Looking For Something Totally Different?
Welcome to Your Equine Experience
If you want to change you need a fresh perspective.
Learning how to be and work with your body brains as one integrated organic system for greater Presence, Resilience and Wisdom, is a learning experience like no other
Discover how your unconscious patterns - thought and actions - show up in how you live your life.
Discover how you can't change simply by thinking about it - true transformation arises when both body and brains are involved in the change process.
Explore & Embrace new skills for being with what is and harnessing the courage to change what is not working through a trauma safe approach to expanding your Emotional capacity and Resilience, Social & Emotionally Intelligent Leadership, Horsemanship and Lifemanship.
Learn how to embrace wiser ways of being, tapping into your emergent intelligence, through communciating with, aligning and integrating the wisdom of your multiple centers of intelligence so that you can live an authentically evolving life at the Highest Expression of true Compassion, Real Creativity and Deep Courageous action
You will learn how to not just think 'out of the box' but how to re-define and re-create the box entirely... but you need to have the 'head, heart & guts' to step out of your everyday environment
"An organization will be top performing to the extent to which its employees can contribute their best skills at full force. The more moments of flow – or even just staying in the zone of engagement and motivation – the better." Daniel Goleman
Offering both Personal and Professional Development Programs -Serving the needs of anyone involved in working with others in the process of Growth, Learning and Change
Traditional leadership training needs to change - Leadership development must include the body to be successful in delivering high levels of performance.
Embodied, adaptive and evolving leadership, horsemanship, teaching & parenting is the next wave
We serve those who are serious about real and lasting transformation. Offering both personal and professional development programs, we partner with those who work in the Corporate, Education, Coaching, Training, Sales and Social Service/Health-Care sectors.
Our goal is to enhance lives and leadership through alignment, coherence and resilience for the purpose of improving people’s lives and peak performance at home, school, work and play.
Skills shortages, stress, burnout, ill health, poor work life balance, high turnover, low job satisfaction, employee disengagement and generational disharmony is at an all time high. The engagement crisis particularly is the same story we’ve been hearing for over a decade, yet most organisations still fail in their efforts to increase the commitment and engagement of their workers. Why is that?
We believe there's little or no return or change because most approaches consist of endless hours of seated classroom, head based learnings along with pretend role plays. Many participants can be disengaged both at work and at training.
"People don't quit their jobs; they quit their bosses"
Added to these issues, our increasingly complex and rapidly changing world with it's unknown challenges, requires adaptive leadership. It is clear that the world is calling for a 'new breed' of leader and it's imperative that this occurs.
The World needs Leaders who can Harness the Power of the Collective, The Herd.
To connect with, engage and lead others, you must firstly be connected, engaged with and lead yourself.
A leader who is connected with themselves can lead with presence and awareness, insight, intuition and wisdom while maintaining a state of balance and coherence. While many know this and have documented the problems and issues outlined above that individual's, leaders and organisations face, no one really knows how to address, manage or facilitate the changes required.
We believe we have a profound and powerful solution.
Our programs will change the way you lead yourself, live your life and
lead your organisations.
It does however require you and your organisation
to go where you haven't gone before...
That's because our process does not involve pretend or role play, it is real life, in the moment experiential life skill learning. Unlike ropes courses and other adventure activities, it's not about 'conquering' yourself, or nature, or 'breaking' a horse. It's about who you are being in relationship with self and others. It is an immersive experience that teaches people about embodied leadership, presence and expanded awareness along with integrating energy and information flow through mindsight, mindfulness and emotional and social intelligence. Even neuroscience is supporting how important mindfulness, the body’s wisdom and breath work is. These ingredients are required both in our personal lives and our professional lives – and coaching with horses is the perfect place to do this amazing work.
Why We Partner with Horses...
Our programs will have you
- growing into deeper levels of self, social and emotional awareness.
