I'm Alissa Mayer

I'm a nature-loving heart-centered horse trainer, somatic educator and writer with big passions and identical twin toddlers. I'm a wanna-be homesteader, obsessed with pumpernickel bagels, wild mustangs and wild foods.

Most days you’ll find me in riding tights, dancing in the living room, working with a horse or playing with my two amazing sons. I used to travel a ton, but now I find my freedom and quiet time at the barn or digging in the garden on the Oregon homestead. I’m a science-nerd, horse-rescuer, and vegan mac-and-cheese connoisseur with an appetite for learning (confession: I eat real cheese too).

I started teaching people to train horses in an effort to have a postive affect on the world... By expanding Connections, Awareness and Empathy.

Now that I'm a MAMA, I'm even more motivated to save the world!

By eating 95% vegan and using regenerative farming practices as I attempt to grow the most nutritious foods for my children and my horses, I'm also improving the health of our soil and sequestering carbon where it belongs, in the ground. For more than 20 years I've been buying 95% of my clothes (and now my kids clothes) second-hand to reduce my footprint and bring awareness to the waste created by the textile and fashion industries... it's all connected, and everything we do (and everything we buy) MATTERS!
My Favorite Things ➠

I didn't always have it so easy with horses: the connection, the feel, the hundreds of students...

I was a riding instructor and horse re-habber, burning the candle at both ends running my own boarding and training facility on Kaua’i, Hawaii when my life changed: one of my horses was having an off day when I was scheduled to take a friend-of-a-friend on a dreamy beach trail ride… and that was the day I discovered Hanna Somatics.

Fast forward three years and I had become a certified Equine Hanna Somatics® practitioner, and I was helping horses rapidly recover from ‘mysterious lamenesses’ and ‘last-resort’ situations on the regular by teaching them to re-write their patterns of chronic tension.

Fast forward a bit more, and I started co-teaching the professional training program that certifies practitioners of EHS, and I had a busy schedule flying back and forth to Europe teaching clinics and working hands-on with dressage horses, race horses, trail horses, and even sport horses on the path to becoming olympic athletes! Along the way, I was starting to work more and more with the riders, (and their partners, students and employees) to help them use what I knew to get out of chronic pain, ditch stiffness, feel great and ride like they were born to ride!

Now, I’m driven to help other equestrians, dancers, athletes, and professionals in the horse industry to discover the ease and freedom they can access using the natural reflexes they were born with (aka science!), AND to help all their horses do the same.



Here's My Secret Sauce...

Learn how to Pandiculate with Somatic Movement - it's the fastest way to improve your feel, your seat and easily follow the movement of your horse for Effortless Riding Posture!

I am 1000% convinced that Equine Hanna Somatics® and Hanna Somatics® for Riders are about to take the horse-world and equine industry by storm! Sign up below for my 7-Day FREE Challenge to start unwinding your tension (stat!), and you'll fall in love with how your body feels.

Wanna be Pen Pals?

Weekly inspiration, strategies and content created with Y-O-U and your HORSE in mind, because you don't need more junk mail, right?