Dr. Giselle Faubel is a Harvard-educated Clinical Psychologist based in South Florida. She is the founder of HORSES AND PSYCHOLOGY and EQUUS FOR HUMANITY - both equine-assisted psychotherapy programs. Giselle's focus has been on providing ground-breaking interventions through a form of psychotherapy which utilizes horses as healers. 

Equine-assisted therapy is successfully applied to individuals, families, and groups. Giselle's recent interest in the use of psychedelics to help heal PTSD has led her to create Equidelics - a next-generation integration of equine-assisted therapy with psychedelics.

There's an exercise where you put the horse in the round pen and you connect with the horse and then you ask the horse to back up and then you release the lead line and you walk away and the horse follows you. In a way, the horse kind of sees you as a leader and you become like the conscious leader that the horse wants to follow because they realize that they're safe with you.

Welcome to the MY FOURTH ACT podcast. I'm your host, Achim Nowak, and I have conversations with exceptional humans who have created bold and unexpected lives. If you like what you hear, please subscribe on any major podcast platform so you won't miss a single one of my inspiring guests. And please consider posting an appreciative review. Let's get started.

I am absolutely delighted to welcome Dr. Giselle Faubel to the MY FOURTH ACT podcast. Giselle is a Harvard-educated licensed clinical psychologist based in South Florida. Giselle is the founder of Horses in Psychology and Equus for Humanity, both our equine-assisted psychotherapy programs.

Giselle's focus has been on providing groundbreaking interventions through a form of psychotherapy, which utilizes horses as therapists. Her interest in the use of psychedelics to help heal piteosity has led her to create equidelics, an integration of equine assisted therapy with psychedelics. Hello Giselle.

Thank you

Well, hello, Achim. Great to be here.

It's great to be with you. loved reading the introduction for our listeners. I'm biased because I've had the privilege of working with Giselle on a horse farm she used to own in Broward County. And I firsthand experienced the power of engaging with horses and what that can invoke in us. Before we talk about that.

I always like to go back to the beginning or early life, which is when you were a young woman, mean, teenager or so growing up and you had to think about what you wanted to do with your life. What were you thinking about yourself?

I'll go back even further. my early years, I grew up in a farm in Columbia and I grew up surrounded by animals, horses. had my own horse at the age of seven chickens. had two rabbits, dogs and whatnot. And those are my friends. I would come home from school and that's who I played with in those days. I'm going to date myself obviously, but in Columbia, even more so.

We didn't have television. We had a television set in our house that basically was turned on on Sunday mornings. And there were a couple of shows that I watched that were very influential to me actually. So that goes to show how influential technology is on a child. Those shows were Daktari. I don't know if you know what that was, which was a show of a vet that lived in Africa.

And he and his daughter took care of animals and they had a pet lion. And so that was like, those are my heroes, right? So I grew up in that farm. And then as a teenager, my parents moved to the city. And that was a huge shock for me because I was leaving behind my security in the animals and in nature to come to what they called was the security of the city, which for me was totally.

incongruent, but here we had honks and, and beeping and whatnot and cars and motorcycles. Whereas before I had chirping birds and whatnot. So it was quite a talk for me as a young, early teen. And so basically I think unconsciously, I always wanted to return back to nature. And then I came to live in, in the States, went to school here.

And when I first started school, I was very young. I was 15 when I graduated high school. So I started school very young and I didn't know what I wanted to do. So I started exploring and taking classes and, and I was fascinated by the field of psychology. It was something that really interested me, especially when I saw the contrast of coming from the light and a farm to seeing the life in a city and seeing people begging on the streets. In Columbia, we saw a lot of poverty on the streets.

people begging with their children. It just was stark contrast with what I had lived with for years in the farm. And so I wanted to really kind of study and find out about humans and what made us the way we are. And so I think I got interested in first in anthropology and sociology and kind of took courses in different fields. So it wasn't like I

decided one day, I'm going to be a psychologist. It wasn't something like that, kind of evolved.

Yeah. As you're describing the farm and the family moving, I was remembering my favorite books. It's a British book called by Gerald Dorrell called My Family and Other Animals. And it's about the experience of a young person discovering nature in animals on the island of Corfu, but then comparing it to human behavior and the behavior in his family, right? So your very evocative telling made me think of that.

