Tricia Brouk helps high-performing professionals transform into industry thought leaders through the power of authentic storytelling. With her experience as an award-winning director, producer, sought after speaker, and mentor to countless thought-leaders, Tricia has put thousands of speakers onto big stages globally.
Being able to support speakers in using their voices for impact is a privilege. I caught up with Hertha Lund to talk about wholeness, horses and the power of having a big heart. Hertha Lund is an author, speaker, Equine Gestalt Coach, litigation attorney, and horse-shoer. She is a lifelong lover of horses and the Founder of Four Horses for Wholeness retreat center in central Montana. Her path to her passion and life work as a writer, speaker and healer partnering with horses has been circuitous.. After covering Congress and the United States Supreme Court as a journalist, she went to law school and founded her own law firm, Lund Law, where she has been serving landowners to protect their property and water rights since 1995. She lives with her husband John, several dogs, Chewie and Rosie, six horses, many cows, and a multitude of wildlife on their cattle ranch.
Hertha, you’re a multifaceted CEO. How did you go from horseshoer to journalist to your work with horses now?
My journey from my business shoeing horses to help pay for my college education to where I am now was a seemingly circuitous path that was perfect for my inner unfolding into wholeness. Forty-three years ago, as a nineteen-year-old old, I spent my summer learning blacksmithing and horseshoeing skills. Both are very hard physical work. My inspiration was to assist horses that had lameness issues and to provide balance in movement for performance and all horses. I discovered I was naturally gifted as a blacksmith and could shape and make horseshoes in a coal fire forge.
Also, shoeing horses led me to my first trip driving across the United States to do an internship at the New Bolton Center, the University of Pennsylvania Veterinary Hospital in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania. At that time, my plans were to attend veterinary school and become a top veterinarian for lameness issues in horses. My passion led me to research and then apply to intern at the top lameness center in the country. My success in applying for and receiving this internship and then driving myself across the country at the age of twenty led me to believe that I could achieve whatever I desired in this life if I worked hard and had courage.
I worked as a horse-shoer, waitress, bartender, and janitor to pay for my courses at Montana State University, where I was a pre-vet, pre-med student with a minor focus on range management. One-quarter shy of graduating, I took a detour into studying the mystical traditions of the world’s religions and worked a ranch in a spiritual community. I worked at the ranch for more than three years as the cowboss and oversaw a small crew as we cared for the livestock. While there, I had an inner prompting to move to the East Coast and finish my college education in journalism so I could actualize my inner dream of being a writer.
This was my next of many moves across the country to follow my inner promptings. I was accepted into Penn State and Temple University. I chose to attend Temple University because it is a good journalism school and it costs less. While in Philadelphia, I had to work several jobs all the time to pay for my classes because several years earlier, we had lost our family ranch in Montana and went practically bankrupt. In the morning, During my college years at Temple, I delivered the newspaper at 4 a.m., and after classes, I worked at a free market think tank. There were times when I ate Special K cereal for several meals in one day because I was so broke.
After graduation from Temple, I moved back to Montana and worked as a freelance writer covering stories impacting agriculture across Montana and neighboring states. During my time as a freelancer, I called the American Farm Bureau Federation office in Washington, D.C. and introduced myself as a ranch girl from Montana who had grown up participating in 4-H, Future Farmers of America, rodeoed for more than 20 years and who had started her first entrepreneurial endeavor training horses for hire during high school. I knew that people who worked in agriculture did not trust journalists, so I shared my bonafides early in our conversation because I was seeking information for a story I was writing.
This phone call led to an interview and then very quickly a job offer and I moved to the East Coast for a third time to work as a journalist covering Congress, the Executive Branch, and the United States Supreme Court on behalf of those working in agriculture all across the United States. I worked in this position for more than three years until I was assigned to cover a case at the Supreme Court on property rights. While I was sitting in the Supreme Court chambers, I was inspired to go to law school – I discovered that I wanted to be an attorney in the courtroom arguing, not a journalist reporting what happened.
