Thirza Voysey: Finding Your Wild

Ross Tayler: Hi, I'm Ross Tayler. Welcome to Sacred Sundays, a space to slow down, tune in, and return to what's sacred within and around you. Some weeks you'll hear a sound-based offering to open the space, other times we'll simply begin in conversation. However it unfolds, this is an invitation into presence, connection, and the beauty of the unseen. So pour a cup of tea, settle in, and let's begin.

Today I'm joined by Thirza Voysey, who lives and works on Gabriola Island at Soul Farm Sanctuary. Thirza offers one-on-one equine healing experiences, soul readings, and the Becoming membership [?]. Her work reconnects people with their deeper truth and the magic of horses. She is also the author of The Wilderness [?], where she shares her journey of healing and reclaiming her lost feminine power while being guided every step of the way by the horses. Her life had a turning point after her divorce, when the magic of horses came back into her world. Today, Thirza and the herd at Soul Farm Sanctuary help others remember the wild within themselves and reconnect with the wisdom that feels like home. Before we dive into her story and the medicine she brings through her work, Thirza is going to share a guided meditation with us.

Thirza Voysey: I'm very honored to be here and to be able to guide everyone through this. We will be held in the equine collective, or equine nation. Let's take a deep breath and allow our awareness to sink into our bodies. We can feel our feet on the ground, and feel our seats and our chairs on the earth. Just allow your breath to flow into your lower belly. Allow the breath to go in as it wants, fill up the space down there, feeling your belly expand.

We're going to gently draw our attention up to our hearts. The horses love to work in the heart. Notice what's going on in your heart area, in your shoulders, even down into your hands. Allow your breath to come there, feeling into your back and your chest. Allow your breath to flow down your arms and fill up that whole space. Notice, what does it feel like in there? What does your heart feel like today?

Imagine a very, very small spark in the center of your heart, just a little light. As you take your next breath, watch that light expand, a little bit, a lot, however feels good. Allow that light to fill up your whole heart, and then watch it fill your whole body.

Now we're going to imagine that our hearts are connected to the herd. Imagine any herd of horses, any horses, ones that are special to you, ones that have passed, ones that maybe you've never met, with a gratitude and a connection to all the horses in the collective. Watch as your heart connects to all of theirs. Just knowing that it's happening makes it happen.

Feel the support that comes into your heart from the Equine Collective. The number one thing they offer people is support. We don't have to be with them. We can feel it everywhere we are. Imagine that as your heart connects to all of their hearts, you feel their hearts in you, their openness, their connection, their love for you.

As you receive that, also notice a giving. In practice, we connect with the horses through an infinity sign. Imagine, from your heart, you can pick one horse or you can pick the entire collective. Imagine your heart has an infinity sign running from it to the other horse's heart and back to yours. There's giving and receiving. Just let that run for a minute. Watch it go back and forth. You can send your breath through the infinity sign. There's no right way. It's just a giving and a receiving. Let the breath flow along, out and back. Nice deep breaths.

[A short unclear passage is not transcribed.]

Just feel what you feel. Let it fill your whole heart, all the receiving, all the energy, into your whole heart, giving and receiving from all of you. If that feels hard or tricky, just notice. We're not forcing anything. We're just allowing what is, accepting everything. Or if you notice you're giving and receiving more from one side or the other, just notice.

Now we're going to let that melt away and bring your attention back to your own heart, and feel how it feels now. Then we're going to ask for one thought, one gift from the Horse Collective, just for me. Allow that to be whatever it is. It can be a feeling, a thought, an idea, a shift. Sit in your heart as you receive. It can be something you are not even consciously aware of right now. It might show up in the next few days. Just receive your gift. We're going to trust our intuition and take the first thing that we think of as the gift we're receiving, and bring that right into your heart. Say thank you in your head. Notice how you feel after receiving that gift. Notice how your heart feels.

Then we'll go back to expanding the light through all the hearts [?] of the whole collective of the horses. Imagine expanding that heart circle so that it wraps around the whole world. We're sharing it with all the animals, all of nature, all of the earth, all of humanity, sharing this strong heart circle, this love circle, the whole planet. Feel how, as a collective, we can hold that love circle, and feel how it feels in your body to hold that expansiveness. If it's not comfortable, you can always drop out of it. You don't have to hold it. But if it feels good, just keep holding it, and breathe deeply.

