Harnessing the Healing Power of Horses: A Journey into Emotional Intelligence with Pia Ault

What happens when you bring horses into the coaching experience? My guest today, Pia Ault, reveals the profound wisdom these magnificent creatures offer as she shares her remarkable journey from corporate burnout to transformational coach.

After experiencing postpartum depression and carrying emotional baggage from childhood, Pia found herself trapped in a work environment that demanded she leave her authentic self at the door. This disconnection ultimately led to a bold career shift and the manifestation of a dream—coaching with horses.

As Pia beautifully demonstrates through client stories, these animals respond not to our words or intentions, but to our genuine alignment. Whether you're struggling with emotional regulation, authentic self-expression, or healing from past conditioning, this episode offers powerful insights for reconnecting with your true self. Ready to discover the language of your emotions? Connect with Pia for a free 30-minute discovery session and receive her guide to understanding emotional wisdom here.

Guest Bio:

Pia is a highly skilled and sought after Transformation and Empowerment Coach. She focuses on personal development, social and emotional intelligence, and empowering individuals through the language of emotions and wisdom from horses. She has a passion for helping women who desire a stronger confidence, presence, and identity. Women who have been made to feel small and now want to be seen and heard.

Find Pia:

Website, Linkedin, Instagram, Facebook

Horse Assisted Coaching Freebie

This episode was produced by six-two.studio

______

Karen Sarmento is a passionate and dedicated Nurse Practitioner for more than 18 years, CEO at Sarmento Mentoring Services LLC, and a Proctor Gallagher Certified Mindset Mentor. She specializes in empowering women to tap into their true potential. She understands the unique challenges faced by women because she too has battled some major challenges in her life. Karen does not let that define her; she believes it’s the challenges that have made her the limitless woman she is today. She whole-heartedly believes we hold all the power within and that we should stand tall together in the pursuit of greatness.

Karen has served thousands over the course of her career and has spent many years studying directly with world class mentors to gain a deep understanding of the science behind human behaviour and learning about the success principals that create lasting change and transformation. She will share her insights with you so you can feel unstoppable and limitless too.

Find Karen:
Website
Instagram
Facebook

Transcript

Karen Sarmento:

0:01

Have you ever felt that inner whisper nudging you towards something greater? We truly are a force of nature, possessing our own incredible power within. We are all here to identify our own personal definition of success. We all have a story to tell. Join me as I dive into empowering concepts and have powerful conversations with extraordinary humans who have shattered limitations, overcome adversity and created remarkable success. I'm your host, Karen Sarmento, and we are meant for more.

Karen Sarmento:

0:49

Hello and welcome back to another episode of We Are Meant For More. Today I have an amazing guest. I'm really excited for this episode. So unique, what she does. Welcome to the show, Pia Ault.

Pia Ault:

1:05

Thank you. Thanks for having me, Karen.

Karen Sarmento:

1:08

Oh, it's our pleasure. I was really looking forward to this. So I'm going to introduce you to the audience and tell them a little bit about what you do. I'm going to read here from the bio so I get this completely accurate. So Pia is a highly skilled and sought after transformation and empowerment coach. She focuses on personal development, social and emotional intelligence, and empowering individuals through the language of emotion and wisdom from horses. It's going to be so interesting. She has a passion for helping women who desire stronger confidence, presence and identity, Women who have been made to feel small and now want to be seen and heard. Oh my gosh, there's so much to dive into there Really excited.

Pia Ault:

2:02

Yeah.

Karen Sarmento:

2:02

So tell us a little bit about how you got started on this journey and to start working with horses.

Pia Ault:

2:10

Yeah, it's been quite a journey, I think, like many other women who are getting into the helping others business. For me, and I think for many others, it starts with the self. So I went through many years of self development therapy. I had postpartum depression after my first born and I had my second born very, very quickly after, you know, after the first. So I didn't really get to understand how I could cope, how I could cope, regulate my emotions. I had a lot of baggage from growing up and having to get independent and become responsible. Very early on there was definitely some neglect and some abandonment emotionally from my parents. So all of that when I became a parent myself, that all just exploded and I had no idea what to do other than go to therapy, which was great. But I sort of wish that I had some of the resources and the tools that I now know and now have. If I had had that in my 30s, I probably would have gotten through it much less painful but also with a greater understanding about myself.

