HORSE, FIRST - with Lockie Phillips

Discover Lockie's Work here:

www.emotionalhorsemanship.com

We come to horses thinking we're going to learn about horses. Then the horse becomes a Trojan horse.

Through the simple, practical business of trying to understand another animal, we can find ourselves questioning much bigger things. How we relate to the land. What we consider intelligent. Where we believe consciousness resides. What illness means. What a body is. What it means to belong to an ecosystem rather than simply live on top of one.

In this episode of Horse First, Lockie Phillips is joined by writer, poet and ecological thinker Sophie Strand for a conversation that wanders far beyond the boundaries of conventional horsemanship.

Sophie writes at the intersection of ecology, mythology, spirituality, storytelling, illness and the more-than-human world. Her work asks us to reconsider the deeply human habit of placing ourselves at the centre of the story.

And horses offer an extraordinary place to begin.

For many of us, the horse is one of the first large, powerful, unmistakably other creatures with whom we attempt to build a genuine relationship. We cannot completely control that encounter. We cannot know exactly what the horse experiences. We have to pay attention to another nervous system, another body, another set of priorities, another way of perceiving the world.

ABOUT SOPHIE STRAND

Sophie Strand is a writer and poet whose work explores ecology, mythology, spirituality, embodiment and the more-than-human world. She is the author of The Flowering Wand: Rewilding the Sacred Masculine, The Madonna Secret, and The Body Is a Doorway.

Website:

https://sophiestrand.com/

Make Me Good Soil:

https://sophiestrand.substack.com/

Instagram:

@cosmogyny

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Can horses get too much of a "good" thing?  In our effort to be ethical have we become blind to the stressors we place on a horses capacities when they live in perpetual turn-out?

I wrote a difficult post that went viral online and this podcast I respond to the criticism and chat about the key themes at play in the episode.

Joined by my mate Michelle Knapp, thanks Michelle!

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Explore more with Lockie HERE:
www.emotionalhorsemanship.com

In this episode of Horse First, Lockie Phillips is joined by horsewoman, educator, and movement specialist Jillian Kreinbring for a thoughtful conversation about the evolution of horsemanship.

Together, they explore the importance of discernment in an age of endless information, asking not whether tradition is right or wrong, but how we decide what is worth preserving and what deserves thoughtful revision.

Drawing on classical horsemanship, functional anatomy, modern science, and decades of practical experience, Jillian shares her perspective on the old masters, the lessons that continue to serve horses today, and the practices that may no longer withstand careful scrutiny.

Throughout the conversation, Lockie and Jillian compare their own approaches, highlighting the places where they overlap, where they differ, and why respectful disagreement is one of the healthiest forces driving horsemanship forward.

This is a conversation about curiosity over certainty, discernment over dogma, and the responsibility we all share to keep refining our craft in service of the horse.

Because good horsemanship isn't about preserving the past unchanged.

It's about carrying its wisdom forward with honesty, humility, and the courage to revise.
Discover Jillian here: https://online.jilliankreinbringinspired.com/
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A conversation about confidence, community, thoughtful training, and the next chapter of Emotional Horsemanship. From my first UK clinics to the launch of Homecoming 4.0, this episode explores why sequencing, training plans and purposeful practice are changing the way we develop horses—and ourselves.

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In this special episode of Horse First, Lockie Phillips reads a chapter from his forthcoming book exploring the origins of his professional objection to whips.

Part memoir, part reflection on horsemanship, this chapter traces the early experiences that shaped his understanding of fear, power, violence, and the complicated relationship many horse people have with training tools.

Far from being a discussion about equipment alone, this episode asks deeper questions about memory, conditioning, and the experiences that quietly shape our values long before we have language for them.

How do our earliest encounters with fear influence the horse people we become?

And what happens when we stop treating our reactions as weaknesses and start treating them as information?

A personal and vulnerable reading from a book still in progress.

Because sometimes understanding the horse begins with understanding ourselves.

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