Since I wanted to return to Montana to live and practice law, I decided to go to law school there. So, again I moved across the United States. I attended the University of Montana Law School and served as co-editor in chief of the law review. During law school, I had to work to pay my expenses, so I worked for the Montana Farm Bureau Federation as an op-ed writing and a lobbyist at the state legislature.
My dream after law school was to clerk for the then Chief Judge of the United States Court of Federal Claims, which I was able to do after a phone interview. The Chief Judge chose me as his number one hire and introduced me as the “state champion horse-shoer from Montana.” I believe it was his way to honor my past while poking a little fun at the stuffy somewhat closed mindset that can occur among attorneys educated in the Ivy league schools. After my one-year internship, I chose to return to Montana, where I secured a job at a litigation firm.
For the next fourteen years, I worked at several different litigation firms and non-profits in three different states to hone my skills as an attorney. Then, I started my own firm Lund Law, PLLC where I still work and employ up to eight other people in my law practice. At Lund Law we provide legal representation for landowners regarding wind leases, condemnation cases, water rights, easement issues, federal lands and grazing, and other issues facing property owners, ranchers and farmers.
Eight years ago, my life changed dramatically after struggling with severe inflammation around my heart and lungs that led to my hospitalization, dying and coming back into my body. Even though I loved being in the white and gold light high above the earth in the higher atmosphere, I realized that I was not done with my reason for this life. I hoped to be allowed to return and I made two promises to God: I promised to do whatever it took to heal, and to do whatever it took to get back into my body. Upon making those promises, I quickly descended and fell back into my body, which felt awful because I was so sick. I went from experiencing being one in total love and light to being my body that was still very sick, painful and heavy. Since then, I have been keeping my promises to God.
I did multiple health disciplines and treatments to attain greater health. My studying Equine Gestalt Coaching (“EGC”) and learning from horses through the love for and from horses has had the most impact on my transformational healing process.Prior to and during my chronic illness, my horse partner was an Irish Warmblood horse who was born in and transported from Ireland. I called him Hoss. Hoss was trained for three-day eventing and I partnered with him for jumping and doing dressage.
There were moments when Hoss and I were dancing together doing dressage that I felt transported into another realm of being and that all time and space ceased to exist. All that existed was this sense of oneness between Hoss and I at multiple levels of being. His hoofs were my hoofs and my heart and mind were his heart and mind. We achieved oneness that allowed us to transcend time and space to experience light, love and oneness on earth.
When I was so sick in the hospital and even when I was high above the earth in the light in the higher atmosphere, I could remember that feeling of oneness that Hoss and I had enjoyed together. I believed that I could heal and live in that consciousness one hundred percent of the time, which belief was bolstered by my first experience with EGC coaching the summer before I died and came back into my body.
My sister and I had signed up to attend a EGC retreat at the guest ranch next to the ranch where my husband and I live. We innocently had decided we needed to do something together each year, and this was our kick-off joint endeavor together. I had no idea that this healing experience with horses, Gestalt Coaching, mother nature and my sister would be so significant in my being able to decide to return to my body and then engage in a transformational healing path.
I was so changed by my experience with EGC, I decided to study with Melisa Pearce, the founder of Touched by Horse, and I have now completed the basic two-year training program and another two-year Master Gestaltist training course. This focus on doing my own work to walk my path of inner transformational healing, and embodying wholeness to serve others on their healing paths led to my healing at inner and outer levels.
The doctors who treated me when I was hospitalized were very excited when I returned a year later after my health crisis that resulted in their hospital care because all the tests and imaging confirmed that my heart and lungs had not been permanently damaged by the severe inflammation for which I was hospitalized. They told me “to keep doing whatever I was doing because it was working.” At first my healing progress seemed minimal and nonexistent. Since I had promised God and my good doctors urged me to continue on, I continued my inner work supported by the outer healing modalities of naturopathic medicine, acupuncture, homeopathy, psychotherapy, somatic experiencing therapy, bodywork, loving my family and friends, and being with my horses.