Pia Ault:

3:27

So I think many of us, many women, go through this and I was no exception. So, in the self-awareness, in picking up things about how I could regulate my emotions, I left corporate, I left a very toxic corporate life and started to train in coaching, knowing that I wanted to be a coach. And that started sort of the path down. You know, you go through your self-awareness, you go through your self-learning and all of that, but then starting to identify who I wanted to actually coach, and I attracted people like myself. I attracted women who had gone through exactly what I gone through.

Pia Ault:

4:08

Probably no surprise there. But then over, you know, through my training and over over the course of time, I started to identify, you know, a smaller and smaller niche. It was still, it was still corporate leaders, many of them females, many of them with imposter syndrome, not able to regulate or even show emotions or empathy in the workplace. So, you know, all of all of the, the pieces of the puzzle kind of came together the last 10 years. It took a long time but, you know, sort of zooming in on, you know where I can be the most helpful. So that's what started it.

Karen Sarmento:

4:46

Wow, there's so much right there. I think, as you said it is, it's very common amongst women. When we have children, all our stuff starts to show up and I know for me personally. Somebody said to me when I went through this little stage in my life, what you don't fix in yourself, you pass along to your children. So that for me was a big igniter of wanting to dive deeper into some of that baggage. Could you tell us a little more of what it looked like when you made the decision to leave corporate, because we went right by that. But it really jumped out at me because it's huge to make just those big decisions. You're going outside of the box of what was expected and what, even what you expected for your life. So what did that decision look like and the actual move to do it?

Pia Ault:

5:41

It took a while. It wasn't something that I woke up one day and said, oh, I think I'm going to go in and quit my job today. A lot of things led up to it. We were living in the Middle East at the time. I was in Dubai, I had had an amazing career, been really fortunate to kind of move up the ladder and, you know, not all without resistance, but you know, I worked hard and I think this was the thing that eventually burned me out.

Pia Ault:

6:12

I was for many, many years what I would label as a pleaser and a doer. I, you know, I knew that if I worked hard, if I worked harder, if I studied harder, if I got more degrees, I could do much. If I studied harder, if I got more degrees, I could do much better. You know, and the things we tell ourselves right? So, anyway, after two master's degrees, after years and years of moving up the ladder and you know, again, very fortunate, been traveling and living throughout some amazing places in the world, traveling and living throughout some amazing places in the world but I felt that there was a part of me that could do other things and I also, I really, really were starting to see that my values weren't met in the workplace and I don't fault anybody for it. I don't. I think that leaders in today's companies, whether it be a small startup or a huge enterprise or huge global conglomerate, there just aren't any spaces for people to show up really authentically. I think we all put on a mask to a certain extent and we walk in and we leave certain parts of us behind outside the door as we walk in, and I just got tired of doing that. I got really fed up with always having to be someone else, that I wasn't really truly authentically at work. So that, combined with a corporate restructuring, new leaders coming in, the teams changing it, just all felt like now was the time to look at. What do I want to do next? And what I wanted to do next was, you know, obviously to keep working, but with everything that was going on, it just seemed more naturally to jump out on my own. I wasn't able to get a job right at the time. I was looking and I thought, well, maybe I should just take the restructuring, you know, take the compensation, take the offer on the table and use that money for something different. So that's it, and it took a good 18 months to do that.

Pia Ault:

8:16

This was not an overnight. I had a personal coach as well, and through her work with me, I started to identify what it was I really, really wanted. Like, what were my desires? What were my dreams? If there was nothing stopping me, what could I do? And I just I wrote down I want to be able to teach or or help women and children and I want to use horses.

