Since 2006, fresh off earning her degree, Natalie Benway-Correll has worked as a LISW (licensed independent social worker) in Iowa City. But a couple of years ago, her experiences as a therapist during the COVID-19 pandemic led to a search for something more.
“During the pandemic, I was seeing — based on all the conversations I was having, with my clients and my friends — this need for expanded emotional capacity,” she told me in a recent phone call. “Everybody was talking about how exhausted and grief stricken [they were]. … People were really tired and reevaluating their lives, like, ‘Where do I go from here?’ Myself included — pretty much in the beginning of the pandemic, I was desperate to find something to help me cope emotionally so that I could be available to my clients and my family. And horses were my respite. It was like coming home.”
Her exploration of the connection between horses and healing, fomented at the Reflective Horse in California under her mentor Cassandra Ogier, broadened into her current passion project, the Well Lived Life. Under that umbrella, she examines space making, community building and deep connectivity within and between people.
“Slow down, Feel IN, Live Well.” That’s the motto on the Well Lived Life’s website. There have been workshops on empowered beauty and more so far. And in June 2023, after working in California and elsewhere in the Midwest, Benway-Correll will offer her first horse-centric “mini retreat” here in Iowa, with hope for more in the future.
“What’s different about the model that I trained in is, it’s somatic reprogramming and equine empowerment,” she explained about Ogier’s trademarked therapeutic style. “One of the things that is a part of the process is being able to intuit or read whether or not that horse wants to be touched. I think a lot of times, we kind of put our agenda on these animals. And part of what this program is about is learning about interdependent relationship, and how to extend an invitation.”
The somatic, body-centric aspect is a preparation for that experience — “I do not allow, nor does my mentor allow, people to go into a space with horses unless you’re grounded,” she said. The key to growing that “emotional capacity” Benway-Correll noticed such a craving for is in stillness, in presence.
“A lot of it is really just about getting quiet enough and connected with what’s happening in your body, and then seeing what comes into your awareness,” she said. “The horse is such an incredible portal to a deeper understanding of yourself and your relationship to everything around you.”
Benway-Correll takes the same approach to her wider work with the Well Lived Life.
“I wanted to create a more inclusive wellness culture. … When I was looking around at a lot of the wellness spaces that I was a part of, they were very white and able-bodied,” she said. “I didn’t want to create just another white women’s wellness [program].”
“It’s not just one-and-done. It’s an ongoing commitment to relationship,” Benway-Correll said of the challenges of transcending that limitation. “And I think that’s what is really foundational to the work of the horses — learning, again and again, how to be in the right relationship.”
“I know it sounds really esoteric, sometimes, what I’m describing,” Benway-Correll says with a laugh. But there’s no secret knowledge necessary to benefit from this process. “You don’t have to be a horse person to experience how empowering it is, to basically go into a herd and become a part of it. If you don’t have an agenda, if you are able to stay grounded.”
The reward for being present is a sort of freedom.
“If I’m grounded, and I’m not in my head about what’s happening, we can both just show up, as is,” she said. “I haven’t even been able to do that in my life in many different relationships, and being able to have a felt experience of that over and over again … I don’t have to tell myself I’m this great person. I just am showing up as I am in the moment, and that is so freeing. It’s just so freeing … And if a horse — or human — doesn’t want to connect, that isn’t about me. I don’t need to tell myself a story about what’s happening. It’s really beautiful to be able to walk through the world in that way.”
This article was originally published in Little Village’s June 2023 issue, Rec’d.