Since graduating from my training programs, during the last five years, I have held nine retreats at our ranch or our neighbor’s guest ranch for those who are seeking their wholeness and desire to shed ways of being that no longer serve them. My first retreat was with five women who had lost someone to suicide, three of them had lost a child. Witnessing them move through transformational healing and leave with a new lease on life, I knew I had my reason for being. I love sharing my vertical connection with Source with those who attend my retreats, holding space and partnering with my healing horse friends to assist them find their way forward by looking deep within themselves.
I founded Four Horses for Wholeness and my husband and I built a beautiful retreat center on our ranch. We provide an immersive experience in mother nature, as close to horses as you can be, good food, and an opportunity to step away from day to day life to find deep, healing change inside for those who attend our retreats.
How do you define wholeness?
I define wholeness as embodying our oneness with our true divine identity. To do this we must resolve our psychology, which means to become conscious of those wounds, pains, and areas of dis “ease” stored in our psyche, bodies and beings. When we resolve our psychology or in other words resolve those energy tangles that block our embodiment of our divine identity, we are more able to embody light and love, which in turn provides the necessary energy for our inner and outer being to be transformed. Wholeness requires balance and harmony in our four lower bodies – the spiritual, mental, emotional and physical containers of our consciousness that are inextricably intertwined and form the vessel we occupy while we are here on the earth. Total wholeness is the same as oneness with the Divine, and it is available to all regardless of religion, race, or any other outer consciousness that sometimes serves to separate us rather than unify us.
Tell me about the power of your horses when it comes to healing.
My horses never cease to amaze me and warm my heart with how generous they show up in my life and with those who come to spend time with them at our retreat center. HeartMath Institute has measured the emanations from a horse’s heart, and discovered that a horse’s heart measures five times greater than the same measurement of a human's heart.
Horses by nature are flight animals, meaning their means to stay safe over all the centuries has been mostly to flee the predators that would hunt them. Also, horses like elephants, dolphins, dogs, and some primates seem to have higher-order feeling and awareness functions. A horse’s heart is a very large organ and many times physically bigger than a human’s heart. Throughout many centuries horses have served mankind in sometimes very inhumane situations for the horses, yet horses have grown into beings that are very gracious, open-hearted, and willing to engage in deep, transformational healing contact with people.
During some of my deepest healing moments when I felt such deep pain, sadness or some other feeling that was moving through me to be released, I have felt energetically held, and even physically held when horses have wrapped their head around me to hug me as I broke down. I have seen my horses meet those who attend our retreats with soft, open hearts and to provide the connection that anchored and supported people through many different transformational healing processes. An old proverb provides that “there is nothing so good for the inside of a man as the outside of a horse.”
Throughout these last years of partnering with horses to serve others in their healing paths, I have become more aware of how horses can sense our feelings and when we are totally unaware of our hidden feelings and those places inside we would often rather avoid. Horses are true, natural empaths. Also, each time I am fortunate to spend time with my horse friends, I become more aware of the fact that horses can also sense or read our minds.
Horses do not have the capacity to be judgmental or critical. So their extrasensory gifts and generous large hearts, along with their grounded wisdom allows them to assist and provide feedback in our healing process that most of us would not be able to receive from another human.
Your book is called Alchemy of Resilience: My Rugged Path to Wholeness, I’d love to know what the title means to you and why.
After dying and coming back, my inner prompting was to write a book to share my experience so that others would be able to experience and know that death is much different than what society teaches us. I first wrote about dying and coming back, and then I realized that to enable others to understand my inner choices that led to my dying and making the promises I did to be able to return to my body, that I had to share more of my life. So, I wrote the entire memoir and I realized that my story was about the Alchemy of Resilience: My Rugged Path to Wholeness.
Alchemy to me is the process of transforming something common into something special or the science of self-transformation. In the past, alchemy was something that some did to turn something into gold. There is no greater manifestation of gold than the inner process of a soul shedding their skeins of unhealthy consciousness to reunite with their true nature, which if love, light and oneness with the Divine.
Resilience is the capacity to withstand or recover from difficulties or the ability of something to spring back into shape. As I wrote my book and did inner work to move through what once manifested as complex PTSD in my psyche, I realized that I had been gifted with an extraordinary amount of resilience. Even as a child, who was hurt physically and emotionally by those who were supposed to love and protect me, I chose to love. I chose to come back into the shape of my true soul nature.