Pia Ault:

8:41

I don't know where that came in. I've always loved horses, but that was part of the dream. And she said I really want you to visualize where you are a year from now. This was back in 2011 or 12. So I said well, in 2013, I'm going to be living on a farm with horses and I'm going to use that in my coaching to help other people. And by 2013, I was already well into coaching and started to work with horses and horse assisted coaching. So you know, I manifested and it yeah, it just kind of happened, but it was not an easy decision. I think the one thing that I was mostly scared of was how I was going to cut it financially.

Karen Sarmento:

9:24

A very realistic concern for most. I love how you said you allowed yourself to, in many ways, to dream If I could have do be anything I wanted without limitation, what would it be? So then you're really allowed to think bigger and amazing, because we often have these self-imposed boundaries of what we can do. Yeah, big time, yes. So that's a great place to start. What's it like when you decide it's kind of a conscious decision to start showing up authentically? Why do you think that's so hard for us to do? Sometimes we feel like we have to show up perfectly, and the truth is, none of us are perfect. We're all going through stuff and we're all just trying our best. So why is it so hard still for us to show up authentically and not feel like we're being?

Pia Ault:

10:24

judged. Wouldn't it be nice if we could just wake up and just be strong every day? I mean, I do this work and I still have doubts, right, I still have limiting beliefs, I still sometimes go. Who do I think I am that I could do this? You know it's like you need to take your own medicine once in a while. You know it's like you need to take your own medicine once in a while, but I I truly believe that a lot of it, and I know this mostly from myself.

Pia Ault:

10:54

Where do my limiting beliefs come from? And I think that can apply to a lot of other women and men as well. Actually, I think it starts with who's around us in our childhood as we grow up All of the parenting, family members, our teachers, our religious leaders if you go to church, your pastor, whatever other friends and our friends' families. For me, I know that a lot of things were conditioned when I was growing up and a lot of things happened in, you know, in the way that I grew up and that leaves a huge amount of habits, behaviors, conditioning, things go into the shadow. Just a lot of deep, deep beliefs that we are a certain way and we cannot be what we really, truly dream that we can be be because it gets shut down, and it's not something that our parents or people around us do on purpose or maliciously, it's just. You know.

Pia Ault:

11:52

For me, as an example, I really, really wanted to take ballet in. You know gymnastics and ballet. I was maybe eight or nine. Most of my friends in school were doing something, you know whether it was Girl Scouts or horseback riding or something, and my mom was a single mom. She didn't have the money for me to do it. But I just wanted to really, really go to ballet. And she said we don't have the money and you know what? You don't have the body for it either. Just, you know you need to have certain toes and you need to look a certain. You know what I mean.

Pia Ault:

12:25

She was trying to like let me down gently, but what happened instead was I became conscious of my body. I became conscious of what I could and couldn't do, and it was the same with gymnastics and all the other things I wanted to do as extracurricular activities that we didn't have the money for. So that's one type of conditioning that we didn't have the money for. So that's one type of conditioning. Another one is the emotional conditioning that when there is something that you need help with or you have a reaction to something, how are emotions welcomed in your family or not right, and in our family I don't think I ever saw my mother cry, even when her mom, my grandmother, died. It was just very stoic. We don't talk about it, I'll get through it. I mean, my mom's a very strong woman, but there's a sense of gosh, just show something, let something out. So I think that also really makes us who we are.

Karen Sarmento:

13:23

Absolutely. I can completely relate. What are some of the tools that helped you to release some of those limiting beliefs or some of those things that held you back?

Pia Ault:

13:36

I took a long time. I mean therapy helped. Like I said earlier, it wasn't really until I started the work with training to be an equine facilitated coach and went through that training about 10 years ago. Some of the books we had to read were about the shadow, some of it was books about emotions and the different books that we read chapters and started to open a curiosity for me, and one of the books that probably have had the most impact and still to this day continues to be my go-to kind of you know the reference I go to most is the Language of Emotions by Carla McLaren.

