HERDstablity Workshops
Private Equine-Assisted Learning Workshops for Families, Friends, and Leadership Teams
Connecting and Learning Together!
Gather together your family, friends, or leadership team for a bonding and learning experience!
The HERDstability Workshops offer memorable and fun team-building equine-assisted learning experiences.
Set in the beautiful Pennsylvania countryside home to Honey Brook Stables, participants will have the opportunity to be hands-on with our horse partners.
Activities included practical horsemanship skills, from grooming to leading a horse to liberty connections. All this interaction provides the perfect setting for learning how the brain-body-relationship connection impacts the way we relate to others and respond to life circumstances.
This experience is not only FUN but also beneficial to overall well-being and cultivating deeper connections with each other!
Who is this for?
These workshops are designed to provide relationship-building opportunities as well as benefits for personal growth. As such, these workshops are great for:
- families looking to spend quality bonding time together
- friends committed to intentional growth and accountability
- couples who want to celebrate a birthday, anniversary, or milestone in a unique way
- corporate and leadership teams who need to improve communication and harness vision
- athletic teams who need to learn how to connect in a physical way
- combine multiple workshops for a one-day or two-day experience
. . . and the list goes on and on!
Workshop Options
In this introductory workshop, participants will learn how the horse and human brain and body respond under stress, fear, and disconnection compared to calm and secure connections. Through interacting with the group's equine partner, participants will learn how to use the ARISE Method for reducing fear/anxiety, increasing confidence, and cultivating healthy connections with others. Yes, this unique workshop offers a practical hands-on learning experience in which participants will walk away with insights and tools for living a stableminded life.
What can a horse teach us about living life in a more playful and adventuresome way? In this workshop, you'll be given a fresh perspective on life through observing and learning how horses interact with each other and their environment. You'll also experience childlike fun that just may include playing some homemade instruments and relay races.
In this workshop, you'll experience the adventure of connecting with a horse in their field and observing the process of haltering and leading to the barn. Then you'll get the hands-on experience of grooming from head to tail, including picking hooves. You'll get to see what connecting at liberty is all about and will give it a whirl for yourself. This workshop is great for a family or group of friends who want to spend time together doing something unusual and meaningful, as you'll learn a bit about yourself and each other in the time spent together.
Building upon Part 1, in this workshop, you'll get to learn about all the gear and supplies needed to care for a horse, from the halter and blankets to the bridle and saddle (English, most likely) to pasture space and stall philosophy. You'll have the opportunity to tack a horse just like you would if you were going to ride out in the wild blue yonder. You'll also have the opportunity to continue building on connection principles at liberty and experience a team-bonding experience with your group's equine partner.
What are the perfect ingredients for creating healthy boundaries that will lead to deeper connections rather than more conflict with others? In this workshop, you'll learn the 3 Cs of building healthy boundaries and developing deeper connections through observing herd dynamics and interacting with your group's equine partner.
What can a horse teach us about having any sense? In this workshop, you'll learn not only about horse senses (and sensibilities) but also how to activate your senses and more importantly, also your sensibility. You'll gain a new understanding of how growth scales, like the window of tolerance, impacts the way to how you face challenges and interact with others at home and work. Yes, this workshop is great for couples, close friends, and work teams. Through observing herd dynamics and interacting with your equine partner, you'll discover how you can support one another in the growth process.
We thrive on customizing our workshops to meet your needs. Tell us what your group would like to learn and the ways you'd like to see growth happening individually and together. We'll come up with something that is perfect for your group!
Workshop Request Form
Why horses?
What is it about partnering with horses in a coaching, learning, or therapy session so powerful?
Horses seek connection.
As herd animals, horses experience secure and insecure attachments as well as social dynamics as they learn to survive and thrive with each other as well as in relationships with us.
Horses respond to heart rate.
Because of this sensitivity, we can observe and learn how our behavior impacts them and vice versus, growing in co-regulation ability and empathy.
Horses respond to the environment.
Horses have a fully active brain and nervous system enabling them to respond to the environment and other living creatures for the sake of survival. They are not mirroring us. They are responding to us, providing us with valuable information to explore our patterns of interacting with others. When we discover these patterns, we can begin the growth process and develop new habits of being in this world.
