själv säger att något handlar om.

Psykiatrin, psykoterapin och annan slags psyk vård delar ut diagnoser, fastställer symptom och sätter in ”behandling”.

Det här blir ett sätt som både den som ”vårdar” och den som tar emot ”vård” måste förhålla sig till. De flesta bestämmer att det är rätt sätt, både av de som ”vårdar” och de som tar emot ”vård”. Och det är svårt att lära om. Att börja se sig själv som icke-sjuk och normal, när man i årtal, från många olika håll, fått höra att man är sjuk och skadad.

Det går att lära om! Jag finns här för dig som vill undersöka vem du är bortom psykiatrins projektioner. Som vill lära känna dig själv, och själv bestämma vem du är, vart du är på väg, vad som är bra för dig, och inte.

Just nu jobbar jag på plats i Skåne, men är flyttbar, speciellt om ni har en grupp som vill träffa mig. Jag finns online också.

Jag erbjuder ekoterapi (med terapi inom något slags imaginärt citationstecken, för jag har mycket kritiskt att säga om traditionell terapi), rewildingtearpi och det jag kallar peer terapi – som just vill försöka rätta till den maktobalans som finns i alla terapier.

Låter det här intressant? Du hittar mer info om mig och det jag erbjuder på www.livethechange.

Jag erbjuder terapi på svenska och engelska.

Mina specialområden är våld, övergrep, försummelse och dissociation, divergens (all sorts divergens), och vårdskador och trauman från psykiatrin och från terapi.

Välkommen!

MONGOLIA’S WILD HORSES

And what we can learn from studying them and the context they and the semi-feral living Mongolian domestic horse live in.
We need to learn about horses from non-western cultures, especially from old horse cultures and indigenous peoples, and their “other ways of knowing”. We also need to study wild-living horses to understand "the horse", beyond human projections. Read about my experiences in Mongolia studying wild-living Takhis (Przewalski horses), reintroduction, rewilding, Mongolian nomadic horse culture, and horse-human interaction.

Mongolia's Wild Horses. Part of the "Rewild your Heart" series Wild horses. Listen to the sound of the word. Wild, as in free. Every human has a relationship with horses. If you never met one in real life, you have seen them on TV, read about them in books, met them in commercials. Beautiful, proud, free horses.

JOIN US FOR MY PRESENTATION ON REWILDING AND HORSES!

And let’s have a nice chat about it all!

Felicia Katarina Lundgren is an ecotherapist and a seasoned equine and nature assisted intervention facilitator. To not ever let the horse become objectified in her work, she has devoted many years to understanding the “horse beyond human projections”. She has also taken a deep dive into understanding horse-human interaction and has promoted equine welfare to be about the horses’ biological needs, as well as emotional, social and cognitive needs. She decided she needed to study wild-living horses to see if “horses” in fact were behaving, communicating, needing, responding, being… like western science concluded from studies of western domestic horses. And what she learned from studying these wild-living, or semi-wild living horses in different settings, also outside of western culture, has confirmed her own re-evaluating of a lot of the paradigms in equine welfare, in horse-human interaction, horse management etc, but also how equine assisted interventions are taught, and ultimately, what rewilding really is about.
Sign up info in the picture.

And if you want to read anything in the meantime, this one might be interesting to you?

https://www.academia.edu/166684374/Mongolias_Wild_Horses_Part_of_the_Rewild_your_Heart_series

or this one?

https://www.academia.edu/42328837/Freedom_From_and_Freedom_To_Equine_Welfare_and_the_Role_of_the_Equine_Professional_in_Equine_Assisted_Interventions

or this one? https://www.academia.edu/129892634/Rewilding_Equine_Assisted_Interventions_Integrating_Ecodynamics_and_Ecosocial_Thinking_into_EAI

See you, I hope, on May 20th!

CONTROLLING EATING TO CONTROL PEOPLE

And to control the situations you find (found) yourself in

Restricting, controlling, and manipulating your eating works splendidly as a coping strategy to keep your anxiety about people and their doings in check. It very fast makes you not care about what they do or do not do. And you are in a place, a world — a mental space, where you are feeling like you are in control of something. Something is in your power to decide over, and there is finally some predictability in your life, and something to hold on to.

Food — and how you control your food intake — becomes both your best friend and your worst enemy. You do not need anyone else. Or at least, that is what you tell yourself. If you can only stay with and keep yourself to your own restrictive eating rules, then it will all be fine. Then nobody, or what they do, can really touch you, not psychically, not mentally, especially not mentally.

All of a sudden, you have super-powers, secret super-powers. They, other people, ask you if you want something to eat — and you smile (outwardly a small smile— inwardly a big smile) — and they do not know that you are in control, secretly. Even if they demand you to eat, they can’t make you. They can’t make you chew and swallow. Unless they put a gun to your head. Most of the time, they don’t do that.

Read my piece on Medium on why we cannot support people with eating/not-eating as a coping strategy without addressing their stress and trauma.

Controlling Eating to Control People And to control the situations you find (found) yourself in

JOIN ME FOR AN INTRODUCTION TO REWILDING!

I believe the path to a lot of healing (or wholing as I prefer to call it) goes through rewilding - of ourselves, our fellow human and non-human animals, of the earth...

We need to let ourselves and others grow into becoming who we are - not who we wish to be, or wish others to be.

Growth needs to be free. Not controlled. Not turned into profit. Not directed by greed, recognition, a need to fit in...

Does it sound strange and complicated? It really is not - it is learning respect for ourselves and others, as they/we are. No matter if it is a human, a dog, a horse, a bird, a river, a desert, the earth...

Welcome to both down to earth discussions about human, equine, dog, earth welfare as well as to philosphicsl and ethical ponderings!

Rewild Your Heart. Online Introductory Course to Rewilding - Spring Edition 2026 A Science-Based AND Open Minded Online Course on Rewild(ing) of Humans, Horses and their Environments

TRAUMA INDUCED DISSOCIATION AND THE WHEEL OF WHOLENESS (TOLERANCE) - A NEW DESCRIPTION

In 2019 I developed an alternative model to the Window of Tolerance and the Polyvagal Ladder. Because neither of them really helped someone like me, with "parts" and lots of dissociation (I write that even if I think everyone have parts and use dissociation), What I address here I call Trauma Induced Dissociation (TID) and I have reworked my original writing in how I describe the model now called the wheel of Wholeness, what it is, how you use it, but also my thinking around some aspects of dissociation, and as usual, I ask some critical questions...

Dowland it and give me some feedback? It costs 7 USD, at least. If you want to pay more and in that way support my work, you are very welcome!

And to learn more - join me on my webinar May 12! You find it on my Buy Me a Coffee page as well!

Dissociative Diaries Series Chapter: The Wheel of Wholeness (Tolerance) Dissociation is by nature elusive. It is like a mist you have to reach out from, or reach into. Depending on perspective. I developed the model "The Wheel of Tolerance" in 2019. Now I have renamed it