Now we're going to bring our energies back to our own selves, back to our own bodies. Watch as your light fills your whole body from head to toe, filling your whole self all the way out to your skin, all the way out around you, feeling your whole energetic space around you, your energy body. Then watch as that light goes down into your heart again. You get to choose how you leave that light. You can leave it filling your whole body, or you can bring it back down into your heart if it feels comfortable, filling your whole heart, or as that little light we started with, however you like, any way that feels good.

Take another deep breath as we pay attention to our seats in our chairs, our feet on the earth. When you're ready, you can come back to the room around you and back to your life. Thank you for joining me.

Ross Tayler: Thank you, Thirza. That was beautiful. I really needed that. It felt really great.

Thirza Voysey: Me too.

Ross Tayler: I could totally feel the energy of the Horse Collective. You don't always feel things, so it was really beautiful to feel that energy and the calm that came along with it. So thank you.

Thirza Voysey: It's pretty amazing when invited. I like to fill the room with their energy. It always feels like a big heart energy to me.

Ross Tayler: Yeah, I experienced that for sure. All right, let's begin our conversation. I'm really curious to begin with about how you came to this work. You said that there was a turning point in your life after your divorce. Maybe you could start by sharing a little about the old life that you walked away from and the new life that you stepped into.

Thirza Voysey: I spent many years trying to do things the right way, quote unquote, and do things the way that I was told to, the way that society told me, the way school taught me. I went through school and did the university and got the job, got the government job, and got the husband and had the two kids. I just didn't feel very happy. I mean, I felt really happy, because family was very important to me and I had wanted all those things. In that way, I really felt content. But of course, like so many of us, there was a kind of loud part of me that was getting louder and louder, and it was talking to me through my body. I call myself a highly sensitive person because I do feel a lot, and it can be overwhelming for my nervous system at times. Over the years with the horses, I've come to be in my body so much more. I was feeling a lot of anxiety throughout my life, and a lot of different things that I write about in my book.

Then at the moment of the divorce, I say in my book, he said, I'm not sure that I want to be married anymore. I don't want to be married anymore. I remember standing at the counter and thinking, well, this was maybe a day later, I don't know. It felt like it was immediate when I think back. That way didn't work, being perfect, being good at doing it the way the world wanted me to do it. Now I'm going to be the best me for me and for my kids. It really became about me and my soul at that point. I started the process of asking, what is it that my soul really wants? I have to find myself again. I had been hiding a lot of who I really am at that point in my marriage. So who am I? I started taking salsa dancing, which is something I always wanted to do since watching Dirty Dancing at 11 years old, and doing the partner dancing. I started that really gung-ho, and it gave me a lot of awareness in my body of the masculine and feminine, and how to feel safe and how to feel inspired and how to express. That was really healing for me.

I also started my yoga teacher training at that time, and that took me into the energy centers. I was obsessed with them. I started offering a lot of classes around that, and the philosophy and the consciousness they were working in, essentially consciousness medicine. I really took to that. Then I eventually found the horses, who also work in energy, after working in energy for so many years. It was a really beautiful match that we came together and started working together.

Ross Tayler: What a great story. It reminds me of my own journey in some ways, in terms of going through divorce and trying to find myself. For me, I don't want to say I was a slow learner, but I had to go through it a few more times. I learned through experience. I can relate to the piece of finding myself. A lot of the clients I work with say, what do you mean, connect with myself? They don't even know who they are. I went through that experience of, for the first time, putting myself first instead of everyone around me and outside of me, and it sounds like you went through that as well.

Thirza Voysey: Yeah. And like you say, I'm kind of bold in that I was like, I'm not doing this again. I'm not getting hurt in this way again, but also I'm going to be on my own path much more. I find some people don't often have access to that. What do I even like, or who even am I? I have a lot of women whose kids have grown up and left home, and they will come and say, I don't even know who I am and I don't even know what I like. Sometimes the process is just finding one thing that you like a little bit and starting to do that, and then feeling those energies come. The cool thing is, usually if people have come here, they have some connection in their life with horses. Often it's, I feel good around horses, or I had a connection with a horse when I was young, so this was a reaching out in itself for them to connect back with their soul.

Ross Tayler: I think of some of the people I've known through my life who have had that connection with horses. They play such a special role at different parts of those people's lives, and the stories they share, and the way the horses brought them through times in their life, and the growth they experienced through that, is so powerful.

Thirza Voysey: Yeah, that's the word people use for it. It's always powerful.

Ross Tayler: On your website, the tagline on your homepage says, Be Your Wild. I was struck by that. I really felt the power behind it. What would you like to say about Be Your Wild?