And there was another aspect of my life early on, which was my parents vacationed and obviously took us to this very primitive island in Columbia and the Pacific coast. When I was a kid, they had a little cabin there that was on stilts, a wooden cabin on stilts, very primitive. The people who lived there were indigenous. There was really no exchange of money. it was all my parents would bring food for the people who lived there. And that was kind of like.

their pay. My father, remember giving the workers the coconuts on the property as part of their pay because they didn't, it was all bartering. And so those were my, those kids that were there were my friends when I was a kid, you know, vacationing on that island. And I remember, and this has been a big influence in my life as well, at night we would gather around a bonfire and the people would tell stories.

And the stories were like the folk stories of transgenerational folklore. And of course, all of the stories today, I mean, to me now I realize that there were the myths that were shared amongst the community, but there's a huge sense of community that happened in those bonfires. And the children would, you know, we would gather around and we would sing and play and the women would sing and play, the men would...

play the drums, and it was very ritualistic and very, you know, there was a rhythm to it. It was very different from life growing up, the way I raised my children here in America. Very good too.

Beautiful. I want to do the impossible now. Just jump ahead to horses. I want to say in my own life, seen therapists on and off for 20 years, and I've always done best with very non-traditional therapists. I've done talk therapy and I've done all sorts of other wild stuff. At what point in your practice as a clinical psychologist, did you start

looking at horses, learning about horses and learning about how that might be part of the work that you do.

So again, it wasn't something like an aha moment. Everything is in my life has been kind of an evolution. So when my son was around seven years old again, I decided to buy him a horse because he had gone to a horse ranch and taken horseback riding lessons and he had been diagnosed with ADHD. And I was at the time I was working at Miami Children's Hospital and I was in the neurology department.

Most of my friends who were neurologists or neuroscientists in one way or another were really pushing for me to put him on medication for ADHD. they were like, it's very benign, it's not going to hurt him. And the school was very strict and they wanted him to be medicated because he was not only disruptive because he would hum in class come to know now it was his way of self-regulating, but he would also, he had

impulsivity and he was a good kid, but he just had impulsive behaviors and he had a hard time paying attention. He was put on medication and I reluctantly put him on medication because it was the only way to fit him into the school system that couldn't work with a child that was kind of neurodivergent. Anyway, so what I noticed was that when he competed or when he

rode the horses, I wouldn't give him the medication on the weekends. It was a break and he competed and he won everything and he could pay attention and focus. And I realized that it was because of the horses. So when he was on the horse and he was being regulated by the movement of the horse, which is a bilateral predictable movement, you know, it's that rocking horse that's going, you know, in a very, with a cadence.

that he was able to focus like never before, hyper-focus. you know, to me it was like, he doesn't have a problem. He's just not in the right environment or something's missing, you know? And so that was like kind of like an awareness for me that was like one of the first times that I thought there's something here. And then this is a story that I tell in a book that I'm writing about a little boy who was autistic who

really didn't communicate verbally. So he would come to my office and his mom was bringing him because he was having some really difficult time being bullied in school. And he would come to my office and he would point to the picture of my son with his horse on the wall and he would say, horse, horse, horse. Anyway, I took him to the ranch where my son's horse was and I taught him how to, there's an exercise where you

put the horse in the round pen and you connect with the horse and then you ask the horse to back up and then you release the lead line and you walk away and the horse follows you. In a way, the horse kind of sees you as a leader and you become like the conscious leader that the horse wants to follow because they realize that you're going to be, that they're safe with you. Anyway, so he learned how to do this and what happened was,

A few weeks later, the mom called up and she said, you're not going to believe what happened. My son was bullied and he was thrown to the ground. And I'm like, and you're laughing. And she says, he got up and he grabbed him by the shirt and he said, back up, back up, back up. The same words that I had taught him to use with the horse. So to me, that was a pivotal moment where I thought this is transferring from the round pen to real life, which

is like unbelievable because it's hard to teach children who have no language. But if you embody the experience and you teach it through as an experiential way, then he learned it. He learned it and it was transferring over. So to me, those were really important moments. Soon after that, my kids gave me a book for Christmas, which was a huge, I think books have changed my life many times.

