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Leadership and professional development

Transform Your Team with Equine Facilitated Learning: Enhance Leadership Skills, Build Stronger Relationships, and Foster a Culture of Collaboration.

Your challenges

Whatever industry you’re in, you’ve likely said that you’re “really in the relationship business” when talking to your team or customers.

The truth is, every business is the relationship business because our interactions with others are at the heart of any successes we achieve.

This means relationships are also at the core of our challenges. Whatever those challenges are – communication, leadership, empathy, group cohesion, teamwork, and many others – they all come back to our interpersonal interactions.

Outcomes

If you’re tasked with helping individuals and teams work together and achieve peak levels of performance, Equine Facilitated Learning is a new and unique way to get powerful results.

After working with our certified EFL practitioner and our friendly, intuitive horses, individual leaders and teams can see: 

  • Improved communication abilities and practices
  • Greater self-confidence
  • Increased team cohesion
  • Higher engagement 
  • Better motivation and performance
  • Improved culture including more transparency, trust, and accountability
  • Improved boundaries
  • Overall enhanced sense of wellbeing and focus

Why Horses?

Horses have evolved over the course of the last 55 million years to become the intuitive partners they are for us today. 

As prey animals, horses crave calm, consistency, and security – and they’re experts at being in the moment and co-regulating their nervous systems. 

Research shows that just being around horses has the power to invoke a sense of wellbeing in humans by helping us achieve a coherent state of heart rate variability. 

All of these attributes make horses perfect partners in any work involving relationships. Whether that’s our relationship with ourself, with others, or with the world in general. Horses give us insights into how we show up and how we can do better. 

For leaders, executives, professionals of all types, and business teams, working with horses can bring about insights and revelations that lead to better relationships and better business outcomes.

Meet Ellen

Ellen Lichtenstein is the founder and owner of Leg Up Learning Solutions, and the human caretaker of the program’s four horses. 

After spending over 15 years in professional communications roles – spanning from TV production to internal corporate communications to SaaS content marketing – Ellen founded Leg Up Learning Solutions in 2020 with the goal of bringing the impactful lessons of horses to others in the professional world. 

Ellen’s credentials include: 

  • B.S. in Communication Studies from New York University
  • M.A. in Communication with a focus on health and behavior change from Johns Hopkins University
  • Equine Facilitated Learning Certifications (Level 1 and Level 2) from The HERD Institute ® 

frequently asked questions

Equine Facilitated Learning (EFL) is a practice that pairs humans and horses in partnership for experiential learning. Through any number of activities, or no activity at all, participants will explore their experiences and the meaning they make from them.

Equine Facilitated Learning is not “horse therapy.” It is not intended to diagnose or treat any illnesses. It is, however, designed to allow participants to explore and learn through being open to experiencing the present moment with the help of human and horse facilitators.

Anyone who has a desire to learn, experience, and grow can benefit from participating in Equine Facilitated Learning. At Leg Up Learning Solutions, we specialize in working with individuals and teams who want to improve their communication skills, leadership skills, conflict resolution skills, team building, and team cohesion. 

The learning possibilities are endless! In fact, EFL can help individuals learn and grow in any way they can imagine.

  • Discovering your communication style
  • Gaining confidence​
  • Improving leadership skills
  • Increasing empathy
  • Becoming a better, more clear, and decisive communicator
  • ​Building trust between team members
  • Improving present-moment focus and mindfulness skills
  • Learning to recognize emotions in self and others, as well as ways to regulate them
  • And much more!

No, EFL is primarily ground-based and does not typically include mounted activities. Instead, Equine Facilitated Learning activities often include: 

  • Observing the herd
  • Joining the herd
  • Round-pen activities
  • Interacting with horses “at liberty” (horses free in a large open space)
  • Grooming horses
  • Leading horses
  • Putting a halter on a horse
  • Games and obstacles courses

It’s important to remember that EFL is not about any specific activity. It’s about the interaction between participants and the human and equine facilitators, and the lessons that can be learned as the experience unfolds.

Ready to get started with EFL?
Click to Schedule a phone consultation today