What if your horse isn’t being difficult…What if they’re trying to speak? Giving Horses a Voice is a podcast for horse owners, trainers, therapists, and seekers who suspect there’s more happening beneath behavior — and want to understand it clearly, practically, and without mysticism or gimmicks. Hosted by Sharon Wilsie, author of the Horse Speak book series and founder of the READI® framework (Regulated Equine Atonement for Dynamic Interaction), this podcast explores the missing link between traditional training and true relational communication. Sharon shares: • How horses actually communicate through micro-gestures • What regulation really means (and how to recognize it) • Why “feel” isn’t magic — it’s observable • How maternal care messages shape equine safety • What happens when humans learn to slow down enough to see This isn’t about whispering. It’s not about dominance. It’s not about anthropomorphism. It’s about learning to observe what has always been there. With over a decade of field research, international clinics, neurobiological study including HRV research, and thousands of horses observed, Sharon brings both grounded science and lived experience to conversations that feel intimate, honest, and practical. Each episode invites you to: • Question what you’ve been taught • Trust what you’ve sensed • And reclaim your own lived experience with your horse You don’t need to believe anything. Just be willing to look. Because when we give horses a voice, we often find our own.
Curated by: Sharon Wilsie (14 videos)
Giving Horses a Voice with Sharon Wilsie – Episode 5 What is the difference between behavior and language? In this episode, Sharon Wilsie explores the difference between behavior and language in horses. While observing an elder rescue horse named Old Ed, Sharon began to notice recurring patterns of communication that conveyed messages of safety, calm, and relaxation within the herd. As a prey animal, the horse constantly reads the environment for danger. Through careful observation, Sharon discovered that what many people call behavior is actually a structured non-verbal language with a beginning, middle, and end. These repeated sequences—from large gestures to subtle micro-gestures—became part of a catalog that helps humans learn to decode and encode horse communication. The foundation of this work is relational literacy, in which understanding the horse’s language fosters deeper connection, trust, and partnership between horses and humans.