Free Rein Australia, 150 Larcombes Road, Modewarre (2026)

03/09/2026

WHEN PAIN PERSISTS BEYOND THE EXPLANATION

I met my new neighbour one Sunday morning when she came over to meet the horses. As we stood chatting, she told me she lives with constant pain.

I asked what had happened.

She had been walking three dogs on a beach when they spotted a seal. The dogs pulled, she went down hard, and broke both hips and several ribs.

She explained the physiological reasons she had been given for why she was still in pain.

I happened to be holding a lead rope, so I handed her one end and held the other.

I asked her to imagine herself back on the beach that day. As I spoke, I began pulling firmly on the rope.

“What do you notice happening in your body?”

She felt a tightening in her solar plexus.

I gestured toward an imaginary seal. “The seal is over there. What protective movement is organising in your body right now?”

“I want to pull harder.”

So I increased the resistance.

She pulled against me for perhaps 20 seconds. Then, while still holding the rope, I softened my resistance.

She straightened. Then she smiled.

She said the pain was noticeably less, and she realised she was standing evenly.

That wasn’t a session. It was a casual conversation between two neighbours!

We caught up again on Thursday and I asked whether anything had changed since Sunday.

She said she had been in noticeably less pain.

Then she pointed something out herself: we had been standing talking for quite a while and she was comfortably standing still. Previously she would have been constantly shifting her weight, trying to find relief.

This wasn’t a gimmick, and it isn’t an alternative to appropriate medical or physical care.

But it demonstrates something that can be overlooked when pain continues long after an injury has healed as well as it is going to heal.

When the dogs pulled her off balance, her nervous system didn’t simply register tissue damage. It also initiated an immediate protective response.

That response failed.

Her body had tried to prevent what was happening, but the injury occurred anyway.

From a BCM perspective, that distinction matters.

An unfinished protective response can leave the nervous system continuing to organise around protection. Muscles brace. Movement changes. Weight is distributed differently. The injured area remains guarded, and pain can remain part of that protective organisation.

When I asked my neighbour what her body wanted to do, she didn’t have to think about it.

Pull harder.

This time she was able to carry out the protective action against resistance and experience a different outcome.

The nervous system received new biological information: the protective action could succeed.

And something changed.

For osteopaths, physiotherapists, bodyworkers and other practitioners supporting people with persistent pain, this raises an important question:

"What if some of the pain you are treating is not only about the original injury — but about the protective response that never finished?"

BCM training teaches practitioners how to recognise and work with those unfinished responses alongside the work they already do.

For information about BCM practitioner training:
freereinaustralia.com

31/08/2026

This training is for practitioners who feel like something is missing or want to work differently.

Your work may be talk or coaching-based, somatic-based, parts and systems-based, or through the body, in education, with allied health, or equine-based modalities.

You may see some improvement but feel like something is stuck.
You may feel some frustration hearing the same stories — not because you don't care, but because the client still seems caught in them. You learn another method. Try another approach.

Regulation practices help, but again, it feels like there should be more.

The Biological Completion Model™ (BCM) is a departure from most trauma therapies because it focuses on what the nervous system is trying to do. It goes beneath the story, the symptoms and the ongoing anguish.

The nervous system is motoric. When threatened, it organises movement for defensive action, and it requires feedback – evidence that the action was successful. When the system receives that evidence, its prediction can update to:
It worked.
The threat is gone.
It's over.
I can protect myself.
And the nervous system reorganises.

When that response fails, it remains active. The prediction does not update. Hypervigilance, avoidance, anxiety, fear, shutdown and other symptoms are expressions of a nervous system still organised around threat.

From the perspective of the nervous system, trauma involves a defensive response that did not complete. The response has purpose. It is not random. There is logic to it. BCM works with this logic.

BCM provides practitioners with a framework to identify the unfinished response — even when there is no coherent story – and work collaboratively with the client to support completion.

Prior to completion, the nervous system is organised around threat and survival.

After completion, the nervous system becomes organised around agency.

The change is often visible and unmistakable. And it can happen quickly – sometimes in the first session.

WHAT DOES THAT CHANGE FOR THE PRACTITIONER?

•You recognise the same nervous system logic across very different presentations

•You don't have to have all the answers.

•You don't even have to know “where to go next.” The client's nervous system will show you.

•You don’t need to keep learning and integrating multiple models and tools for different presentations.

•You don’t carry the client.

•You feel energised.

