On an Equine Therapy Retreat in Indonesia, Letting the Horses Dig Up Old Feelings

Before we start, I am told to wait. Hannah, one of the horses equine healer Candice Webster likes to work with, needs to settle. “Juicy energy,” I am told. Matt, Candice’s husband, is incredulous; he can’t believe this is the same horse he’s seen all week. When they arrived at Nihi Sumba, she could barely move, limping from a leg infection caused by the rainy season. Truthfully, she has been slowing down for a while. When we first met the horses at the sanctuary, we were told that Hannah would soon pass away. But you wouldn't be able to guess that now. Today I must wait as she gallops around the sand school. Something in the air is humming.I sit and drink from a coconut. I pick at my nails. It is hardly the standard morning routine for a resort best known for its world-class surf break and iconic beach rides. Many have traveled for the horses that live at Nihi Sumba—the ultra-luxurious hotel settled at the shoreline on this wildly untamed Indonesian island—but never in this particular way. I’m here for its first retreat in collaboration with equine healer Candice Webster and, finally, it’s time to face myself. I fold up my crumpled sheets of paper containing frantic scrawlings of all the negativity I’m going to leave on the Sumbanese sands. “This is not a session,” Candice reminds me, as she calls me into the ring, “it’s a ceremony.”The horses at Nihi Sumba take a daily swim in the ocean. Jason ChildsCandice Webster is striking, with a diminutive frame; long, flowing hazel curls; a giant grin that rarely leaves her face; and a perma-excitement that radiates outwards. She’s never worked outside of her home ranch in South Africa before; she’s had no need. People travel to her—vast distances in many cases—to receive the “medicine,” as she calls it. She is an equine intuitive, with a reputation for transformative trauma work that has earned her one million followers on Instagram alone. Her practice incorporates reiki, chakra work, and the energetic presence of the horses, using their sensitivity and subsequent behavior as a mirror for our unspoken emotional weight.Hannah has settled a little when I kick off my flip-flops and crunch across the sand school to a bed adorned with a conch and hibiscus. The ceremonies are held at Nihi’s Nihioka sanctuary, an hour’s ride from the hotel through wide open rice fields and thick jungle, where emerald hills cascade down towards the sea and the sound of waves carries faintly across the valley. Here, rescued horses are rehabilitated and, when possible, rehomed. Newly invigorated Hannah is joined by cheeky young Nicky, who nibbles at my hand, nudges the shell towards me, then inexplicably eats the flower. Candice reminds me that horses’ behavior reflects your own energy. “I feel a strong playful sense from you,” she says.Candice Webster performing a healing ceremony at Nihi's rescue sanctuary with Hannah and Nicky Joe Kelly @alifeiimaginedPerhaps usually, but not today, as I immediately burst into tears. Oh my God, I can’t stop crying. Candice tells me I don’t need to worry and that she’ll go as deep as she needs to go. All of my ancestral traumas shall be vanquished. She has consulted the dragons, she says, and Mother Gaia. Realistically, this is odd. But Candice is so earnest, so totally confident in her assertion, and the waves are rolling in the distance in the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen. So I go with it.It’s obvious why Candice chose Nihi as the first place to work away from her own herd. The hotel’s tagline is “the edge of wildness,” and the winding 90-minute drive from Sumba airport does feel rather like slipping into a lost world. Candice and her family took seven plane rides to reach this remarkably undeveloped island, which runs for miles through dense tropical foliage. Then you reach the hotel and everything falls away onto a blistering white slice of beach, where huge turquoise waves crash onto the shore.Some come for the surfing, others for the environs alone, but most are drawn by the equine program, launched by Nihi's own onsite horse whisperer Carol Sharpe in 2013. Candice’s retreat incorporates plenty of Nihi’s typical horsey activities, including sunset beach rides, horse yoga, a visit to a nearby equine charity, and early morning treks with the herd as they head over the misty sands to their higher grazing grounds. Alongside the free-roaming Sandalwood ponies that canter along the beach, Carol also oversees the nearby sanctuary and runs her own equine retreats on request. She is a steady daily presence, whether leading mindfulness sessions or explaining the role horses have played in Sumbanese life for generations.Candice Webster and the island's native Sumba ponies Joe Kelly @alifeiimaginedEvery villa at Nihi Sumba has its own private pool. Tanveer BadalAs Candice starts to work on my body, I’m still crying. She speaks in an ancient, unintelligible language—“light language,” she calls it—as she moves, hovering her hands over each of my chakras in turn. When she reaches my chest, I weep even harder. At one point, I feel a great heat radiating from my feet, but when I open my eyes, she isn’t even touching me.It's difficult to explain. It’s so easy for Western wellness culture to commodify spirituality, to take sacred motifs and repackage them as resort amenities. Much