Awareness With Equines
Individual and small private group EFL (equine facilitated learning) sessions with the horses focused on building awareness, ease and community. Other activities may include creating art, journaling, breathing practices and exploring movement and/or reflection at the Taco Bella Farm Destinations.
Sessions are customized and participant-led to accommodate individual goals.
Why horses?
Horses are hardwired to be in community; they seek out and prioritize authentic connection. Like humans, horses’ survival over time has depended on connection with their herd.
Horses’ superpower is their ability to go back to grazing immediately after determining they are safe from physical harm. There is no ruminating on what could have happened or what the future will bring. They find ease in awareness, always in this moment, and they have trust in their ability to deal with whatever comes up, even when it’s not what they expected.
Horses show us things about ourselves we are unaware of by giving us honest and immediate feedback about our actions and energy. They also respond in the moment to changes we make in our approach, internally and externally. This can help us improve our awareness of what’s going on for us and how that impacts our interactions and relationships.
Masterson Method Equine Specialist
Sessions offer instruction for individuals and small private groups on how to practice the Masterson Method bladder meridian technique with horses.
This technique works with the horse’s nervous system to help them release accumulated tension, which then can resolve soreness issues and movement restrictions.
The process of performing the technique with your horse will build trust, release emotional tension and improve the quality of your relationship as the horse realizes you are helping them to feel better. And, as a bonus, this technique is also a fabulous mindfulness practice because it helps us slow down and refine our awareness.
Photo credit: Stone Meadow Farm Equine Sanctuary in Grove City
You might notice I go on a lot about “awareness, ease and community”, and maybe you are wondering why those things are so important to me?
Awareness
Awareness = choice. Our human super power is our ability to shift our thoughts. Shifting our thoughts will change our outlook, and then our behavior, which ultimately changes our life circumstances. In order to shift them, our thoughts need to be in our conscious awareness, and we can cultivate that awareness by making a practice of observing what’s going on for us, in our minds and bodies. We can then use that information about what we find internally to make a choice about whether that is serving our best interests, and shift accordingly. A side benefit of this awareness practice is that we begin to see patterns in how our internal environment is impacting our interactions and relationships. Seeking awareness does not mean beating ourselves up if we don’t like what we find when we slow down and observe. Instead we congratulate ourselves on taking the first step in elevating our lives. Horses are awareness professionals because their survival depends on it, and happy to give us feedback we can use to level up.
Ease
Ease is one of my favorite words. It doesn’t mean “easy”, in fact one goal in ancient transformation traditions like yoga is to find ease within the effort of the poses. Ease to me is the sense of peace we feel when we release attachment to outcomes, the freedom that results from giving up the illusion of control. Sometimes life is hard and we shouldn’t expect things to be smooth all the time. We can find ease within the chaos that often overwhelms life, and here on the farm I can help you develop practices that cultivate that ease, making it more accessible at times when our surroundings feel full of effort.
Community
Like horses, humans are herd animals. Nothing feels better to us than authentic connection, and being around a tribe that gets us. Part of my mission is to offer space and experiences that create community for folks, and help them chart a path to authentic connection in their own lives. When we learn about ourselves and grow, we can transform our community, which slowly changes the world.