And that was a huge changing moment for me. I read the book, The Tao of Equus by Linda Kahanoff. And Linda was writing about the stuff that I had been seeing and witnessing. And she had put it into words, something that I hadn't been able to do. For me, it was ineffable. I just couldn't put it in words. I couldn't write about it, but she had done it beautifully and eloquently. And I thought,

I need to meet this woman. So I actually contacted Linda. We're now good friends and I've learned a lot from her. She's been one of my teachers and mentors. And so I think that that was a very important moment for me.

I appreciate learning of these touch points. Now, when you and I met, you had a beautiful ranch in the southwestern part of Broward County. You had horses. So I could tell that this is somebody who has a practice around this. It's established. So how do you go from that discovery to

growing a psychology practice with a ranch that you owned and lived in that people came to to do work with you and the horses.

Wonderful question. And again, is a question of evolution. I started off renting space, renting stalls. Initially, I rented space in Miami, in horse country, because a horse was needed to be rescued and they were going to put him down. And I got the horse and I had nowhere to put him. So I put him in, the stables in Miami, but it was a Paso Fino ranch. And you can imagine, I Paso Finos are horses that are going like,

really fast and what I was trying to do was very kind of organic and it was like kind of incongruent with the stuff that was going on in the ranch. They were competing, the horses were, they used some kind of inhumane techniques from my perspective to train the horses. So it really was very difficult for me to be there. I moved them to

the farm, the ranch where my horse is. My son was competing at the time. So he had two horses and moved them to that ranch. But again, what I was doing, which was bringing patients to work with these horses, the way I saw the horses was very different from the way that people in the competition world saw the horses. So again, it was kind of an incongruent feeling because here I was trying to

do work on the ground, teaching people how to connect with the horses. And in the meantime, there were horses jumping, you know, in the arena next to us. And the trainer was screaming, pull the reins, kick them hard, you know, use your whip. And it was like, because it just didn't, didn't feel right. So at that point I decided I needed to buy a ranch where I could do everything kind of

in a very aligned way. And I decided that when I bought the ranch, my horses were not going to have shoes. They were not going to have bits in their mouth. Nobody was going to whip them with a whip or use spurs to get them to jump or do anything. I wanted what we were doing to be totally aligned with the practice that we were bringing on. yeah, a lot of people thought I was crazy and

especially the people in the competition world, know, that's the crazy lady that talks to the horses. I mean, I went in my earlier years, I went to dude ranches where they would tie horses up and keep them tied up for a whole day without water, food, because they were breaking them. To me, that's inhumane. There's gotta be better ways of training horses. And so that's when I decided that I needed to have my own space.

where all the animals, and not just the horses, the chickens, whoever was there, were going to be treated with dignity and respect.

If you had to put into words, which I'm sure you've done before, the question in my mind is, what is the intelligence or wisdom of the horse and what is the dealing capacity of the horse as a human engages with the horse? What happens in that encounter?

Great question. it's one that we can go really deep or very superficial. Horses, first of all, are non-predatory animals, right? Their eyes are on their sides. So they're predatory animals. They're herd animals that are herbivores. So horses need to spend most of their day grazing, eating, because of their size. Horses are

Just by knowing that, that means that horses have to walk constantly. So in the wild, horses walk about 16 hours a day. They travel miles. And so because of this, in order to survive in herds in the wild, they developed exquisitely fine-tuned sensorial systems.

What does that mean? That means that if I'm grazing, because I have to graze and my head has to be down on the ground, my ears have to be very alert. My sense of touch and feel has to be incredibly like parabolic and tennis. So if there's a predator, mountain lion that's approaching the herd, I need to be able to sense that before I can see it. So if you think about it, the electromagnetic field of the horse,

So the electromagnetic field of the human is about eight to 10 feet. So you can actually sense energy for about eight to 10 feet. And the electromagnetic energy comes, I'm talking about the one from the heart. The horse's heart electromagnetic energy is about 80 feet in diameter. So when there's another living being heartbeat 80 feet away and the horse can sense it because it's going very fast, cause it's a predator, then that horse immediately

looks up and speeds up, doesn't ask any questions and speeds up and everybody in the herd takes off. And that's how they've been able to survive. So because of this incredibly well-developed sensorial system, when they're in the presence of humans, we can actually access those sensorial systems and use them in the therapeutic space. And so

Basically, when you're in the presence of the horse, the horse can sense your heartbeat from three feet away. If your heart is racing, the horse is going to become very alert because it's a signal that there may be some kind of problem, something going on. If your heart is calm, then the horse will settle down. The horse doesn't care what you say, how much money you have in the bank, what car you're driving, you know.