- learning how to navigate your life more wisely and successfully
- aligning and integrating your multiple intelligence
- reducing stress
- improving your relationships and your health
- enhancing emotional awareness, state management, capacity, resilience and agility
- living from the highest expression of Compassion, Creativity and Courage
- compassion and passion from the heart
- creativity from the head and
- courage to create action from the gut
These are three essential elements required to evolve our selves, communities, organisations and our world. .
The bottom line is
- greater health
- harmony
- productivity and
- engagement at all levels of an organisation - a herd that is thriving, not simply driving and just surviving.
As Albert Einstein said,
"We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them"
Not Therapy yet it is Therapeutic
Our offerings are crafted to the needs of high performing clients. We don't conduct therapy, although the relationship that arises through the process can be therapeutic and there are often therapeutic outcomes for participants.
Our Equine Facilitated Experiential leadership programs are unlike other Equine Assisted Psychotherapy and Learning programs and training, in that we don't simply 'use the horses as tools' with a focus on 'doing to the horse'. These types of programs often challenge people with the challenges they already have, setting people up for failure or frustration, and while they may have their place for some, we find they are often structured in a way that creates rising levels of frustration as some sort of catalyst for trying something new. These are 'discovery' based in that challenging activities are set up with the horses to provide oportunities to 'screw up', discovering what you already do, then to reflect back on how that doesn't work.
Our process instead is relationship-based and is about living into new ways of being (this also provides a powerful framework for therapy). First and foremost, the practice is grounded in mindful respect for the spirit and well-being of our equine partners. The horse is never objectified or simply used during the process; deep learning emerges through relationship exercises that gently shifts the participant’s perspective, helping them to 'get off the dance floor and into the balcony' to observe their unconscious patterns of relating and ways of being.
While new awareness arises organically during an activity and at times participants may get in their own way, our aim is to provide experiences for people to actually practice new ways of being; at whatever level of self awareness and skill they are at - an opportunity to see this and stretch it to physically practice showing up in the world in presence and clarity, with clear intent and communication.
For example when a goal is set during an experience, we seek to reflect on what happens to people's ways of being, do the participants stay present to relationship or lose it in pursuit of the goal.
Over 10 years of study, research, application and practical validation has created a highly malleable developmental platform that rapidly accelerates the emergence of Wisdom, Mindfulness, Emotional Intelligence competencies, Creativity and Innovative thinking.
All of this is weaved into a trauma informed and trauma sensitive facilitation style and training
The structure of programs is a mix of classroom based and hands on learning with the horses - taking the didactic learnings into the field for equine feedback as to how the leadership and relational concepts have been integrated and embodied. All horse related activities take place with people on the ground, no riding is involved and no horse experience is necessary - safety of all is a high priority so we cover herd behavior and safety considerations in all programs as well as having horse handlers.
Aligning and Integrating Head, Heart & Hara
Thinking and acting differently requires new neural pathways created by both thought and action. It requires a change in...
Attitudes Beliefs Cultural Values
along with Embodied Action
Successful Leadership of yourself and others requires living from the Highest Expression of each of your centers of Intelligence. Connection through...
Compassion from the Heart
Creativity from the Head
Courage from the Hara (Gut)
Transformational leadership and learning requires the courage to open the self to empathy and vulnerability - two often ignored qualities of leadership and it requires an exploration of our Conditioned (False / Destructive / Disempowered) Self and our Authentic (True / Constructive / Empowered) Self.
Scientific knowledge is finally catching up with the insights from esoteric and spiritual traditions that have informed humans for thousands of years and it greatly validates experiential learning programs with horses.
It's been proven that we have at least 3 powerful centers of intelligence...
Brain in the head;
Brain in the heart;
Brain in the gut (hara)
So why aren't we using all 3?
and why is it that leaders, managers, executives, employees and organisations are in increasing amounts of pain?
Think, Be & Do Different
This training brings together all of the research findings along with behavioural modelling of the 3 brains into a practical framework that provides a set of self-evolutionary tools for wiser decision-making in all areas of life.
Our process is unique - we are the first, and to date, only Equine Experiential Leadership and training program in the world that is grounded in peer reviewed research that draws on interpersonal neurobiology and integrates an innovative suite of tools that Integrates your Multiple Intelligences. This makes us Australia's most innovative provider of Training and Coaching programs.
