Wednesday, January 25, 2012: Coaching From the Heart a FREE Internet ‘Salon’
January 22, 2012 by Kathleen
Coaching From the Heart: A FREE Internet ‘Salon’
Wednesday, January 25, 2012 at 1:00 PM EST
Are You A Coach Who Wants to Create Transformation, then join Lisa Murrell and Kathleen Ingram on for a FREE live streaming internet “salon” called “Coaching From the Heart” on Wednesday, January 25, 2012 at 1:00 PM EST
What is coaching from the heart? A way of connecting with ourselves and our clients that is based upon relationships and recognizes the value of emotions and energy in supporting and guiding those who come to us for coaching –concepts that are inherent horse wisdom and difficult to learn in traditional coaching programs.
Equine Coaches, Simon, Tibor and Spanky will join us as we go deeply into a conversation about:
- The 5 critical elements for transformational coaching
- How the ‘Shadow Self; (those unrecognized and unaccepted aspects of ourselves) hold important wisdom for our coaching and clients.
- Why emotional and energetic agility is THE future of coaching.
- How you can take your coaching to the next level through Equine Assisted coaching!
Your first Salon? A Salon is a gathering of like-minded people under the roof of an inspiring host, held partly to amuse one another and partly to refine taste and increase the knowledge of the participants through conversation and connection.
What is Live Streaming? A very nifty piece of internet technology that will let us interact and engage live- almost like we were together in person – ala ‘salon’. (Don’t worry, if you can open a URL in your web browser, you’ll be able to participate easily and with grace.)
To register for this call visit Lisa’s site: www.EquineAlchemy.com
February 3-5, 2012: “Launching Your Coaching Journey,” A 3 day Learning Intensive with Lisa Murrell and Kathleen Barry Ingram, Albuquerque, New Mexico
January 22, 2012 by Kathleen
This experience can, and most likely will, change your life!!
Are you ready to step into your greatness and share your gifts? Do you want to wake up each day excited and full of gratitude because you are living your life with a clear purpose? Would you like to live in a like-hearted community of learning and support? Then you have arrived! “Launching your Coaching Journey” is about launching your life as you intend it to be from now on…. Coaching is not a ‘job,’ it is a way of being.
Relationship building is at the heart of coaching! The experience of working with horses requires a relationship with another being. It requires an acute awareness of boundaries -yours and theirs- as well as skill in interpreting body language. Interacting with horses requires obtaining permission to lead and demonstrating a willingness to follow. Such a relationship demands courage as well as vulnerability. Most importantly, the horse requires authentic communication. Twenty minutes in the round pen with a horse will take these powerful, insightful concepts off the page, out of your head, and anchor them into your entire being. You will also experience a tremendous boost in self-esteem and confidence from learning how to connect and establish boundaries with a thousand pound creature through a mind/body connection, presence and clarity of intent and connecting with your ‘heart’s desire’.
Virtual Classroom Work before the in-person learning intensive to prepare for our time with the horses will include:
Introduction to Coaching
-The ICF competencies and standards
-Distinctions between therapy and coaching
-Setting the coaching foundation
-Co-Creating the relationship, Part 1
On-site Equine and Experiential Components – Creating Awareness of Self and Others:
Through a series of specially designed activities with horses on the ground (no riding), you will deepen awareness of your personal challenges, core feelings and areas of bodily tension that inhibit your ability to reach your true potential.
Launching your Coaching Journey Workshop includes:
-Pre-site work
-3 day on-site learning intensives with the horses
-1 private coaching session with Lisa
-1 90 min content session with group
-1 90 min peer coaching call
This is an ICF Approved Coach Training Workshop
Cost: $2000 per person
For more information, or to register, visit: www.EquineAlchemy.com
March 19-21, 2012: The Zone of Intuitive Knowing, an Intensive with Kathleen Barry Ingram and Sun Tui, United Kingdom
January 22, 2012 by Kathleen
The Zone of Intuitive Knowing led by Kathleen Barry Ingram MA co-creator of The Epona Approach ™
Exploring the Scientific, Psychological and Spiritual Dimensions of Equine Facilitated Learning and Psychotherapy
If you are interested in the subtle energetic connections between all of life then this workshop is for you. We exist as a unity, interdependent in relationship with all in the invisible web of the quantum field. Horses, as consummate teachers, can show us how to re-discover, connect and develop our “knowing” selves. The Zone of Intuitive “Knowing” comes directly from the ‘brain in the gut’ and the ‘brain in the heart’. This workshop includes experiential exercises with the horses that engage our innate abilities to use these organs of perception. We can choose to enter the Zone of Intuitive “Knowing” through direction from these powerful centers of intelligence in concert with the intelligence centered in the brain. When fully grounded we are able to extend our self-awareness into all aspects of daily life and live authentically each moment with tangible success.
