The Equine Healing Collaborative

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The Equine Healing Collaborative

The Equine Healing Collaborative was created to provide a path to recovery, self-discovery and person

The Equine Healing Collaborative was created to provide a path to recovery, self-discovery, personal growth, a re-connection with the natural world, and/or emotional insight and health. The EHC offers more than just traditional talk therapy and utilizes interventions such as equine assisted psychotherapy therapy, mindfulness, and mindful equine massage to promote health and quality of life for individuals seeking change. History: The inception of The Equine Healing Collaborative came when Jennifer Fenton, a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist became certified in Equine Massage Therapy. During the process of certification Jennifer began to notice the healing power of simply being in the presence of equines. She also noticed that as she massaged and released tension in her equine clients, she too released the tension of her day to day work and began to experience new energy and passion for her work and life. Jennifer then began the path of researching and learning as much as she could about equine assisted therapy and how she could combine the practice of mindfulness and massage into this already proven therapeutic technique. Jennifer has a history of working with those who are least able to access or afford mental health services and has experience working with at-risk youth, individuals in crisis, and special needs children. She is certified and/or trained in several evidenced based practices such as Motivational Interviewing, Seeking Safety, Aggression Replacement Training, Client Centered Treatment Planning, Hostage Negotiations, Critical Incident Stress Management, and Mindfulness. Jennifer’s passion for helping those in need led her to the concept of forming a non-profit agency that will combine her passion for equines and her mental health experience. Her vision for this non-profit is to continue to treat those in need including; veterans, at-risk youth, special needs children, and many others seeking alternative treatments that promote mental and emotional health.

04/11/2026

Meet Keith. 🫏

He didn’t come here to do therapy. He came here to eat, bray at inconvenient times, and remind everyone that life doesn’t have to be so serious.
And somehow, that’s exactly what we all needed.

There’s something about a donkey with zero agenda that just… lets your nervous system exhale. No expectations. No performance. Just Keith being Keith, curious, ridiculous, and completely unbothered.

We work with a lot of heavy stuff here at EHC. Keith is the antidote.

Follow us! You’ll understand. 🐴✨

NervousSystemReset AnimalTherapy SalinasCA MentalHealthMatters

04/04/2026

PSA: Doom scrolling is not the same as being informed. 📱❌

Your nervous system is exhausted. The headlines aren’t going anywhere. But neither is your anxiety if you don’t give yourself a break.

Step away. Breathe. Pet something soft. Eat a snack. Come back when you’re ready.

Regulated humans change the world.

You got this. 💛

03/28/2026

He’s home. 🐴

Chuck has returned to the ranch after some time away for medical care, and if you could bottle the look on his face the moment he saw open sky and familiar faces, you’d have the best medicine in the world.

There’s something quietly profound about watching a horse remember where he belongs. The way he moved through the gate, took in the wide open space, and found his way back to his herd said everything words can’t quite capture.

Relationships heal. For our clients, for our staff, for our horses, connection is always the medicine.

Welcome home, Chuck. We missed you more than you know. 🌿

HorsesHeal BackWhereBelongs

03/20/2026

We are deeply grateful to Yellow Brick Road for their generous $5,000 grant in support of The Equine Healing Collaborative.

This gift goes directly where it matters most – into the hands of clients who cannot afford mental health services. In our community, more than 93% of those we serve live at or below the poverty line. Grants like this one make it possible for us to say yes when someone needs help and has nowhere else to turn.
Thank you, Yellow Brick Road, for believing that everyone deserves access to healing, regardless of their income.

MentalHealthForAll NonprofitGratitude

03/16/2026

Big news and a big thank you. 🙏

The Equine Healing Collaborative has received a $10,000 grant from The Montage Foundation, and every dollar will go to removing financial barriers to mental health care.

High deductibles. Unaffordable co-pays. No insurance at all. These are the realities facing many of the individuals we serve. This grant means we can say yes when cost would have otherwise meant no.
Thank you, Montage Foundation, for seeing our clients and choosing to invest in their healing.

HealingIsPossible EHC

03/14/2026

🐴💫🐴Horses don’t just sense your anxiety. They respond to it, shift around it, and wait for you to find your way back to regulated.

That’s not a metaphor. It’s nervous system biology.
Horses are prey animals hardwired to read environmental threat cues, including the subtle ones you broadcast without knowing it: held breath, shallow chest breathing, muscle tension, a racing heart. They pick it up through your body, your energy, the space between you.

When you slow down, they settle. When they settle, you settle more. It becomes a feedback loop, and your nervous system starts to learn what calm actually feels like in your body, not just as a concept.
This is what equine-assisted therapy is built on. Real co-regulation. Real physiological change. Not inspiration, not metaphor.

The horses do a lot of the work. We just make space for it to happen.

03/07/2026

🐴 There’s something that happens out here that you don’t find in a traditional therapy office.
A horse nudges your shoulder at exactly the right moment. You start laughing, maybe for the first time in months, because honestly, what else are you going to do?

That laughter isn’t a distraction from the healing. It IS the healing.

In Equine Assisted Psychotherapy, horses mirror what we can’t always say out loud. They sense the tension we’ve been carrying, the walls we’ve built, the stories we’ve stopped telling. And sometimes, instead of tears, what breaks through is a belly laugh. A snort. A shared moment of pure, unscripted joy.

Healing doesn’t have to look like suffering through it.

Sometimes it looks like standing in a pasture, covered in horse hair, giggling at absolutely nothing, and feeling, for the first time in a long time, completely and utterly yourself. 🌿

💛 We serve clients across Monterey and Santa Cruz counties, including Medi-Cal. Everyone deserves access to healing that feels human.

EquineTherapy MontereyCounty SantaCruzCounty LaughterIsTherapy TraumaInformedCare EquineHealingCollaborative

02/25/2026

Horses are herd animals.

Not metaphorically. Not poetically. Biologically.

A horse alone is a dysregulated nervous system. A horse in community is a regulated one. They co-regulate through proximity, movement, breath, touch, shared vigilance. Their safety lives in relationship.

When we ask horses to serve as co-therapists in psychotherapy, we are asking them to do sophisticated relational work. To attune. To respond to micro-shifts in posture and affect. To mirror incongruence. To stand steady when someone is grieving, dissociating, or learning to trust again.

They cannot do that well if they are deprived of what makes them horses.

Pasture.
Movement.
Choice.
A consistent herd.
Room to graze, to rest, to establish hierarchy, to repair ruptures in their own social system.

At The Equine Healing Collaborative, our horses live in herds because their wellbeing is not separate from the clinical work. Their ability to live naturally is what allows them to show up grounded, curious, and honest in the round pen.

We do not use horses despite their herd nature.
We rely on it.

Psychotherapy happens in relationship.
And our co-therapists teach us every day that healing does too.

Address

902 Monterey Salinas Highway
Salinas, CA
93908

Telephone

+18312934492

Website

http://equinehealing.org/, http://equinehealing.org/

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