THIS MODEL EVOLVED FROM MY WORK AS A SOMATIC EXPERIENCING PRACTITIONER

Over time, I began to notice consistent patterns. I noticed how the nervous system organised in response to different threats and constraints. I realised that the concept of ‘fight/flight/freeze’ was not enough to explain how the nervous system organises around threat. And after years of clinical observations, documenting cases, research, and testing theories, BCM emerged.

BCM identifies a defense hierarchy where the nervous system selects a response depending on the type of threat. Environmental threats and relational threats present different biological problems so the nervous system selects different strategies for defensive action.

Sometimes the nervous system changes strategies mid-action. One response is abandoned when another takes priority. This matters because a person can successfully escape, remain physically unharmed – and still develop trauma because another defensive response never completed.

BCM looks for what was left unfinished.

Many of the clinical cases I have shared previously appear remarkably simple once the response becomes visible. That simplicity is not accidental. It comes from having a framework.

I explore many more real clinical cases, across very different trauma presentations and defensive strategies, in my forthcoming book, "The Unfinished Response."

SO WHY IS THE TRAINING ONLY 12 DAYS?

Because practitioners are not learning a different intervention for every presentation. They are learning the logic of the nervous system.

BCM gives you a framework for interpreting what the client’s nervous system is doing, and a map for what to notice, what to ask, where to guide the client, how to recognise completion and how to support what follows.

The destination is not simply fewer symptoms, better regulation or greater understanding of the past.

The destination is agency — the capacity to feel able to act, protect, choose and move through an uncertain world.

The training is highly experiential and includes demonstrations, observation, discussion, case analysis and extensive practice with one another, as well as theory.

While training takes place in the presence of horses, BCM is not an equine therapy modality and does not require horses in practice.

However, the horses contribute to both safety and containment within the training environment. Because they are free to move, approach and disengage, their responses provide immediate feedback about congruence, boundaries and nervous-system state.

Training cohorts are small, with a high ratio of training assistants to participants.

WHAT WILL YOU LEARN?

You will understand the logic of the nervous system and learn to:

•support the client to increase self-awareness and the capacity to stay present without overwhelm

•recognise nervous-system organisation beneath very different symptoms and presentations

•identify the defensive strategy that was interrupted, inhibited or overridden

•recognise when one defensive strategy has overridden another and identify the response that remains unfinished

•identify and suspend survival-based inhibitors

•distinguish how the nervous system organises around different types of threat

•recognise when the client is ready to move toward completion

•use interventions that support the nervous system to continue the unfinished defensive response

•create the conditions required for the unfinished response to complete

•understand how prediction sustains the response and what biological evidence is required for prediction to update

•recognise the physiological markers that indicate the system has reorganised

•support what follows completion — including integration and the restoration of agency

WHO IS THE TRAINING FOR?

Anyone whose work brings them into contact with stress, trauma, and protective patterns, such as:

•counsellors and psychotherapists

•coaches

•somatic and body-based practitioners

•allied health practitioners, including physiotherapists and osteopaths

•educators and other practitioners working with human behaviour

•equine practitioners

The longer-term goal is to develop a community of BCM practitioners who integrate the model into their existing work, contribute clinical observations, and help take the model further.

TO REGISTER
Send an email to [email protected] or contact Cindy on 0411 593 369

24/08/2026

https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61593302504642

7 Prevailing Assumptions About Trauma

There are some prevailing assumptions about trauma that have become so familiar they are rarely questioned. But when you compare them with the logic of the nervous system, they often raise more questions than they answer.

My work did not begin by trying to prove or disprove those assumptions. I simply listened to the nervous system instead.

1. Trauma is what happened to you.

The event happened. Then it ended.

We already know trauma is not simply the story of what happened. So why can the nervous system continue responding years later as though something is still happening?

If the event is over, what exactly remains?

2. Trauma symptoms need to be managed.

Anxiety, hypervigilance, avoidance, shutdown, reactivity, fear: we learn to manage them. Reduce them. Regulate them. Cope with them. But symptoms are effects.

What is still producing them?

3. Fight, flight and freeze are the trauma response.

Fight, flight and freeze describe important survival responses. But the nervous system does far more than select from three options. And there is another problem.

People can fight successfully.
They can escape successfully.
They can survive by freezing.
And still remain affected by the trauma.

If the survival response worked, what remains unresolved?

4. Knowing you are safe should teach the nervous system that the danger is over.

People can know they are safe. They can know the abusive relationship ended years ago. They can know the current situation is different. They can understand exactly why they react the way they do.

And still their nervous system responds as if the old threat is present.

So what evidence is the nervous system actually waiting for?

5. Regulation is the goal.

Regulation matters. A healthy nervous system needs to activate when something requires action and settle when the demand has passed.