Business and life coaches, counselors, psychotherapists, healing therapists (any discipline), teachers, business managers, trainers and consultants, all horse professionals or anyone interested in human growth and development will find this workshop helpful. This is a no- riding workshop.
This workshop can be used as a qualifying workshop for IFEAL Facilitator Training
Cost: £1,450.00
Contact Sun Tui: SunTui@me.com
For more information or to book this intensive: www.IFEAL.me
April 2- 5, 2012: Connecting the Pieces, Private Sessions with Kathleen Barry Ingram and Sun Tui, United Kingdom or Cypress
January 22, 2012 by Kathleen
Connecting the Pieces, Private Sessions with Kathleen Barry Ingram and Sun Tui
The researched evidence is that in order for any therapeutic technique to be effective, it is essential that the person is fully present, empathetic and congruent.
These private day/days Intensives affords the opportunity for an individual (or partnership – either personal relationship or professional) to deepen awareness of personal issues, core feelings and areas of bodily tension that inhibit the ability to reach your fullest true potential. Elemental horse related activities, that could include swimming or a sweat lodge set with in the IFEAL herd’s woodland environment, are designed to explore and integrate an expansive yet grounded mind set, capable of endless compassion, innovation, energetic adaptability and creativity. Our work will include experiencing the spiritual and scientific biology of emotions to integrate them with the Mind and Body.
Each session is custom tailored to meet individual’s needs, lasts 3 hours or more, begins with Tai Chi with the Herd.
A biodynamic organic lunch and nutritious snacks tailored and served to your taste are provided.
Kathleen Barry Ingram, co-founder of The Epona Approach™ is a Tucson-based life coach, consultant, lecturer and educator specializing in Equine Facilitated Experiential Learning
Sun Tui is the founder and director of IFEAL and is an Advanced Epona Approach Instructor. She teaches Horse Way Tai Chi and Integral Body Mind Therapy.
Special Note: These intensive sessions are also available at Sun Tui’s Olympus Mountain retreat home in Cypress. The home is a beautiful 11th century cottage, with mountain views over the 11th Century Monastery and Monagri village. The cottage is a pleasurable scenic 30 minute drive to either glorious Mediterranean beaches or breathtaking views from the top of Mount Olympus. On-site accommodation available.
Contact Sun Tui: SunTui@me.com
For more information or to book a private session: www.IFEAL.me
April 12, 2012: The Power of Horses: An Introduction to the Epona Approach ™ with Kathleen Ingram, Dusseldorf, Germany
January 22, 2012 by Kathleen
The Power of Horses: An Introduction to the Epona Approach ™ with Kathleen Ingram, Co-founder of the Approach.
A full day of learning, horse experience, and the basics behind the Epona Approach ™. This is not a method of training but an approach to being in integrity with the horse and the client.
Cost: 180€ with snacks and a vegetarian lunch.
This workshop will be held in English – German translation possible if required.
Please contact Eva Balzer, Stockweg 143, 45481 Muelheim an der Ruhr, Germany
www.Zentaura.de
Email: kontakt@evabalzer.de
Mobile phone: +49 (0)172-2320836
April 14-15, 2012: Connecting with the Heart – Yours and the Horse’s, Dusseldorf, Germany
January 22, 2012 by Kathleen
Grace in Presence and Flow in Movement.
