Emma Barnosky
Equine-Assisted Learning Facilitator
Emma is a certified Equine Assisted-Learning Facilitator, PhD candidate, and Somatic Practitioner who bridges her scientific expertise and intuitive understanding of the horse-human partnership to help individuals and groups find deeper connection with themselves and the world around them. At the core of her work is the understanding that humans, like horses, are hardwired to be social, connected creatures—we are biologically and spiritually meant to exist in relationship. However, cultural norms, upbringing, and life experience can create circumstances that get in the way of the authentic relationships that our nervous systems and psyches need which, in turn, can lead to anxiety, depression, pervasive loneliness (among other forms of dis-ease). Emma and her equine co-facilitators take an experiential approach to effectively dismantle such barriers. Equine and somatic work are unique in that they do not require clients to talk about what has happened to them. Instead, they thaw barriers to connection through nervous system regulation, relational skill building, and refined self awareness. As Dr. Peter Levine has famously shared, "trauma is not what happens to us, but what we hold inside in the absence of an empathic witness." Emma and her equine co-facilitators serve as empathic witnesses for clients hoping to shift into this more connected and authentic way of being.
Education and Training
Somatic Experiencing (Advanced Student)
Other trainings & workshops
My dissertation looks at the connection between mental health and environmental management. In particular, my interdisciplinary research focuses on the emotional responses to and cultural narratives about wildfire in California, with special interest in how these interact with our histories of environmental management and settlement at the Wild-Urban Interface (WUI) to create and continually reinforce structural, cultural, and individual disconnection.
A 10-month certification and apprenticeship. The training weaves together the nonverbal work of horses with trauma-informed facilitation skills including key concepts from the fields of Somatic Experiencing, Internal Family Systems, Constellation Therapy, and Nature Therapy. My apprenticeship focused on applying these facilitation skills in work with veterans, first responders, and others with PTSD & cPTSD diagnoses. Upon graduation from the certification program in 2023, I was hired as one of the ranch's in-house facilitators and I continue to run groups, workshops, and 1:1 sessions there.
Somatic Experiencing® (SE) is a science-backed therapeutic approach designed to help individuals process and release stress, shock, and trauma stored in the body. The three-year training program provides practitioners with a clinical tools to help clients find greater levels of nervous system regulation and move through fight, flight, and freeze responses "stuck" in the physiology and psyche. Research has shown these tools to be effective in the resolution of both PTSD and developmental attachment trauma. "Advanced student" means I have completed two years of training and am currently finishing the final year of the program.
This International Coaching Federation accredited program trains coaches to help clients move towards their career and life goals while respecting the ways that developmental, attachment, and/or shock trauma can impact this journey.
DARe Attachment and Trauma Fundamentals (via Dr. Diane Poole Heller); Equine Assisted Therapy using Polyvagal Principles (via Dr. Rebecca Bailey); 3 years regular equestrian and horsemanship training with Angie Martin Lapinski; 10 years of regular equestrian & horsemanship training at Stanford University's Red Barn
Get In Touch
For inquiries about 1:1 work, workshop facilitation, or speaking engagements, please reach out via the form below.
