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 — Season 2, Episode 2 In this episode, Sharon Wilsie explores one of the most powerful “secret sauces” of Horse Speak: mirroring. Sharon shares how horses communicate across distance, within the herd, and through subtle body signals long before anything becomes loud or obvious. From her early publishing journey to years of studying wild Konik horses in Holland, she explains how horses use posture, attention, breath, gesture, and Functional Interaction Points — also known as “buttons” — to guide, regulate, and connect with one another. This episode focuses especially on how mares teach foals through touch, visual attention, and body-based signals. Sharon describes how the mother horse helps the foal organize movement, follow direction, release stress, and learn safety through the body. Listeners will learn why human self-awareness matters so much around horses. Horses are constantly reading us — not only our deliberate cues, but also our unconscious habits, posture, tension, breath, and emotional state. When we become clearer in our own bodies, we become easier and safer for horses to mirror. Sharon also offers practical riding and handling insights, including how to connect heart-to-poll and belly-button-to-wither, how to use softness instead of pressure, and why soothing touch should follow the direction of the hair rather than rubbing against it. At the heart of this episode is a simple but profound idea: If we want horses to mirror us, we need to become something worth mirroring. This conversation is for horse owners, riders, trainers, bodyworkers, therapeutic riding professionals, and anyone who wants to understand horses from the inside of their own language. Key Takeaway Horses are already listening to the whole body. The question is not whether we are communicating. The question is whether we are communicating clearly, kindly, and consciously. www.horsespeakacademy.com