So I used to tell patients or clients when they would come to the ranch, horse doesn't know that you just drove in in a horse 80s. Horse doesn't care what clothes you're wearing. Horse cares about whether he's safe when you're in this space. And if the horse feels safe, then there's going to be a space where the horse feels at ease. Now, what happens instinctively is that the horse's heart rate

and trains with the humans. It's almost like emotions are contagious. So if you're right next to a person who's really anxious, you're gonna feel the anxiety. But if you're really calm, you can actually breathe and have them join you and calm down together. Same thing happens with the horse. So if the horse's heart rate is going at a very much slower speed than the human's heart rate, it can entrain with it and help the human heart rate.

So many times I'll be inside the stall or the round pin and I'll say to the human, put your hand on the horse's heart, take a deep breath and see if you can lower your heart rate to the rate of the horse. And see if you can lower your breath to the rate of the horse's breath because they also breathe much slower than we do. And so in that arena,

We can actually work with that space, working with the horse's presence more so than with the horse itself.

I remember being at your ranch and my encounter with a horse and I think you told me, but I knew that whatever normal commands I might use, this was about being in tune, which is what you're describing. At the same time, as you talked about the initial space where horses are used for race and show purposes, I can't help but think that everything's being done to work against

what the horse naturally wants to do or be. Am I hearing that correctly?

Yes.

Yeah.

You've already given us such wonderful examples of just how individuals have been impacted by being with a horse. If you would just give us one more example, maybe one of the more extreme ones where you worked with a client or a patient, whatever term you use and.

Let me give you a story. had a client who came to see me and she wanted me to work with her son and daughter. The little girl was eight years old. The little boy was 13, maybe 12. And she wanted me to make sure that they were getting along right. You know, they were not fighting. I was like, okay, sure. So I had two miniature horses and a large horse. And what we did was every time they came, we did activities. They would bathe the horses together. They would play games with them. They would.

go in the arena and do, you know, obstacles with them. Now all of this, keep in mind is on the ground. We're not riding the horses and they were getting along brilliantly. A couple of weeks went by, a few weeks went by and I said to the mom, know, this is great. It's been a wonderful summer camp, but I'll be honest with you. I don't see any problems, no concerns with your children. I think they're really good with each other. They share, they're fair. They care about each other. They care about the animals. I don't see any problems and I don't feel

that it's ethically right to continue charging you because they're fine unless you want to continue bringing them just to be around the animals. And she said, well, that's great. I'm happy to hear that. Can I come to see you? And I said, for you? And she said, yes, for me. And I said, well, what are you coming to see me for? And she said, well, I have anxiety and I have fibromyalgia. she gave me a whole list of symptoms and diagnoses.

told me that she was on tons of medication for anxiety and all this stuff. And I said, well, are you in therapy? And she said, yes, I've been in therapy for 10 years, but I'm still battling. And I said, well, sure, come next week. So she came the following week. And I was kind of unprepared because I really hadn't done a very thorough intake since I had started off with the kids. I just thought, and that's wrong to assume, right?

lesson learned. She comes to the ranch and things happen the way they happen and it's just magnificent. She came to the ranch. had Maria Bonita in a large space, which is like a big stall. And one of the things I did with her was I asked her initially to do a body scan, which I tend to do with people to just kind of get a feel for where they are.

And she connected with her body and she started doing a body scan. And this is right in front of the horse inside the horse's stall. Big space. When we got to her stomach, the horse reared up. was, keep in mind, she was being held by my assistant and the horse reared up. And I thought the horse had been stung by a bee. So I put my hand in front of the client and I said, step away.

I think the horse has been stung. And she kept saying, no, no, no, it's me. And I looked at her and I'm like, no, it's not you. And she put her hands on her face and she said, I was raped when I was eight years old and the horse can sense it.