Pia Ault:

14:18

She's an American author. She's written several books and I started to learn about why I was so angry all the time, because anger has to do with your ability or inability to set boundaries and how your values are met. And it makes sense now. But in at the time I didn't realize why I was always so angry and resentful and that was because none of my values were met and none of principles were respected at work and maybe also in my private life.

Pia Ault:

14:51

So going through that book and then she just coincidentally happened to right after I was done with the horse assisted coaching, certification, coaching, certification she opened up a dynamic emotional integration a course online for people who wanted to become consultants and trainers with with emotions and empathy and I enrolled in one of the first. You know I was one of the first cohort members and that's a good nine, eight, nine years ago. That really offered me a way into dealing with my emotions but also understanding my clients emotions when they come for coaching and people around me. So, going back to the question you had before about showing up authentically, I believe that it has to do with how we also regulate and we meet our emotions or we brush them under the carpet meet our emotions or we brush them under the carpet.

Karen Sarmento:

15:49

Yeah, thank you for that. Well then, I want to dive into how you incorporate horses into your coaching. How does that work, what does it look like and what? Maybe you could even give us an example of how a horse has has assisted you could even give us an example of how a horse has has assisted.

Pia Ault:

16:10

Oh gosh, yeah, I've got so many great stories from clients I've got, obviously, I coach globally. So many of my clients are overseas. When everything takes place with you know, teams or zoom, and in cases like that, if there are any kind of knowledge or wisdom that I feel could benefit the client you know just in terms of examples of how a horse herd would do things or how a horse could show something I bring that in, obviously without the horse, and I talk about it and say if we relate this behavior or what's coming up for you to horse wisdom or you know something that horses will do when they're together, we then talk about that and then you know, I ask the client well, what do you feel about that? How does that relate to something that you've been through? So we can do it talking, do it talking. But of course, what I love the most is to have live sessions with clients where they come into an arena, they spend time with the horse and those types of activities. A lot of it is just kind of what wants to happen.

Pia Ault:

17:18

I don't go okay, horse, here's Karen, karen, here's the horse. We don't introduce it like that. I start by doing some safety briefing. I would ask you if you have any fear on you know a level from one to 10, where's your anxiety, where's your fear level? We work through that. We typically do a body scan, so we kind of scan our bodies just to see what's showing up where any kind of discomfort or tension or sensation. And then, after all of that, then I would invite you into the arena or the round pen with the horse, and a lot of the introduction is the same way that horses introduce themselves to each other. They, they share breath, they kind of sniff with one and the other nostril, they, they greet each other, they share breath, they kind of sniff with one and the other nostril, they greet each other, like that, and then they figure out where they are in the herd in terms of the hierarchy. So we do a similar thing where we share breath, we introduce ourselves, and then it could go many different ways.

Pia Ault:

18:22

The client can bring up an issue or challenge that they're going through at the moment, whether it be relationship work, something that they self-regard, anything that they struggle with at that particular time in life and the horse can help in several ways. I could do activities with the horse and the client and things will show up. Or I can simply just leave the client and the horse standing together. We have what we call mindful grooming. They can groom the horse, they can touch the horse, you know, do whatever they feel sort of comfortable with. Or they can just simply take a chair and sit down and see what happens around them with the horse.

Pia Ault:

19:06

Or if there's more than one horse, what does the horse represent for them? Is it a person? Is it a symbol? Is it the issue itself? So yeah, a lot of different things can happen in the session. It's never really scripted because, you know, we don't. We're on horse time and we're, we're coming into their world, so we need to see what, what they show us, what they feed back to us. It just is sort of unpredictable a little bit. What, what might happen.

Karen Sarmento:

19:34

Oh, my gosh, it's so unique. Do you have any examples of how the horse really guided you or or the client to some answers, or how it helped?

Pia Ault:

19:47

Yeah, I had. I had recently a client that showed up. She actually showed up to the first session on her own and she spent time just standing with with my horse and she was telling me about how she had. She had issues of trust or lack of trust because her husband travels a lot. Lack of trust because her husband travels a lot. He's gone from, you know, from a one to two weeks and back for a week, then gone three weeks and back, and they've been married for a long time and she knows deep down there was absolutely no reason to distrust him. She's never had any you know, concrete example of where something has happened.