has been talked of the whitewashing of Ayurveda, for one. To be clear, I’m not saying a stay here isn’t outrageously indulgent. I’ve had the open-air massage with a “hair smoothie,” and my colossal villa comes with not one, but two, butlers. Once I return from watching day-old turtles wobbling into the sea at sundown to find a surprise bathtub, heavy with rose petals, for no reason at all. But while high-end hospitality can easily be bought and packaged, what happened at the sanctuary that day resists easy aestheticization.Were my tears simply the cumulative effect of relaxation, beauty, and time in unusually close quarters with strangers encouraged to be vulnerable? Or something about the horses themselves?Writer Charley Ward taking a ride on the beach at sunset Charley WardThe local boys racing their Sandalwood ponies at dusk Charley WardNo animal is more sacred on this island than the horse. According to the island’s ancestral animist religion, Marapu, these creatures aren’t merely livestock, but revered as “untamed nobles” and sacred vessels—living bridges that connect the human realm to the ancestral spirits. They play a key role in the island’s unique burial rituals. When it's time to lay a relative to rest, there are sacrifices to the gods: a great spectacle where dozens of prized water buffalo, pigs, and horses are slaughtered to feed the mourning community and clear the path to the afterlife. In Marapu cosmology, every drop of spilt blood serves a dual purpose: it pays homage to the creator spirits and transforms the animals into spiritual beasts of burden, carrying the deceased’s soul and earthly wealth safely into the ancestral realm. To engage with horses on Sumba is to engage with the very heartbeat of the island itself.Certainly, my emotional release felt far less transactional than a response to five-star pampering. I've blubbed on several occasions this week, sobbing through a remarkably vulnerable full moon gathering with the retreat guests on the beach, and again in another equine session with Carol. Hunter, a large bay native Sandalwood horse, initially shies away from my touch, and I’m nervous, unsure about my directive to send him away by spinning his lead rope. But just 30 minutes later, he is following me around, untethered entirely, stopping, starting, and turning left and right under my hands-free direction. Carol says if I can control a horse, I can control my own life.I'm surprised at how comfortable I've felt sharing so much of myself with strangers in such a short time, but there's evidence to suggest my experience isn't uncommon. Equine therapy has gained increasing attention in recent years, with practitioners believing horses’ profound sensitivity to body language and emotion allows them to respond to feelings that humans often suppress. Horses don’t care about your job title, your carefully rehearsed stories, or the version of yourself you’d prefer the world to see. As prey animals, they’ve evolved to read the smallest changes in breathing, posture, and tension in order to survive. Whether or not you believe they can detect something deeper, they have an uncanny way of inviting you to become present.Nihioka sanctuary is also home to the hotel's idyllic outdoor spa Charley WardCandice has moved up my body to my crown chakra. She is tapping my third eye, my neck, my head. Or at least I think she is; she tells me afterwards clients often tell her how good that feels, only for her to say she didn't touch them at all. Nicky gently rests his nose on my hair, and it’s over. “We’ve got a lot of energy out of you today,” says Candice, “we’ve dug up a lot of old feelings."She points at what the horses have done to the ring. The sand, once pristine, is a complete mess. Hannah and Nicky have wheeled around and around, digging and digging into the ground. Great craters now exist where there were none before. It's a striking physical manifestation of all my old feelings, exhumed from the depths and released into the Indonesian daylight. I take my crumpled papers with all my silly old feelings and set fire to them in a bowl. Candice gives me a hug.At sunset, boys who live in a nearby village are galloping bareback down the beach on their Sumba ponies. The sky is painted pastel, and the waves rear up 20-feet-high before thundering onto the shore, over and over. A farmer starts to usher his buffalo herd into the shallows.I, too, feel cleansed. Others may dismiss this place as just another high-end boutique for wealthy wellness-seekers, but I’ve been to plenty of beautiful hotels and never wept over a marble bathtub, or even a tropical sunset. In a place where horses serve as both companions to the living and guides for the dead, this retreat feels as though it has mirrored that same ancient respect. Carol has dedicated years to rescuing those that have been neglected, while Candice trusts them to lead people towards parts of themselves they struggle to reach alone. I have been touched by the genuine kindness, care, and attention I've received from them both.Perhaps the medicine, as Candice calls it, is simply the opportunity to feel truly seen. You don't need to believe in energy, or even equine therapy, to believe in the power of that.Find out more about Candice Webster's retreats on Nihi's website, or check availability on Booking.com. This article was originally published in Condé Nast Traveller UK.