Equine-Inspired Wellness At Work
At The Mane Intent, we offer professional retreats and wellness workshops working in partnership with horses as natural coaches. Horses have historically been prey animals so their survival has depended on becoming highly sensitive to body language, intent, emotional tone and the position and movement of objects they sense within their environment.
These professional development opportunities:
- Invite participants to explore their own personal leadership essence, demonstrated by personal purpose, values, vision and ideas for the organization, expressions of courage, building trust and walking the talk.
- Deepen your team’s understanding (individually and collectively) of natural leadership, teamwork, connection, personal presence, trust, managing change and transition, and effective communication.
- Enhance creativity by helping participants collaborate more effectively, stay present, understand resistance
- Build resiliency by exploring the emotions that arise at work and learn to best manage them during times of high stress, and
- Build teamwork by engaging in meaningful team-building exercises with energy-sensitive horses sensing and responding to unseen group dynamics.
The fastest and most accurate way to discover who you are and what you are presenting to the world is revealed from interacting with a horse. Their personal feedback often reflected in body language is instant and unbiased.
Horses don’t have a pre-existing agenda and they live in the moment. So when we work in partnership with them, they simply reflect back to us any self-limiting perceptions, while helping us to close the gap between how we actually present ourselves to others and how we think we are being. They help us become more aware of ourselves and the impact we have on others around us.
“I’ve had some pretty incredible experiences in my life as part of my job…today’s tops the list. The Mane Intent is a must experience worth personally having and sharing. It was an incredibly authentic, deeply personal experience. I learned as much about myself as I did about the horses.” – Kelly Jessup, Marketing Officer, Peterborough Economic Development and Tourism
How It Works:
Each exercise is a combination of demonstration, hands on exploration and guided discussion. This allows participants the opportunity to experience, observe and reflect how our attitude, body language and intent impact what we communicate and the results we get.
By gently reviewing each learning experience, participants start to gain some real insight into how and why they behave the way they do, and the consequences of those actions both for themselves and others. The activities with the horses become a metaphor for what is happening in the participant’s life and provides a mirror to reflect back information about their personality style, leadership style, communication ability and team working skills.
Facilitated Equine Experiential Learning helps the participant explore their fears, build trust in themselves and others and develop their leadership skills in a supportive and non-threatening environment away from the workplace. These activities stretch people mentally, intellectually, emotionally and spiritually.
No previous horse experience is required to participate — just an open mind and heart and a willingness to learn and experience the power and wisdom that horses have for us.
Check out our Calendar of Events for upcoming workshops or contact us to discuss your specific needs for a customized offering.
Bonus: Enhance Your Personal Intelligence Competencies for Lasting Change
Additionally, to complement the experiential nature of our professional offerings, we invite participants to complete a personal assessment called a Multidimensional Inventory for Personal Intelligence™ (MIPI) prior to their visit. This is an on-line, evidence-based assessment that measures emotional competencies (emotional understanding, introspectiveness, attentiveness, emotional communication); social competency scores (social integration, performance readiness, social agency); and motivational competencies (motivation self-efficacy, motivational influence, and perseverance). The best leaders are self-aware and the results of this assessment will be confidential to each participant.
You receive a personal and customized report that outlines your ability to:
- Recognize and label emotions as you feel them and recognize those feelings in others
- Think about, prioritize and appreciate both your feelings and the feelings of others
- Maintain focus on other people and on details in your environment even amid distraction
- Meaningfully describe your feelings to others and to converse about other’s feelings
- Create meaningful and effective relationships with others across a variety of contexts
- Subject yourself to others’ evaluation in order to achieve a specific outcome
- Make effective decisions and maintain a sense of personal control during social situations
- Create long-term goals and encourage yourself to pursue them
- Influence others to behave in ways that align with your goals
- Expand energy and resources to pursue goals even through difficult times
The report also includes suggestions for areas to work on. Learn more about MIPI here.