At that point, the took a deep sigh and a huge long breath in and settled down. And that was the beginning of her treatment. I turned to her at one point and I said, have you told your therapist? And she said, I haven't told anybody in 30 years. And I just told the horse in less than five minutes.

That goes to show you the horse can sense what's going on inside of you. My take on that is that when she started doing her body scan, she connected with the part of her body that where she held her trauma and everything just probably went to fire and the horse picked up on that. And the horse felt it as, you know, or flight. What was amazing was what ensued from that was an incredible relationship between

And she's in the book, I name her Susan in the book. Susan and Maria Bonita developed this incredible connection. And throughout the time that she was there, she came for about three months. She would say to me, I want to be like that horse. She's so strong and she's so beautiful and she's so grounded. And Maria Bonita was like that. She was a mare that was just so grounded and powerful and yet so gentle and docile.

And she was a matriarch. She was literally the alpha of the herd. So whenever anything, there was a scuffle going on in the herd. If she stepped in, everybody like took off and calmed down because she was like the one who was in charge. And all the horses looked to her for guidance and she was like the wise one. Interestingly enough, Maria Juanita came to me when my son was looking for a horse to compete.

once he had reached a level where he needed a bigger horse, and I was still in the competition world, I had gone to Argentina to look for a horse and we hadn't found one. And then eventually they called me up and they said, you know, we think we have the perfect horse for your son. Cause I had asked for a horse that was calm yet strong and you know, whatever. And that could jump really high. In that folk stories that I told you about the island in Columbia,

One of the stories that was told was about a woman who, I don't know if you've ever heard the story of Maria La Llorona. It's the weeping woman. And so there was a part of the island where children were not allowed to go to, and it was a marsh. And we were not allowed to go there. And they would tell us that La Llorona lived there and the weeping woman. So people were really scared. And they would say that at night you could hear her weeping.

And the tale went that Maria had fallen in love with a young man from a different island. And at night he would appear on a beautiful horse named Bonita. And they would ride away into the horizon and into the ocean. They would swim with dolphins and whatever. And then in the morning she would be singing and she sang beautifully. And from that relationship, they had had two children.

And at one point, this young man came and told her that he wasn't going to be able to see her again because his father wanted him to marry someone else. She decides that she takes it upon herself to kill her children. So she drowns them and then she drowns herself. And the story goes that she's weeping because she's never allowed to enter the heavens. And this is a story that changes.

in different countries. You hear the story, the same kind of myth in Mexico, you hear it in Colombia, you hear it. But in this island, it was this story about this woman with this horse. And the horse's name was Bonita. So when I heard that there was a horse named Maria Bonita in Argentina, I knew she was mine.

It was no coincidence that that was a horse that was for me.

Now you.

no longer on that ranch that we just talked about. Why did you let it go and your passion and belief in the power of forces is palpable? So that's a pretty big thing.

Yes, and I will tell you it was not my decision. It was a decision that I had to come to during the pandemic, unfortunately. And it was a very painful decision because it was a decision of survival. You know, I had huge overhead and there were no clients and I couldn't support the ranch any longer. So I made the

the huge decision of retiring the horses to a big ranch in Virginia and to sell the ranch because there was no purpose to have the ranch any longer. So I sold the ranch and that was very painful. At the time, I felt very defeated and very saddened. I had lost friends and family members to COVID.

The country was in severe disarray, as you can remember. And so it was a very, very difficult time. And that's what happened.

And today we're recording this in November of 2025. You have created something called Equidelix, which is to me in my mind, a wonderful next step in evolution of your work. It makes a lot of sense to me as I think about it, but would you just explain how you connect at the dots between working with psychedelics?

Evolution. I think I read something that you wrote recently on reframing, which really resonated for me right before, you know, coming on this podcast. And so during the time when I sold the ranch and I kept feeling like a victim and I felt like I had to sell the ranch and it was so unfair. had a pivotal experience that really changed the course of things. I was dealing with.

loss and grief and feeling defeated. And I had a transformational psychedelic experience of personally, and it really changed the way I saw what was happening. And instead of seeing it as a, as a, experience of loss and grief, I saw it as a doorway into a new chapter of my life. And so it just refrained it.

