Exploring Life & Business with Kelley Slagle of Joy Fun Live Coaching

Today we’d like to introduce you to Kelley Slagle.

Hi Kelley, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
Hi! I love to share my story because it so clearly models the art of inner tracking (following your own “warmer” and listening to your instincts) which I use in my practice so often. I was trained as a traditional therapist and had been home with my kids for several years not actively practicing, but continuing my own personal healing journey. I had a habit at the time (a period of a lot of upheaval in my personal life) of getting up early to read and journal.

One day, I picked up an Oprah magazine and just flipped it open. It opened to an image of a woman surrounded by horses and I began crying. At the time, while I loved animals, I not only had little experience with horses but was terrified by them. However, I read the article that accompanied the photo and booked a weekend retreat with the program discussed. Bottom line, I attended, had zero ideas why in the hell I had signed up in the first place, waited until the smallest pony showed up, and only then did I brave getting in with a horse. What happened that weekend was difficult to identify, but I knew that when I got on the plane home, I felt more hopeful, more joyful, and liked myself more than I could ever remember.

I thought to myself that I had no idea how in the world I thought I would do this work (as I live in Brookside, know no one with horses, and was terrified of horses) but knew I needed to bring it to Kansas City. Like so many drawn to the healing arts, I come from a background of upheaval and trauma and knew if I had experienced equine work as a teen, my healing journey would have been very different. So, I set out to make it happen. I studied with a program that gave me a great set of tools to start working with people using the horse as a mirror or metaphor for whatever they were struggling with.

Through the kindness of many people who believed in my work and trusted me with their amazing animals, I was able to start a practice. And through that journey, I was fortunate enough to begin work with First Responders, Veterans, and others through the Battle Within organization. I now operate a private practice as well as work with this amazing nonprofit group. As I created my business, I realized that I could offer far more than just a set of exercises for people to walk through with a horse and I began to expand my work into a far more intuitive style. I began to sense that people could access a deeper and richer experience than the more traditional exercises I had been utilizing could provide.

I moved from working within a round pen (which I still do for group work as it affords the opportunity to witness your fellow attendees doing the work which is really rich and valuable for the group) to working in a paddock or pasture with multiple horses and just trusting that whatever unfolds between the individual(s) and the horses is exactly what the client needs or desires. And I have yet to be disappointed. Somehow these magical creatures and wise teachers have the ability to energetically sense what a person is longing for, what a person is needing at the moment.

And they so gently and innately offer it up. Time after time I am moved to tears and joy witnessing a person coming home to themselves, feeling their own unbrokenness after years of fearing that they are irrevocably broken. There is a healing that happens at that moment that cannot be forgotten and goes far beyond words…that is the power of this experience. It is a knowing that happens between the animal and the client that shines a light on the spaces where they are holding themselves back, but more importantly where they are yearning to go and all the magnificence of themselves that the challenges of life have caused them to discount or forget.

And watching people love themselves again, grieving what they have experienced, and coming back into fully living again is the biggest honor of my life. There is no trauma too big or too extreme to navigate and the horses model it so beautifully. Showing us that we never have to be okay with any events in our lives, and we DO have the power to change the story we tell ourselves about what those events mean about who we are.

I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle-free, but so far would you say the journey has been a fairly smooth road?
No, it has been such a interesting journey. First, I was terrified of horses and had no experience with horses. Secondly, I had no access to horses when I began. Lastly, I wondered who I thought I was to believe I could do this type of work without long term experience around horses. But I found my way. And building a nontraditional practice has been and still is a tough sell because the experience is so different with every client. Because I choose not to put my clients through a set of specific exercises, I have to trust myself and follow my intuition about what is unfolding.

Because none of my sessions are ever the same and because most of my sessions now involve multiple horses, it is difficult to explain to a client or an organization exactly WHAT I do! You have to experience it and see it to understand it. And because of confidentiality and the literal ground we can cover in a session, recording sessions is challenging. And it is financially challenging. In order to do this work you must have access to horses and locations for the work that offer privacy and ample space. I am so very lucky that so many people have opened their facilities and loaned their horses to me free of charge as many Equine coaches must pay for that privilege.

But even with that unbelievable generosity, the insurance (both therapeutic and Equine) is expensive and for each session, I have to take about three hours (to drive, prep, etc.), so it is certainly a labor of love. But worth every challenge! And the work is so effective and is felt immediately by the client and that is deeply rewarding. I watch people begin to heal themselves all the time, you see their faces and bodies just let go of the pain right in front of you, it is amazing!

Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I have always been an academic and was on a path to law school when I realized that what I really wanted to do was help people heal. Most of my clients have whip quick brains and have trouble getting out of their thoughts and into their bodies and nervous system which you need to access for healing. I really understand that struggle. I have been so fortunate to work as a client with so many attuned therapists and some not-so-attuned therapists. One thing I believed was missing as a client in therapeutic work was the ability and freedom for me to step into a leadership position in my own therapeutic path and set my own pace.

I believe my own frustration with this coupled with what I was seeing in my Equine work shifted my attitude about therapy and the therapeutic journey from organized dependence into an supported, creative empowerment model. The coach or therapist supports them in is giving some tools to assist them in learning to listen to themselves in a different way and stepping into self trust and self leadership in their life journey. I credit the horses and my nature based work for modeling this so clearly (I created a nature-based coaching program during Covid as I couldn’t work for a while with the horses). I trust that the client has every single bit of information they already need to navigate their own best life and they just need a little experience to “feel” that. Once they get their sea legs through our session(s), they know what is best for them and begin to trust the information being revealed to them. I encourage them to sit with the session and then let me know if they want to proceed with me, their own therapist, or just sit in what has happened for a while. And because the session is an experience it imprints differently than a talk therapy session and clients can experience “aha” moments long after the session has ended which is really cool.

This is where therapy seems to be moving… trusting that people have a massive capacity for their own healing, they just need to believe in that, get some tools and trust themselves! The second thing I believe I am really good at is not getting drawn in by someone’s story… for whatever reason, I can hear below the story or the trauma and focus on what is under there that they are yearning for. I come from a trauma story that is pretty dramatic and maybe that is why I am able to do this. And I will never ask a client to do anything that I myself am not willing to (or have done) as a client. People and horses can smell falseness a mile away, so it is essential that I walk my on journey.

I proudly will be in therapy/on my own healing journey forever! I find that is very important and surprisingly unusual. How can I ask a client to trust me if I haven’t been willing to trust others and look into my own dark corners, pain, and fear in my own journey?

Pricing:

• $250/session Equine
• $150/Nature-based Session
• $150/IFS session
• I offer packages as well

Contact Info:

• Email: [email protected]
• Website: www.joyfunlive.com
• Facebook: Joy, Fun, Live

Image Credits
John Parker