Thirza Voysey: I've always said, find your medicine, feel your magic, be your wild. To me those three statements feel like all the energy centers coming together. Be your wild is like, I'm going to be my soul self. I'm going to be who I am in my core vibration, which is really what the horses are helping us do, be our core vibration and strengthen that. Even more discerning than that, I just did the live call today for the Becoming Wild [?] membership, and one of the themes that came through, and I don't usually share this, was discernment around our vibration. It's not that we even have to change our vibration. It's that we have to let go of things that are not our core vibration and allow in things that are. In manifestation, things might not be coming to us, not because we're not attracting them with our vibration, but because we maybe have an umbrella up and can't let them in. Or if things aren't working in our lives, maybe we're holding onto stuff that isn't ours. Especially with highly sensitive people, or energetically open people who haven't quite mastered their energy, there can be a lot of holding onto stuff that is not ours. There's also the piece around not fully being in our body. But I really liked that discernment, that it's not that we're not who we are, because we just are who we are. We're out there emitting this vibration of who we are all the time. It's whether we have the worthiness to let in the things that match us. I find that's pretty powerful.

Ross Tayler: It really makes me think about our nervous system, and how much we might be living from outside stimulus versus inside stimulus. We might not realize how much noise there is in our system that is keeping us from seeing. I think what you're saying is that we're always vibrating at the highest level, but we can dampen it by what's going on in our nervous system, in our body, the experiences we're holding onto, and the stress we're carrying. All of that is noise over and above who we really are. Would that be what you're saying?

Thirza Voysey: Yeah. I tell a story that's also in my book, about being six years old, I think, and I figured it out based on memory, of how I would fall asleep and feel similar to the expansion in the meditation. I would feel my connection to all that is, and feel myself expanding and have the whole world inside of me, all the planets. This was never really a conscious thing. It just happened. Then I would get to a place where it felt overwhelming. I could feel the energy running through my body and it just felt too much or too big, and nobody had taught me how to hold that. So I started to shut that down. I started being really afraid in the world. That was my core vibration, and it was really coming in hot at that age. Then I looked around me and saw people in fear, people who said, this is how we have to do it, and you can't be that way. We put all these things in place, like, this is how I have to be, it can't be like that, and we hide that away. People say that about our shadow, that it's not just all the dark, bad stuff in there. It's also the little singer or the little dancer or the little whatever who got shoved in there because she or he wasn't fully accepted in our world.

Ross Tayler: Shadow work, yes. I love talking about shadow work, because it's been such a big part of a lot of my healing. Shadow work gets misinterpreted sometimes, because it's not about darkness necessarily. It's about bringing out the light that's been hidden and put into the shadows, and expressing those parts of ourselves that we've had to deny or suppress or reject. To link that back to what you were saying about the energy centers, what you were saying about fear makes me think about those lower chakras, the fear, guilt and shame that live in those lower chakras. I speak from my own journey, I spent so much time in those lower chakras, in the distortion. It's been a life's work to rise up and get to the heart space rather than being in those vibrations that keep us stuck, of fear, guilt, and shame.

Thirza Voysey: Yeah. The really beautiful thing about the work with the horses is that they reflect back to us both the part of us that is our core vibration and the part of us that has lived a life on this planet, or that is blocking ourselves. Not necessarily in the same moment, but throughout a session, they will often reflect back, and maybe through me as the interpreter, the edges of growth, what's showing up in that space. It's fascinating to feel your core self, your soul self, reflected back from this thousand-pound animal, and also to have some awareness around, okay, what is this edge right now? For example, Raven is our black mare, and the horses have medicines that they bring forward, though I don't like to paint them with a brush, but it shows up over and over. She shows up with this powerful feminine leadership, and she will show that to people, especially if it's your thing to learn or your edge of growth. Recently she was in a session and she was hiding behind the barn. I of course was like, okay, Raven, who often shows up with feminine leadership, is hiding, and I'm just curious about that. Of course there was a whole story about that. It's really cool how they show that specific thing we're working on. We can be working on five or ten things at a time, but there's a piece that really shows up in our energy that's reflected back. It's very cool.

Ross Tayler: It's subtle in a way that you could almost miss it. I had an experience, I think I told you before we hit record, in a sample session of equine therapy. One of the things that happened was that one horse kept walking away from me and wouldn't come toward me. The reason it wouldn't come toward me was that I wasn't in my strength and my power. The moment I stepped into that energy, the horse would come to me. I also reflected to you that I had this really clear experience where I said to the horse, you're beautiful, and the horse immediately turned its head and I could see my reflection in the horse's eye.