This 2 day workshop is an advanced workshop with those already familiar with the Epona Approach™ which is not a method of training or working the horse. Kathleen Ingram, as the co-creator of the Epona Approach™ with Linda Kohanov (author of the “Tao of Equus”), along with Eva and her magnificent herd will encourage the participants to follow their hearts in a respectful relationship. This workshop will help participants to maintain connection with respect and afford opportunities to take this into movement with the horse. Each individual’s intuitive gifts and the horses true essence is honored and encouraged.
Daniel Siegel, author of “Mindsight“, uses the description of this honoring of self with others and calls this “feeling felt”. In order for this to take place both the horse and the person must feel and experience the soul and essence of each other. As facilitators, we hope to help others to be open to their unique gifts and challenges. We will assist them in this integration for following the original “blueprint of their souls”. To do this the person must be present to what is happening and look for collaboration in stillness and movement, essentially what Kathleen has called the “Yin and Yang of It”
Cost: 395€ with snacks and Vegetarian lunches.
This workshop will be held in English – German translation possible if required.
Please contact Eva Balzer, Stockweg 143, 45481 Muelheim an der Ruhr, Germany
Email: kontakt@evabalzer.de
Mobile phone: +49 (0)172-2320836
Relationship in Motion (RIM)
December 11, 2011 by Kathleen
2011 has sure been an eventful year with many challenges and opportunities for all of us. If you are like me, you are ready to see what 2012 is all about! I see this as a time of expanded conscious awareness for all of us. Certainly, my work with the horses all over the world supports this. Recently I was asked, “What do you see and feel is the common denominator with horses and people in your travels?” As always, my answer was “horses are helping us to wake up.”
My colleagues and I have been working on a concept which we call Relationship in Motion or RIM. Over the years in my work in Equine Facilitated Learning, as well as work with families and corporations, I have noticed that much of a relationship is lost or put aside when a goal, deadline, or time constraint is present. In EFL I notice that people may love connecting with the horses on the ground through grooming, reflective round pen work (one in which there is no goal but to be in relationship), or just standing and being with the herd in the field.
However, because we are human, and many times goal oriented and constrained by time limits, I see people dropping the feeling of connection to get “the job done.” RIM is a process we are developing that assists the person to be in relationship- or limbic connection- with the horse and get motion or movement with collaboration. This may seem simple but those of us working with horses, children, spouses or employees know this is not always the case. What parent hasn’t temporarily “lost it” when asking their child for the 100th time to clean up their room? When you are going to get your horse for an activity with a client, do you remember to tell them what you would like?
We know that maintaining a limbic connection and asking for movement involves the heart, intention from the brain, and pressure (or direction) from the belly or power center of the body. When one is predominant (or lost) the horse will often stand stock still or be overcome with confusion. Active round pen work, as opposed to the traditional lunging the horse, can offer the opportunity to stay in connection and get movement and collaboration. What I have seen more often, however, is that people get into the goal of the activity and the horse – who has learned to “obey” the signals- performs the activities mindlessly but is disconnected. This disconnect, of course, will often translate into peoples’ lives outside the round pen. I have seen many times the person who wants to stay in their heart be unable to get any kind of forward movement.
As a facilitator of EFL I want the client and the horse to have the best possible experience – an experience which will help the client’s body to remember what it feels like in connection and with movement. I recall a man who experienced post traumatic stress disorder and had limited his life to the degree that even benign opportunities for change frightened him and kept him isolated and alone. We had introduced the concept of emotions as information, and especially the differentiation of fear versus vulnerability. It was his turn to get the horse (with some assistance from the equine professional) and see if he could have an experience of movement in the round pen. At the beginning of the workshop he had told part of his story and informed us that he was terrified of horses. By the time we got to this activity he had been with the horse in a safe place and was open to the challenge of taking the horse for a walk. The facilitator let this man take the time to connect with the horse, by putting on her halter and beginning the walk to the round pen. By the time the man and horse entered the round pen so much had happened within the man that he wanted to just be with the horse. Was this a success? You bet it was.
When he came out of the experience and shared with the group he said, “Kathleen when you first introduced the difference between fear (outright physical or emotional threat) and vulnerability (inside change or opportunity), I was not sure I would be able to tell the difference. I had spent so many years reacting to the feeling of fear that I had not allowed myself any opportunities for change.” When asked for one word at the end of the workshop to sum up his experience with the horse, his word was “Courage.” The smile on his face when he faced the challenge of connection and movement with the horse is one that will remain with me for a long time.