Pia Ault:

20:28

But it was this feeling that came up. She felt distrusting, she felt very lonely, you know, often on her own and not able to see friends. So there was a sense of loneliness. So I asked her to just stand in sort of in the middle of the round pen. Lola had gone sort of to the other edge and said you know, think up, close your eyes and just think of something really, really poignant that you and your husband have shared in the last, you know, two weeks while he's been home and she's so. She was starting to think and she started to cry and she's like I don, I can't really think of anything specific. And again, the horse wasn't doing anything, it was just standing on its own.

Pia Ault:

21:23

We talked about what she would do the next time he was out of town to get herself engaged with friends, reach out to her support system. And she turned away from the horse and started to talk to me and the horse just sort of looked at her as she was starting to, you know, come out of her crying spell. She started to smile, she said, well, I would call so and so and I would go out for coffee with so and so. And she started to align within herself, to kind of manifest, and then slowly just starting to become what we call. Authenticity is one, but it's also an alignment, it's the congruence of what's going on in her mind, what's going on as she's speaking it, and what's going on in her body.

Pia Ault:

22:03

And at that point Lola, who is my horse, just turned towards her and came over and she just stood right by her shoulder for a good five, five, six minutes because she now felt that this is the person she wanted to be with. She had the answers, she felt trustworthy and she she kind of wanted to meet up with her and you know, whereas before there was something that was blocking, and when a horse doesn't feel comfortable with you, there was something that was blocking, and when a horse doesn't feel comfortable with you, it's not going to be with you. So that was really, that was a very powerful moment that you know, there was like an aha moment for her going okay, I have the answer within myself, I know what I need to do and this is what I'm going to do. And she said the intent and that made the horse align, you know, or meet up and just, yeah, want to be with her.

Karen Sarmento:

22:53

Wow, that's really profound. It really sent the horse sensed the difference in her not being authentic prior to that. Yeah, my horses, what? What is it about them that they're so intuitive? Is it other animals too, or is it? Horses are unique in this way I mean you can work with.

Pia Ault:

23:14

I suppose you can work with dogs or dolphins or you know, I don't know. I don't know quite the scientific reason for why it's. You know this magic happens. But what I do know is, socially, as animals, we are a lot like a horse herd. You know. We humans need to be with other social beings and longing for that safety, I guess.

Pia Ault:

23:41

And horses are also herd animals or social beings and they they feel safe, you know, in a big group. So for them it comes down to survival, like they cannot survive on their own, rarely in the wild, right. So they rely on safety in numbers and they rely on having certain members of the herd lead them to safety or keep them safe, keep them close to resources water, grass, hay, you know, shelters, whatever. I think that that's one of the things that we probably pick up from a horse herd is is that they mirror back that, that safety that we also yearn for. And they are very intuitive and they are very honest. They give honest and judgment-free feedback, like right away. They do it to each other and so when you're in with them, you become one of their herd members and they give you the same feedback. They mirror back whether they're safe, they want to be with you, they want you to lead them or they want to be in shared leadership. It's really. It's really unique. Your work is really powerful.

Karen Sarmento:

24:46

And you are actually offering the listeners a free gift of a 30 minute discovery session and, with signing up for that, a guide to the language of your emotions. Yeah, that's amazing. That could really be life changing and so helpful. Tell the listeners a little bit what maybe a session with you, this 30 minute free session, would look like and what they could expect.

Pia Ault:

25:19

Yeah, sure, we Well I mean ideally we would we would talk about what's going on in the person's life. Do they struggle with regulating emotions? Are they perhaps not even consciously aware whether they are suppressing or overly expressing emotions? Because you know, it can go both ways. I mean, sometimes we hide, we suppress our emotions, we don't want the emotions to come up, and other times we express them. You know almost to what people would say too much oh, my goodness, you're so emotional. You know whether it's crying or yelling or angry or or whatever it is. I mean, there's always been, it's always other people telling us how they see us, and so you know what I typically do in a session is we talk about what. What emotions are you able to identify? And that's the first. Talk about what, what emotions are you able to identify? And that's the first, that's the first challenge there. Many people can't name their emotion, and I always. I mean so.