Thirza Voysey: That's so powerful. It's so quick and so subtle and so powerful. My job, essentially, is to catch those things for people. I've set up the membership so that people have the opportunity to get into relationship with the horses over time. People come for an hour every week and get their time to build a relationship with the herd. The horses helped me design this. I had it very different. I had it very sort of systematized and training people and all that. And they were like, nah, we're not doing it like that, which was really hard for me to trust. Okay, we're going to throw that out and start fresh. This is how it ended up, and they love it. They have their weekly visits with everybody. I really wanted the community involved more with the herd and connecting more in this work. That's how it happens, when people have that kind of longer relationship, because I'm around, but I'm not right there as I would be in a session, so I'm not doing the translating and bringing it forward. What happens over time is that the horses help people build their energetic strength and essentially teach them how to be, and not how to do. People start coming and they're like, I don't know what to do. What do I do? Of course I give some guidance, and some people come to check it out and ask, are we riding? I say, no, we don't ride, we be. There's a lot of discomfort that comes with being, as we all know. There are lots of energetic practices and lots of ways to develop relationship. What happens when people really start being is that the horses start to trust the people, and then they start to guide them in healing. I always say in a session, it's for me, it's for you, it's for the collective, and it's for the horses.

They will start to show people how to do healing work and how to help some of the horses. We have a young horse, Luna, who came with a lot of abuse in her past. They all come from different backgrounds, which are not beautiful. She came and she was biting us and jumping fences and not comfortable and not trusting. She's the youngest, so often the older two will guide the people in the membership to put their hands on her, or show them where. She was really uncomfortable with that before, but every time she has a safe interaction with humans, and sometimes it's kids and sometimes it's men, which was a thing for her, she's learned, person after person, okay, this is safe. This is safe. This is safe. She hadn't been around anybody in a long time. It was only me and my husband. So it's this beautiful healing for everybody, and the relationships that build. Then people become strong in their energy. If you're going to walk around with a thousand-pound animal, first of all have your own boundaries, but then ask the horse to do something with you, like liberty. I teach liberty a lot, which is essentially dancing with the horses with no ropes or anything. It's this beautiful energetic connection, but to get to that level where you're asking the horse to trust you and also do something with you and join you energetically, it's another level. It's just beautiful to see how people go through all these levels of connection with them.

Ross Tayler: Yeah. One of the things that struck me during the meditation, energetically, was the history between humans and horses, and the healing that perhaps is needed for that lineage of the horses and that relationship with humans, but how they've been here and of service to humans for so long.

Thirza Voysey: Yeah. A huge part of this work for me is for people to realize how much is going on with horses and how much they are here for us in this specific way. Not all horses want to work with humans, but the ones that do and the ones that are here, they're no joke standing waiting for people before they come. We have an acreage, and there are a few pastures with fences that we can shut, but mostly right now everything's open. When a human comes for a session, the horses can be wherever they want on the property. Sometimes one will wander off if it's not part of the session, but they're still holding a space, and the other ones are coming forward because there's something they're more involved with. They're always there, wanting to be part of it, curious and excited. I love it because they have so much choice. They could be up hiding behind the house.

There's one lady who comes who is very energetically strong and very in her body and very grounded, with a lot of intuitive gifts, and she really knows about them. Luna, the youngest one I was talking about, was hiding across the farm behind the house when she first came. It took, I don't know, probably months of her coming once a week and then to different events for Luna to be right with her. Now they have this beautiful, really deep connection. More recently she was saying, because I had been away and Luna wasn't super comfy when I was away, ignoring people and getting a little snarky if she's not comfortable. Then, just after we had that conversation, I saw them walking together across the farm. I was like, wow, that's really shifted. It's the most amazing thing for both the humans and the horses, for the horses to be seen in this deep way and for the gifts they have. Even with the kids, I always teach them that horses aren't here for us to use for our uses. Humans do use horses for therapy in other ways, but it's really important to me that that's not what we're doing. We're building relationship, and it's as much for me as it is for the horse. I always tell people that if you're here, it's because you have something for the horses as well. It's not just about them having something for you.

Ross Tayler: Wow. The whole time you're talking, I've had a smile on my face just listening to the stories and your descriptions of everything. It's great.

Thirza Voysey: Yeah, I love the examples, because even your example about the eye, seeing yourself, people get it through stories, I think, or experiencing it, of course.

Ross Tayler: At the same time, if you weren't paying attention, you could miss it. That's the beauty of having you as an interpreter, to make sure that you catch those things and pass them on.

