Your journey Your horse Your choice
Effective partnership requires an open mind and an open heart. It means being mindful, creative, and honest. It takes mutual respect and a willingness to shift our perspective. It asks us to be aware of our natural state of being and maintaining that being while doing.
Our suite of educational classes, clinics, and retreats are designed to develop and nurture these qualities for a deeper, more meaningful connection with our horses. We respectfully support your intuition, your ideas, and your decisions. After all, this is your journey, your horse, and your choice. We’re simply here to help inspire and guide you along the way.
Our Approach to Holistic Learning
Our approach to holistic learning builds on the belief that we must first look within and explore our beliefs, perceptions and motivations so that we can understand our behaviors. With knowledge, experience, and an open mind and heart, we are better prepared to examine new ways of being in the world and living as our authentic selves. Whether we’re engaging one-on-one or in a larger group, we create a calm, respectful, diverse, and safe learning environment free from judgment and expectations. In this setting, our students explore new ideas and experiences with confidence, joy, and FUN!
As the famous Chinese proverb says,
“Tell me and I’ll forget.
. Show me and I may remember.
Involve me and I’ll understand.”
We believe in teaching not only the “how” and “when,” but also the “why” behind everything we do with our horses. We are all part of a broader network of interconnected relationships and life systems where understanding and cooperation benefit all.
Our Focus
Our classes put the focus on the welfare of the horse first. It’s why we present new and different ways of seeing our horses – who they are apart from us, their innate intelligence and adaptability, what they have to teach us, and their willingness to meet us soul to soul. We use that knowledge to make better choices that benefit both our horses and ourselves for pure joy and connection.
Equine Body
In this series of classes we will look at the evolution of the horse from the “dawn” horse to the present day modern horse. To understand the horse’s world, we must also earn about the horse’s brain and senses to gain some insight into their ‘thinking’, feelings and behavior.
We then explore the physiology of the horse’s movement or “equine biomechanics”. This will enlighten us as to how, as riders, we influence, for benefit or harm, the natural and healthy carriage of our horses.
Human Body
The horse has carried a rider for many years and horsemanship has been an artistic and noble pursuit for almost as long. Looking at horsemanship through the ages will show us how this art has evolved.
The horse knows how to move naturally to meet his needs, whether that is running from a predator or quietly grazing in a field. It becomes a balancing act for him when a person is placed on his back. To grasped the horse’s perspective, we might imagine a large, maybe very large backpack that we now must carry as we run an obstacle course and jump over logs.
Equine Mind
When we realize the main purpose for all learning for the horse is survival, we begin to appreciate how our methods of teaching affect our horses. We will first explore standards of learning as applied to horses, what they mean, why they work with horses, and how and if they lead to developing connection.
Knowing that all animals learn how to navigate their worlds from their parents and conspecies, we will examine the family life and herd dynamics of horses to look at social conduct and communication.
With our previous knowledge of the physiology of the equine senses we will explore just how the horse might interpret the world differently than we do.
We will carry this further into examining intelligence while keeping in mind what we call ‘smart’ is different for the horse, who responds in order to cope or communicate. Looking at intelligence through a human filter may be missing another kind of intelligence.
Human Mind
Using the same learning models as with horses, we will take a look at how people learn and what motivates learning differently than horses.
New approaches to learning that incorporating both body and mind bring consciousness to how we approach situations and interpret our experiences. A few of these methods, such as Feldenkrais – Awareness through Movement, and Brain Gym help us become more aware of ourselves and how we present ourselves in the world and of course, to our horses.
Pulling together how horses learn and how we learn, we begin to pay more attention to how we are communicating to our horses and how we may have been missing how they have been communicating with us. This knowledge can potentially lead to a big shift in our connection with our equine friends.
Putting aside all judgment and expectation leaves us wide open to experience old situations is new ways. Just moving to a different location in a room can make a difference in what one sees. Here we will discuss how judgment and expectation limit the possibilities that we have in our approach to life.
We will follow with 2 classes in sport psychology where ……..
Equine Heart/Soul Human Heart/Soul
The path to true connection with our horses is through the heart to the soul. Coming from the heart is the natural state of life. Due to our wondrously developed mind, this natural state can sometimes be blocked by thoughts based on beliefs that we have carried for a long time. We’ll talk about how limiting beliefs hold us back and how we can change them. Then we will explore one controversial belief, “Are horses sentient beings”.
Being more conscious of our beliefs will help us take the next step to see how they affect our observations and perceptions of our environment. As we bring light to this new awareness, we will look at awareness itself.
Why do we do the things we do? Why do horses do what they do? When we look at our motivations we may find they do not always blend with what “excites” our horses. If we really care about our horses, being mindful of their perspective can create a respectful environment from which to start our relationship.
We know that trust is an essential quality for a good relationship. We will look at what trust means to us, and how we think the horse shows trust. Joe Camp, author of Born Wild and The Soul of the Horse, encourages us to choose trust as our goal and love as our motivation as the foundation of that relationship.
To trust another we must trust ourselves. We’ll take a closer look at what is means to ‘follow our gut feelings’ as we consider our internal guidance system, how it works and the link to our authenticity.
Bringing together the knowledge we have gathered about the way the horse perceives, thinks, feels and moves, and the way that we have come to relate and interpret the world, we are equipped with a new approach to connect with our horses. We will implement them through the energy in our bodies, connecting to the horse, mind, body and soul.