It totally changed it from something where I was in that victim role to, wow, this is a new opportunity. So at the time, another book landed in my hands, which books have been very, important in my life. And it was Michael Pollan's book on how to change your mind. And I discovered psychedelics for the first time. had never been exposed to psychedelics. I grew up in an era where.

Drugs are bad and I taught my children say no to drugs and all that stuff and realizing the difference between drugs and medicines and the real difference. And because I didn't grow up in this country, really wasn't never exposed to the hippie movement of psychedelics. But when I was at Harvard, I had a mentor, a professor who was also

very big influence in my life. He was one of the first black psychiatrists at Harvard who had come up with a tremendous amount of research and he had worked with Timothy Leary. And so I had heard from him about some of the experiments that they had done at Harvard at the time, but didn't pay much attention to that. But one of things that Dr. Pierce said to me, and by the way, Dr. Chester Pierce, was

He's well known for the person who came up with the term microaggressions. If you know what, if you've ever heard that term, he coined that term and he was a brilliant man. And he would always say to me in my many conferences with him, as it was my mentor there, you always have to be ahead of the game and you always have to be reading the latest research. Now that was really easy when you were at Harvard, because the people who were your teachers.

were Jeremy Kay again and know, Carol Gill again. The people who were writing the books were actually the lecturing in front of you. So it was really easy to say, well, go read the newest articles. But what happened was once this book came to me during the pandemic, I felt the urge to really hone into it and educate myself into the field of psychedelics.

I decided to take a course at the California Institute for Integral Studies, which is the CIS, and become certified as a psychedelic assisted therapist. And so what happened was it was an amazing force because again, the people who were writing the books, the people who are doing the research, so there's research going on, the trials are going on at Johns Hopkins, at Harvard.

California, Berkeley, and so on. All of these people were our professors. Hot off the press, the latest article would come in and we were reading it the week after it was not even printed and we were already reading it. So it was an amazing way to learn, to keep ahead and be in the field of discoveries. And to this day, I truly believe that psychedelics are the new frontier for psychology.

and that this is really gonna revolutionize our field because what we're encountering with psychedelics and using these tools in the therapeutic realm is so powerful that it's nothing that we've been able to see before. Now I saw a huge parallel between the equine assisted therapy and the psychedelics because when we work with the horses, what I can tell you, Achim, is that

I really felt that people would surrender their defenses because here's a horse, you you don't have to pretend anything with a horse. And when they surrendered their ego, so to speak, they were able to connect with a, an inner sense of self that probably had been disintegrated early on by trauma or whatever. So people would say to me, well, you're re traumatizing by going back and desensitizing people of their traumas.

And I would say, no, we are going back to the trauma, not to desensitize, but to help the client reconnect with the parts of themselves that were left behind. So that's kind of what happens when you're working with psychedelics. An example is a young soldier who goes to war, and this is 20 years ago.

And this was a case that they had in the trials. And he comes back after he sees and witnesses his best friend being blown up by an ID. And when he got to his friend, his friend was dead and there was nothing he could do. Comes back and 20 years later, cause this is the first desert storm conflict and he feels totally disconnected from himself. And he feels that he left a part of himself in the desert and

For 20 years, he has continuous nightmares, nightmares and flashbacks. And now he's written by anger and outbursts and dysregulation and alcohol and whatever, because he's trying to numb himself. And then what happens is they give him the psychedelics, he experiences a psychedelic journey with therapists, of course. In this journey, he goes back

to the battlefield. He encounters the explosion and his friend being blown up. And he runs up to him and his friend looks at him and he holds him and he kisses him. And he tells him he loves him. And then he tells him, my journey is over. Yours is not here yet. I'll see you when you get there.

And when this guy wakes up after that psychedelic journey, he says, I get it. And he has a smile. And of course he continues to integrate and he has therapy, ongoing therapy, but his life changed because he's able to reframe this experience, not from the little incident that happened, but from a bigger frame. And so, you know, if you ask me, there is an intelligence at play.

you know, whether we're going to call it God or spirit or the universe, it's a higher intelligence that is not necessarily something that we know about, but it's in nature. It's here.

You're giving it this wonderful name, Equidelix. Where are you doing, Equidelix?

