Kasia Bukowska: What a Horse Shows You About Your Own Patterns

Horses read your state, not your words. That is the whole premise of this conversation, and it is why Kasia Bukowska says a horse can find something a person has been talking around for years.

Our guest is Kasia Bukowska, an equestrian coach and equine-assisted therapist working from Poland. Her own path into this was not smooth. Her horses would not do what she asked, she went home frustrated and in tears, and she started painting to process it. Analyzing her own paintings afterward, asking why she had used those colors, why the horse's head was up or down, is how she began to decode what the animals were showing her. She keeps six horses and works with four, including one she uses rarely and only with experienced people, because several vets once told her he was too dangerous to keep.

Kasia walks through what a session involves. She and the client talk on the walk up to the paddock, then she opens the gate and lets one or two horses take themselves into the arena. Nobody rides. The horse wears nothing, so it can move away, come closer, or ignore the whole thing, and each of those is treated as a response rather than an accident. She sets a task, deliberately without instructions, and watches how the person solves it. Her guiding line, which she says she picked up at a seminar, is that the way you do one thing is the way you do everything.

The reason this lands for a BTGO audience is what she describes about reliving. If you are talking about being pushed around while a horse walks toward you, the horse will read the state you are in rather than the sentence you are saying, and it may walk straight into your space. Kasia also covers the version of this for people with no access to horses at all: watching one animal closely enough to leave your own head, getting genuinely grounded rather than performing it, and saying out loud that you are scared. She ends on how to find an equine-assisted or equine gestalt practitioner locally, and the same practice applied to a cat, a dog, or a tree.

As always, this is strategic education, not legal or mental-health advice for your specific situation.

🎓 What you'll learn

• What an equine-assisted session actually involves, and why nobody rides
• Why the horse wears no halter, and what it means when it walks away
• "The way you do one thing is the way you do everything," tested in an arena
• Why a horse responds to the memory you are reliving, not the words you are saying
• How to get something out of watching horses from a fence, with no session booked
• Saying out loud that you are frightened, and what that releases
• Why addiction, anxiety and self-blame keep leading back to the same core
• How to find an equine-assisted, equine gestalt, or online practitioner

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 You do not need to own a horse for any of this
3:00 Kasia's work, and painting her way to what the horses were saying
7:00 What a session actually looks like
11:00 Why the horse stays loose, with nothing on it
13:00 The horse answers what you are reliving, not what you are saying
15:00 "The way you do one thing is the way you do everything"
19:00 Addiction, childhood, and the same core underneath
22:00 If all you can do is watch horses from a fence
25:00 Saying out loud that you are scared
29:00 Finding a practitioner, and how online sessions work
33:00 The shire horse, the pole, and what softening did

Keep going 💜
Book a free 30-minute discovery call and we'll help you map your next steps: https://beentheregotout.com/call
📘 Been There Got Out: Toxic Relationships, High-Conflict Divorce, and How to Stay Sane Under Insane Circumstances — https://www.amazon.com/dp/194627495X
📘 Been There Got Out: When Your Ex Turns the Kids Against You (our parental-alienation book) — https://www.amazon.com/dp/1967674183
🔗 Kasia Bukowska at Heart Horse Experience: https://www.hearthorseexperience.com/
🔗 Kasia Bukowska on Instagram (@equestrian_kasia_bukowska): https://www.instagram.com/equestrian_kasia_bukowska/

About Been There Got Out
Chris Barry and Lisa Johnson are high-conflict divorce, custody, and co-parenting strategists, and the founders of Been There Got Out. They know these cases from the inside: both have successfully represented themselves in family court. Few attorneys have a playbook for a case like this — Chris and Lisa write yours with you, so you and your kids can get through it as unscathed as possible.