In this arena, the horses hold the lessons for whatever questions you bring with you regardless of what you’re working on. The results are often breakthroughs that arrive more quickly with a deeper, felt sense of impact from these experiences than could have been discovered through conversations or problem-solving techniques.
"I was so taken by my time with the horses. I had no idea of their presence, their wisdom, and their awareness. With each moment I spent with them, I found myself more and more at ease, time slowed down, the rest of the space around us went away, and it was just us. Ali held this space beautifully, both preparing us for one another, and also stepping back and letting the experience be its own between us. I have spent a lot of time on meditation retreat, sometimes for many days, and during such times the world slows, and at the same time comes alive, and the time with the horses did just this as well. The difference was that the feeling of connectedness and wholeness that took often many days to realize in meditation practice happened in an hour with the horses as guides. Their gentleness and their love was palpable and powerful. I will forever admire their ways differently than I have in the past, and be better for it."
Scott Kriens
Co-founder of 1440 Multiversity
"I didn’t really know what an equine experience would be like and my natural cynicism was there in the back of my mind. Being in the presence of the horses was emotional and powerful, I have always tended to have a bias for the intellect and learning through the thinking brain. The power of learning through experiencing it in my body was lasting. The biggest impact was feeling the impact my body has on other living beings, when you are calm and in a state of peace and love the possibilities for others just multiply. This is the biggest lesson I have taken away and it’s a practice I am learning and working to bring it into my body and my everyday work."
Angela McKenna
SVP Global Talent Development at Salesforce
“At first blush, it seems insane. How can hanging out with a bunch of horses -- not riding them, mind you, not petting them, just sitting and being with them! -- how can that help you run a high-growth tech company, or manage a team of neurotic overachievers, or step boldly into your role as a leader? I know! How can it? All I know is, it does. There's a level of awareness that comes from spending time with the horses that has stuck with me. It's helped me make smarter, more rational and less emotional decisions. It's turned me into a more intuitive and responsive manager. And it has, without a doubt, made me a better and more effective leader.”
Alex Blumberg
founder and CEO of Gimlet Media
"Wow. I never knew what an incredible experience spending this time with horses could be. Ali helped us learn from the horses and interact with them in a way that was incredibly special and healing. It was really profound to learn about their energy and connect with them through this type of work. I’d highly recommend this - it was one of the most unique and special experiences I’ve had."
Laurie Segall
Senior Tech Correspondent at CNN
"Our work with the horses enabled a mix of group experience and personal revelation. As a group, we integrated our own rhythms with those of the herd, bringing us together. At the same time, individually, we were encountering a mix of personal fears and settling of new decisions. Working with the horses and being drawn into my horse body (or heart) enabled me to truly sit with an important personal decision. Settling into their calmness allowed me to feel incredibly grounded while I internalized the meaning of what I was deciding. It was incredibly powerful."
Reuben Munger
Managing Partner at Vision Ridge Partners
"I was amazed at how much there was to learn about myself, my relationships, and my leadership in our work with the horses. I began as a total skeptic and ended as a huge believer in what these incredible animals have to teach us. "
Matt Munson
CEO of Twenty20
"Working with the horses at Reboot was profound. Even though I've spent much time with horses, I have never taken the opportunity to delve deeply into the deeply spiritual work with them. This work opened many doors in my own exploration."
John Winsor
Founder and CEO of Speakeasy Guild
"There is a strength and peace in being grounded, like the horse. Their equanimity is something to aspire to. I learned that when working with horses there is a dramatic difference between pulling them and walking beside them. I later realized that the same is true for people."
Matt Lieber
Co-founder of Gimlet Media
Equine-Facilitated Coaching creates a container for learning that provides immediate insights and interpersonal reflection about your relationship with self, others, and life with horses as your guides, partners, and mirrors. No prior horse experience is necessary and no riding is involved.
In this arena, the horses hold the lessons for whatever questions you bring with you regardless of what you’re working on. Explore radical self-inquiry, deep listening, self-mastery, collaborative leadership, partnership, and non-predatory uses of power. Grounded in evidence-based research into the neurobiological approach to learning, working with horses engages the limbic pathway where the rewiring of emotional and psychological habits is possible and transformational.
Individual Sessions
Individual sessions with the horses go deep quickly as we explore whatever’s at work for you. How do you show up in relationship to yourself, to others, and to life? How does your energy impact others? What might you need to learn about boundaries? What perspectives and mental models are actually limiting us, or keeping us back; and, what other perspectives are there? As you attune to your self through the mirror of a horse, you can uncover the ways of being in the world that are keeping you complicit in what you say you don’t want, and learn how you affect the field around you with your presence.
Pair With A 360 Review
A session with the horses is great to pair with a 360-degree leadership development review. Working in tandem with the 360 feedback session, you’ll glean more insight into how you are as a leader, and how you might be more effective.
A Team Experience
Bring the wisdom of the herd to your next team offsite or executive team reboot. Interaction and learning with the herd can surface team dynamics and offer new ways to work together. Group experiences take place at Devil’s Thumb Ranch in Tabernash, Colorado, or at our sister facility in Tesuque, outside of Santa Fe, New Mexico.
“Being with the horses is opening up to another way of knowing, and another way of being in connection and experiencing love, acceptance and caring beyond that which comes from human interactions. Communication and interactions are literally beyond words, and flow between beings and within self as feelings, thoughts, sensations, and images; and bring new possibilities and insights. With horses, we journey and arrive at places and insights we couldn't have come to through thinking alone.”
Jim Marsden
Reboot Coach & Facilitator
“So much of the work that we do in coaching is in the realm of spoken language. We use words to ask questions and answer them, to convey meaning. This is all right and good. But there is a somatic knowing that precedes and transcends even our use of language to make sense of ourselves and the world around us. The equine work puts our human bodies in contact with horse bodies in a way that supports our connecting with and tapping into this deep bodily knowing. The horses' highly attuned connection with each other and with the earth invite us into our own life-giving attunement.”
Andy Crissinger
Reboot Coach & Facilitator
By giving us greater awareness of ourselves and the field we create, horses teach elusive yet essential personal growth and organizational change concepts in ways that are experienced, felt, and help reshape our neural landscape to support new growth and possibilities.
As prey animals, the equine nervous system is hyper-specific, which means they have an acute sensitivity which can read what’s happening on the landscape in a half mile radius around them. Horses can also pick up on emotions and feeling states of herd members. When you are in their presence, as part of the herd, they can read you too. In that way, they can help us find congruence in ourselves with who we really are, how we are being, and how our wholeness serves the whole herd.
Equine Facilitated Coaching sessions guide us to:
Horses seek harmony and equanimity. In the herd, the leader is the horse that moves the least. The leader is also the one who cares the most. The leader can lead the herd into unknown territories, by managing her own fears. Horses don’t lie: what they feel, they express. There is much we can learn from how the herd operates, and how we operate within the herd, and how we are as leaders in our organizations.