But if the same activation needs to be regulated again tomorrow, next month and next year—
what has actually changed?

6. Calm means the trauma has resolved.

People can become very good at appearing calm.

They can breathe through activation.
Ground.
Settle.
Return to calm.
Until something triggers it again.

Calm is evidence of a state. It is not evidence of resolution.

7. Trauma is something you learn to live with.

Humans are extraordinarily adaptable.

We avoid.
Accommodate.
Control our environments.
Choose around our triggers.
Structure our lives to reduce the likelihood of being activated.

Eventually those adaptations can feel so familiar that they become part of identity: “this is just who I am.”

But if the nervous system is designed to protect us from threat—
why would it be designed to remain indefinitely organised around a threat that no longer exists?

These assumptions start to break down when we ask what the nervous system itself is doing.

That question has been at the centre of my work.

Not: “How do I get this nervous system to calm down?”
But: “What is this nervous system trying to do?”

And when I followed the logic of the nervous system, some of what I found genuinely surprised me – actually shocked me once I understood what it meant.

Next: 7 things about the nervous system I did not expect to discover.

23/08/2026

OMG it gets worse!

I called Leila in for her yummy warm molasses-soaked dinner (that she usually hangs out waiting for), and SHE DIDN'T COME!

SHE IGNORED ME! 😂😂😂

Her butt is even facing me! 🤣😂🤣

23/08/2026

When it comes to horses, my horses are quick to remind me that after only 35 years, I still know nothing!

After Holly passed, I was worried about Leila. She had always 'buddied' up with Holly and they never really integrated with the herd.

In fact, the herd chased them out of their 'inner circle' when they got too close. I worried about how Leila would go after losing her best friend, and being alone - especially at night.

After Holly passed, she stayed around the shed - where the food comes from! She just waited from 1 meal to the next.

But now it seems she is become quite the social butterfly! Go figure! (In the pic, Leila is the second one on the left - the chestnut with 2 white socks).

20/08/2026

There is a plethora of equine therapy training organisations, and consequently a plethora of practitioners in the industry. In addition, there are places popping up everywhere – offering a horse experience, horse healing, or spiritual expansion. None of these are wrong, they are just different. If you are just getting started, you might find all of this overwhelming. Here is a summary of the various equine therapy offerings: https://www.freereinaustralia.com/.../equine-therapy.../

Learning a form of equine therapy is not a discipline on its own. It is a modality – in the same way that CBT or EMDR or IFS are modalities. Certification comes from your discipline: e.g. counselling, psychotherapy, coaching, teaching... Equine therapy is a modality that falls under your discipline. It is another ‘tool.’

Here are some practical questions to help you clarify which organisation you choose to train with.

1. Ask yourself why you want to learn equine therapy? To be around horses, to share the experience of being with horses with others, to help people overcome adversity, or deal with disability…. This is perhaps the most important question because it will influence your training organisation choice the most.

2. Ask yourself who would be your ideal clients? It’s recommended that you start with a demographic you know and are comfortable with. For example, choosing to work with children when you have no experience with children will be a double learning curve. It’s important to understand the needs and behaviours of your ideal client so that you can more easily absorb the training.

3. Ask yourself what kind of outcomes you would like for your clients? That leads to what skills and resources do you need.

4. When considering a training organisation, ask what is their methodology. What is possible for the client? What is the practitioner’s role in a client session? How would their modality work for your ideal client?

5. When considering a training organisation, ask what their philosophy is about horses. Do they need to be trained, are they constrained or at liberty, are they ridden, how do they live, what is their schedule like, and what is their role in equine therapy? How does their philosophy compare to yours?

6. Ask the training organisation explicitly, what will you need and what will you learn to get you from where you are now, and where you need to be. And specifically, what skills and what processes will you learn?

7. If the training organisation offers certification, ask who (what governing body) recognises it, and how is it useful? Saying they are certified does not guarantee effective, or quality training.

8. Ask the training organisation what is involved in learning practical skills. How much practice will you get working with a ‘client,’ and will you be ready to start offering your services at the end of the training?

20/08/2026

A therapist’s beliefs about trauma are not neutral.

They are not casual.

They are causal.

They shape how the therapist responds:
What they see.
What they look for.
What they believe is possible.
What they tell the client about themselves.
What they consider progress.
And what they accept as an outcome.

Years ago, I worked with a woman who had accumulated almost every mental health label imaginable.

By the time she came to me, she believed she was profoundly damaged. So damaged that giving up felt like the only option left.

I listened to her history. I listened to the diagnoses she had been given. And then I asked her: “has anyone ever told you that you’re normal?”

She was shocked.