Another example of Relationship in Motion (RIM) involved a horse trainer and a reluctant horse. The woman went to get the horse and, after checking in with her body, got the message to go slowly. Later that message would have a lot of significance for her in her personal life. As we watched the exchange between woman and horse we noticed how slowly and deliberately she took each step. Now this woman is a horse trainer so she certainly knows how to get a horse to move. However, she took the time to listen to herself – and what the horse needed – to get to the round pen. I have to admit I had to let go of my idea of what might be happening to support what was happening between them. It took her 40 minutes step by step.
When she got to the round pen I asked her what she wanted to do. Her response was priceless, “I told him the goal was to walk to the round pen and that I would take the time he needed to do this. Once that happened I learned what I needed from the experience.” This horse had a problem with people pushing him beyond his limits. The trainer could feel in her body that the opportunity for him to create a new memory of pressure and release was more important than any goal. As a goal oriented person, this lesson translated to her life and allowed her to feel what it would be like to have forward movement and to maintain connection with herself and loved ones.
We have had many opportunities to see and observe this connection and movement, or Relationship in Motion, with people and horses. It is the “dance of relationship” with collaboration, full intention and respect that the body remembers when working with horses or people the next time a challenge and opportunity is presented.
I have mentioned just two examples of the work with horses and people from this year. I have traveled over the world this year and seen many more. For this opportunity, I would like to thank the horses and my colleagues; Wendy and Andre at Horse Spirit Connections in Canada (www.HorseSpiritConnections.com); Sun Tui and her herd in England (www.ifeal.me); Eva Balzer and her herd in Germany (www.Zentaura.de); Drea Bowen in Washington state at the Equine Empowerment Center (drea.b.bowen@gmail.com); Lisa Murrell in New York (www.EquineAlchemy.com); Susan Castaneda in New Mexico (www.EquineAlchemy-Southwest.com); and Eve Lee and her horses at Loghaven in Illinois (www.EquineMagic.com).
Many Blessings,
Kathleen
The Change EFL Can Bring to the Horse Co-facilitator – By Beth Goodwin
December 11, 2011 by Kathleen
How the Horse’s Life is Enhanced and Benefited
Beth Goodwin
Over the past 12 months as I have begun my journey as an EFL Facilitator I have been amazed at the positive changes I have seen in my own mare and the horses who have co facilitated sessions for my clients who choose to work with their own horses.
One of the first sessions I facilitated was for a woman with several horses. She asked that I work with her and one of her geldings. However, when I turned up to her property it was very evident that another gelding wanted to work with her. While this may be no surprise to many of us in this field, it came as a complete surprise to his owner. She reported that she felt this horse didn’t like her – she had had him since he was a foal, and he always walked away from her in the paddock, especially when she had a halter and a lead rope in her hand. She retired him from his dressage career early as she felt he didn’t like her or the work she was asking him to do. His owner reported, “What I found very surprising was that the horse I least expected to want to participate made it quite clear he wanted to be very much part of this. He was the horse who wanted to help me the most and this stunned me.” He was right there beside his owner wanting a piece of the action. After the session the owner reported how much love she felt had come to her from the horse during her session. What is really amazing to me is this “love story” has continued ever since, even 12 months down the track his owner still reports how he is there at the gate to meet her, and is happy to be caught.
Another interesting case was with a warm blood mare and her owner. Her owner felt she had reached a bit of a plateau with her mare in their dressage work. There were also other things going on between them. When I made contact with the client a few days after the EFL session, she reported a real change in her mare and the previous relationship. She said she didn’t feel like she had to baby the mare anymore (she bred her) and that she had had some “exceptional “rides on this mare. She was really pleased with the change and it was way beyond what she had expected.
A teenage girl asked me to facilitate a session between her and her pony. She wanted to have a better connection with her pony among other things. Her Arab cross pony, while reasonably sensible, could be quite challenging for her. When I made contact with her a couple of days after the session she reported how “We had a lovely beach ride today and he seems very relaxed and settled around me, even when there were some dramas this afternoon”. Then a day later, “He was even more great today after a ride through the forestry; prancing along at a fast walk with his ears forward the entire time!”
