Equine Assisted Learning

There were some beautiful memories captured from Friday morning in the photos and video below.   Memories of those moments of connection with the horses and a reminder of the value of this in our human to human relationships –  being present and tuning into the needs of the horses to build trust and connection and also exploring as a team the four Easy Access values of connection, compassion, advocacy and growth along the pathway of success.

We started the day by grounding ourselves, leaving an openness for what was to come. Many of the staff had heard it could be emotional but were certain it wouldn’t be them to go to tears.

Sure enough first exercise in and the power of the horse made itself present. Staff were brought to tears by the energy the horses possessed and how welcoming they were when we entered their space. A truly goosebump moment.

During the next exercise we had the joy of pairing up and grooming and leading the horses. At this time we were looking to read the micro behaviours and try to assess what the horse may be communicating, or even more so analysing how we tend to interpret behaviour (fascinating).

The last exercise we joined as a group to create an obstacle course for the horses to be led through, each obstacle was to reflect the core values of Easy Access being Connection, Compassion, Advocacy and Growth.

The team enthusiastically created four obstacles.

Connection was demonstrated by us all engaging in the same activity a weave through the cones.

Compassion was reflected by the love heart on the ground, there were many moments of standing in this love heart hugging the horses– soppy, but a lot of fun.

Advocacy, my favourite of all was the moment the horses were given a choice to choose the  path they desired (brilliant work team)

And growth, two jumps, this created quite the challenge.

There was a moment in which a horse after completing advocacy stood motionless with our team baffled as to what to do next. Jackie our facilitator reminded the pair to ground themselves, reconnect to the horse and then set their intentions… this moment was all that was needed to get the stead into action!

Another horse also refused to take on the jumps… during our reflection time it was revealed that whilst one of our team was masking and saying they intended to go over the jump, when we dug a little deeper the internal narrative running at the time was “oh no way am I taking a horse over those jumps” so again the horse provided a beautiful metaphor for what the human chose to not express.

A truly wonderful day and we are very grateful to Jackie and Ann the facilitators at Wisdom of the Horse for hosting our team, we thoroughly enjoyed it.