Nickel is still here.
That feels important to say first. Because after Noah, after the grief of Part 1 and the questions of Part 2, here is something solid and alive and ongoing. A silver horse, tall and striking, learning — slowly, honestly — how to be in the world.
He is not a quick story. He never will be.
Every day, Eric goes to him
No fanfare. No agenda. Just showing up — quietly, consistently, without drama. Not pushing. Not forcing. Offering, and waiting to see what Nickel can meet him with that day.
Some days Nickel is more open. Some days he needs more space. Eric follows his lead. The pace is set not by a schedule or a plan, but by Nickel’s nervous system itself — the only honest guide there is.
This is how re-wiring actually works. Not in a single breakthrough moment. Not in one powerful session or one insight that changes everything overnight. It happens in the repetition. In the thousand small moments of safety that begin, slowly, to outweigh the thousand small moments of fear that came before. In our work with humans here, we call it taking your nervous system to the gym. You don’t go once and expect to be transformed. Every rep matters. Every quiet moment of safety is a deposit.
Nickel cribs — that repetitive self-soothing habit we mentioned in Part 1. He may stop one day. He may not. We don’t try to force him out of it. We try to settle the part that needs the soothing. And we trust that as that part settles, the cribbing will find its own level.
That is what real healing looks like. Quiet. Incremental. Sometimes barely visible from the outside. And entirely real.
You can find part 1 & 2 of this story on our blog.
What strikes us, watching this unfold, is how familiar it looks
How many people arrive at Tula Vida carrying something not so different from what Nickel carries — a nervous system wired for survival, a deep longing for connection, and no real map for how to get there without pushing everyone away, shutting down, or running?
Not because they are broken. Because they adapted. Because once, that was the only way through.
We don’t judge that here. We don’t ask anyone to abandon the parts that kept them safe — those parts did their job, and did it well. What we do instead is get curious. We help people notice their own system — how it moves, what activates it, what begins to settle it. We help them find their own map.
And then the horses step in.
They don’t read your bio. They don’t care about your clothes or your productivity or how well you hold it together. They respond to what is actually happening in you — your breath, your body, the quality of your presence. When you begin to settle, really settle, they feel it before you do, and they respond. So you get to see it and feel it too, and to start to map it yourself. And that feeling — of being truly seen and accepted, just as you are — is a form of safety the body remembers long after you leave.
Nature does its part too. The vibrant greens, the sounds of the birds, the smell of the trees, the horses grazing peacefully, the absence of urgency — all of it sends signals directly to the nervous system that it is safe to soften. Your body knows how to do this. It just needs the right conditions to remember.
Here, without even trying, the natural rhythm starts to return. And the experience of feeling genuinely regulated — calm and settled at every level — gives you something you can orient by. A compass point. A felt sense of home to navigate back to, again and again, long after you leave.
Nickel is still on his own journey, and it is a visible reminder for all of us. He will be a great teacher of this. He is already a teacher for Eric — they show up when you’re ready.
If something in this is calling to you — if you recognise something of yourself in these horses, or simply feel a pull toward this place and this work — we would love to hear from you.
You can find out more about our retreats at www.tulavida.com, or reach us directly at tulavidateam@gmail.com. We are always happy to have a conversation first, just to see if it feels like the right fit.