Thank you for that question. We're kind of on hold in a lot of ways because unfortunately we're bound to the legalities. And so some people are doing this work in the underground, but we're not promoting that. We're not promoting to do it underground. We're hoping that the laws change and that people are able to do this work legally in this country. So.

The good news is that ketamine is legalized. So we're working with ketamine and we're bringing the clients to the ranch and initially setting an intention. And then after the ketamine infusion, they come and they do an integration session with the horses. And it is amazing to see how beautifully, because the horses give them the groundedness that they need after all these insights come up. Imagine that.

soldier coming back and integrating with a horse and being able to connect with that horse and say, I get it. Now, where do I go from here? And really connecting and feeling his feet on the ground and feeling that animal and being totally present. We're limited by the legalities. There are certain places abroad where we can do the work because it's legalized in other countries.

But it limits, and I think what happens is, unfortunately, then you have to think about taking clients abroad and the dangers associated with that. When people are in an altered state, they're extremely vulnerable. Anything that is said or done in an environment where somebody's in that vulnerable state can be very dangerous if it's not done correctly. People are not well-trained.

So, you and I've had people who have approached me from the underground worlds and said things to me like, teach me what you do. Like, give me like your manual. And I'll say to them, you know, it's 25 years of work. It's not something that you can learn on a weekend course. We can teach skills to people who are trained. And that's why there are centers like CIIS who train specifically.

psychiatrists and psychologists and people who've been in the field for a while. But I think there's this myth that you can become a shaman on a weekend course and that's, that's, know, what happened with coaching, unfortunately. Yeah.

I've seen you with horses and I've seen videos of you with a horse and a client and the thing that sort of grasped me especially there is this powerful, powerful, powerful sense of being present to the moment. And obviously as we're listening to you too, the forces that are operating beyond the physical and being present to those, right?

I'm going to wrap this up with an impossible question. You've used the word evolution a lot as you tell your story. Do you have any sense of what else wants to evolve right now? Is there a sense of what's next for you? Is something evolving that you want to talk about?

I'm in the process of completing a book that initially started just with the equine therapy clients and then evolved into incorporating the psychedelics as well. And so I'm in the process right now of editing it. There's other projects happening. One of the projects is the creation of a clinic. And we have space here in South Florida where we think that

that would be the proper space, so we're creating that. And it's mainly to treat people with mental health conditions, but obviously incorporating the psychedelics, whichever ones are legalized and will basically evolve into whatever comes next. That's in the plans. The other thing that I've been very involved with, we did the trailer for the Equidelix documentary, and the big project is to create a docu-series.

with that trailer. We're right now considering starting filming a documentary that could evolve into a series. We're in conversation with the directors and the producers and you know that whole thing, that whole world of film and that's really wonderful. My dream is to continue to promote the field, to continue to demonstrate that there is hope, that there are new

tools that we have that will be available hopefully to many people down the road and that you know this field continues to grow. think that one day people will look back and will say what they did psychotherapy without psychedelics.

Where, I'm sure as people are listening, they're curious and want to learn more about you. Is there a website? Where do people learn more about your work?

www.drfabel.com, that's my basic website. And then there's the trailer, the Equidelix trailer, which is on YouTube. I think as we go forward, we're going to continue to post things. I'm definitely going to post this podcast and hopefully, you know, carry on from here. Part of my journey right now is to bring on new herd members, you know.

because we can't do this alone. so creating a strong herd for me is very important of like-minded people who feel that there is a need to raise consciousness and to bring an awareness to the world that we can do things better. And that we need to take care of our environment, we need to take care of animals, that animals are conscious beings, and that we are part of nature. We forget that.

We're animals. The human animal is an animal. That's where the work needs to be done, is to continue to raise awareness and to bring like-minded people to help support this field so that we can continue to bring healing to the world.

Thank you for the gift of this conversation and the exquisite work that you do and I support your future vision.

Thank you, Achim. I know our paths will cross again.

Ciao ciao! Ciao! Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the My Fourth Act podcast. If you like what you have heard, please like us and leave a review on your preferred podcast platform. And if you would like to engage more deeply in fourth act conversations, check out the Mastermind page at AchimNovak.com. It's where fourth actors like you engage in riveting conversation.

with other fourth actors. See you there, and bye for now.