Looking back, I am now aware that those painful, sad times in my life gave my soul the desire to do whatever it took to heal and make it through the labyrinth of dark inner and outer areas of life so that I could strive to embody love, light and wholeness. Just like in the alchemy to turn some base material into gold, it is likely one needs heat and other elements for any inner alchemy to actually occur. The same was true for my soul. My ability to withstand the heat of trauma, pain and sadness led to the inner energy to move into and through ongoing transformational healing.
Tell us about the transformations that happen at your retreat and how the horses play a role.
At my retreats I have seen each participant come with a countenance of the burdens of life and leave looking like they received an energetic face lift. I am always amazed at the noticeable transformational change that occurs and is visible in the physical. Those who have attended the retreats have told me that their changes have stayed with them even years after the retreat.
Equine Gestalt Coaching is very different from talk therapy and provides an experience where one can let go of some outdated way of being or old wound that blocks one from living open hearted in the here and now. Gestalt is a German word for wholeness. As a coach, I see everyone as already whole and serve to assist whomever I am coaching uncover their answers and resolutions that are inside them.
My healing horse partners are nearby and participate by being physically close and with their energy with each person’s healing process during the retreat. Sometimes the horse might open their mouth wide in what looks like a horse yawn. Instead of being a yawn like being tired, the horse is moving energy and will generously use their hearts and beings to help whomever they are coaching release and let go of energy that has been blocking their beings from forward progress. Some horses will actually move their bodies around and stand next to the person they are working with to balance their chakras, or energy centers.
One of my horses will sometimes serve to pantomime or act out what consciousness is hidden or the person is avoiding. I may notice my horse acting out something in his movements, I ask the person, “what do you think he is doing? Does his actions remind you of something.” And, the person will say, oh my, he is acting out. That is my stuff that I have not wanted to see.
At all times, my healing horse friends meet people where they are at with open hearts. They see and hear those who are with them in a very deep, loving way. I have heard stories several years later from someone who stood by one of my horses outside the corral, and how they broke down crying, healed and were permanently changed by the experience of just standing next to a horse.
For leaders out there, is wholeness important for their success and how can they achieve it?
Wholeness is necessary for true success because it provides the inner foundation to move in harmony, and flow with love, light and the energies of life. Embodying wholeness leads to the alignment of our inner and outer worlds so that we can anchor attracting all the resources that we need to fulfill our reason for being. True riches and abundance come when we are congruent with our divine identities and are able to be one hundred percent flow with love and light.
What would you say to someone who is feeling like you did at they read this?
If someone reading this is feeling or has felt like they want to leave the earth, I would say:
I understand. I felt that way for much of my life. I wanted to go home to somewhere else where I believed life was better and escape the pain, sadness and meanness I had experienced on earth.
I now know, I am very grateful for the gift of my body and that I am still here to fulfill my reason for being. I now live in a flow of light and love that is similar to what I experienced when I was high above the earth in the higher atmosphere. I had no idea that life could be so good on earth just because I faced my inner demons, pains, sadness, grief and all those feelings that I never wanted to feel. I discovered that these feelings were paper tigers and not as bad as I had imagined. I now often live in a consciousness of light and love that is heaven on earth. I believe living in a higher consciousness is available for everyone and that it is the reason we were born.
Tricia Brouk, Founder of The Big Talk Academy
Tricia Brouk helps high-performing professionals transform into industry thought leaders through the power of authentic storytelling. With her experience as an award-winning director, producer, sought after speaker, and mentor to countless thought-leaders, Tricia has put thousands of speakers onto big stages globally. She produced TEDxLincolnSquare in New York City and is the founder of The Big Talk Academy. Tricia’s book, The Influential Voice: Saying What You Mean for Lasting Legacy, was a 1 New Release on Amazon in December 2020. Big Stages, the documentary featuring her work with speakers premiered at the Chelsea Film Festival in October of 2023 and her most recent love is the new publishing house she founded, The Big Talk Press.
