FINDING YOUR EQUANIMITY

Finding your equanimity at Equinity

Like most of us horsey folk, JANE CAMENS loves a good horse shop, but even more so when its owner is supporting people recovering from trauma by providing horse therapy…

Equinity Horse and Rider Emporium is in a side street on the edge of the Northern Rivers town of Murwillumbah, and is the creation of Sharon Van Den Broek, a 45-year old multi-tasking powerhouse who was recently, tragically, widowed. Sharon is also the mother of three children, the youngest just six-yearsold. Equinity isn’t her main business, although in the short time since she opened it in July 2018, it’s become an integral part of the local horse community. The shop was actually conceived to subsidise financially stretched clients of her other business, the Centre for REAL. ‘REAL’ Sharon tells me, stands for ‘Resilience. Emotional Awareness. Learning’. It’s a form of therapy with horses, mainly for people who’ve experienced trauma, although anyone can benefit and experience revelatory learnings from the deep communication sessions Sharon conducts with her seven therapist horses. The centre is run out of her hilltop farm in the magical countryside of Tyalgum. Sharon and her horses work with people who have fears, anxiety, depression, or low self-esteem due to something in their past. To experience this form of deep communication with horses, it’s necessary to slow right down, to breathe and be conscious of your breath. The REAL horse therapist who approached me was Cody, a big grey Percheron. Because he’s such a big boy and elderly, he was the least likely of Sharon’s horses I expected to have a connection with. I mean, I wouldn’t have chosen him as a working partner. But there you go. Cody and I had a beautiful silent connection. I wasn’t visiting for a therapy session, only to get a sense of what this form of experiential communication is like and what it might achieve. After a lot of silent, controlled breathing, and imagining a connection between Cody’s heart and mine, Cody simply rested his big head on my shoulder. Sharon’s clients often get teary during the sessions when it seems as

A if the horses understand something of what they have gone through. Sharon was a city girl 14 years ago when she and her first husband drove from Brisbane and crossed the Queensland border to start a new phase of their lives afresh in the country. She’d ridden a horse, but fancied she’d like a Clydesdale in the paddock and that she might like to learn to drive a rig. She and her husband bought a bush block and, eventually, Missy, an 18-year-old beginner’s pony. The man who slashed the next door block, Frank Van Den Broek, nearly 30 years Sharon’s senior, eventually became her second husband. It was while she was in the process of ‘ ‘I realised that people who’ve had a long history of mental illness aren’t always in a position to pay for therapy...

B C

A: Sharon with one of her therapy horses.

B: Sharon in the Equinity Shop. C: Sharon at her centre.

separating from her first husband that Sharon discovered Equine Assisted Learning. She would eventually become a qualified facilitator and acquire a lot more horses. She certainly does ride these days, often through the Mebbin National Park on the edge of her property.

“When I started seeing clients, I realised that people who’ve had a long history of mental illness aren’t always in a position to pay for therapy,” Sharon says. “I started making horse design t-shirts to help subsidise anyone who couldn’t pay, but that wasn’t making enough money to offer significant discounts. I decided I needed to support myself in some other way and thought about a small shop. I’ve got a background in retail and the idea just grew and grew.”

Sharon’s cheerful presence in the shop always adds an additional energy and glow to her store, and she has great staff to help her when she’s away conducting therapy sessions. I spent the half-day with Sharon at Equinity and at her REAL centre not only to hear Sharon’s story, but because I also (temporarily) lost my car keys in her Aladdin’s treasure palace of a shop. It was a great excuse to get to know Sharon and to consider future purchases from her beautiful emporium.