For another element of the program, women sit in a circle in the mountains and are led in song by American-Irish musician and teacher Anne Walsh.
Coming Home to the Body
The table is set. The meal carefully prepared. Hands are held; prayer is felt. Mackenzie Fink consciously connects with each person circled around this stunning spread under a summer sunset sky. With a soft smile and knowing eyes, all feel the power of her gaze: gentle, penetrating, and present.
Fink is the co-founder for the nonprofit Heroes and Horses. She embodies the organization’s spirit of deep listening, wholesome gratitude, and sincere presence as she guides participants through the sensory experience of intuitive eating. Plates are filled, guests are seated, and the feast begins.
“When we return to our relationship with food, even in small ways like cooking a meal from scratch or choosing to hand-select produce at the grocery store, we begin to return to ourselves,” she says. “This happens one conscious choice at a time by reawakening the body’s natural intelligence. It helps to restore trust within and rebuild coherence in the nervous system. Each conscious choice reminds us that we are part of nature, not separate from it.”
With Double H Ranch in Virginia City as a homebase, Fink and her husband, Micah, lead Heroes and Horses, with Micah running the 41-day program for combat veterans, and Fink guiding their spouses through a parallel healing journey. Founded in 2014, the organization uses horses, backcountry pack trips, and immersive experiences and challenges to help veterans and their families lay a path toward inner healing. Fueled by adrenaline, risk, and wild rides, their nonprofit’s start is a tale that reminds us there must be a higher power at work.
UNPROGRAMMING THE PROGRAMMED
Fast-forward 12 years, and we see the husband and wife operating an expanded program for entire post-combat families. They’ve fine-tuned their approach to a unique take on healing after military service. They seek to “unprogram the programmed,” Micah says. It’s a deep dive into self-discovery through discomfort, the ritual of healing in community, and a return to the body’s innate wisdom.
For 41 days, men come from all over to disconnect from phones, sugar, substances, and warm water. They learn to ride and pack horses into the wilderness, confront discomfort, tune in to their intuition, and eat whole foods with intention. While the draw may be the liberated appeal of the cowboy ethos, what results is a soulful journey toward deep sovereignty by sourcing safety from within and trusting the body’s natural ability to heal.
For the last two years, the Finks have included veterans’ spouses in what they call the Resilient Heart program. It is a separate women’s program that begins with a six-week online course followed by a week-long stay at the ranch. Led by Fink and supported by a variety of expert teachers in movement, horsemanship, sound, and ritual, it’s an intense period of challenge and reflection rooted in remarkably practical and accessible tools for embodiment.
A military spouse and mother of five children, ages 4 to 20 years old, Fink has experienced the challenges of 13 military deployments, parenthood, and her own struggles with health. Over the years, she has taken a long and deeply intentional journey through her own transformation, laying a foundation for others to learn from her magnetic vulnerability, playful humor, and deep sincerity.
Disconnection from body is at the heart of why the Finks designed these programs. Fink believes industrialized food systems have prioritized speed, profit, and convenience over our own intuitive wisdom. Likewise, contemporary culture overrides the body’s biological signals creating dissonance in our nervous systems. Hunger and fullness are ignored, exhaustion is overridden, and discomfort is avoided or numbed. Collectively, a break from land-based ways of living has resulted in a cultural distrust of the body’s natural intelligence, the innate ability to heal ourselves, and the divine bridge to spirit.
“Deep remembrance is truly about reconnecting with the wisdom that lives in the body, the land, and the spirit.” —Mackenzie Fink
DEEP LISTENING
Both the men’s and women’s programs invite participants back into their bodies through a series of ancient and modern modalities. Participants are invited to begin deeply listening, so they may stir the memory of their connection with body, land, and spirit.
“The practices curated for [these programs] come from both ancient traditions and modern understandings of the nervous system, trauma, and human behavior,” Fink says. “[The modalities] honor the whole person: the body, mind, spirit, ancestry, and environment that help a person remember what is already inside of them.”
The first step for deep listening: remove all that is unnecessary. Upon arrival, participants step into the unknown, relinquishing phones, clocks, and schedules. Meals are cleared of inflammatory ingredients and focus on whole, unprocessed food as clean and close to the earth as possible. The ranch setting is clear in its simplicity; each structure and site is intentionally primitive, stripped of consumptive elements and serving in function and form. Mirroring the wild world around us and our deep interconnection to all living things, participants feel both exposed and held by the primal materials of wood, water, stone, and steel.
