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A new workshop with Second Hand Method

May 18, 2026

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Set against sounds provided by the Bala Bala Boys, frequencies aligning themselves with the gray sky and the breeze, we gathered at Paddock. Knobby weeping willows, their branches brushing along the edges of fencing that outlined the paddocks. Two horses in one area, another in the adjacent. And one more, looking on from a neighboring property, present, but at a distance, the way some of us arrive at new things.

With Second Hand Method co-founders Rachel and Lauren, we had spent the week raking, arranging, pouring our sweat into creating an environment capable of holding what we knew would happen. Off-white canvas covered the ground. Almond butter and jelly sandwiches in bags alongside Chinese herbal teas. A basket of red apples. The perfect scent from a BAGO candle, chosen with intention.

Second Hand Method creates experiences that introduce people to wellness practices, modalities, and ways of seeing that invite deeper clarity, connection, and transformation. Unbridled Rising believes in a world where the horse-human relationship is recognized not as a niche therapeutic modality but as one of the most sophisticated, evidence-grounded co-regulatory environments available for human nervous system healing and mindset transformation. UR is codifying and expanding access by building programs designed by and for different populations so that it becomes foundational to human wellbeing.

Together, we made BEGIN. This was our very first workshop.

Before participants moved toward the horses, I framed the experience around three ideas: curiosity, presence, and respect - not as abstract values but as lived practices. I introduced how horses sense our nervous systems, how they feel the electromagnetic pulse of our heartbeats from several feet away. They are forever dynamically present with their environment, and they remind us to be the same. To pay attention to breath. To the brace held in our shoulders. The flip in our belly. The elation, the sadness, the wonder. Horses don’t reward performance. They respond to truth.

We ran two paddocks simultaneously. In one, a demonstration of positive reinforcement, a learning system premised on invitation, attunement, and patience. One where reward is given to effort and to the right answer, where building a relationship requires showing up consistently over time. In the other, two horses simply being themselves in a herd dynamic: negotiating space, expressing personality, communicating in a language most of us were encountering for the first time.

Participants were asked to observe both. To notice body language and behavior. To consider the personalities of each horse and hold them against people they know in their own lives, and to ask themselves: how do I actually interact with those characteristics? What do I do when I’m around someone who leads like that horse leads, or needs like that one needs?

In the positive reinforcement paddock, they could see what consistent, patient learning looks like after it has had time to take root. Trust made visible. Mutual respect made physical.

When the workshop ended, we received gratitude. Some of the best hugs I’ve experienced in a long time.

And then, afterwards, my mind went, as it always does, to all the things I could have said to land the connections better. To how I might have more explicitly named what was happening in the nervous system as people stood near these animals. But underneath the usual second-guessing, something more specific was surfacing.

The story arc of the event. There wasn’t one.

Not because the content was wrong, or because the people weren’t moved. They clearly were. But because I had structured an experience that could only be understood by those who already half-knew what they were walking into.

Some participants had their first-ever horse encounter by watching the positive reinforcement demonstration, the polished result of months of work, of trust built through hundreds of small consistent moments. They saw the outcome. But they hadn’t yet had the chance to simply stand with a horse at liberty, no training context, no arc, no goal. To feel what it is to be in the presence of a 1,200-pound animal that has its own entire interior life and is choosing, in this moment, what to do with you.

The raw encounter with all its uncertainty, all its aliveness, should come first. Then the question: what might it take to develop a trusting, dynamic relationship with this animal, with the least pressure possible? How would you go about it?

And from there, the positive reinforcement demonstration becomes an answer, not just a display. It becomes a response to a question the participant has just lived inside of. All the work that lies between raw encounter and earned partnership - the presence required, the consistency, the patience, the rewarding of effort not just outcome - lands differently when you’ve already felt what it is to be a stranger to something, and to want connection anyway.

That’s what BEGIN was really pointing toward. Not a technique. Not a program. A call to readiness. To do wellness differently, to bring our nervous systems somewhere they haven’t been invited before, and to trust the process of what can happen there. To begin. And then to do it again, and again, in community, each time understanding a little more of the arc.

I know now how to build that arc. And I can’t wait to BEGIN again.