Change Your BodyBrains Change Your Life
The brain likes to conserve energy. We all know it takes conscious effort to change or break a habit. Our programs are based on the neuro science premise that transformation requires a change in the hard wiring of the brain and that the development of new neural pathways requires a catalyst, a unique and novel event to create the necessary energy to jump start this change - a quantum shift. Many know that this shift is needed but very few leadership, change management or transformational programs truly know how to create a program that facilitates these capacities.
Interactive experiences with horses can provide this crucible new experience and it's not traumatic but joyful. It's the 'shake-up' needed to make a lasting shift and is a powerful way to form and develop new neural connections. Our findings suggest that even just standing alongside and 'being' with a horse can actually assist this evolution.
Our multi-dimensional, multi intelligence approach is a unique and powerful fusion of the fields of horse 'listening', leadership and neuroscience. The process weaves together a tapestry of stretch concepts, that combined with the experiential learning, sparks neurogenesis in the pre-frontal cortex, the part of the brain in which Emotional Intelligence emerges.
“The recent research is validating what we’ve been witnessing first-hand for years, Conducted and facilitated properly, this approach is a remarkable accelerant for personal and professional development.
Our approach frames each exercise using a scientifically-substantiated concept. The participant then experiences the concept first-hand in a ground-based exercise with the horse. The result is an immutable lesson, delivered on a neurological level. The metaphors that rapidly emerge in 'aha moments', for leadership, collaboration, and positive relationships are astounding.”
The mindful process of self-awareness, regulation, alignment and integration techniques lowers stress and promotes emotional balance and resilience, leadership, academic excellence and performance.
The Challenges...
Organisational problems run deep in our psyche and social conditioning. Part of the disharmony lies in a difference in values and the way that Baby Boomers grew up and were educated. This was a time where leadership was much like old styles of horsemanship - command and control in a heirachical management system that was based on reward and punishment.
Gen Y, X ers and most women don't respond well to this style of leadership and management and prefer those who, as we have discoverd, are more horse like and can harness the Power of The Herd - those who are able to manage and lead in a co-operative and collaborative way without bias or ego, meeting the needs of the whole through drawing on and sharing leadership with those who are the most experienced, or have the most knowledge or talent for the task at hand, in a flat level management system.
Due to this conditioning and disharmony, many people leave essential and valuable parts of themselves behind and behave differently at work compared to when they are at home. What impact does this have on work relationships? - conflict and communication, trust and engagement, creativity, passion, purpose and performance? What lies at the core of this behaviour? Why do we often wear a mask and present ourselves falsely?
Our findings reveal that many often hold a part of themselves back and most often, fear is at the core. Fear of failure, fear of not being good enough, fear of being found out or of being truly seen, fear of speaking up and stepping out of line, fear of change or not changing, fear of stepping up and out to start that business we've been dreaming of, fear to follow our true purpose and passion, fear of being vulnerable - all this fear has the same outcome -
No Courage = No Action
Feeling the need to conform to a perceived work culture can cause stress and inner conflict as people strive to be who they think they need to be, rather than who they really are. People who are authentic and bring all of themselves to work however, are more compelling and inspirational than those who don't. They are able to lead themselves and their teams and influence others effortlessly with energy and enthusiasm that is both inspirational and contagious.
Gary Hamel, professor at London Business School and one of the world's top 50 Thinkers, puts it this way: "By far, the greatest untapped source of wealth and potential in any organization is all those people who have chosen on that particular day not to bring their imagination to work, not to bring their passion to work, not to bring their initiative to work ... and the capabilities that we need most of our employees, their imagination, initiative ... are exactly the capabilities that are most difficult to command. You cannot tell someone to show initiative or to be creative ... those are literally gifts that people choose to bring into work every day or they don't."
As Hamel says, the question a manager needs to ask himself is not "How do I get people to serve my company?" but rather, "How do I create the work environment and a sense of purpose that literally merits the gifts of creativity and passion?"