Rooted in the earth’s four elements, each activity for the Resilient Heart spouse program is achingly beautiful and intentional. Participants are invited to engage in breath work, cycles of cold immersion and sauna ritual, and various movement practices each day that ground the individual with natural materials in outdoor spaces. Immersed in sensuality, the practices embrace music and sound, oils and incense, touch, taste, flowers, and fire. The program as a whole is enveloped in kinship, ritual, and ceremony, with rich communal experiences that provide opportunities to drop the mask and be witnessed in one’s full and honest expression.
The Resilient Heart program is designed to spark the healing of relationship, or our connection, to all of life. By awakening the interconnection within our own bodies, land, and spirit, we begin to heal the way we have, or have not, carried life and to ignite a sense of agency in the way we show up in the world. This is further applied by introducing participants to horsemanship practices and wilderness experiences that invite them to embody risk, decenter human life, and release control over outcomes. This awakens a deep remembrance of the sentience and innate intelligence of the life surrounding us.
REMEMBRANCE
An essential focus is healing our relationship to food. Contemporary food systems have removed people from the experience of land stewardship, harvesting practices, and preparing food in community. In the Spring 2026 edition of Edible Bozeman, Jeanne Allgood Gaisford introduces Fink’s new cookbook, The Anti-Inflammatory Farmacy: Traditional Wisdom Guided by Science (article available at ediblebozeman.com), describing Fink’s beautiful homage to healthful eating, the veteran program, and the journey toward wholeness.
Fink is tuned in to the relationship to our food systems not just with carefully curated meals, but with an intentional ceremony to remind us of where our sustenance comes from. Called the Circle of Life gathering, this part of the women’s retreat begins on a cool morning at sunrise to harvest a lamb the Finks have lovingly tended. With heartfelt blessings and gratitude, participants witness the lamb’s sacrifice to give life. Both confronting to experience and powerful to receive, the women in attendance face the realities of ending life and watch the process of butchering, skinning, and preparing the pelt for later use.
Having fasted from the night before, the women hold a deep sense of reverence and fragility through the day. The lamb is thoughtfully prepared and served in a meal that evening called the Nutritional Symphony. It is symbolic of instrumental harmony, which we feel when we allow coherence in the body.
Participants dressed in their finest gather for a hillside sunset dinner. The meal begins with a period of silence, the table beautifully arranged with a wooden plank colorfully adorned with produce, fruits, grains, and meats. The women bless the meal and eat in silence. Here, the opportunity is to feel it all through intuitive eating: savoring, smelling, touching, and experiencing the meal slowly, intentionally, and quietly. There’s nourishment for the eyes, heart, soul, and body. The evening ends after the last bite, the silence breaking with an eruption of joyful noise and laughter, all satiated with full hearts and bellies.
“Reconnecting with the body is not just about health; it’s about sovereignty,” Fink says. “It’s about reclaiming the ability to feel, to sense, to choose, to participate in our own wellbeing. When we heal our relationship with food, we heal our relationship with the body. When we heal our relationship with the body, we heal our relationship with life. This is a quiet revolution of reclaiming sovereignty.”
Finding one’s own voice through these diverse modalities is where things can begin shifting. Experiencing Heroes and Horses’ beautiful menu of ancient practices is meant to help unlock something larger within. At a time in society when many are disconnected from their ancestry, Fink admits that it may feel both exciting and confusing to explore these traditions. She believes that the key to finding your own voice is listening deeply to what resonates in your own body.
“Deep remembrance is truly about reconnecting with the wisdom that lives in the body, the land, and the spirit,” she says. “When people find modalities that speak to them, they’re reclaiming their capacity to feel, sense, heal, and stand in their own truth.”
Indeed, the Heroes and Horses programs have a big impact. They are a confrontation with discomfort, an invitation to surrender to the body’s innate wisdom. When we stop betraying ourselves and build trust by responding to our bodies’ needs, safety is sourced from within, where personal power is derived. This is authentic autonomy. The freedom of the cowboy. With intentional choice and action, healing truly begins.
For more information about Heroes and Horses visit heroesandhorses.org or email admin@heroesandhorses.org.