The owner of a very upstanding and talented mare asked me to facilitate a session for them both. By now word was getting out that the EFL work was really benefitting the horses and the relationship between the owner and their horse. This horse had been chased by a previous owner, with a flag, into a wire fence. She was very weary of people and finding it hard to trust her present owner. She could not be paddocked with other horses as she hid behind them and was almost impossible to catch. At the beginning of the session this mare looked dissociative. During the session she slowly softened like cheese melting – kept her form but soft around the edges. On following up with the owner a few days later she reported a significant change in the mare. She felt both she and the mare had changed and they had a much more trusting and positive relationship. Several weeks later, the owner reported even more significant changes in her mare. She is now in a paddock with the rest of the herd and very happy to be caught. She can now be floated places as she stays in the float and doesn’t rush out the minute her chest touches the breast bar. The owner reported how she loads her and stands with her and “tells her stories”. She feels the mare listens and then continues to stand there after the story is complete. The owner also has ridden her bare back and jumped her – both for the first time. The owner reported how she had never jumped in her life before but trusted the mare to show her how. She said she was feeling really positive in herself and that she and the mare were helping each other. The day I saw the mare, several weeks after her session, she was happily eating hay with her paddock mates, looking very content with herself with a lovely clear and sparkling eye.
I have also noticed changes in my own mare after she has co facilitated a session with a client. She always seems very proud of herself and she glows with health for days after wards. On one particular occasion her change was really marked. She had worked with a client with cancer. After the session my mare looked like she had just had a body work session – her normally dippy back had come up and she looked like I had just washed and polished her with some show sheen. I took a photo of her and sent it to friends. They found it hard to believe she was the same horse. This change in her lasted for several weeks. I wondered who was actually healing who?
A change like this was also reported by another client who worked with her own 26 year old gelding in an EFL session. A few days after the session she commented how he seemed so much more alert and interested in what was going on around him. Several weeks after the session she said this change had endured.
However by far the most remarkable change in a horse I have co facilitated a session with has been with an 8 year old Hanoverian gelding. He began an early career in dressage with a previous owner and was starting to show intermittent lameness by the age of 5. His present owner was given him as a case study project for her equine sports massage practice. He was progressing nicely. However New Years Eve 2010, he got a fright in the night, and ran into a wire fence. He was found in the morning and by this time he was a mess, with lacerations and cuts all over his body. He was so bad the vet suggested euthanasia. However the owner felt she needed to give the horse a chance. At the time of the EFL session it had been 7 months since his accident. While his body had healed, his mind had not been so fortunate. He had been hyper alert ever since the night of his accident. Even the slightest movement around him and his head would go up rigid and he would take off around his paddock. Anything out of the ordinary upset him. He also found it very hard to be separated from his paddock mate.
He co facilitated two EFL sessions in the one day – one with his owner and one with someone else. In both sessions he found a “happy place”. While he was holding space for the clients to work, it also seemed like they were holding a space for him to work. Several times during the sessions the other horses in paddocks nearby would start running around but this horse just stayed totally focused on the client while in a really relaxed and “zoned” posture. His owner reported that this was really unusual for him since his accident – in fact unheard of. What is even more astounding is that he has maintained this chilled out demeanour ever since the day of his sessions. He is now able to be paddocked on his own, if required, without any fuss. He happily carries on eating while chaos is happening around him. He is really focused on his work and is not distracted by what is going on in his environment. When his owner takes him for a walk in the forest, he is totally focused on her and not wanting to return to his paddock mates as he had done in the past. His owner reports that he is “no longer spooky and lacking in confidence but rather confident and inquisitive”. She can’t get over “how mellow he has become”.
When I started out on my journey with EFL someone asked me who my primary target market was. I replied without thinking about it too much, that it was helping people to have a better relationship with their horses. At the time I wondered where this had come from in the recesses of my mind, but what had me wondering even more was how this was going to be achieved. In my training to that point, I had not seen any really positive effects on the horse co-facilitators. While they had not necessarily been adversely affected there didn’t seem to be any really positive effects either. I could see how if the owners could be more “in their bodies”, congruent and authentic then they would be easier to be around for both other people and horses. I never really expected to see the extraordinary changes clients have experienced both in themselves and in their horses. As one client commented, “equine facilitated learning is an amazing experience and I believe that we are only just scratching the surface of its real potential for humans and horses.”