Equine-Assisted Coaching Helps:
- Reduce Anxiety
- Increase Ability to Relax
- Uncover Core Fears
- Identify Frustration Tolerance
- Reveal Relationship Habits
- Expose Limiting Beliefs
- Tap in Courage and Confidence
- Find Your Voice
- Create Space for Healing
- Repair Broken Relationships
- Learn How to Make a Healthy Request
- Discover How to Connect with Others
- Develop the Skills to Work Well as a Family, Team, or Organization
Meet Your Workshop Creator & Facilitator
Elisa Pulliam, founder of Stablemined.us, is passionate about helping clients arise, stabilize, and thrive personally and professionally. As a dually trained mental health therapist and coach, Lisa provides her clients with holistically focused, trauma-informed education, equipping, and encouragement necessary for healing and growth. Lisa counts it a privilege to be married to her husband, Stephen, for nearly three decades, a mama to four grown children and their spouses. Her life is made fuller by her beloved Golden Retrievers and remarkable Kodiak Jack, her 2010 OTTB she adopted in 2022.
Ready to get started?
Connect with Lisa to begin the kind of growth process that will result in lasting change and impact.
FAQs
Equine-Assisted Coaching and Learning provides a unique way to explore growth because horses are willing to engage in connection and also resist it if they don't feel safe. They are created with a brain and body response system that works for their survival. As herd animals, they rely on their senses and one another for protection and also the provision of needs. By entering into an experience with a horse, we can explore what we bring into a relationship as well as what we can get out of it. As a result, we learn about ourselves and the needs of others in a fresh new way.
Natural Lifemanship principles utilized in equine-assisted coaching and learning sessions are built upon the concepts of healthy attachment and building attuned, connected relationships. The principles applied between the horse-and-human relationship equally apply to our human-to-human relationships.
Neuroscience research demonstrates that our brains can change through new and healthy experiences. In our sessions, we explore the cultivation of new thinking patterns (neuropathways) to move toward healing, growth, and transformation.
The way to change old patterns that no longer serve us is to practice something new. The learning is accomplished in our sessions, utilizing principles we put into practice in all of our relationships. The goal is to learn how to have connected and attuned relationships, which leads to healthy development, contributes to healing at any age and enhances well-being.
Although most people believe that trauma needs to be a big life event, anything that causes you to experience fear of harm can result in a traumatic experience and hinder the way you see yourself, others, God (if faith is part of your life), and your place in this world. For example, all these events can be categorized as trauma:
- intrauterine and birth trauma
- abuse and neglect
- domestic violence
- grief and loss
- car accident
- flooding and fires
- natural disaster
- divorce
- family separation
- combat
- detainment/deportation
- incarceration/imprisonment
- homelessness
- poverty
- community violence and civil unrest
- sudden changes in relationships
- sudden and unexpected moves
- individuals eager to gain self-awareness and heal
- mothers ready to discover a new way to relate to their children
- families seeking to cultivate new ways of connecting and communicating
- couples longing for a deeper understanding of each other
- young adults looking for the courage to embrace their college and career endeavors
- leaders and teams ready to find unity in their vision and discover how to work together more effectively
The farm sessions are held in heart of Pennsylvania horse country at Concordia Stables in Narvon. If you are from out of town, we will schedule your sessions on back-to-back days or the same day. Feel free to request a list of local accommodations.
You don't need any horse experience at all. Actually, the less you know about horses, the more remarkable your experience can be because you'll show up teachable and without any preconceived notions about what to do. This is all unmounted work. If you would like riding lessons, we can put you in touch with a fabulous instructor at the farm.
You'll want to wear closed-toe shoes and comfortable clothing that you don't mind getting muddy.
When it comes to caring for horses, the expense can quickly add up in order to provide quality veterinary care, food, pasture space, grooming supplies, and board. As a professional working with horses, there is also the matter of liability insurance. As such, the cost of an equine-assisted experience will be more than an online coaching experience. However, what you learn in one session with a horse may take multiple sessions online, depending upon your level of awareness.
Make Your Workshop an Experience to Remember
With so much to see and do in this region of Pennsylvania, plan your workshop as one part of a memorable experience for your family, group of friends, or team. Come the night before, stay the night after, and visit the sites. Check out our recommended list for travel plans, lodging, and things to do.
