I envision a world where all beings are treated with dignity, kindness, love, & respect. A world where love rules.

Gloria Hester is a Somatic coach and Educator for humans and other vertebrate species. She is the founder of SEVA™ (Somatic Education for Vertabrate Animals) and Yogic Wisdom for Horse and Human, an educational program that includes somatic healing retreats and workshops with horse and human participants. Gloria is a Certified Yoga Therapist, C-IAYT and Certified Hanna Somatic Educator for humans and equines, and runs a private practice as a Somatic coach and Educator for humans, horses, canines, and other animals.

As a Body Ecologist certified by Donna Gates, Gloria infuses retreats, workshops and trainings with lectures on the subject of nutrition, food-based healing, and how food affects the nervous system. She reflects the new edge of integrating principles of trans-species psychology with innovative and traditional approaches to healing non-human animals. Critically, she engages psyche (mind) and soma (body), which in contrast to conventional behavioral training, gives animals voice and respect in support of their well-being and self-determination.

I had a broken foot, and torn discs in my low back. I was in a lot of pain and had been told by Dr’s not to even bend over or to reach above my head. I was pretty much bed ridden. And I was so young!

Basically I had been told not to move. I didn’t see not being able to get a glass out of the cabinet or to put my own socks on as much of a future for myself. The doctors I was seeing offered no hope, only more tests.

I had heard somewhere that Yoga was “good for low back pain.”

That was twenty years ago. There were no nearby studios, so I hobbled into a Suncoast video store and bought Alan Fingers video called “Stress Release and Conditioning.”

I took the video home and watched it, thinking, “Oh boy, I can’t do any of this.” But I really wanted to help myself, and looking back, I think that was key. So I did what I could of the video, and about halfway through, as I was standing in the middle of my living room in a wide standing forward fold, I realized that I was bending over and wasn’t in any pain. It was then that I knew that something special was happening, that I had found my way home.

I began to practice every day and experienced that first savasana, that savasana that really gets most people hooked on yoga. I had never experienced that depth of connection before in my life.

I had been taught growing up to have faith in God, but I had never felt safe in my physical body, until I started to practice yoga. Over the years, my fear of heights went away, and my fear of driving long distances alone melted away.

I loved everything about Yoga. The first book I got on Yoga was Bikram’s old red cover edition. Those first few books really shaped me, and whenever I met a runner with tight hips, or a knee injury, I would show them things they could do to release the muscles and ease the pain.

Friends around me would laugh, and say, “Why don’t you teach?” Of course, I thought, “Well, there are all kinds of postures that I can’t do, and I have to be able to do them all if I teach.” But they assured me that that was not the case, and kept insisting that I should teach.   The idea of it really intrigued and excited me, but I was so used to being afraid, and nervous.

It took every ounce of courage I had in me to travel and study with teachers, but with pounding heart, I did it.

I literally took a stuffed teddy bear (for moral support) with me in my backpack to that first training.

After I started studying to teach, a friend who was a neuromuscular therapist invited me to teach at his place when I was ready. And that was where I held my first class. I was so scared, scared of not getting it right, scared of looking silly. Sharing funny shapes to make with your body, mantra, and mudra, things that at that time were so foreign to most people.

I went on to study so many more disciplines of Yoga, dance arts, somatic healing arts, one that was most notable for me, were somatic studies, which led me back to formally working with horses, combining all that I love most in this world into one epic adventure…

So, that’s what happens when you take the plunge, or at least it’s what happened when I did…
You fall in love with the divine, what I call “The Big Love.”

Twenty years later, with thousands of road miles, countless air miles, and more than a few friends across the globe, I am still at this game of love.

That’s what it is for me, a game of love.