Pia Ault:

26:19

In my learning from carla mclaren, for example, we learn early on that there are no negative and positive emotions. They are all welcome. They are not categorized into. These are the bad, bad, negative emotions. And happiness and joy are the good. You know sort of nice emotions to have. We just learn that any emotion that comes up is not good or bad, not negative or positive, and not right or wrong. And the second thing we learn is that and I believe this because I can see it with myself when there's an issue, we tend to blame the emotion, and it's really not the emotion that's the problem, it's the situation that you're in, right. So you're going to work, you're stuck in traffic and you get angry because you can't get anywhere. Well, it's not anger, that's the issue. Anger is coming up and telling you what's going on here and you're cut off, traffic is, you know, chockablock, and you, so your boundaries and your personal space is invaded, you can't get anywhere and you're late for your meeting, and then you start to get anxious. So then we got anger and anxiety coming up. Then you're afraid that you might get fired. So now we have fear coming up, you know. And then you know maybe other emotions come up as well. So you're like inundated with these different emotions and a lot of times we don't, we don't have the resources to perhaps identify what it is that really is coming up. We just know that we're getting emotional, but we can't name the emotions.

Pia Ault:

27:48

So the thing you were talking about, that I that I offer in the session. We talk about the emotion and we talk about what are the gifts that the emotion is bringing and what information does it carry with it. So what when? If you feel confused, if you feel panicked, if you feel fearful or anxious, what is it that's behind that? What's it telling you? And then there's a couple of questions we can ask to the emotion. Okay, I'm sensing fears coming up. What action do I need to take? What is it that's actually causing me to feel the fear? Am I in danger? Am I really in physical danger or is it just something that I think is going to come further down, that I'm not sure of which? Then it's really not fear, it's more anxiety. So it really allows you to identify the different emotions, what's behind it and what action can you take. Sometimes it's no action, but just knowing what your choices are, I think, is going to be very freeing.

Karen Sarmento:

28:52

So helpful. That's really generous. That's exciting, so I would encourage anybody that, if this resonates with you to all the contact information will be in the show notes to sign up for that. Call Pia. Are there any things about your coaching or any parting words for the listeners that we haven't touched upon, or anything you'd like to leave the audience with?

Pia Ault:

29:16

We've covered a lot.

Pia Ault:

29:18

We've covered so much.

Pia Ault:

29:21

No, I mean, the one thing that I would, that I would emphasize, is if you are going through something emotional, of course, if it's something that's really deeply depressing you, I always say, reach out.

Pia Ault:

29:32

If you're feeling to the point of, you know, despair and maybe have suicidal thoughts, you know you need to reach out to the appropriate, you know the appropriate contact for help. But if it's emotions in everyday life or it's issues that are challenging you and your family, your relationship with your children, aging parents, I'm right now going through a lot of grief because my mom's got dementia and so I'm grieving what she used to be, but I'm also anxious about what's going to happen in the future with her care. So really, there's no, you know no issue is off the table. We all face different challenges every single day because that's life. So, yeah, you know, don't think that any topic is off the table Would be really really happy and delighted to help anybody with, with something that I might have gone through myself or, if not, you know, certainly pointing to the right resources and the right and the right help.

Karen Sarmento:

30:33

Amazing. Thank you so, so much for being here. It's been a pleasure, it's been an honor to have you here on the show. My pleasure. Thanks, karen, thank you and thank you to the audience and we'll see you next time for the podcast. We are meant for more. Remember whatever challenges you're facing or have faced in the past, they don't define you. You are worthy, capable and destined for greatness. Let's embrace the whispers of possibility together, because together we rise and we are meant for more.