Beth Godwin
How Horses Help Us To KNOW Ourselves
December 8, 2011 by Kathleen
How Horses Help Us To KNOW Ourselves
Efficacy of EFL supported by the latest brain research by Kathleen Barry Ingram
Co-founder of The Epona Approach
Describing the work with horses as co-facilitators in human development is not an easy task. Simply stated the horses really do help us to know ourselves.
I can’t tell you how often I have witnessed a client coming out of a quiet session with a horse and heard them say: “It was magic! I felt like myself for the first time. My heart just opened and these tears came flowing out—but they felt free, open —you know not jammed up in my throat”. I could go on and on about what people felt in the presence of the horse and what other people witnessed, but I think you get the point. Guess what, it is not magic but is a process scientists now can actually name which happens only in relationship. What the client and others felt, saw, and experienced is the limbic connection of two beings. Relationship does affect the revision of these pathways in the brain through the processes of limbic resonance, limbic regulation and limbic revision or restructuring.
The book, A General Theory of Love is an excellent source for much of the research on this subject. Some of the information contained in this book about how a therapist’s relationship with a client is the determining factor in long term healing; this can be applied to how and why equine facilitated learning works.
[P. 192] “A General Theory of Love
Thomas Lewis, M.D., Fari Amini, M.D., Richard Lannon, M.D.
Because our minds seek one another through limbic resonance, because our physiological rhythms answer to the call of limbic regulation, because we change each others’ brains through limbic revision—what we do inside relationships matters more than any other aspect of human life.
- 1. “The first part of emotional healing is being limbically known [limbic resonance]—–having someone with a keen ear catch your melodic essence…………..a precise seer’s light can still split the night, illuminate treasures long lost, and dissolve many fearsome figures into shadows and dust. (pg. 170) “
Limbic regulation happens through relationship. “But people do not learn emotional modulation as they do geometry or the names of state capitals. These concepts are stored in the neocortical brain. People and animals absorb the skill from living in the presence of an adept external modulator [the horses with congruent and authentic facilitators], and they learn it implicitly.”[1]
Research on how we learn and how much we retain supports what the horses have been teaching us all along. Implicit Knowing which comes from actual experience supports experiential learning, in this case the work with horses. Explicit knowledge, while necessary and important, is not experienced directly but rather through study, education and the experiences of others.
I can’t begin to tell you how passionate I have become about some of the newest brain and body research and information coming from very reliable and dedicated scientists and clinicians. Most of my professional life, I have practiced as a clinician whether I am conducting a session as a psychotherapist, coach, mentor or teacher. The many “miracles” I have been a part of fills me with awe and hope for the ability of people to learn new things, change, and have better lives. The work that I do with the horses has transferred to everything I do and teach since these brilliant beings are so good at helping people come back to their true selves.
The 3 brain theory: Brain in the head; brain in the heart; and brain in the gut supports the work with horses who have a much larger heart field and gut than humans. In fact, too much thinking and remembering can take us out of the moment without enough brain activity for feeling and experiencing. We now know that intelligence is distributed throughout the body. When you have a direct experience it does not go directly to the brain in the head. The first place it goes is to the neurological networks of the intestinal tract (brain in the gut) and the heart (brain in the heart). If we do not feel our values and or goals, we cannot live them. The brain in the heart actually seeks out new experiences and is open to new possibilities which will intuitively matter to you in your life and work. The brain in your gut “reads” what others feel and measures the coherence and congruence of the other’s feeling state and checks it against its own inner state of coherent values, beliefs, and passions. This is why horses, as prey animals, are so good at measuring the inner state of people, checking them out for any incongruence, and responding from their guts and hearts and not from the brain in the head where language can distort and deny what is actually happening.