I explained that given what she had experienced, it made sense that her nervous system was responding the way it was. Her responses were not evidence that she was defective. They were evidence that her nervous system had been trying to survive what had happened to her.

The idea was almost too much for her to absorb.

When she returned for her second session, I asked: “what is it like to be normal?”

She lit up. She smiled broadly. “Yes! I am normal!”

Same history. Same symptoms. Same nervous system.

A completely different assumption about what they meant. And that matters because a therapist’s beliefs do not stay inside the therapist.

If the therapist sees pathology, the client may eventually see themselves as pathological.

If the therapist believes trauma healing is necessarily long and difficult, the client learns to expect a long and difficult journey.

If the therapist believes regulation is the goal, becoming better at regulating becomes success.

If symptom reduction is the measure, fewer symptoms become the destination.

If the therapist believes some effects of trauma simply have to be lived with, the client may learn to organise their future around managing them.

These assumptions are so common that most people entering trauma therapy never think to question them.
They are just hoping to feel better.
Less anxious.
Less reactive.
Less overwhelmed.
Better able to cope.

They may never have been given reason to ask: “can my trauma actually resolve?”

My assumptions are very different.

I do not begin with the belief that a person is damaged.

I believe the nervous system is responding for a reason. That trauma lives in the biology — not in the story we tell about it.

That talking about it, analysing it, reliving it or reframing it may change our understanding of what happened. But understanding is not the same as resolution.

I believe trauma is the body attempting to finish a defensive response that could not be completed when the threat occurred.

And when the conditions are right, resolving trauma does not inherently take a long time.

Sometimes it happens in one session. Sometimes it takes a few.

The destination is not better symptom management.
Not calmer.
Not better regulated.
Not better at living with what happened.

The destination is restored agency.

So perhaps before asking a therapist what modality they use, ask something more fundamental:
“What do you believe trauma is?”
“What do you believe needs to happen for it to resolve?”
“How will you know when it has resolved?”
“What do you believe is possible for me?”

Because the answers to those questions shape far more than the treatment plan.

They can shape how you come to understand yourself.

Be very careful whose beliefs you place yourself inside when you are vulnerable enough to ask for help.

Because those beliefs don't stay with the therapist.

They can become yours.

P.S. After 10 sessions, that client was going out on her own again, driving a car, got a job, and repaired relationships with her children.

15/08/2026

What if the reason you can’t manifest what you want has nothing to do with not wanting it enough?

Instructions on manifesting is everywhere:
Visualise what you want.
Feel as though it has already happened.
Believe it is possible.
Step into a state of knowing.
Act as if it has already happened.

And there may be something important in that. Because the nervous system is predictive. It is constantly using past experience to anticipate what is likely to happen next — and organising perception, physiology and behaviour accordingly.

So when you repeatedly imagine a desired future, you are, in effect, trying to strengthen a new prediction:
I can be successful.
I can have a loving relationship.
I can be financially secure.
I can have that new home, new car, holiday…
I can be seen.
I can have the life I want.

But there is a problem. Predictions are not all equal. Some predictions carry survival relevance. And those predictions may have been learned through experiences in which something really did go wrong:
Being seen is dangerous.
Having needs is dangerous.
People hurt me.
People leave.
If I speak up, there will be consequences.
I cannot protect myself.
I have no control over what happens to me.

You can spend twenty minutes visualising success while your nervous system is still organising around the prediction that visibility is dangerous.

You can imagine intimacy while your system predicts that closeness leads to pain.

You can rehearse confidence while your system predicts that taking up space has consequences.

You can picture your new home or new car while your system predicts unworthiness.

You can repeat “I am safe” while your nervous system is still carrying biological evidence that says:
I couldn’t stop it.
I couldn’t get away.
I couldn’t speak up.
I couldn’t be seen or heard.
I couldn’t protect myself.

And when a prediction has survival relevance, repeating a more desirable one may not be enough.

That does not mean you are “blocking abundance.” It does not mean you are manifesting incorrectly. And it certainly does not mean you need to try harder to think positively.

Your nervous system may simply be giving greater weight to a prediction it once needed in order to survive.

This is why I am increasingly interested in what happens when that old prediction finally receives new biological evidence:
I can act.
I can protect myself.
I am worthy.
My response works.
I have choice.
I have agency.

Now the system is not being asked simply to believe in a different future. It has evidence from which to predict one.

Perhaps that is one of the missing pieces in the conversation about manifestation.

Before asking: “What am I trying to manifest?”

It may be worth asking: “What is my nervous system predicting will happen if I actually get it?”

Free Rein Australia

03/09/2026

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