Thirza Voysey: Yeah. There's so much depth in it, and it's very slow. I think that's part of what is uncomfortable for people at first, that it can seem like nothing's happening. I'm just sitting here on the ground with these horses, or standing with my hand on this horse, or standing in the barn not touching the horse because the horse doesn't want to be touched. We're humans, and we're like, okay, I'm just going to come in and do this and do that. Especially horse people are used to doing things with horses, and for us to just be with them, well, what's the point? Why do you even have horses? I've had that question so many times. Why do you have them if you're not riding them? Are you using them for therapy? No, I'm not using them for therapy. This is what we offer together. It's a very back and forth thing. I feel it's for humanity and it's for the horse collective.

Ross Tayler: I love it.

Thirza Voysey: Interestingly, as I've mentioned a few times, I would venture to say that everybody who has come to the farm for a session or a meditation or the membership probably identifies as being highly sensitive. Maybe not all the horses, but Luna for sure as well. So there's a lot of nervous system healing going on. The beautiful thing about working with horses is that it's a very gentle way for us to get into our bodies. I work with people who have been through a lot of different quote unquote therapies to help get them into their bodies, and a lot of things can, I always say, blow us out. Even meditation sometimes. When I was doing that meditation, I was aware that this expansion could feel like too much for somebody who's not in their body. It can be a lot for people. The horses are really good about meeting people where they're at. That's what I always say, they meet you where you're at.

It might be as simple as the first level, which is what the HeartMath Institute calls entrainment. You come here, you're on the farm, you're on the land, it feels good. The horses are by nature working on your energetic state, your brainwaves, your heart rate, your breathing, so that you are part of the herd and they can still feel safe and spot a predator. They're basically smoothing out your energy so that they can still be aware. It's like a big herd hug, I always call it. That's one level where you're going to feel that, and you'll leave and say, I feel better. I also warn people. I had these ladies come who just wanted to paint the horses, and they're professional painters on the island. I said, yeah, come. Of course I was there for safety, and they didn't realize they were going to be right there with the horses. They thought there would be a fence or something. Luna, curious George, came right up and was blocking one lady's vision of Raven because she was painting her. But Luna's doing healing work, because people are people. She doesn't know if they're here for this or that. I told these ladies, you might feel tired after, like you've had some energy work, whether you like it or not. You might feel tired, you might have dreams about the horses. I often tell people that. If people are more connected with horses, or quite in their bodies, or ready to go deeper, they can go very, very deep with the horses and have powerful, opening experiences.

Ross Tayler: That's wonderful. I just love your passion as it comes through when you're talking about your experience with horses. I feel like we could go on forever, and unfortunately we get to the point where we have to wrap up. I always love to close with a question, and it's, what is one simple way someone could connect with the sacred today?

Thirza Voysey: Well, I of course would suggest they sit with a horse.

Ross Tayler: Ha ha.

Thirza Voysey: I always say that the horses to me are the greens juice of nature. You take all the greens in the garden and put them into a greens powder, and that's your super powerful juice of the greens. A lady once said to me, I can sit with a tree all day. I get different things for different people. For her, she can sit with a tree all day and feel good, but the second she sees horses eating grass, she comes into her body so fast and feels so grounded. I really think of them that way. I think the thing that horses essentially want us to do, how we can tap into the sacred, is any way that brings us into presence. That's one of their biggest gifts, being in the present moment. It could even be with our dog or a tree. But our world is not very slow, so really slowing down and being with what's here in this moment.

Ross Tayler: Thank you. I love that. Really, that's what this podcast is about, giving people an opportunity to slow down and connect with ideas and experiences that they might not always get to hear or have.

Thirza Voysey: I love it.

Ross Tayler: If anyone listening wants to stay connected or explore more of your work, where's the best place for them to find you?

Thirza Voysey: I'm on Instagram and Facebook, and people can also email me or send messages through the website. I love getting messages.

Ross Tayler: We'll share all those links in the show notes. Thirza, thank you so much for joining us today. I'm so grateful to have gotten to speak with you and to hear your stories and you sharing your gifts. It was such a pleasure.

Thirza Voysey: Thank you for having me. I love any opportunity to talk about this. I'm so passionate about it.

Ross Tayler: You are so welcome. And to everyone listening, thank you for tuning in, and until next time, take good care.

Ross Tayler: Thank you for joining us here on Sacred Sundays. I hope something in today's offering spoke to your spirit, stirred something true, or simply gave you a moment to breathe. Feel free to share this episode with someone who might need it. Until next time, may your Sunday be slow and sacred. Bye for now.