The book, The Brain That Changes Itself [2] has some of the best information on the neuroplasticity of the brain. Neuroplasticity of the brain is the term used to describe the capacity of our brain for creation of new neural connections and for growing new neurons in response to experience. In the process of experiential learning with the horses, the experience itself, which is very new for most people, i.e., being with a horse without doing anything can actually assist the client in forming and developing new neural connections. I often give a simple explanation like this: The horses help the humans to see, feel, and believe in the possibility that the old super highway way of being and responding to a familiar person, stimulus, thought or action can be replaced by a new path—much like the road less traveled.
In Daniel Siegel’s latest book, Mindsight, he eloquently and factually supports the efficacy of experience in relationship to help people grow and change. He believes that most people come into the world with the brain potential to develop mindsight, but the neural circuits that underlie it need experiences to develop properly[3]. He describes mindsight as our seventh sense and tells a story of a ninety-two year old man who was able to overcome a painful childhood to emerge as what he calls a mindsight maven. Siegel believes, as do I, that it is never to late to stimulate the growth of neural fibers that enable mindsight to flourish. His concept of “feeling felt” is what most people and horses desire to live exciting and meaningful lives.
In equine facilitated learning this sense of feeling felt is necessary whether we are working on the ground or riding the horse. The sense of feel that many individuals describe in natural horsemanship is this implicit way of knowing another being. The explicit learning and knowledge we receive from our teachers and the horses, although very necessary, is not enough to really make the changes our clients and students are seeking.
Equine facilitated learning can and does transform the client’s limbic brain which takes much more repetition than does the “quick fix” of most brief therapies which address only the neocortical brain. The neocortical brain can rapidly change didactic information but without the whole body, the brain in the heart and the gut; only ones’ thoughts and information change. This, in my opinion, is why so many people “understand” why they might do “such and such” differently and still go about life unconsciously without full engagement and lasting results. When all 3 brains are in agreement and the person is living from a conscious place, life becomes a symphony with each day bringing new challenges, joys and sorrows.
The horses and good facilitators both with listening hearts can really help people be open to the possibilities of change and with limbic revision guide them towards the probability of a new life. One of the consistent ways of doing this is what I call holding the sacred space of possibility. This is a space, nestled between two heart beats, where two beings breathing together co-create the possibility for lasting and sustainable change.
Kathleen Barry Ingram, MA
© June 2011
Kathleen continues to teach internationally in training programs in the UK, Canada and the United States.
For more information on Kathleen and her mentorship programs contact her at www.sacredplaceofpossibility.com
[1] “General Theory of Love” Lewis, Amini and Lannon
[2] “The Brain that Changes Itself” Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontier of Brain Science by Norman Doidge, M.D.
[3] “Mindsight” The New Science of Personal Transformation by Daniel J. Siegel, M.D.
CANCELLED! The Sacred Pause: Living in Uncertain Times: February 14 – 19, 2012, Tubac, AZ
November 29, 2011 by Kathleen
RETREAT CANCELLED
A mid-winter retreat in sunny southern Arizona at Pocket Sanctuary at Kenyon Ranch
Connect with a group of women gathering to seek serenity in the uncertainty of these times and discover new ways to wait patiently in this Sacred Pause. Together we’ll explore the art of surrendering to what “is” by becoming “naked” with nothing to hide, “vulnerable” with nothing to defend, “empty” with nothing to lose, “in the unknown” with nothing to fear, and open to what is meant to happen.
Facilitators are three Elders: Mary Louise Gould, Holotropic Breathwork Practitioner, Kathleen Ingram, Counselor/Coach, and Eve B. Lee, Shamanic Practitioner, who will guide the gathering in activities including meditation, Holotropic Breathwork, shamanic journeying, reflective round pen work with horses, inspired writing, walking the labyrinth and working with dreams.
To prepare for the retreat and to begin to answer the question: “Where do we go from here?,” participants will read When the Heart Waits by Sue Monk Kidd.
Cost: $1850 per person including meals and lodging
Nonrefundable Deposit: $400 by January 16, 2012 (The program requires a minimum of 7 participants)
Save 10% for payment in full ($1665) by January 2, 2012
Save an additional $100 apiece for you and each friend you bring!
For more information contact Mary-Louise Gould at MLGould125@aol.com or 520-975-6126, or log on to www.EquineMagic.com
Horse work will be done at Equine Voices Rescue and Sanctuary: www.EquineVoices.org